Luciano Is Being Seventy

Wednesday, September 30, 2015 A friend of mine who is writing a book of little league memories from the old timer of Douglas asked me to write my favorite memory from my little league days. As I wrote my memories I realized that those things that we do as kids, those things that happen to us when we are young impact us through out all our life. They influence who we are, and what we become. It is for this reason that I am including these memories of little league as a posting in my blog, "Luciano Is Being Seventy."  Little League Memories 1958 Luciano Ramirez I am writing my Little League memories at the request of Hector Leon from Douglas, Arizona. I really appreciate the humongous effort that Hector is undertaking  in making us, old little leaguers, dig into our memory banks and try to extract those memories that happened to us more than half a century ago. My memories are probably a little distorted and maybe a little embellished. What I am writing here is

Wednesday, November 11, 2015 Veterans Day On this Veterans Day I am very proud to say that this was my cousin and childhood friend, Richard "Richie" Ramirez We were about the same age and we grew up together in the Sulphur Springs Valley, Arizona, 20 miles north of Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. We both attended Douglas High School graduating in 1964. The last time that I saw him was in June of 1968 when he shipped out of Travis Air Force Base in northern California to Viet Nam. I never saw him again.He was killed in Vietnam in August 1968.    We went to his funeral in late August of 1968. We didn't see the body. It was a closed casket.  The sadness that I saw in his mother, my tia Josefina,  on the day of the funeral is the sadness that I have seen in her everytime that I have seen after that. It is a sadness that has never gone away. The loss of a sun or daughter has got to be devasting to a parent. I get chills just thinking about this  and writing