Cal Poly’s journalism department lost a long-time advocate and supporter last week with the discovery of journalism professor George Ramos dead in his Morro Bay home in July.
Ramos, 63, was both a professor and former student of Cal Poly’s journalism department, as well as a decorated reporter, with three decades of experience in the field and three Pulitzer Prizes to his name.
The Young Mustang
Ramos was something of a legend even before he graduated from Cal Poly, according to those who knew him in college.
Ramos had a big personality that left a mark on the journalism department, said Pete King, a Cal Poly journalism alumnus who later worked with Ramos at the Los Angeles Times.
“I started at Cal Poly right after George had left, but his legend was still bouncing around the halls and walls,” King said.
George made an impression working for the Mustang Daily as sports editor and later as the first Latino editor-in-chief.
Ramos was noticed for his commitment to his work even as a student, said former journalism professor emeritus Jim Hayes, who started teaching at Cal Poly in Ramos’ final year at the school.
His work was not the only thing people remember about Ramos as a student. Ramos was also a character who was extremely sure of himself, Hayes said.
Hayes recalled one time, in Ramos’ final quarter at Cal Poly, when he found the student working away at a typewriter in the Mustang Daily newsroom. Hayes said he asked him what he was working on, and Ramos replied that it was his senior project.
“I said, ‘When are you going to finish it?’ and he said, ‘Tonight,’” Hayes said. “And he’d just started it. And he wrote that whole damn thing in six hours.”
Pacifist at War
After graduating from Cal Poly in 1969, Ramos didn’t go directly into the journalism field. The Vietnam War was in full swing, and he was sent overseas as an artillery gunner, which is when Hayes said he lost touch with Ramos.
Ramos frequently told his own students decades later that although he hated war and was a pacifist, he joined the ROTC in college in order to avoid the draft long enough to finish his degree.
In the Industry
Ramos made it back from Vietnam, and began reporting for the Los Angeles Times in 1978, back in his hometown, the city he knew and loved.
Hayes reconnected with Ramos while he was working at the Los Angeles Times, when Hayes began coaching reporters and editors in the ’80s. Ramos was exactly as loud and opinionated as he had always been, Hayes said.
“He was an aggressive, hard working, take-no-crap-from-anybody, shoe-leather reporter, and he always had been,” Hayes said. “That persisted throughout his life.”
At this time, King also met Ramos for the first time, as they were both colleagues at the same paper.
Ramos began writing a column about life in Los Angeles, convinced that residents should be familiar with the intricacies of their city. King edited the column, which he said was some of Ramos’ strongest writing.
“He was a stand-up-for-the-little-guy sort of columnist,” King said. “His best work was always done when he was talking about his life, the life of East Los Angeles.”
Ramos won his first Pulitzer Prize while writing about his own experiences growing up in East Los Angeles, in a series about the lives of Latinos in Southern California. In doing so, he became one of the first Latinos to win the Pulitzer.
Later he went on to win two more Pulitzers for reporting on the Rodney King riots and the Northridge earthquake.
But Ramos never forgot Cal Poly, even while living in and writing about Los Angeles, King said. The two Mustangs would often discuss Cal Poly and its athletics in the Los Angeles Times newsroom, King said.
Ramos stayed at the Los Angeles Times for more than two decades, from 1978 to 2003, working every position from reporter and columnist to editor and bureau chief. He served on the advisory board to Cal Poly’s journalism department near the end of his time at the Los Angeles Times, trying to stay in contact with his old university.
But he couldn’t stay away from his alma mater forever, and Ramos returned to Cal Poly in 2003 as the new department chair.
Homecoming
Ramos’ return to Cal Poly was one of hope for the journalism department, said Mustang Daily adviser Paul Bittick, who knew Ramos for nine years.
When Ramos was brought in as chair, the journalism department was divided by infighting, and there was hope that things would improve, Bittick said.
“With his hiring came a lot of optimism, especially from students,” Bittick said. “They were all excited about a new chair coming in, especially from the industry. That might have been the biggest thing, excitement, which was what we needed at the time.”
As chair, just as he had been on the advisory board, Ramos was a fierce and fearless advocate for the journalism department.
A few years before his hiring, he was asked to be commencement speaker at graduation. At the time, the journalism department was at risk of being eliminated, and Ramos used the opportunity to publicly “get into the president’s face” about why the journalism department should be saved, King said.
“That was George being George,” King said. “He wasn’t afraid to get up at commencement and call out the president.”
Ramos’ attitude wasn’t always met well by those he encountered. Ramos made more than his fair share of enemies at Cal Poly, Hayes said, including Cal Poly College of Liberal Arts Dean Linda Halisky, who eventually asked Ramos to step down from the position as journalism department chair.
“He was an unusual man, without a doubt a very different kind of a person, and not everybody took to him,” Hayes said. “There were some people, including Cal Poly administrators, who looked at him with a jaded eye.”
Ramos’ rough demeanor was an asset to his teaching, however, as he pushed students to improve, said Tristan Aird, a former student of Ramos’ who now writes about high school sports for the Las Vegas Review Journal.
“He was very good at knowing how to challenge you to become a better reporter and a better writer,” Aird said.
Ramos coached Aird as a writer while the student held Ramos’ old position as Mustang Daily sports editor.
“He would always advise me in how to be tougher with asking questions with coaches,” Aird said.
Ramos used to tell Aird that he should write editorials that would stir up controversy, like a piece on why the women’s basketball coach should be fired, said Kristen Marschall, who went to school with Aird and was editor-in-chief of the Mustang Daily.
“He gave him so much crap,” Marschall said.
Ramos also left Marschall with lessons about daily newspaper reporting that she carries with her to this day, as a writer for the Palo Alto Daily News.
“Whenever we had made a mistake or something he (always said), ‘Tomorrow’s another day,’” Marschall said. “I still work at a daily newspaper, and I still have his voice in my head saying, ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’”
In addition to changing the lives of his students, Ramos also deeply affected the lives of his friends, such as director of media relations for Cal Poly athletics Brian Thurmond.
Ramos, Thurmond and Thurmond’s wife liked to spend long dinners debating every topic they could think of, Thurmond said.
“The three of us would sit there and no one would take anything personally,” Thurmond said. “It was fun debate banter, and he was a great person to do that with because he had such a wealth of knowledge.”
Both Ramos and Thurmond were known to play devil’s advocate and argue a position they were opposed to from time to time just for the fun of arguing, Thurmond said.
Ramos was close with the Thurmond family, and attended Thurmond’s daughter’s first birthday several weeks ago. For Thurmond, the biggest tragedy is that Ramos died while Thurmond’s daughter was so young, he said.
“One of my biggest regrets about him passing is my daughter won’t know him,” Thurmond said. “We printed out his stories so that when she’s old enough she can understand, read and know what he did.”