A wrinkled fading black and white copy of Rafael Palafox’s Certificate of Naturalization shows he was 24-days short of his sixty-eighth birthday when he suddenly passed away. I found it in my mail basket. It was made to serve as “In Case of an Emergency” identification document when traveling to California, El Paso and the Texas Rio Grande Valley to conduct business for the NALEO Educational Fund. Rafael worked for the Fund almost thirty-years to my eleven.

Rafael was a printer by trade. When I met him in 1989, he had started his own print shop after being laid-off from a big printing company as technology began to impact the industry. I was doing grassroots organizing for a political action committee named Latinos Unidos. The PAC hired him to print its newsletter and business cards. Three years later, when I joined NALEO’s Texas office as a volunteer coordinator, he started volunteering with the Fund. NALEO, the nation’s leading non-profit, non-partisan organization that facilitates full Latino participation in the American political process, from citizenship to public service, was new in Houston and was in great need of volunteers and community support.

It was a challenging period for Rafael too. He confided that for years he resided in a house which he thought he was buying. As he struggled to build his business, the grantor claimed the official property record stipulated that if he missed monthly payments it voided the agreement. Abruptly, from one day to the next, he became renter. Rafael was familiar with hardship. His mother died when he was two-years old. It was not an easy subject for him to discuss. He was raised by his aunt. Despite his struggles, he always showed up to NALEO with an uplifting jovial disposition.

Rafael’s commitment to NALEO’s mission earned him part-time employment. As the organization’s services became more in demand and the workload increased, he became a full-time employee. Rafael was responsible for training new volunteers, preparing the materials for the conduct of citizenship workshops, and assisting walk-in applicants. Moreover, not many people know that a decade before the League of Women Voters gain notoriety for registering new citizens to vote at U.S. Citizenship Ceremonies in the Houston area, a group of volunteers under NALEO’s direction, distributed a package at every ceremony that included a voter registration application, a U.S. Passport application, a congratulatory letter from the President of the United States and a Welcome to U.S. Citizenship guide encouraging participation in American civic life. Rafael was the point person, in charge of gathering all the materials for the initiative.

Originally from Tampico, Tamaulipas, Rafael was a naturalized American citizen that was always ready to help legal residents with the citizenship process any day, anywhere, at any time. NALEO served communities all over the greater Houston area, as well as from Dallas to Austin to San Antonio to Harlingen to El Paso and everywhere in between.

Looking back, I witnessed Rafael experienced some of the happiest moments of his personal and professional life working for NALEO. His former colleagues can take solace in knowing that his association with NALEO helped lessen Rafael’s hardships. It afforded him a livelihood that he enjoyed immensely, the opportunity to travel to every major city in the nation, and a sense of accomplishment. More importantly, he was able to take care of his family and buy a house in a nice part of Houston a thousand times better than the one he lost. 

As we mourn Rafael, let us celebrate his volunteerism and loyalty which helped sustain NALEO as it worked to establish its profile and increase citizenship services to the public near and far. Let us recognize that as an employee he quietly kept the organization functioning as change in its local leadership occurred.

It has been twenty years since I went from being Rafael’s boss to simply his friend. The grief one feels knowing that we have lost him is a reminder that human beings are bound by their shared experience. Accordingly, in addition to his wife, daughters and his grandchildren, he will be deeply missed and fondly remembered by his peers, current and former NALEOites, and the thousands of legal residents he helped become citizens.