The world has lost a good one in the death of Bob Graham

Saddened by the recent passing of former Florida Senator and Gov. Bob Graham, a man of intellect, integrity, and a true love of our state, I want to share a side of him that many may not know.

In 1977-80, I directed a three-year Title VII federal grant at Florida International University that provided Spanish total immersion experiences to different homogeneous groups of school district administrators, teachers, religious leaders, and government officials. Each group consisted of about 20 professionals who would attend a two-week program of Spanish language and Hispanic culture immersion.

Bob Graham was running for governor of Florida in 1979 for the first time, and he chose this experience as one of his now famous “workdays.” We gave each participant Spanish names, so he became “Robertico,” and none were allowed to speak English throughout the day, role-playing the part of children learning Spanish as their native language. The main purpose of the grant was not only learning some Spanish, but walking in the shoes of the newly arrived immigrant children attending a school where their native language was not spoken.

“Robertico” did very well; he could even have basic conversations in Spanish with “Mauricio” (Merritt Stierheim) and “Margarita” (Margaret Kempel). I role played their “mamá,” and each day was dedicated to the culture of a different Hispanic/Latin American country, including learning a song and dance from each country; a field trip to Little Havana was a highlight as well.

It is widely known that Bob Graham did not ever lose an election, and that is true—except for the election for “presidente de la clase” of that Spanish immersion course (“Margarita” won). He never let me forget it! At the end of that experience, Bob, then a member of the Florida Senate, told me he would help me advocate on behalf of bilingual and multicultural education in our state. I helped run his campaign for governor at FIU, and the rest is history.

In the early 1980’s, my colleague Dr. Susan Angulo and I received another grant to travel statewide and hold intensive workshops for school administrators to assist them with setting up English for Speakers of Other Language (ESOL) and maybe even bilingual programs for the thousands of newly arrived immigrants arriving all over Florida. We needed an endorsement from someone important who was in our corner. I called Bob, and he agreed to narrate and be on camera for a video that would introduce our workshop: “Bilingual education in Florida: A Perspective” was the result. We could not have asked for a better introduction.

Then, in the first decade of the new millennium, when I was serving as board member of the Florida Humanities Council, I asked “Robertico” to head a panel on “The Future of Florida.” He again obliged, and he gave a prescient analysis of where our state was heading, and what we as citizens could do to assure a bright future.

After that, we kept in touch throughout the years. I enjoyed the Christmas postcards with pictures of the entire Graham family, but my favorite by far was when he would still call me his “mamá,” embarrassingly in front of people, who had no idea why he would do such a thing. I will miss him terribly.

Dr. Norma Martin Goonen is an associate professor at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: The world has lost a good one in the death of Bob Graham