Ana Maria Romo de Mease

With deep sorrow we announce that after a complicated illness and a long battle, Ana Maria Romo de Mease passed away at the age of 82 on April 2, 2025. We will truly miss a beautiful person full of love and compassion, a wonderful wife and family member, a steadfast friend to the many people she knew and cherished; a person who understood the importance of education and learning through study, reading and travel and became a strong advocate for cultural understanding.

Ana Maria was born in Teocaltiche, Jalisco, Mexico, in an area called Los Altos, the Heights of Jalisco. When she was still young, her parents took her to Guadalajara, the state capital, to continue her education, where she lived and studied until she received her degree in psychology from ITESO (Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente).

Having learned the value of education and having a thirst to see and learn more about the world, Ana Maria came to the United States in 1966, where after studying English for a summer, she received a fellowship to continue her studies at Catholic University in Washington, DC. In the meantime, she met Larry, who convinced her to marry him, but because he had no money, he found a good job teaching English in Saudi Arabia, which allowed them to pay off debts and save some money. After being married in Guadalajara, Mexico, they traveled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Larry taught English and Ana Maria found a job at the Venezuelan Embassy doing translations from English to Spanish. Through the embassy, she met people who became lifelong friends. Because Larry worked for an airline, they traveled throughout Europe, North Africa, and Asia, and she learned the value of understanding people from completely different cultures.

In 1969 she and Larry returned to the US via a one-year stop in Germany, where Ana Maria studied German at Goethe Institute, worked for Siemens Corp. in Munich doing translations, met people from diverse backgrounds, and traveled throughout Western and Eastern Europe. She settled for a year in Washington, DC and worked in the newly formed Hispanic Cultural Institute to support her husband, who was finishing his Masters Degree in linguistics. There she met and formed friendships with people from all over the US and Latin America.

In 1971, Larry received a fellowship to study at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, where she found a job in Albuquerque Public Schools and, for the first time, experienced discrimination, which had a lasting impact on her. She decided not to work in the public school system but at the adult and university level, so she went back to school on a teaching fellowship at UNM where she learned her teaching skills and in received a Masters of Arts Degree in Spanish Literature in 1976. At UNM she met students who became life-long friends and became convinced that cultural understanding was essential for a better world.

From 1976 to 1990, Ana Maria and Larry worked in Dhahran and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she taught Spanish at the University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran and at King Abdul Aziz Women's University in Jeddah. She continued to travel and learn, with trips around Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bali, and Europe. There was one break, 1980-1982, when Ana and Larry went to Mexico to live and set up an English language school in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Ana Maria was instrumental in its founding and set up a very successful section for children, but unfortunately, the political situation in Mexico deteriorated with Peso devaluations and the nationalization of the banks, so she and Larry returned to Saudi Arabia, where she taught Spanish again, but not without a first stop at the University of Texas in Austin to study Arabic for a semester.

In 1990, Ana Maria returned to the US and Albuquerque for good where she taught Spanish at the Technical Vocational Institute (TVI) and the University of New Mexico. During this time, she wrote and published a Spanish textbook, which she used in her classes. After searching for jobs, she and Larry finally ended up in Eureka, CA, in 1994, where she taught at College of the Redwoods (CR) for eighteen years before retiring in 2012. During this time Ana Maria became a strong advocate for cultural diversity and understanding, instilling in her students the importance of education, diversity, and tolerance. As the first Latin woman to teach at the college, her task was gargantuan. She dedicated her time to her students and the Spanish program, which she expanded from just a few small classes to one of the largest departments at the college. She advocated tirelessly for cultural understanding by bringing local speakers and groups from all over the world to instruct and perform. She set up an annual Cinco de Mayo celebration, a yearly Day of the Dead alter display at the college, and in coordination with Humboldt State University, produced and directed an annual play in Spanish with student actors and translators from her classes. Every year, she took students on a cultural trip to San Francisco to see the Diego Rivera murals, visit museums, and enjoy the food and atmosphere of the different cultures of Latin America. In addition, she took her students to summer Spanish school at the University of Guadalajara in Guadalajara, Mexico, planning the classes and excursions. The college helped with some of the expenses, but Ana Maria helped earn money for the trips by motivating the students to sell food at the college and wash cars, and they loved her for it.

Probably her crowning achievement during her time at CR was the formation in 1998 of the Latino Film Festival. She was instrumental in its founding and continuation. In coordination with Rosamel Benavides, the Chair of the Language Department at Humboldt State University, she set up an annual film festival for the students and the community, which was held for three days at a local theater. They invited a keynote speaker from the film world who introduced each film and participated in a panel discussion after the film. Students received credit for attendance and a required essay on a topic they chose from the film. The organization of each festival was a huge job, but Ana Maria put all of her boundless energy into a project that she and her students loved: finding films with a common theme, arranging a speaker for three days, getting panelists and designing posters. It was a great success with enthusiastic audiences from the two local universities and the community with lively discussions and creative essays, and it is still thriving. She won College of the Redwoods Multicultural and Diversity Award twice, and in 2023 at the celebration of the 25th Latino Film Festival, she was honored for being a co-founder so many years earlier.

In 2012, Ana Maria retired and returned to Albuquerque, a place she always considered home in the US. Life slowed down considerably. She visited friends and neighbors, attended concerts and plays, took long walks in the mountains, along the Rio Grande and her neighborhood; always staying in contact with friends and colleagues; she continued reading. When possible, she made one or two trips to Mexico a year to visit family and get back to her roots, and she kept up her deep love of learning by traveling to a different country for a month every year, studying the language for two weeks and traveling for two.

We have lost a beautiful person, who was full of life and adventure, humble about her achievements, never bragging about them. She was a truly dedicated educator who was strong and firm in advocating for her students and the importance of cultural understanding-a person who has touched many and left lasting impressions. So, with a last loving embrace and a sad goodbye Ana Maria, we send you off on another adventure in the universe of unlimited travel, friendship and possibilities.