Thanks for the memories, vato: Former El Paso Times reporter Ramón Rentería dies Friday

Javier Rentería, the son of longtime El Paso Times reporter and columnist Ramón Rentería, posted on Facebook the news that his father died peacefully Friday morning.

Ramón Rentería spent 39 years at the Times, winning awards and the hearts of El Pasoans.

When he retired in April 2015, Ramon Bracamontes wrote the following:

El Paso Times columnist Ramón Rentería retires after 43 years

After 43 years as a reporter — 39 of them at the El Paso Times — Ramón Rentería simply decided "it's time."

With those two words, one of the city's best-known and most well-respected journalists has called it a career. Today is his last day. His final column is in today's Borderland section.

"I've put in my time, it's time to go," Rentería, 66, said. "It's scary — this is all I've ever done — but it's time."

Joined the El Paso Times in 1976

A native of Valentine, Texas, which is just outside Marfa, Rentería began his newspaper career in 1972 at the Clovis, New Mexico, News Journal. He joined the El Paso Times in 1976 in the Las Cruces bureau. Several years later, he moved to El Paso to cover City Hall. He later moved to the education beat, which he covered for almost 20 years. More recently, he has been a Sunday columnist, general assignments reporter and books page editor.

Jimmy Vasquez, a longtime educator and former Region 19 Education Services Center executive director, said Rentería was one of the best education reporters in the state.

Award-winning writer

In 1989, Rentería wrote a national award-winning story that exposed the problems with the state's education funding formulas — a debate that lingers today in the courts and in the state Capitol. Vasquez said the piece raised eyebrows because it showed that students in property-poor districts, such as the San Elizario Independent School District, were not being provided the same type of education as students in property-rich districts in cities such as Dallas. The reason was simple — those districts have more money and more resources.

"He delivered the message about a part of the state that was ignored," Vasquez said. "He had a good grasp of the school funding equity issue and how it affected us all in the state of Texas. He made it clear that we (Hispanics) were being left out."

Rentería won several local, state and national awards for that 1989 piece titled "Separate and unequal: the story of Kelli, Veronica and school finance." Veronica was a student in San Elizario; Kelli was from Richardson, Texas, just north of Dallas.

"That piece on school funding and its inequities was probably the best work I ever did, mostly because it is something that is still being talked about today," Rentería said. "School funding problems have been around for the past 15 years."

Spanglish and slang words

Rentería's career took a turn in 2008 when then-El Paso Times editor Dionicio "Don" Flores asked him to become a Sunday columnist. Rentería's first Borderland column started this way:

"We lost our resident newsroom pit bull the other day.

"No screaming headlines announced reporter David Crowder's departure.

"Losing anyone to the competition is not something you brag about."

The column contained one word in one of the final sentences that turned out to be Rentería's trademark: Instead of writing "veteran," he used its Spanish equivalent, veterano. The sentence read: "As someone said at the departure of another veterano the other day, life goes on, the newspaper is still published daily, and the Crowders in our lives become another memory, another war story worth retelling later."

At first, Rentería's use of Spanish, Spanglish and slang words in his column made some readers irate. Today, those colloquialisms are what make his column unique.

The Times needed a voice

Flores said he asked Rentería to start doing a Sunday column because the Times needed someone who could write, in a professional way, the way El Pasoans speak, mixing English and Spanish and making up words.

"The Times needed a voice, somebody who could relate with a segment of the community that thought it wasn't being heard," Flores said. "And Rentería is a great storyteller. He has great community knowledge and he isn't a self-promoter.

"To this day he talks and writes about a segment of the community that is silent and very much in the shadows."

Estela Casas: Simple, direct and honest

KVIA news anchor Estela Casas has been an avid reader of Rentería for years. It's the first thing she reads in the Sunday newspaper.

"I think he tells it how it is," Casas said. "He makes me smile. He talks to me. As journalists it's our job to connect with people but it's very hard to do it, to have that relationships with an audience. Yet, he does it because he's simple, direct and honest.

"He will be missed."

Yes, he will.

But as former El Paso Times reporter, Gary Scharrer, puts it, Rentería's work will not be forgotten.

"He is an institution," Scharrer said. "Institutions never retire."

Thanks for the memories, vato.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Former El Paso Times reporter Ramón Rentería dies Friday