First HALL banquet features Jaime Escalante
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| Daniel Castro, MD, president of HALL, presents Armando C. Hernandez, MD, and his wife, Mirta, with a plaque honoring his being selected as HALL's first Alumnus of the Year, while Daisy De León, PhD, (right) looks on. |
Mr. Escalante was born in 1930 in Bolivia. His parents were school teachers who worked in a small Aymara Indian village. At age nine, he and his family moved to La Paz, where he remained until he emigrated to the United States in 1963.
While still attending college, he was hired as a physics teacher at the American Institute, another La Paz high school. There he developed such a good reputation that by the time he graduated, Mr. Escalante was working at three schools, and tutoring on the side.
During his 12 years as a teacher in La Paz, Mr. Escalante developed a reputation for excellence. He created a team of science students at his old high school that consistently won city-wide contests against other schools.
In 1962, he attended a United States Department of State program for Latin American teachers in Puerto Rico. After seeing the United States for the first time during a tour following the program, he agreed to his wife's repeated suggestions that they join her relatives in California.
Mr. Escalante's first few years in the United States were difficult due to his lack of an American college degree. Since he was unable to teach, he found a job as a busboy, worked his way up to cook, then as an electronic factory technician, while accumulating night school credits for a degree in mathematics and a teaching credential at California State University in Los Angeles.
He was hired as a mathematics teacher at Garfield High School in east Los Angeles in 1974. From 1978 to 1979, Mr. Escalante began his first advanced placement calculus course and steadily increased the size of Garfield's calculus program. In 1982, the Educational Testing Service, which aDMinisters the college board advance placement program, suggested that some of his students had copied their answers, and forced 12 to retake the test. All passed the second time, giving the Garfield program a great emotional and political boost and leading to a succession of community awards for Mr. Escalante.
Subsequently, each year has seen an increase in the size and quality of the Escalante mathematics program. In 1989, 155 Garfield students took one of the two advanced placement calculus examinations and succeeded. That number set a Garfield and Los Angeles city record and was higher than all but a handful of high schools in the United States.
In March, 1988, Warner Brothers presented an American Playhouse Theatrical film titled "Stand and Deliver," starring Edward James Olmos in the role of Mr. Escalante, and Betty Carvalho in the role of his mother.
Currently, Mr. Escalante is hosting his own television series sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Sciences Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, ARCO, and IBM. These quality motivational videos, titled "Futures," were first broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System in the fall of 1990 as a Foundation for Advancements in Science Education production.
He is working on a book for parents to help with their children's math education, and another workbook series on calculus.
In 1993, Mr. Escalante began teaching four classes in mathematics at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, California, where he is replicating his success.
In his talk to the HALL guests, Mr. Escalante told the audience that "you must be a success with yourself before you can be a success for others. Self respect is something no one can ever take away. Go forward. If you go backward you will drown. Be a winner, choose your own destiny. You must have that privilege in life but you must demand the best from yourself."
Special guest at the banquet was actor Edward James Olmos. He was invited by his friend, Gerardo James de Jesus, PhD, patient representative at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Mr. de Jesus and Mari Cortes, aDMinistrative assistant in the LLUMC chaplain's office, served as hosts at the banquet.
Special tributes were made to Loma Linda University president B. Lyn Behrens, MBBS, and former special assistant to the president for diversity Delbert W. Baker, PhD, who is currently president of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama.
Dr. Behrens was honored for her initiative of starting the office of diversity. She also started and contributed to the President's Circle Endowment Fund for Hispanic Students for each of the six LLU schools. Through her work, she has encouraged Hispanic students, faculty, and alumni of Loma Linda University to work closer together.
Dr. Baker was presented a special appreciation award in absentia for his work in establishing the Hispanic Alumni Association of Loma Linda University and for his strong leadership for Hispanics.
HALL Alumnus of the Year
Presented with the first annual HALL Alumnus of the Year award was Armando C. Hernandez, MD. Dr. Hernandez was born in Cuba on July 16, 1921, the youngest of ten children. Though he was born into a wealthy family, early in his childhood his family lost all of their possessions to the country's economic depression.
Dr. Hernandez received his undergraduate degree at Antillian Union College in 1942. In January, 1944, he married Mirta Lopez and in May, 1944, they moved to Madison College in Tennessee where they worked for the summer.
In August, 1944, they enrolled at La Sierra University in the pre-medicine and pre-nursing programs.
After finishing their coursework in 1947, Dr. Hernandez entered the School of Medicine and Mrs. Hernandez entered the School of Nursing.
Dr. Hernandez graduated from the School of Medicine in 1951. After finishing his internship he began practicing medicine in Los Angeles. In August of 1957, he opened a medical practice in Santa Ana, where he spent the next 28 years practicing medicine.
In 1985, Dr. Hernandez retired from medicine, but has remained active managing his business properties and has been involved in several Seventh-day Adventist Church organizations. Dr. and Mrs. Hernandez have four children, Sonia, Dania, David, and Max. All four children are graduates of Loma Linda University. Dr. Hernandez initiated the Armando Hernandez Endowment Fund in the School of Medicine.
One of the highlights of the program was the presentation of the first Hispanic Alumni Scholarship Awards ever presented by HALL (see above photograph).
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