HERMISTON — With an Oregon State University hat on his head and a determined attitude and passionate heart, Jesus Jaime-Diaz has done everything he set his mind to.

He grew up in Hermiston with his parents and as the oldest of six siblings. His parents came from Nayarit and Durango, Mexico, immigrated to the United States and met working in the strawberry fields around Hermiston.

While Jaime-Diaz said he learned English at an early age, school remained difficult with educators at the time not prepared to “be responsive to the diversity” of students.

“It was assumed because you had a social language, you could understand science and all that,” he said. “If you learn a language from cartoons and TV and talking to people that is one thing, but you need a strong academic knowledge to decipher what is being taught to you.”

He withdrew from high school in his sophomore year and started to work in the fields surrounding Hermiston, mostly planting and digging up potatoes.

Finding inspiration

In the next few years, he bounced from job to job, until he landed a job at the Walmart Distribution Center after helping build it. Days lasted 12, sometimes 14 hours, with a lot of heavy lifting as he moved entertainment centers and palettes.

“At the end of the day, the sun would go down, and I just felt so empty inside, like life had no meaning, and that was all I was worth,” he said.

After five years of backbreaking labor, Jaime-Diaz was given a clipboard job at Walmart, allowing him to pursue a General Educational Development certificate, which his younger brother had done.

“My brother in prison, he inspired me,” Jaime-Diaz said. “And I wanted to motivate our youngest brother, too. I wanted him to be the redemption for our failures. No matter what I sacrificed, from here on out, he was going to be the one to make it.”

Making a promise

During his previous shifts, Jaime-Diaz attempted to complete the degree, but was exhausted and burned out after his work. With the promotion, he changed his schedule from weekdays to weekends, 12 hours a day. This allowed him to pursue his degree at the Hermiston campus of Blue Mountain Community College.

Nearly two months after starting his GED path, the trailer home Jaime-Diaz, his mother and siblings lived in burned down, with his youngest brother dying from smoke inhalation at 14 years old.

“After seeing so much darkness in my life, I was tired, I wanted to give up,” he said. “I don’t think I ever recovered from that blow in my life, and I don’t think that I ever will.”

Just months before his brother died, Jaime-Diaz asked him if he had the choice, where he would want to attend college.

His brother told him his dream was to attend Oregon State University and be a Beaver. The memory came back to Jaime-Diaz during the funeral, and he promised his late brother to fulfill his dreams for him.

“I didn’t know how to read, write, count,” he said. “In school they told me I didn’t know how to talk. But I promised him I would go to that school for him. I didn’t know how I was going to get there, I didn’t know what it meant to go to college, I didn’t know any of that. But I was going to do it.”

Teacher makes a difference

Jaime-Diaz did not attend his GED classes for two weeks after the death of his brother. He said he went into paralysis, not being able to think or function.

But he had a GED teacher, Jeannie Lockwood, who pushed and motivated him every step of the way. She brought Jaime-Diaz’s entire GED class to his brother’s funeral and made sure he pursued the dream he promised.

“She told me one day, ‘With everything you have lived and overcome, you can help a lot of people. Just imagine if you woke up every day loving what you do,'” Jaime-Diaz said.

This was unfamiliar territory for Jaime-Diaz, but he worked hard to pursue his goal, with the help of Lockwood, who bought him his first college math textbook upon getting his GED certificate in the summer of 2002.

Jaime-Diaz enrolled at BMCC that fall to work toward his associate’s degree and started his involvement in student government. He finished in the spring of 2005 with an associate’s degree and an emphasis in sociology.

To Corvallis and beyond

Entering OSU as a junior, Jaime-Diaz continued his work in student activism but focused mostly on a double major in ethnic studies and speech communication.

After his undergrad time at OSU, he hoped to return home and take care of his family, but his professors had other plans.

“My professors said your purpose in this life is to be a voice for the dispossessed,” Jaime-Diaz said. “You’re going to need to speak for the people that come from the bottom of society.”

Teachers recommended he pursue a Ph.D., and within one year earned his master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies, focused on adult education, ethnic studies and speech communication. He defended his thesis soon after, on Latinos in community college and what motivated them to pursue a higher education.

The University of Texas at San Antonio accepted Jaime-Diaz into a doctorate program, where he excelled in his coursework and by his second semester taught his own class.

After his third semester, Jaime-Diaz returned home from Christmas to find his brother had been killed.

Community matters

“When that happened, I felt like it was going to be the end of me,” Jaime-Diaz said. “But then I remembered the community that supported me here, I remember the community that supported me at Oregon State and I remember the community that supported me in Texas. I knew I had to represent them.”

Jaime-Diaz said he felt it was time to start anew and transferred to the University of Arizona, where he earned his doctorate in 2018.

He now is the outreach coordinator and a professor at the University of Arizona where he teaches courses in Mexican-American studies, speech communication and critical multicultural education. He said he finds it important to educate his students on social oppression in every type of community, the same he felt as a child.

“My sense of injustice will always fuel my passion to educate, until the end of my life,” Jaime-Diaz said.

And each time he teaches or speaks, Jaime-Diaz’s Hermiston roots tug on him, reminding him where his passion blossomed.

“My professors said your purpose in this life is to be a voice for the dispossessed. You’re going to need to speak for the people that come from the bottom of society.”

— Jesus Jaime-Diaz, former Hermiston student now professor at University of Arizona