Hector Mendez has packed a lot of experience into his life from serving his country to being a longtime educator for Ector County ISD.
Now retired, Mendez says his family is healthy, he’s healthy and life is good. Mendez was born in Miles, Texas, a farming community 18 miles east of San Angelo. Before starting school, his father moved to West Texas before Mendez began school. The family lived in Crane and McCamey before settling in Big Lake.
Prior to college, he joined the Army for two years, leaving as a sergeant. He joined just a year after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Mendez said there was a lot of controversy in the U.S. about the war. At school, there were assemblies where a man who resembled Robert McNamara would talk about the spread of communism, scaring the heck out of the kids. He would show a visual representation of communist red covering the globe.
Mendez went to Vietnam and in two years he was a sergeant.
“That was sort of the attrition rate,” he said.
Mendez was with the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta assigned to the Mobile Riverine Force, so they were fondly called the River Rats.
“Actually, I was fortunate to be assigned there because one of the good things about that was that our base camp was a naval ship. We were up and down the Mekong River from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Cambodian border. … The neat thing about it was that once every 10 days, because we used to go in operations for about 10 days and then we‘d come in,” Mendez recalled.
They could only do nine or 10 days at a time because the Delta was all water, mud and rice paddies. They would go to the ship, see a doctor and dry out for a couple of days before setting off again.
The latter part of his tour is when President Nixon began withdrawing troops.
As a 9-year-old, he chopped cotton working 55 hours a week for 75 cents an hour. He also did yard work and worked at a hospital at age 12 or 13 and then a grocery store.
“When I graduated, I wanted some time off just to do something different, but … that was a dangerous time … to take time off because if you were not in school, you were drafted,” Mendez said.
He volunteered for the draft as a friend and co-worker at the grocery store got married. Right after he got married, he got drafted. Mendez went to the draft board and told them to draft him instead of his friend. A year later his friend was drafted anyway.
Mendez always intended to go to to college. His father was a little bit upset with him when he didn’t go right away.
He earned a bachelor’s’s degree in elementary education and a minor in sociology from Angelo State and later a master’s in educational administration from University of Texas Permian Basin. He also has certifications in strategic planning, curriculum auditing and education leadership, for example.
Mendez said he never thought about teaching; he actually wanted to be a community organizer.
Mendez looked at salaries, but still wanted to serve in some way. He decided the best path was elementary education.
“I’m glad that I did …,” Mendez said.
He enjoyed developing relationships with students and always worked in the Title I schools, “the needy schools” with students that tended to have backgrounds like his own.
“I’ve lived the experience, so I wanted to be sort of a big brother to them, as well as teach them. but also help them maneuver through their lives,” Mendez said.
He logged 44 years in education, including a stint as ECISD superintendent from 2007-2013. Mendez also was superintendent at Pecos-Barstow-Toyah for a short time and has been a teacher and principal even going back to teaching after he retired.
As an administrator, Mendez said he regrets not spending more time with his family.
“When I retired, I decided that I would spend more time with family. My wife and I took some trips. We went out of the country. Went to Washington, New York. I’ve been there before, but this time not in a working way but in a relaxed way,” Mendez said.
Two years after he retired, his dad was having some health issues so Mendez and his wife, Rose, took him in. Several months later, he decided to go back to teaching as ECISD was more than 300 teachers short. That first year back was rough, he said.
“It was like starting over. The only thing was I had experience, but getting reacquainted with developing relationships with students and all that is required of a teacher. That first year was an adjustment period, but it was very rewarding in terms of getting together with the kids, working with the staff and the principal,” Mendez said.
He expressed thanks to Mauricio Marquez for giving him a chance to re-experience teaching.
Mendez and his wife, Rose, have five children and 13 grandchildren with two great-grandchildren on the way.
Phil Fouche, who was on the ECISD Board of Trustees when Mendez was superintendent, said he was one of the most quiet, reserved school chiefs he’s ever met. He and Mendez became friends while Fouche was serving on the board.
“What I … always appreciated about him is he loved the classroom. Sometimes we forget it’s all about the classroom and when you see a guy who’s been assistant superintendent and a superintendent and after he retires from those goes back and teaches (elementary school) that’s impressive to me because here’s a guy who loves the classroom and there’s nothing more important. That’s where it all happens,” Fouche said.
