By Libby Cluett
lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com

The important things in Daisy Gomez’s life include rearing her children, church and education.

Gomez and her husband, Benjamin Gomez, who has been an integral partner in raising their six children, both agreed that with the first three kids they “realized the greatness of the responsibility we had.”

Daisy Gomez did not have the privilege of a public education past the sixth grade. She was raised in a rural village in El Salvador where school was taught up to sixth grade.

When she was 6 years old, Gomez worked by cleaning and gardening for her family. From the ages of 8 to 10, she picked cotton with her brothers at a neighboring farm.

“They paid 25 cents a day,” recalled Gomez, who now makes considerably more as a carhop at Sonic.

She also spent time making tortillas – from grinding maize to patting the tortillas by hand – and washing clothes by hand on a washboard.

In 1982, the year she emigrated from El Salvador, her small native country was already a couple of years into a destructive, deadly and highly political civil war. At the age of 15, Gomez left home to live with her sister in Mineral Wells. By this time, eight of her 10 siblings lived in the U.S. Her youngest sister remained in El Salvador and still lives there today.

When she first moved to Mineral Wells, Gomez worked at Pulido’s Mexican Restaurant cleaning tables, where she worked for nine years. After marrying Benjamin Gomez and starting a family, Gomez was a stay-at-home mother for the next nine years.

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With help from her family and church, this mother of six who came to the U.S. with only a sixth-grade education, has managed to raise children who are excelling in academics, sports and are good citizens.

Academically, she says she has “three and three. Three [children] who are good and three very good.”

This fall the Gomezes sent their daughter, Bricia, ranked eighth in her graduating class, off to Texas Tech University with seven scholarships.

Gomez explained that her daughter wanted to be a lawyer since second grade until she recently worked at Walgreens Pharmacy.

“She got to know the pharmacists and [became] interested [in the profession],” she said.

Gomez added that she thinks being bilingual and well educated will help each of her children in the future workplace.

“Bricia will be an example for us and how she uses her bilingual skills,” said Gomez.

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She smiles and laughs when thinking about her early years rearing children.

“When we were first married and had our first child [Daisy], we didn’t realize we were going to have this many kids. When Ben [their third child] was born, we started going to church. I didn’t feel I was as good a parent as I was after going to church,” said Gomez.

She said that with her first three children she did the best she could do but was overprotective.

Once she and her husband became students again, by attending a special program for married couples at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, they started understanding their roles as parents.

“Church taught us, for example, that we should educate ourselves first, then educate our children,” explained Gomez.

“I believe if every parent dedicated time to their children and remembered that everything the parents do, the children are watching, then families would be stronger,” she added.

“We’ve always wanted them to do well, better than their parents,” added father Benjamin Gomez who said he works long hot hours as a brick packager stacking bricks by hand, a job he has been doing for 23 years.

“My job has taken care of me and my family. It’s hard work, but it pays well.

“We’ve always given our time to our children. We’ve lived for them,” he added.

Son Ben Gomez, who is a senior at MWHS and currently ranked 12th academically in his class of 234, said, “I’ve noticed they’ve put time into us.”

“They’ve told me with an education, we won’t have to kill ourselves working,” he added.

Daisy Gomez gives credit to her church for continuing to educate her and her husband to be responsible parents.

“We’re just continuing our education with the church. We’ve learned to choose good family friends with their families and we learn from the mistakes we made,” she added.

She also said that her sister has been integral in rearing her children and, in exchange, she has helped her sister raise hers. Additional help has come from a psychologist friend, who they met 12 years ago in marriage classes at church and with whom they still keep in touch.

“He gave us a lot of good counseling on parenting. He’s the extra person who’s there for us,” she added, citing that her children have his phone number in case they need someone to call.

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Daisy Gomez giggles, and even apologizes to eldest daughter Daisy, as she recalls one of her past parenting decisions. She said she always thought school was for learning and not playing so she did not want her children playing sports.

“School was for grades,” daughter Maria jibes.

When his father signed him up for soccer, son Ben recalls, “Mom came and unregistered me,” as soon as she found out.

She did not allow him to play organized sports until he was a freshman in high school. Now he starts as an offensive guard for the Mineral Wells Rams.

Eventually, other siblings were allowed to play sports: Bricia, powerlifting and cross country; Ben, football and soccer; Maria, cross country and volleyball; Roy, soccer; and Reina, cross country and soccer.

Maria Gomez, now a freshman, was “athlete of the year” last year at Mineral Wells Junior High and was recently honored with “athlete of the month” for October at Mineral Wells High School.

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Gomez said that juggling parenting is easier now that her children, who range in age from age 12 to 20, are at two schools and no longer spread out across the district campuses.

Once her youngest, Reina left Lamar Elementary, Gomez said she started working again – the morning and lunch rush at Sonic. This way she can be home when her children return from school.

She is now a grandmother. It appears that nine-month-old Mia, the daughter of Gomez’s eldest, Daisy, has many more than her parents and grandparents to help rear her, including her many young, energetic aunts and uncles who seem happy to see her grow and transform.

MWHS Principal John Kuhn has known most of the Gomez children through his teaching and administrative roles at Mineral Wells ISD and said, “They’ve been not only really good students, but they are good people. That says a lot about their parents.”

Editor’s note: Special thanks go to Ben Gomez and Mineral Wells High School Principal John Kuhn for their assistance with this story.