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From migrant worker to Professor de la Cruz

by PEP | August 20, 2007 at 07:34 am | 162 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

The cards were not only stacked against Dr. Juanita de la Cruz, but she and her family weren't even dealt a full hand. In spite of poverty and the life as a migrant worker, this remarkable woman earned her Ph.D. and is passing on her wisdom to countless others.

San Juanita de la Cruz remembers sleeping in a former pigsty, using communal showers in a migrant camp and crouching in the back of a pickup to try to shield her gray-striped cat Monina from a rainstorm during her family's 1,700 mile-odyssey from Texas to Michigan to pick fruits and vegetables.

''This was survival,'' she says.

Decades later, de la Cruz, 55, is working to help other children climb out of the back of trucks and into the middle class.

As one of the nation's first migrant farm workers to earn a doctorate, de la Cruz has become a much-honored Miami-Dade school administrator and Nova Southeastern adjunct professor who emphasizes reaching out to the poor and homeless. She's currently secretary for the executive board of the Miami Coalition for the Homeless and on the state's Homeless Education Needs Assessment Committee to help homeless youngsters thrive in school despite their precarious situation