AFTER 37 YEARS, LUCINO AND BEA LOOK BACK

By Juan Montoya

They met when they were students in Brownsville High School, then the only high school in town.
Now the school is called Homer Hanna, and there are more than a handful of high schools in Brownsville. But in those days, "going steady" was a serious thing, and Beatriz Galindo, with a surname from a middle-class, professional, socioeconomic level of Brownsville, and Lucino Rosenbaum Jr., the son of business-oriented family from the Southmost barrio that had worked its way up from the migrant stream, were an item.They wed in 1972 and after high school, he went off to the U.S. Army. After his stint in the service, the couple went about the business of setting up a home and starting a family. The family business – a grocery store, then a gift and flower shop – prospered. Soon came Samantha, Lucino III, and Nicole. She took a job in the leasing department of the Brownsville Navigation District.
Exasperated by the conditions of the roads in his neighborhood off Maverick and Dakota roads, Lucino ran for commissioner of Precinct 1. He didn't know it then, but he was taking on one of the most powerful politicians in South Texas, the late D. J. Lerma. He lost by a few votes, but Lerma had seen the writing on the wall, and when Judge Jack Goolsby died in office and Lerma was appointed interim county judge, he annointed Rosenbaum to succeed him in Precint 1.

The men – once bitter political enemies – became fast friends.
But that was far in the future when Rosenbaum's candidacy became known in the barrios. Pachanga after pachanga was thrown in his honor and the formerly passive, non-participatory electorate suddenly caught the excitement of having one of their own in the running for an important post.
After serving Lerma's term, Rosenbaum ran twice again and won. He lost after serving two full terms. Along the way he took on former County Judge Ray Ramon – and beat him in a runoff by six votes. He then led the defection of a majority of the commissioners, all Democrats, and handed Tony Garza the county judgeship – the first Republican county judge in Cameron County since Reconstruction. His opponent was Rosenbaum's old nemesis, Ramon.
Garza, still a close friend, recently capped his meteoric rise in state and national politics by serving as George W. Bush's ambassador to Mexico.
There will always be low valleys in a politician's career, and the Rosenbaums went through several trying periods. Both their mothers and fathers died, their children got into trouble, etc., the usual travails of families.
But those things are not what they're celebrating today. After 37 years of marriage, Bea and Lucino live in their Dakota Road homestead, she still with the BND, and he still helping out with the family business and raising goats and horses on his spread.

There is also a crop of grandchildren running around the Rosenbaum stead. Nothing's perfect in this life, but after 37 years, this is probably close enough. Felicidades Bea and Lucino!