TONY MARTINEZ'S SON STRICKEN WITH SERIOUS ILLNESS

Various Sources

We have just learned (and confirmed) that Jesuit Father TJ Martinez, president of Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory School in Houston, and son of City of Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez has been diagnosed with a serious, potentially life-threatening illness.

Those who have read this blog will be acquainted with our sometimes blistering criticism of his dad and his handling of the city's financing and his autocratic style of governing.

But nonetheless, as parents with kids of our own, we share the Martinez  family's concern and worry over their son's health. Political differences are one thing, the life and health of a family member is quite another.

Father Martinez was featured as one of four “new influencers” in Houston by local magazine, "Papercity," in its April 2012 issue. The Jesuit magazine, The Jeuist National News, also featured a story on him a month later in June.

On August 2013, the Brownsville Herald ran a feature on his work in Houston's Cristo Rey Jesuit College

which noted the success of the new school in providing a top-flight education to the city’s underprivileged children through its innovative work-study program that pays the students’ tuitions.

Martinez was praised for his ability to galvanize donors and corporations to support the school’s mission of providing a rigorous college preparatory track to Houston’s youth.
A section in the story highlighting Fr. Martinez’s achievements that appeared in the Houston magazine appears below:

"In Houston, the Cristo Rey campus near Hobby Airport revived a Catholic high school that had closed due to shifting demographics and declining enrollment. Enter the recently ordained Fr. Martinez, a Boston transplant raised in South Texas who was tapped after receiving his Harvard degree not only to lead, but to forge the Houston branch.
The campus opened in August 2009, with its first class set to graduate in May 2013. It currently serves 270 students and is set to enroll grades 9 through 12 in the fall of 2012.

The new school “relies on the private sector, not the government, to educate Houston’s youth who are living in poverty,” Fr. Martinez says. 

At the heart of Cristo Rey’s model are high-powered corporations — energy to finance, ConocoPhillips to Deutsche Bank — which pay the students’ tuition as part of an intriguing work-study program: Each Cristo Rey kid is employed one dy a week by his or her sponsoring firm throughout the school year. 

The community has embraced the new college prep’s vision, with a lead gift of one million dollars from the Kinder Foundation and an inaugural gala in January 2011 that raised an astounding $1.6 million. Giving a tour of Cristo Rey’s gleaming hallways, then dropping in on a chemistry class where students enthusiastically cluster around lab experiments, Fr. Martinez emphasizes the power and primacy of his school’s mission: “Cristo Rey Jesuit marries Houston’s corporate culture with a college-prep culture serving children living in the most financially challenged neighborhoods, to form a partnership that will not only save the lives of these children, but [ensure] Houston’s future as well."

We here at El Rrun-Rrun wish him and his family well.