Lauro Fred Cavazos Jr., a politically-orientated Democrat, United States Secretary of Education from 1988 to 1990 – during the administration of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — and the country's first Latino to serve in a presidential cabinet position, died Tuesday, March 15, at 95, in his home in Concord, Massachusetts. He also served as president of Texas Tech University.

Cavazos was the eldest of five children born to Lauro (father) and Tomasa Quintanilla Cavazos, whose ancestors settled in Texas long before it became a state in 1845. Lauro and his brothers were born on King Ranch, the largest expanse of Texas state, near Kingsville. His father was the foreman of the Santa Gertrudis cattle on the ranch, and his mother was a descendant of Francita Alavez, the “Angel of Goliad,” who saved the lives of many prisoners in the Texas Revolution, a rebellion against Mexico between 1835 and 1836.

The brothers, who spoke English with their father and Spanish with their mother, attended a two-room school on the ranch for the children of the king's workers. Starting in 1935, they went to public schools in Kingsville.

Upon graduation from high school in 1945, Lauro joined the Army and served in the United States Infantry in the final days of World War II. One of his brothers, Richard E. Cavazos, who died in 2017, became the Army's first four-star Latino general.

At Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Lauro Cavazos earned a bachelor's degree in zoology in 1949 and a master's degree in zoological cytology, the study of cells, in 1951. He açso earned a doctorate in Physiology in 1954 from Iowa State University.

In 1954, he married Peggy Ann Murdock, and they had 10 children: Lauro III, Sarita, Ricardo, Alicia, Victoria, Roberto, Rachel, Veronica, Tomas, and Daniel.

Dr. Cavazos taught Anatomy for a decade at the Medical College of Virginia (now part of Virginia Commonwealth University), and in 1964 he joined Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston as professor and chair of the Department of Anatomy. He was also dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 1975 to 1980.

In 1980, he was named president of his alma mater, “Texas Tech,” and the School of Medicine – the largest Latino run school in the country, with 24,000 students. He increased enrollments for black and Hispanic students and gained a reputation for budget discipline. 

“In May 1988, he stepped down as the university president to resume teaching. But months later he accepted the Reagan appointment as education secretary, apparently with an understanding that if Bush were elected president, he would have an inside track for reappointment”.

Dr. Cavazos, a Democrat with no political experience, served under two Republican presidents and under intense pressure to succeed at the Department of Education, which Reagan threatened to eliminate as a waste. Importantly, education in the US is largely left to state and local school districts, without direct federal jurisdictional control.

“While Dr. Cavazos was regarded as highly qualified for the post, his appointment by Reagan in 1988 — confirmed by the Senate in late September in a 94-0 vote — appeared aimed at drawing Hispanic voters to the flagging presidential campaign of Bush, his vice president. Doubts about the appointment’s political nature were dispelled when it was learned that only three Hispanic candidates, including Dr. Cavazos, were being considered by President-elect Bush for education secretary”.

In addition, Dr. Cavazos came to Washington at a time of deepening crisis in public schools, with inadequate funding, declining academic performance and high dropout rates. Colleges and universities were struggling with ethnic preferences in admissions policies, among other issues.

At that time, he pledged to work with educational education officials, including the National Education Association, the largest organization of education professionals in the country. One of his work priorities was to reduce high school dropout rates, especially among students considered minority groups.

After serving only two years and three months – under criticism for his leadership for not presenting a clear and forceful agenda – in December 1990, Bush asked for his resignation. “The catalyst was a ruling by the Education Department’s civil rights division that college scholarships designated solely for a racial minority were discriminatory and illegal, and that federal aid would be denied to any college that awarded them”.

“The ruling infuriated many educators and civil rights advocates, who said it might undo years of educational progress for minority students. Politically embarrassed, the White House reversed the ruling, and Bush named former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee to replace Dr. Cavazos”.

After resigning in 1990, Dr. Cavazos returned to Tufts as a professor of Public Health and Home Care Medicine.

“Dr. Cavazos wrote two memoirs: “A Kineño Remembers: From the King Ranch to the White House” (2006) and “A Kineño’s Journey: On Family, Learning, and Public Service” (2016). (Kineño, or king’s man, was the name adopted by residents and employees of the ranch.) He also wrote articles for technical journals and textbooks on the physiology of reproduction and the structure of cells and tissues, and for general periodicals on education”.

Asked early in his cabinet tenure what he would like people to say about him when he left office, Dr. Cavazos told The New York Times: “Here was a person who brought the nation together to address a serious problem, and started people thinking toward a solution”.

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