WSU names Mom of the Year
It is estimated that more than 75,000 people were killed during the Salvadorian Civil War, a violent, 12-year-long conflict from 1980 to 1992 between El Salvador’s government and a coalition of guerilla groups called the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.
Maria Cruz was a survivor. After being separated from her family, Cruz fled her war-torn country for the United States at just 13 years old to start a better life.
On Saturday, Cruz was surrounded by family in the luxurious Lewis Alumni Centre at Washington State University for a Mom’s Weekend brunch, unaware that she was about to be named WSU’s Mom of the Year.
Her daughter, 22-year-old Kelly Cruz, had tears in her eyes as she described why she decided to nominate her mother, who received numerous congratulations from fellow moms after the ceremony.
“Even though it’s not as big as anything she’s given me, I just wanted to try giving something small for her, and so I decided to nominate her,” Kelly said.
She submitted the application – a series of essay questions – not thinking hers would necessarily stand out in a potentially large pool of other honorable mothers.
When Kelly eventually got an email saying her mom had been chosen for the award, she rushed to tell her family – though she said she usually goes straight to her mom with big news – and urged her five siblings not to give anything away.
The family, mostly coming from Tonasket and Cheney, Wash., arranged plans to travel to WSU while some stayed home to take care of the family taco truck, a business 23 years in the making. Maria and her husband have run the business since she was 21.
“We work every day from 5 in the morning to 10 at night,” Maria said after the ceremony.
Together, they have six children, ages 9 to 29. Two have received two degrees each from Central Washington University. Kelly plans to graduate in May 2018 with degrees in sport management and strategic communications.
Maria is proud of her children for all they have accomplished. Sometimes she feels they do too much.
She described life in El Salvador as very different from the United States. Women had no rights, she said. There was no time for sleep. As a child, she worked with her grandmother to feed Salvadorian soldiers. After fleeing the country, she and her husband (then boyfriend) held three jobs each when they were only 16.
“I’m coming from a very poor country … and I told them, it’s very hard when you don’t have anything,” Maria said. “We have a free country, we have a lot of food and you have to thank God that in this country, you have everything. All the opportunity. You can go as far as you can.”
To Kelly, her mother’s journey paved the way for Kelly to be able to have such successes, even in the face of a debilitating illness. Kelly was recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the WSU Health and Wellness Services medical clinic after nearly 10 years of painful symptoms that other doctors were never able to diagnose.
For a while, the pain left her unable to get out of bed to go to class as she watched her GPA start to sink and soccer tryouts slip out of reach.
But with the help and support of her mother and professors, Kelly remains on track to graduate and eventually pursue a goal to work with the Special Olympics.
“The community in Tonasket, they go and ask me, ‘how do you raise your kids?’ They didn’t get in trouble, they have straight A’s, they are hard workers. We give a lot of love to them and we always tell them respect other people,” Maria said.
Maria took home a glass award plaque and a bundle of red roses from WSU.
“She never lost hope. She never stopped looking for her family and she never stopped caring for the family that she had,” said Jennifer Murray, program coordinator for the Women’s Resource Center at WSU.