Romero, Fernando, 1946-

When Fernando Romero (b 1946) started school as a Spanish-only speaker in the barrios of El Paso, Texas, he quickly picked up English, excelled in classes, and proudly claims his Chicano identity. Education came with good and bad teachers, the bad believing they were entitled to pick on the brown-skinned children. These were early lessons for Fernando, who describes his harsher lessons would come when he enrolled at Nevada Southern (known as UNLV today.)

Fernando was the keen-eyed youngest of five Romero children. He witnessed the accomplishments of his family members and reaped benefit of their encouragement. Despite working two jobs, his father also found time to perform as a musician in the El Paso Symphony. One of his older brothers graduate high school early and was hired as a professional musician with big named bands in Las Vegas. Music also motivated Fernando, but not in quite the same way. For him it was the key to higher education and scholarships.

When he moved to Las Vegas in 1967, he found himself amidst a tiny enrollment of Latinos on campus, of those, most of those were of Cuban ancestry, not Mexican like him. He founded the Student Organization of Latinos (SOL). Fernando changed his major from music to a political science and practice his success by working with a host of community leaders, from former Nevada governors to US Senators, from education to gaming industry to civic leadership. He often became the first Latino to hold a position of leadership. He is a lifetime member and President of the Hispanics In Politics.