My Crazy Tio Martin’s 50th Wedding Anniversary

On Dec 27, we celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary of my tio Martin and tia Molly. Tio Martin is one of my mom’s two brothers; the other is Antonio ‘Nito’ Ramirez, and she also has a sister, Annie, whose 50th we celebrated last year. Tio Martin has six children and 14 grandchildren, and I have fond memories of growing up with them when we visited the west side of town. They lived on the same block as tia Annie’s family, so we’d often walk down and get more kids to play basketball or football in the street. Here’s a picture of them back on their wedding day:

And today:

We had a full mass at The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, on the west side of San Antonio. I’d never been there before, and it’s beautiful. Then we had a traditional Tex-Mex reception in the parish hall next door, with mariachi’s, dinner and dancing. The mariachi’s were very special: they are known as Mariachi L, formed by all eight(!) children of the Marshall and Magdelena Luevano family. Magdelena is Molly’s niece, via brother Jesse Hernandez(no relation to my dad). On top of that, the DJ for the night was the grandson of Tio Martin’s best man back in 1958.

All of Martin’s children gave speeches, and daughter Laura, who is a professional video editor(she and her crew produced Jurassic Fight Club for the History Channel), produced a very nice video slide show for them.

I sat with my grandparents, and, similar to what happened for Annie and Fino’s 50th two years ago, their table received many visitors throughout the night. Grandpa Tony and Grandma Amy have been married 73 years! It was a rare sight indeed to see the groom dance with his mother for his 50th anniversary:

Later, they held a ‘dollar dance’ for the bride and groom, a Tex-Mex tradition where you pay one dollar to dance with either one in a community effort to start them off on more sound financial footing. This time, they really didn’t want or need contributions, but it’s hard to argue with tradition. I had already danced some conjunto with tia Molly, so I wanted to dance with tio Martin just to have some time with him and tell him how proud I am of this very significant and rare accomplishment. Well, you can see what happened next. All I will say is he started it! Crazy Tio, Te Amo y felicitaciones!