Movin' on upward, outward

For Upward Bound's Martina Granados, life hasn't always been easy

    By MAURICE NDOLE

In Martina Granados’ childhood home in a small Mexican village, she and 13 siblings shared everything from food at mealtime to a spot in a bed at night.

Life, in fact, for Granados was difficult right from the very start.

“I was born on the kitchen floor. We were very poor. The hospital was probably like two hours away from the little town, so my mom had me at home,” Granados said.

She said her grandmother helped deliver her by cutting her umbilical cord with a pair of scissors.

But the scissors were not sterilized and caused an infection that almost killed her.

Granados, after being the first in her family to get a college degree, sits at a desk in a Fresno State office. Granados is now the director of the Upward Bound program, a federally funded program that helps students from migrant and poor families to reach their academic goals.

In her daily routine, she is soft-spoken and attentive to those who visit her office and instantly puts her guests at ease with her sudden burst of humor and a spontaneous smile that slowly spreads across her face, forming dimples on her cheeks.

She said her childhood experience taught her to teach her students hard work and courage.

She didn’t know her destiny, but she knew she wanted to be a teacher.

“I knew I loved education. I wanted to be where I can learn from others and at the same time teach,” Granados said.

Granados immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was 7 years old.

The family of 16 shared a small house at a ranch in Chowchilla given to her father by the owner of the ranch as part of a work agreement.

She says life in their home was not easy, but they were happy.

“We didn’t have a big house. It was a really small house,” Granados said. “It was just two bedrooms and they had just made up a third bedroom (by dividing) half of the living room. We put a curtain halfway in there and it became a bedroom.”

Granados said the children had to improvise and share what little her family could afford.

“We were little, so we were used to sharing even a bed; a full-sized bed—not even Queen or King, just full-sized.” Granados said. “There would be like four or five of us in that bed, some across, some the opposite way, feet hanging.

Granados said her family never went shopping in the mall or owned name-brand clothing.

“I can’t really say that I had a brand new pair of pants or shoes. We shared our clothes. We didn’t really have our own unique things,” Granados said. “Just things from second-hand stores. We didn’t visit the malls or have the name-brand stuff; it was just more hand-downs, thrift stores and just whatever people would give us.”

Granados, the eighth-born child in her family, never expected to go to college, but she became the first child in her family to attend a university through Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) Summer Bridge program, which admits students from poor families to college based on their academic potential.

“I just give credit to God because I know he is in full control of our lives,” she said. “I never took any coursework classes. I don’t think I even knew what coursework classes were.”

Coursework classes are courses taken by high school students to qualify for admission to a university.

Granados said she started applying for admission to universities after her high school counselor, Sam Hairston, introduced her to a Fresno State recruiter.

“[Hairston] is the one who pushed me to do the paperwork, and I just [applied] to do it, not knowing what I was getting myself into,” Granados said.

Granados said she knew it was not going to be easy to convince her father to let her go to college, especially since she was not married and also because of the bad perception people in her small town had about Fresno.

She secretly did all of the application, even providing information in sections designated for her parents.

“I didn’t tell him anything until my letter from Summer Bridge arrived. I didn’t have any other choice,” Granados said.

She convinced her mother to talk to her father about letting her attend Fresno State, but her father suggested Merced College, which was closer and in a smaller city than Fresno.

“I told him that if it’s not Fresno, it will be San Diego. I had to tell him that because I knew he would go with the closest (college),” she said.

Granados described her first visit to Fresno State, with her parents by her side, as shocking.

“[My father] drove me to campus, and it’s funny, I still have the picture; it was a memorable occasion,” Granados said. “Fresno State seemed like a big city. They had their own post office, and they had streets on campus. I thought it was a town by itself, because our town back then had only one stop light. It was very scary.”

She began to feel the pressure to succeed in school on the first day after her father, speaking in Spanish, told the counselor that he had entrusted the well-being of his daughter to him.

“I said ‘oh my God, I can’t mess up. I can’t do something (bad) because this poor man is going to get it,’ ” she said.

Once in college, Granados said she knew she could not call home and ask for money because of her family’s poverty and an ultimatum her father gave her.

“He said that ‘you know the hardship we have at home with money,’ ” Granados quoted her father as saying. “ ‘If you are going to call and ask for money, then you better have your bags packed, because I’m going to come and pick you up.’ ”

The ultimatum made her work hard in school and look for jobs, like tutoring. She saved money and sent some money to assist her family at home.

Granados said she was forced to rely on the services provided by EOP and the Collegiate Assistance for Migrant Program (CAMP), an organization that assists migrant students in adjusting to college to survive and send some money home.

“I think if I hadn’t gone through EOP and CAMP, I would have maybe given up,” she said.

Granados won her father’s confidence, and he started supporting her more in her studies.

“I gained his trust more. I had proven myself after successfully completing my first year, and he encouraged me to ask my sisters to apply to college,” Granados said. “I knew my father was very proud of me because he would later on joke and tell me that he told me I could have whatever I want because he would collect once I graduate.”

Her father, however, did not live to see her graduate. He died in a farming accident while unloading heavy machinery, two years before her graduation.

“I mostly felt the loss on behalf of my mom, because she still had younger children to raise. I missed him on my graduation; it was sad, but I knew he was spiritually with me,” Granados said.

Granados graduated with a degree in liberal studies in a ceremony attended by most of her relatives.

She said her family celebrated her graduation for several weeks.

“Most of [my siblings] showed up. It was a major event, they were cheering; you would have thought it was a wedding,” she said. “Most groups are normally five or so, mine was big; we drove in a caravan.”

Granados later earned a master’s degree in counseling and a pupil personnel services credentials.

She rose through the ranks to become the director of the Upward Bound Program in 2001.

‘I knew that I loved education and I wanted to be where I can learn from others and at the same time teach others,” she said.

Granados got married to her long-time boyfriend in 1993.

They have three children Jaime, Jessica, and Jasmine aged 9, 4 and 1 respectively.

Granados describes her mother as kind and says, despite her limited education, her mother is her biggest inspiration.

“We are a close family because of my mom. She is so strong but she doesn’t even notice it.” Granados said. “She made us appreciate each other.”