Original Bernalillo HS graduate serves as homecoming Grand Marshal

BERNALILLO — Seventy-two years after graduating from Bernalillo High School, Ralph Martinez has not forgotten his Spartan roots.

After all, he helped pick the name all those years ago, when he was part of the first graduating class of BHS in 1953. During an assembly, when Martinez was a student body vice president, his classmates ditched the Cobras for the Spartans, a warrior in the ancient Greek state Sparta.

“It’s superior, I guess,” the 91-year-old said with a laugh in an interview from his home in Corrales.

On Wednesday, Martinez was given superior treatment by the school district when he served as Grand Marshal in the high school’s homecoming parade.

For Martinez — one of only three surviving classmates from 1953 — owning the homecoming title was an absolute honor.

“My dream came true,” he said. “I really enjoyed it.”

Bernalillo High School Principal Rosangela Montoya wrote that it was an honor to have Martinez “lead the parade and represent our community.”

“Once a Spartan, always a Spartan!” Montoya wrote.

Long before Martinez realized his homecoming dream, he was just a farm boy from Corrales living through the Great Depression and World War II. Even when his father left home to build wartime ships, Martinez stayed in New Mexico with his mother to continue his education with his siblings before becoming one of 76 Bernalillo High School students.

He entered the new school even before the building was finished, according to a “senior history” write-up he and Bernalillo Public Schools officials provided.

When it was time to move in, initiation was “tough but fun,” even with “the very few desks we had,” the historical passage said.

BHS didn’t have a basketball team until Martinez’s senior year. When it did, the high school still lacked a gym, so Martinez and his teammates used to practice outside on a makeshift basketball court made of dirt.

That was just the beginning of Martinez’s athletic career at BHS, where he was a lettered basketball and baseball player.

One of his basketball rivalries was St. Mary’s High School in Albuquerque. In those games, Martinez faced off against the late U.S. New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici.

“It was hard playing against a big school, but we managed,” Martinez said.

He managed, too, to find his future wife, the late Erlinda Lovato. The couple was named BHS homecoming king and queen in April 1952, during Martinez’s junior year.

“It felt good,” Martinez said in an interview, calling meeting his wife “a crowning achievement.”

During his senior year, Martinez and his classmates took a trip to Carlsbad before heading to Juárez, Mexico, where the students watched a bull fight.

“We were good friends,” Martinez said, showing a photograph of him and his classmates enjoying a hardy meal.

He doesn’t remember his own high school graduation, but other memories of BHS and his affection for the school led him to collect artifacts from that time and make presentations to several community organizations.

Martinez, who only has a high school diploma, has some advice for the Class of 2026: “Keep on going” with their education.

Martinez ‘s long resume includes long-haul trucker, construction foreman, crane service oiler, and maintenance employee for Sandia National Laboratories.

In retirement, he served for many years as a member of the Sandoval County Planning and Zoning Commission. Martinez also continues to fulfill his longtime role as a county elections worker and, in his free time, he is a member of two different choirs.

“I just can’t quit; I’ve got to keep on going,” Martinez said.