Howdy! My name is Ricky Morris and as of Labor Day 2023, I will be celebrating my 14th year in the Information Security field professionally. In January 2004 at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas I started my journey as part of the first group of students that enrolled in their Cyber Security Program. I had already gotten a head start earning 23 credit hours in Fall 2003. I will write more about myself at some point but today and throughout this series of posts, I am paying tribute to the people that I’ve personally lost in my technology journey.
During my time studying the Cyber Security field and during my journey within it I’ve met many unique and incredibly talented individuals. Many who deserve recognition and appreciation for their accomplishments. Some of those people are no longer here physically to hear this but they will live on in my heart for the impact they made. Make the most of your time here and love one another. Every single minute of this life is a minute someone else doesn’t have anymore.
The first time I met Juan was in Fall of 2003, during my first programming class. From the very first class we took together, we were put into a group project together. I am an extrovert so I LOVED group projects and I found out Juan was probably at that point in my life the biggest introvert I ever met. However, we shared a connection when we started talking about our interests. We both loved video games, anime, buying tech related devices, he was Latino and we were hungry for knowledge. There were not many Latinos/Latinas in tech during this time period despite Corpus Christi having a large population of Latinos/Latinas. We both knew there would be a challenge to breakthrough in this industry but we were willing to prove our value to anyone that would give us a chance. Through him, I was challenged to take higher level programming classes even though it wasn’t a prerequisite. Juan wasn’t a checkmark and done type of guy. He wanted to learn everything he could. I remember taking a robotics programming and a video game design class with him just so we could learn something new in the event that we may need it in the future. Looks like C is still the programming flavor for robotics even today!
Our friendship continued to grow and by 2005, we, alongside a group of other Computer Science students, started the “GEEK” club at our college. In my final year of college (until I went back in 2020) I became the president of the GEEK club and he was vice president. During this time period we bounced many ideas off of each other to make a positive impact. Like most millennials, community outreach was important to us. We started a class called Geeks for Grandmas in 2006 where we went to nursing homes in Corpus Christi, Texas. We taught the elderly how to use email so they could communicate with their children/grandchildren. During the Del Mar College Fall Festival in October of 2006 we turned the second floor of one of the college buildings into a life sized Pac-Man game. In May 2007, we both graduated from Del Mar College and together we represented our family by becoming the first in our family to graduate college. After graduation, he moved from Corpus Christi to San Antonio to pursue a higher level degree at the University of Texas San Antonio with who would be my future brother-in-law. I got married and moved to Houston to pursue my dreams of getting into the Cyber Security field.
He ended up moving back to Corpus Christi around 2009 to be closer to his family. He worked hard to be a good role model to his younger nieces, nephew and became a mentor to those up and coming programming students that attended Del Mar College.
I will always consider Juan to be family. He broke bread with my family many times. We spent countless hours studying for exams and maintaining our near perfect GPAs. He waited outside of Target with me the night the Nintendo Wii came out so I wouldn’t be alone. To me, he was like the older brother I never had.
In 2012, I talked to him about developing an app for an idea I had. Somewhere in that communication we ended up losing our connection because we both got busy with life. I last tried reaching out to him at the end of 2013 but we were never able to sync up. In December 2016, a week before Christmas… Juan lost his life at the age of 37 in the same hospital I lost my father at in 1995 and the same hospital my sister worked at during that time as an RN.
As I end this tribute, I want the world to remember Juan Chavez as a brilliant man but more importantly a kind, soft spoken soul. He was a peacekeeper and the younger, immature version of who I was, learned a lot from his “zen” attitude and applied it to myself later in life. He helped develop applications, mentored future programmers at the college we went to, and at some point built his own mobile game that I don’t believe ever got published. This life is not a guarantee. Don’t take time for granted and make the most of the present. Reach out to someone you haven’t in a while and tell them how much you love them because you may never get a chance to tomorrow.
If I could tell Juan one thing today, it would be thank you for the moments, advice and continued impact you made not just in my life but so many others that you influenced!
If you are reading this post and are a friend, co-worker, a LinkedIn connection or found this on another website, I love you! I guarantee someone else does too even if they don’t tell you consistently.