Fred Romero's Obituary

Fred Emilio Romero died peacefully at home on March 25 after a battle against kidney cancer. He was born on August 19, 1931, in Blanca, Colorado to Maximinio and Josefita Romero. Fred graduated from high school in 1949 and was valedictorian of his thirty-person class. In 1953 he received his BA from Adams State College with a double major of mathematics and sociology. In his senior year he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps; he entered the Corps immediately upon graduation.

A Second Lieutenant, Fred was sent to Korea where he served as a Forward Observer. After he returned from Korea to Camp Pendleton, he was promoted to First Lieutenant and met his future wife, Jean A. de Kuerguelen. He resigned from active duty and joined the Marine Corps Reserves. He retired as a full colonel after thirty-one years.

Fred began teaching high school mathematics in Wallsensburg, Colorado in January 1957. Because he planned to obtain a doctorate, he also took a graduate course in physics that spring. He took graduate mathematics courses during the summer of 1957 thanks to a National Science Foundation scholarship. A second NSF scholarship enabled him to take additional courses the following summer, and then to study full-time for a year at the University of Colorado. In 1959 he obtained a MS degree in mathematics from the University of Colorado.

Fred taught in the Denver school system until he accepted an offer from the University of Denver to further his education. He received his doctorate from the university in 1966 and became an assistant professor in the mathematics department and a consultant for the state's department of education.

In 1967 Fred joined the U.S. Department of Labor where he remained until he retired. His first position required him to ensure the successful implementation of a program that trained youth for jobs within a five-state region based in Dallas. From there Fred moved to a program in San Antonio that trained both youth and adults. He held the job for less than a year because in 1968 he was promoted to Regional Director of a new division within the Labor Department. It included the two programs where he had previously worked.

Starting in 1969, Fred was promoted again. His first promotion required moving to Washington, DC where he became the Deputy Director of the Employment Service. Then he was put in charge of all funding for the Department's training programs, and in 1971 Fred became responsible for consolidating the Labor Department's numerous training programs. The result of this consolidation became Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973.

Fred then took a leave of absence to enroll in a program at Princeton for upper-level managers that focused on helping them improve the programs they oversaw. After returning to the department in 1975, he became Special Assistant to the Undersecretary until 1978. While he held that position, his home life began to deteriorate and in 1976 he and his wife, Jean, agreed to divorce.

The next year Fred was selected as a member of the Senior Executive Service, which consists of civil servants whose positions require executive and managerial skills higher than those of the highest-level civil servant. The Executive Service was established under a 1978 law reforming the civil service.

From the end of 1978 through 1980 Fred was the commanding officer of a civil affairs unit in Washington, DC. His first order was for his unit to research and report on the geographic areas where the Corps anticipated conflicts would arise. The following year the Corps ordered Fred, and his unit, to take charge of 20,000 Cuban refugees who had arrived in the U.S. only days earlier. In addition to arranging sleeping quarters and creating a daily schedule for the refugees, Fred established rules governing their behavior. For his work between 1978 and 1980 the Secretary of the Navy awarded Fred the Legion of Merit.

During the early 1980s Fred oversaw the Labor Department's research program, married Carol Jusenius, an economist he had known professionally for some time, and retired from the Marine Corps and Department of Labor. He briefly became a consultant for a Hispanic community-based organization. At the request of then Vice-president George Bush, Fred prepared a paper on alternative policy positions for the federal government on English-as-a-second language.

But most of his early retirement years were spent with his sons renovating houses in a part of Washington devastated by the riots after Martin Luther King's assassination. Fred also became serious about his golf and for the only time in his life, hit a hole-in-one. In 2011 Fred and Carol moved to Homeland, California to be closer to their families. They moved to Rancho Bernardo in 2017.

Fred is survived by his wife of 38 years, Carol Jusenius Romero; four siblings, Marie Klockenbrink, and Jim, Robert (Holly), and Bernard (Bernice) Romero; and three children, Fred (Katsue), Cynthia, and Deborah. A second son, Anthony, predeceased him. Eight grandchildren, eleven great grandchildren and many nieces and nephews also survive Fred.