A wrinkled, fading black-and-white copy of Rafael Palafox’s Certificate of Naturalization shows that he was just twenty-four days shy of his sixty-eighth birthday when he suddenly passed away. I found it in my mail basket. It had been carried as an “In Case of an Emergency” identification document while traveling to California, El Paso, and the Texas Rio Grande Valley to conduct business for the NALEO Educational Fund. Rafael worked for the Fund for almost thirty years—to my eleven.

Rafael was a printer by trade. When I met him in 1989, he had started his own print shop after being laid off from a large printing company as new technology began to reshape the industry. At the time, I was doing grassroots organizing for a political action committee called Latinos Unidos. The PAC hired Rafael to print its newsletter and business cards. Three years later, when I joined NALEO’s Texas office as a volunteer coordinator, he began volunteering with the Fund. NALEO—the nation’s leading nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to facilitating full Latino participation in the American political process, from citizenship to public service—was new in Houston and in great need of volunteers and community support.

It was a challenging period for Rafael as well. He confided that for years he had lived in a house he believed he was buying. As he struggled to build his business, the grantor asserted that the official property record stipulated that missing monthly payments voided the agreement. Abruptly, from one day to the next, Rafael became a renter. Hardship was not unfamiliar to him. His mother died when he was two years old—an experience he found difficult to discuss. He was raised by an aunt. Despite these struggles, Rafael always showed up at NALEO with an uplifting, jovial disposition.

Rafael’s commitment to NALEO’s mission eventually earned him part-time employment. As demand for the organization’s services grew and the workload increased, he became a full-time employee. Rafael trained new volunteers, prepared materials for citizenship workshops, and assisted walk-in applicants. Few people know that a decade before the League of Women Voters gained notoriety for registering new citizens to vote at U.S. Citizenship Ceremonies in the Houston area, a group of volunteers under NALEO’s direction distributed a package at every ceremony. It included a voter registration application, a U.S. passport application, a congratulatory letter from the President of the United States, and a Welcome to U.S. Citizenship guide encouraging civic participation. Rafael was the point person, responsible for gathering and organizing all the materials for this initiative.

Originally from Tampico, Tamaulipas, Rafael was a naturalized American citizen who was always ready to help legal residents with the citizenship process—any day, anywhere, at any time. NALEO served communities throughout the greater Houston area, as well as from Dallas to Austin, San Antonio to Harlingen, El Paso, and everywhere in between.

Looking back, I witnessed Rafael experience some of the happiest moments of his personal and professional life while working for NALEO. His former colleagues can take solace in knowing that his association with the organization helped ease his hardships. It provided him with a livelihood he deeply enjoyed, opportunities to travel to major cities across the nation, and a strong sense of accomplishment. More importantly, it enabled him to care for his family and to purchase a home in a good Houston neighborhood—one a thousand times better than the one he had lost.

As we mourn Rafael, let us celebrate his volunteerism and loyalty, which helped sustain NALEO as it worked to establish its presence and expand citizenship services near and far. Let us also recognize that, as an employee, he quietly kept the organization functioning during periods of local leadership change.

It has been twenty years since I went from being Rafael’s boss to simply being his friend. The grief we feel in losing him reminds us that human beings are bound together by shared experience. Accordingly, in addition to his wife, daughters, and grandchildren, Rafael will be deeply missed and fondly remembered by his peers, current and former NALEOites, and the thousands of legal residents he helped become citizens.