Ed Lucero, 73, understood the value of hard work

The Rocky

Published August 9, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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The nation knew Ed Lucero for two things: Education and work - hard work.

"He lived to work," said daughter Wendy Keefer of Denver.

At 7, he was selling newspapers around Fort Collins.

"When everybody, including him, was working in the beet fields, he came up with the idea of selling all the workers soda pop while they were working, and he didn't have to deal with the beets anymore for a while," said daughter Kris Mack of Centennial. "He was always the entrepreneur."

Keefer recalled the time her parents decided to remodel their home.

They hired a handyman to knock down a wall. But they told him to leave the bricks behind. He gave each of his four children a chisel.

"After school, we were supposed to clean the bricks with a chisel," Keefer said. "At 7 years old, I thought it was a blast."

It took the children about a month to clean the bricks. They were paid a penny apiece.

"At the end of the month, mom and dad sat us all down. They gave me $2. I was so proud that I had cleaned 200 bricks," Keefer said. "He was trying to teach us the value of hard work, to work for what you want."

The toil is over for Mr. Lucero, who died Aug. 1 from complications of diabetes. He was 73.

He was born Nov. 18, 1934, in Fort Collins, to Antonio and Augustina Pacheco Lucero.

His parents divorced. Mr. Lucero stepped up and became the head of the family.

"When my mother and father divorced, he became my father," said his sister, Cristina Rivera, of New Hope, Pa. "He was most caring and protective, not only of me, but of my mother."

He knew he didn't have a chance without an education.

"Life was hard in Andersonville where he grew up. The Hispanic children were not allowed to attend public school at that time. So grandma arranged for her children to go to the Catholic elementary school in town which was much farther to walk to," Mack said.

"The kids had chores to do at the school in order to pay their tuition and dad's was to be there very early in the morning to shovel the coal into the stoves so that the rooms would be warm once the other children arrived."

After he graduated from high school in 1952, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Korea.

He went in weighing 98 pounds. He gained 60 pounds.

"He said it was the first time in his life he had three meals a day," Keefer said.

After he was discharged, Mr. Lucero used the GI Bill to study business at Colorado State University. "He worked full time as a cook while he was in school," Keefer said.

At a restaurant where he cooked, he met the former Carol Whittaker. They started dating.

They were married, but later divorced. Mr. Lucero got custody of his children. And then his former in-laws moved in to help care for them.

Mr. Lucero was chairman of the Denver Job Fair in 1968. He founded Colorado Economic Development Association, a nonprofit serving minority businesses. In 1973 he was appointed to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City and was appointed as a member of the advisory committee to the state treasurer.

He also founded CECC Capital Corp., which specialized in home loans for minorities.

At home, he insisted on doing remodeling jobs himself. Once he decided the family needed a pool in the backyard. He rented a backhoe, but didn't have a clue how to operate it.

"He was a cowboy in the backyard," Keefer said. "He proceeded to knock down the side of the back porch. And he broke through a retaining wall."

One day, he put Keefer and her brother, David, in the backhoe with him.

"Dad got a big bucketful of dirt. It went up in the air. It kept going up. The dirt just went on top of us," Keefer said.

But he finished the job. "He mastered it," Keefer said. "He got it all dug."

Mr. Lucero pressed his children to excel and to behave honorably. "People trusted him. He would give people guidance. He gave back not only to his community, but to his state, and to the country," Rivera said.

Surviving are daughters Kris Mack of Centennial, Wendy Keefer of Denver, Sue Carrell of St. George, Utah; son David Lucero of Aurora; eight brothers and sisters, Frances Sanchez of Fort Collins, Donaciano Lucero of Deming, N.M., Josie Holcomb of San Jose, Calif., Julia Serrano, of Kansas City, Mo., Tony of Fort Collins, Jim of Lakewood, Margaret Arellano of Fort Collins and Cristina Rivera-Weerts of New Hope, Pa.; 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

massarog@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5271

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