Rudy Ramirez would pretend he forgot his glasses and ask for help, and write his letters so small misspellings couldn’t be seen

For 91 years, Ramirez said he used “all the tricks” to hide his trouble reading and writing.

But a year ago, he went to the Warder Literacy Center to learn how to spell, and this month Ramirez, now 92, earned the Edith Stager Memorial Award as the center’s most outstanding adult student.

“What was outstanding was his tenacity,” said Bobbie Sin, the centers’ student services coordinator.

“He was always here early before his tutor came in,” for his twice-a-week sessions, Sin said, even though he’s the caregiver for his wife.

Tutor Molly Barclay said that in eight years of working with people from Venezuela, Pakistan, Mexico, China and the parole office, Ramirez has been her most motivated student.

“It took a while to find out what he wanted to do,” she said.

But once they set their sights on spelling, “he picked things up very quickly. Spelling, of course, led to a lot of reading, and he got a lot of help and support from his wife.”

Rose Ramirez’s illness is one reason her husband of 70 years wanted to improve his spelling.

“She does all the check writing,” said Rudy, who relocated to Pitchin from California three years ago with Rose to be closer to their son.

If she were no longer able, he said, “How am I going to draw those checks?”

“And then I was ashamed of myself, too. I couldn’t play games,” involving spelling and reading.

Nor could he have dreamed of writing the abbreviated life story he has produced with Barclay’s help.

The son of a Mexican immigrant and ranch foreman, Ramirez picked figs and grapes in early childhood in Fresno, Calif., before taking a job selling newspapers for a penny a paper. He moved on to picking cotton for a penny a pound, hauling in nearly 300 pounds a day to help his family of 12 get by.

“I always believe that the harder you work, the sooner you get to your goal,” he wrote.

By 15 he was washing cars for 25 cents each, then was hired on at a Shell station.

Only occasionally did he get to school, he wrote. And after a stint in a detention home for truancy, he was regularly walking out the back door of the family home when the truant officer came calling at the front.

Ramirez was helping to build Liberty Ships in Richmond, Calif., when the draft board called him to report for induction Dec. 22, 1942.

By then married to his high school sweetheart, Rose, he was shipped to Fort Chaffee, Ark., where he endured the rigors of basic training and compiled a 14-1 record boxing at 135 pounds.

Tougher fights came overseas when his tank unit was sent to knock out Japanese artillery. Involved in six landings in which tanks trundled onto beaches out of LST boats, “I don’t like what I remember of World War II,” he said.

He was the lone survivor from his original squad.

Because the examiner had sympathy for a veteran who could barely read, Ramirez got a job as a heavy equipment operator for the city of Fresno, the beginning of a 30-year career as a grader on the highways and in the water canals of the city.

In retirement, Ramirez has become a skilled carver who specializes in walking sticks fashioned from found wood. Each stick has a grasshopper carved into it, his symbolic signature.

Carving “keeps your mind away from trouble,” he said.

The downside of it is eyestrain, made worse by his new skill.

“My eyes are hurting because I’m reading so much now,” he said.

But he continues to whittle away at both, keeping a list of new words on a piece of paper that does double duty as a bookmark.

He called Barclay “a wonderful teacher” and credited the entire literacy center staff with his success. “All those people, they stay with you and don’t push you. They’re marvelous.”

They’ve helped a man of 92 reaffirm a belief in a work ethic he learned long ago.

Said Ramirez, “I guess there’s no end to success if you work hard at it.”