Ruben Barrera M’79 has been practicing law for more than 43 years and has been involved in public entity projects that have impacted more than two million people across Texas. A shareholder with Langley & Banack, he firmly believes that Trinity University is a key to his success.
“Trinity was a game changer for me,” Barrera reflects. Even despite establishing an endowed scholarship fund for the university’s undergraduate students, he maintains, “I’ll never be able to thank Trinity fully or adequately."
A member of the university’s Board of Visitors and a Trinity True donor, Barrera argues with unwavering conviction that Trinity has no equal.
“No university that I have attended has the academic rigor of Trinity University,” he says. “Trinity is a jewel here in San Antonio.”
That deep appreciation for his Trinity education was forged in an environment of fierce academic challenge and transformative opportunity. Barrera arrived on campus in August 1977 in a Ford Pinto and found himself surrounded by more expensive cars in the student parking lots. Coming from an upbringing in a very poor family, the contrast was stark.
Barrera grew up in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom house in McAllen, Texas, and slept on a cot without a mattress. He moved the cot into the living room each night and tucked it away in the bedroom every morning.
“I didn’t sleep on a real bed with a mattress and a box spring until I was a junior in college,” Barrera shares.
His father worked tirelessly to provide. For groceries, he relied on credit from the neighborhood Handy Dandy corner store to ensure the family never missed a meal. He made sacrifices to afford school necessities for Barrera, from biology dissection kits to gym uniforms to a cornet for the school band. Barrera’s mother creatively stretched every ingredient, and she carefully patched holes and tears in two pairs of pants that had to last Barrera the entire school year.
Not leaving his father to carry the entire burden, Barrera started working, too. First, he helped his extended family, like the weekend he picked cotton on his uncle’s farm in the Texas heat. Then he worked at H-E-B, sacking groceries, stocking shelves, and unloading trucks. Experiences like these began to seal his ambition to create a different life for himself.
In the classroom, Barrera’s teachers were a constant source of encouragement, providing a balance to the financial hardships he endured in his home life. School became a sort of refuge for Barrera, and he fell in love with reading at an early age. As a teenager, Barrera realized that his only path out of a life of limited resources and opportunities was through a formal college education, which he thought would have to be fully or partially self-financed.
Consistent with his desire for a college education and a different life, Barrera decided as a ninth grader at Lincoln Junior High that he wanted to be a lawyer. According to Barrera, it was not lost on him that lawyers in 1960s and 1970s television shows were educated, well-read, and lived quite well. In any event, Barrera never revealed his plans to anyone.
With the Vietnam War raging on during his high school years, Barrera wondered if his dream of becoming a lawyer might at minimum be interrupted or perhaps not even realized if called upon to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. While Barrera registered with the Selective Service System as required, U.S. combat forces withdrew from Vietnam, and the draft expired around the time he graduated from McAllen High School in May 1973, thus allowing him to pursue his original plans.
Throughout his years at Lincoln Junior High and McAllen High School, Barrera played the cornet in the band, earning numerous awards and honors. Music also provided Barrera with several non-music skills, including discipline, structure, focus, will, and purpose. These skills became very useful during Barrera’s university years and later on in his legal career.
Admitted to Pan American University on a music scholarship, Barrera played trumpet in the jazz band and symphony orchestra for two years before shifting his focus to government, history, and urban studies. Toward the end of his undergraduate studies, one of his professors urged him to apply for the urban studies master’s program at Trinity. Barrera initially hesitated, intent on heading straight to law school, but his professor pushed back, insisting that he would not regret it. Barrera submitted his application to Trinity and soon after graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Pan American University in May 1977.
When Trinity offered him a Brackenridge Fellowship, which included a stipend for living expenses, the decision was made. Barrera accepted without having ever set foot on campus. Given his upbringing, he knew the value of every dollar contained in that fellowship award.
“The fellowship I received from Trinity was life-changing, and that’s putting it mildly,” says Barrera. “I could not have afforded to attend a university as prestigious as Trinity without such financial assistance.”
At Trinity, that life-changing scholarship was met with relentless effort. “If I got four hours of sleep a night at Trinity, that was a good night,” Barrera recalls.
The high expectations of the faculty pushed Barrera to excel. After celebrating an A-minus on a midterm exam during his first semester, Earl Lewis, Ph.D., the founding director of the graduate urban studies program at Trinity, summoned Barrera to his office.
“I take it you were proud of that,” Barrera remembers Lewis saying. “Don’t be. I know you can do better.”
Barrera rose to the challenge, completing all required courses, defending his thesis, and graduating with a 4.0 grade point average. Over the course of his career, he has blended his master’s degree from Trinity with the law degree he received from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in December 1982 to represent public and governmental entities on legal matters involving their business and operations functions, special projects, and litigation cases.
Through it all, Barrera’s life philosophy has kept him going. “I use every day to make my corner of the world better for tomorrow,” he says.
One way he is doing that is by establishing an endowed scholarship fund for undergraduate students at Trinity with his wife, Raquel, and his son, Aaron. Created as part of the Trinity Commitment, the Ruben, Raquel, and Aaron Barrera Endowed Scholarship Fund will be awarded to students with demonstrated financial need or merit who reside in the Rio Grande Valley counties of Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, and Willacy, as well as Bexar County.
Barrera believes that education is paramount to personal success and being a contributing member of society.
“The world is complicated with problems that need real solutions by serious people based on formal education, training, and experience,” he says, “not false information, willful ignorance, or ideologue talking points and simplistic slogans.”
His message to young people, especially those who come from economically challenged backgrounds, is that, while the education path is long and the sacrifice is hard, they should never give up.
“You must always focus on the future. The past should be a consideration, but never a limitation. More importantly, use your life for something that will outlast it,” he urges.