Mother’s Dream For Her Son Comes To Pass

The handsome lady from Panama was holding her son’s hands and wouldn’t let go. For the longest time, she just kept looking at him, smiling the brightest of smiles and her son smiled back.

She hadn’t seen him for four years but that was all disappearing fast.

“Siempre … desear do este dia,” the lady, Virginia Riquelme, was saying now to her son, Ruben Garces, the Providence College basketball star.

Translation: “Always, I am waiting for this day.”

The day came Sunday when Garces picked up his degree in social sciences as PC held its 79th commencement at the Providence Civic Center.

He was all smiles, ear to ear. A teddy bear. He was surrounded by Team Garces. There was his mom, who had flown from Colon, Panama; her first flight ever. She was with her sister, Maria Eugenia. Garces’ dad, Ruben Garces Sr., was there, as was Anna Morgan of Providence, is his English language tutor the last two years. Not to mention Bobby Gonzalez, the PC assistant who recruited Garces.

“This is an amazing day,” said Gonzalez. “A wonderful day. But there were times I wondered if we’d ever see it.”

He has been the Friars’ center the last two years and we think we know him.

But here’s Ruben Garces:

Five years ago, he struck out from his home in Colon with the dream of getting a diploma at a U.S. college and maybe even becoming a basketball player. He had been a soccer player in high school, but he was playing street basketball one day when a friend suggested he think about changing sports. He knew of a couple of junior colleges, Navarro in Texas in particular.

Garces said goodbye to his mother and left. He didn’t know a word of English, but met a woman named Angela Sessums, an attorney who knew of his plight and helped him with tutoring and such.

In one year at Navarro, he grew from 6-foot-6 to 6-9 and the recruiters began coming. One was Gonzalez, an aide on Pete Gillen’s new staff at Providence.

He was in Dallas when a friend asked: “Do you know about Ruben Garces?” Ruben who?

He handed Gonzalez a road map. Navarro JC was an hour and a half out of Dallas. The town has a main street and a lot of sage brush.

“But when I saw Ruben, I couldn’t believe it,” said Gonzalez. “He had limited offensive skills, but he could really run and jump. He just blew me away.”

The recruiting got down to PC and Pittsburgh because Garces wanted the Big East. The only problem was, he couldn’t get out of Navarro JC. Because he still was learning English, he failed an exit exam. So, he transferred to Compton (Calif.) JC, where they don’t require the exit exam.

The problem was, Compton was at the edge of a war zone. Garces took a bus to class at 5 a.m., but first had to worry about what color clothes he was wearing. One color was Bloods. The other Crips. He wore neither.

“I had to fly out there three times, it was so frustrating for him,” said Gonzalez. “He kept saying he wanted to go home. But he stuck it out.”

When the time came to enroll at PC, he had only enough money for a bus, cross-country. Two days into his trip, he called the PC office.

“Hi coach,” he said to Gonzalez. “This is Ruben.”

“Where are you Ruben?” asked Gonzalez.

“I don’t know coach,” said Ruben, “but I think Colorado. There are mountains everywhere.”

“Well,” said Gonzalez, “call more often …”

At which point the phone went dead. No Ruben.

Three days later, the phone rings again at PC.

“Hey coach, this is Ruben,” he said to Gonzalez.

“Ruben, what happened? Where are you?” Gonzalez yelled.

“I’m in New York City,” said Garces. “The bus was leaving. I had to run down the street after it. We didn’t stop for three days.”

At PC, he improved every day on the court and got another English tutor, Anna Morgan, who also became a second mother to Garces.

“He was very low key; he had a down-to-earth personality,” said Morgan, who was born in El Salvador. “I could identify with him and relate to him. And I thought to myself ‘What a wonderful Hispanic young man … oldtime values … he respected his elders.’ He was well mannered. You just don’t see that nowadays. And he was serious about his work.”

You have to understand, Garces was trying to pull a difficult double. He was trying to achieve good grades while learning the language.

“He has always been very serious about his studies,” said Morgan. “It was very important to him. A matter of country pride, really.”

He would call his mom once a month or so. A lack of finances prevented calling more often. His parents were divorced, but his father, who worked for the transportation company, could call more often.

One time, the father called in panic. He had heard Ruben had been killed. He called Bobby Gonzalez. It was 6 o’clock in the morning.

Gonzalez jumped out bed and drove over to PC as fast as he could. He didn’t even dress. He went to the weight room and there were some players there.

“What happened to Ruben?” Gonzalez asked.

“Nothin’ coach,” said one of the players. “He was just here. And why are you wearing your pajamas?” Gonzalez ran into the locker room and saw Garces. He told him the rumor.

“Nope,” Garces deadpanned. “I not dead, coach.”

“Well, call home and tell them,” said Gonzalez.

Garces did.

“No papa,” he said to his father. “I am not dead.”

He made the dean’s list twice, became a terrific rebounder - and most importantly this is his day.