The Herald Star from Steubenville features an article about a man called Mike Dieguez called "Colleagues recall Dieguez as great man, councilman" today.
They open up the article with this paragraph: A gentleman and a Basque.
Good start I would say.
The article then gets into who Mike Dieguez was and what he meant to his community:
Those characteristics were the pride of former City Councilman Mike Dieguez.
His many friends and co-workers remember him as a great person with the city, especially the 1st Ward, in his heart.
Dieguez died Sunday at Valley Hospice Palliative Care at age 84.
Dieguez had served for 26 years on council and had been retired from city government for several years, but that didn't mean he gave up his interest in the operations in the Municipal Building and the City Annex Building.
Dieguez often would ask his friends who are still in government what was going on.
And after a few more paragraphs, it tells us just how proud he was of his Basque ancestry:
His friends also recount Dieguez's tales of being a boxer in the service, and his constant discussion of Basque history.
He was proud that he was one of the world's true Basque descendents. Basques are people who live in the areas of Eastern Spain and Western France, along the border, with their own special language and heritage. He even had a license plate that proclaimed his Basque heritage.
Strangely enough, at least one person among his coworkers did not understand the difference between being a Basque and being a Spaniard:
Fifth Ward Councilwoman Deborah Welsch recalls when she started as council clerk in the late 1980s that she was concerned how to pronounce the 1st Ward councilman's name. Was it the Americanized "DEE-kez" or the Spanish "Dee-yeah-gez"?
"He was so proud of his Spanish heritage," Welsch said. "From then on, whenever I called on him in council, I said the Spanish pronunciation."
I think is my duty to contact Councilwoman Deborah Welsch before she continues to mar his legacy.
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