6/24/1999 12:06:00 AM
Memorial Service Honors Slain Will Rice Alumna
BY DAVID D. MEDINA
Rice News Staff
June 24, 1999
More than 100 people attended a memorial serivce for Rice alumna Noemi Dominguez
on June 16 at the Catholic Student Center of Rice University.
Noemi, 26, was murdered on June 4 in her home in southwest Houston.
Dominguez had just completed her second year of teaching at Franklin Elementary
and was pursuing a master's degree in education at the University of Houston.
At Rice, Dominguez was a member of Will Rice College and was active in several
organizations, among them HACER and the Catholic Student Center. Assistant English
Professor Jose Aranda said Dominguez excelled in his Chicano literature class.
"Noemi once told me that she was going to make sure that she gave her students
everything she had ever learned and that she wasn't going to hold back, especially
when it came to to teaching Chicano literature," Aranda said.
After graduating from Rice in 1995, Dominguez worked as an ancillary teacher and
librarian for All Saints Catholic School in Fort Worth. She then served a year
for Volunteer for Educational and Social Services (VESS), which sends missionaries
to work with the poor in Texas.
Those who knew Dominguez remember her as a caring and peaceful person. "She
was very serene, very religious, very sweet and wide-eye innocent," said
Isabel Martinez '96. "She was very committed to education in low-income communities."
Dominguez is survived by her parents, Manuel and Olga; fiancee Daniel Green of
San Antonio; eight brothers and sisters: Tony, Fabian, Elsa, Haydee, Manuel Jr.
'91, Alex '93, Brenda and Eric, and a sister-in-law, Tyan Parker '93.
Police have determined that Dominguez's death is linked to a series of killings
in Houston and other Texas cities, Kentucky and Illinois in which all the victims
lived near a railroad line.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Dominguez's
name to Los Dias Education Foundation, P.O. Box 8509, La Feria, Texas 78559. The
foundation was started by the Dominguez family to raise scholarship money for
graduating high school seniors in La Feria.
