This summer, Beaverton High School lost a student in our community. Isaac Ramirez, a rising senior, passed away in a drowning accident while on vacation with his family. This article was written as a tribute to Isaac, and through the testimonies of his teachers and friends, you will get to see the valuable impact he made and a piece of who he was.
Mark Geren, Isaac’s Marine Biology teacher, described Isaac as a happy and curious student. He said that once Isaac was comfortable, he loved to talk about his interests and what he was learning about. These interests included topics like Marvel and dinosaurs. According to Geren, Isaac was “incredibly knowledgeable” and would educate his classmates on how dinosaurs lived, the different time periods, and their phases of evolution.
Isaac was a big critic of the “Jurassic Park” franchise and would often stress that “velociraptors had feathers” and draw examples of what they may have realistically looked like. One of these examples now hangs in Mr. Geren’s classroom.
Along with his passion for dinosaurs, Isaac had a love for art. In his classes with art teacher, Eric Loftin, Isaac would let his creativity run free. He would mix and match his favorite characters from “Looney Toons”, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (FNAF), “Marvel”, “Pokemon”, and “The Simpsons” with each other. He even created “venomized” versions of these personas based on Marvel’s “Venom.”
Loftin described Isaac’s witty comments, artwork, and big bellowing chortles as “an open window to the stuffiness of large workloads.” Isaac’s sense of humor and irony brightened up every classroom he entered and made every day in class a fun one.
Christian Ortiz, had Isaac for personal finance and computer science. His favorite memories of Isaac involve comedic Google Slide presentations, the irony in his jokes, and the nickname Isaac gave him: “Mr. Or-Cheese”— but don’t put cheese on his burger. Mr. Ortiz is lactose intolerant.
Isaac was always making jokes and he loved making people laugh. Even teachers who never had the chance to have him in their classes knew who he was. Sara Sanchez, an art teacher, had multiple chance encounters with Isaac. She recalled that even if you didn’t know him, he was always “open to telling you about what he was making. Did not matter. He’s like, you want to listen? Let me tell you about it.”
Isaac had a profound impact on the lives of the people here at BHS. Ortiz said that “it feels weird having his classmates in my class but not having him” and that “I can’t see Marvel and stuff and not see him. I can’t see horror movies like “Aliens”and not see him.”
Isaac Ramirez will be remembered greatly for his enthusiasm, amazing artwork, and his passion for making people laugh. Students can visit a tribute for Isaac in the SPED hallway containing some of his work.
Below is a gallery of Isaac Ramirez’s artwork.
