Spanish professor Sonia de Lama dies at 78

Sonia de Lama didn’t have a high school diploma when she immigrated to the United States from Cuba at 18, but as a young mother raising two small children in an Uptown apartment, she went to night school, eventually earning three degrees — including a Ph.D. from Northwestern University — that enabled her to become a professor who taught Spanish to students at the City Colleges of Chicago.

“She was an Amazon,” said her son, George de Lama.

Mrs. de Lama, 78, died Wednesday at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital of complications from a stroke.

She was born Sonia Gisela Josefina Ramirez Merino to a working-class family in Havana, where her musician father led a police band. She met her future husband of 51 years, Francisco “Paco” de Lama, on March 10, 1952, the day that Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista staged a coup. They honeymooned in Miami Beach and moved to Chicago in 1955, where they found their first snow so wondrous, they had a friend photograph them walking in its midst.

In their first days in Chicago, they lived in the old Metropole Hotel at 23rd and Michigan. “My dad loved Al Capone movies and he knew Al Capone had lived there,” George de Lama said. “The barber had been Al Capone’s barber, and told stories about shaving Al Capone — nervously.”

She sharpened her English with a job at Marshall Field’s on State Street, wrapping china for shipment. The de Lamas settled into an apartment in Uptown at a time when the Uptown and Riviera theaters still showed movies — the Uptown had “Three Stooges” marathons on Saturdays. It was also a period when urban renewal policies led to the demolition of swaths of Uptown buildings.

Her husband worked in the restaurant industry and in factories. In 1964, with his encouragement, she started night classes at Lake View High School. She was 27. Soon she earned a GED and bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Roosevelt University. Her in-laws left Cuba and moved in with the de Lamas. They also supported her dream of an education, but it meant three generations were in one apartment.

By 1973, she received a doctorate in Romance Languages at Northwestern University. She soon embarked on a 32-year career with the City Colleges.

“This was before women’s liberation, before anything. Coming from their culture, I didn’t appreciate the magnitude of it. She was extraordinary,” said her son. And her husband was “incredibly supportive.”

Mrs. de Lama counseled students at Tuley High School, a forerunner to Clemente High School. She worked as a Spanish professor for 21 years at Kennedy-King College and 11 years at Truman College, five blocks from the Uptown apartment where she made her decision to finish her education, her son said.

Her classes at Kennedy-King were so popular, they were always full. They immersed students in Spanish from the moment they entered her room, said Gwendolyn Washington, who signed up for one of Mrs. de Lama’s classes when she worked at the school registrar’s office. “The students liked her. She was a very, very good teacher,” said Washington, later an assistant librarian at Kennedy-King. “She was very patient.”

Mrs. de Lama also directed Spanish immersion weekend programs for Benedictine College and for George Williams College of Aurora University in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Instead of rote memorization, she broke from standard practice of that time to focus on spoken language skills, said Luz Berd, who taught Spanish at George Williams.

“She was adamant that students had to lose the fear of making mistakes,” Berd said. “That was innovative back then.”

She also taught Spanish in the Chicago Tribune newsroom, where her son was a managing editor. The journalists called her “Mama de Lama.”

“She was beautiful, even radiant. I never saw her without a huge smile,” said former Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski. “She had an expressive, silky voice and listening to her speak — whether conjugating Spanish verbs or sharing stories of life in Cuba — was its own joy.”

After living in Uptown, the de Lamas moved to the North Park neighborhood. She shopped at La Unica grocery on Devon Avenue for Cuban food.

She enjoyed trips to China, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico and Morocco. And she liked dancing to salsa music.

Her husband died in 2006. She is also survived by her daughters, Gisela, Pirada Molina and May Siriwatt, and two grandchildren and one great-grandchild. A private memorial is being planned.