In memory of Augustin Barrios

By Millie Diaz
Staff Writer
    Laughter can be as therapeutic as crying – especially in the Barrios family. Though they lost their patriarch, Augustin “Augie” Barrios at the end of April to a battle of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, daughters Roxeanne, Veronica and his sister Emily couldn’t help but laugh and giggle at the memories Augie left behind.
    Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is a head and neck cancer located behind your nose and above the back of your throat. Though it was the cancer that took him, it was nearly two years before his family knew exactly what was causing his physical symptoms.
    Roxeanne, Augie’s youngest daughter, said doctors at a Veteran’s Affairs clinic kept saying he was suffering from constant ear infections. “Then we took him to an ear, nose and throat doctor in Victoria and he said the same thing: an ear infection.”
    Emily said by that point, her brother had started to lose his hearing and more. “They did a scope twice through his nose, plus a biopsy, and it came back negative. But it wasn’t just his hearing, he couldn’t taste food and he lost his sense of smell. The whole time they kept saying there was fungus in his ear and cleaning it out, but it wasn’t helping anything,” she said. “His vision got worse too: he said he could see three of me in one of his eyes, and I told him, ‘oh, you’re so lucky!’ We laughed at that, but we couldn’t deny he was getting worse, and he didn’t want to wear an eye patch.”
    The ENT doctor said to Augie’s family he’d noticed a left vocal cord paralysis, but it wasn’t his priority because he was worried about the ear infection. “But it was all linked,” Roxeanne said. “The doctor just didn’t put two and two together.”
    On Labor Day weekend of last year Augie was finally transferred to MD Anderson in Houston when a CT scan saw a small mass near his upper throat. “The Houston ENT doctor saw the mass right away,” Roxeanne said. “My dad had been getting frustrated because doctors couldn’t figure out what was going on with him, and then in Houston they noticed it right away.”
    Veronica, Augie’s oldest daughter, said even though his physical senses were leaving him, he still had his mind intact.
    Augie passed at the age of 70 on April 23, 2017, and the memories he left for his family have kept them going and give them life whenever they need it.
    “Even though I was his step-sister, he called me his sister without hesitation,” Emily said. “He had a huge heart, and served in the Navy and Army. Plus, he was a volunteer firefighter in Vanderbilt.”
    Commander Joe Solis of the Disabled Veterans Chapter 169 of Victoria said Augie was a life member of the organization and chapter member for seven years. “He was Commander of our chapter for two years and represented with pride at military funerals as part of the Honor Guard,” Solis said. “He will be greatly missed.”
    Veronica said her father often worked two jobs to help the family with money. “He always wanted to help anyone with anything; he went beyond the extra mile to help people.”
    The women recalled Augie’s involvement with Little League back in the day as a baseball coach and umpire, back when there was only one team – and you either made the team or not. Veronica was one of the girls who didn’t make the team, but it was the catalyst for Augie’s involvement.
    “My father became a coach in Vanderbilt and he made a second Little League team there, and they played badly!” Veronica laughed. “But the point was that he started it and we got to play. At one point he had all girls on his team, aside from a few boys, and he asked the boys to sit out for one game, to make a statement.
    “People used to make fun of him, and it fired him up enough that he wanted to show the crowd what we could do,” Veronica continued. “And we won! We showed people girls can accomplish a lot, and he was so proud of us for that.”
    His daughters described how much he enjoyed volunteering as a junior high and high school football referee; and his kindness extended even farther when he started feeding the band students before football games with the help of other parent volunteers. Roxeanne remembered them making carne guisada, rice, and beans.
    Augie’s heart clearly went beyond the boundaries of his family, and extended to other veterans that needed help, even if it meant Roxeanne was elbow-deep cleaning beans for her father’s big silver pot. “If you asked him to do something, he did it without question. It’s just that I was asked to do something, too,” she said. “He cooked for VA meetings, and I knew it when he brought a huge sack of beans home I’d be sitting in the kitchen all day cleaning beans.”
    Veronica began giggling.
    “And then one day, he told my mother and me that he spilled a ‘little bit’ of bean juice in the truck and asked if we would clean it up,” Roxeanne said.
    Veronica’s giggle grew louder.
    “It wasn’t just a ‘little bit’ of juice, he spilled almost the entire pot of beans in the truck!”
    The family bursts out into laughter, and tears spilled down a few faces.
    Roxeanne continued. “As we cleaned, my dad sat outside and watched us to make sure we weren’t throwing anything away, but he wouldn’t help us.” She dried her face from the tears that fell from her laughing so hard. “It was always me and my dad, because I was the youngest. Veronica is a military wife, so I was the one to take him to his appointments.”
    Though Janie and Augie divorced years ago, their daughters said the two always stayed close and helped each other out whenever one needed the other. It taught their daughters love doesn’t have to end badly and two people can stay loyal to each other, even if they can’t stay married.
    The family of Augustin Barrios depicted him as a fair, honest, nondiscriminatory, generous man and each one said they have tried to mimic his behavior so his memory will live on.