Ulysses Segovia sat in the middle of the rows of his high school biology classroom. He was always tightly engaged, no matter the assignment or lab partner. His enthusiasm for science spilled out in sharp questions and elaborate stories from his own experiences. Ulysses waited until his classmates pushed out into the hallways at the end of class to share short videos on birds and reptiles. This was a student that independently transfigured his life in education.

Ulysses battled childhood cancer his sophomore and junior years of high school. He continued to stage inquiry between his treatments at MD Anderson. He pondered genetics and evolution in his disease, prompted discussion in cellular controls with his doctors. He was a child. A child that accelerated his own education in his last two years of life.

Ulysses embraced celebrations and socials with his peers within his hospital community. He touched the lives of his friends, family, nurses, physicians, and teachers. When at home, he mastered his coursework as a homebound students and built terrariums into imaginative microhabitats. Ulysses explained he was going to be the scientist that successfully reanimates Jurassic life in our modern world. All will be welcome into his pyramids of discovery.

Ulysses did not survive to graduate from his alma mater, Brazosport High School. His legacy continues in the hearts of his hometown in Freeport, TX. A tribute of him, an enlarged smiling photo of him in a cowboy hat and bright collared shirt, hangs in the biology lab at Brazosport High School. He has already had two younger brothers traffic through that lab room.

Ulysses’ mother was his absolute champion through each moment. She made special invitations to his educators to stay connected with her son, as she knew how essential these roles and relationships were to him. The Segovia family has always valued education at its highest degree, in a largely impoverished community. Ulysses’ three younger brothers certainly show the same enthusiasm and will be vested in the pathways they each choose.

Ulysses (in red shirt and cowboy hat) attending a quincenera.

A double rainbow and Ulysses memorial.