Raymond Ramos ’76: Why I VMI

“VMI teaches you leadership through intention, and I think that’s really very critical to what we need. In our society today, we have too many followers, too many sheep, and as a result of that, they can be easily led astray. And so I think VMI, with the character building that it brings to the table, the honor it brings to the table, is something that this country needs.”

That’s what Raymond “Ray” Ramos ’76 has to say about the value of VMI. Now on the cusp of celebrating his 50th Reunion, Ramos is passionate about supporting the Institute because of the value it adds to cadets’ lives through life lessons in discipline, effort, and yes, even failure.

“If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing yourself,” noted Ramos, a member of the Class of 1976 Reunion Committee. “And so that’s really the whole issue about failure and VMI. VMI teaches you—here are the challenges. Are you ready to accept them? If you’re not ready to accept them, find something else to do. If you’re ready to do something about it, take it on. Do the best you can do. Hopefully, it will be successful, and most of the time, it is.”

But even if one’s efforts are not successful, Ramos continued, there’s much to be learned, and inside of barracks is an ideal location for those hard lessons. “I think VMI does a pretty good job of teaching you that the consequences are minimal in comparison to the consequences once you are out there earning a living,” he said. “As long as you’re learning from failures, failures are the best lessons you could ever have in life.”

Ramos, who now lives in Greensboro, Georgia, and runs a full-service architecture and engineering firm with 110 employees in five states, came to VMI from Panama, seeking a college where he could study engineering and commission into the U.S. Army. In time, two of his brothers—Richard Ramos ’80 and the late Robert Ramos ’86, M.D.,—would also choose VMI.

Asked his first impressions of the Institute, Ramos gives a tongue-in-cheek answer: “We turned onto Letcher Avenue, and I looked off to the left, and I see these brick buildings and the marble columns, and I think this isn’t half bad. And then I hit Limits Gates and realized I was looking at the wrong college.”

Despite this initial case of mistaken identity, Ramos quickly found his footing at the Institute. As an Army brat and a member of a Junior ROTC unit in high school, he was already comfortable with military training and firearms, so he sought challenges that were both athletically and academically demanding.

“I like to push myself and see how much I can take on,” he explained. “So, I did wrestling the first year. Then I joined the swim team the next year and stayed with that. I was a ranker. I came back with cadre every year and did that, and then I was also working on a double major. I was a civil engineer, and my professor for modern languages says, why don’t you try working on a modern language degree … And so I found that to be the challenge.”

After graduating from VMI with distinction, Ramos served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—and found his life changed unintentionally when he was assigned to Army recruiting for his last 2 years of service. “I was an introverted engineer, so going into business development, marketing, selling the Army was something foreign for me,” he stated.

VMI, though, had prepared Ramos well for challenge and change, and in that role, success followed success. “At the time I showed up, we were ranked 42 out of 45 companies as far as what we were producing,” he said. “And so I figured, I can’t screw this up any more than it’s already been screwed up. So within 6 months, we had moved into the top 10, and we stayed there. And as a result of our company doing so well, the battalion went from 56 out of 56 to number one, and we stayed there the entire time.”

Transitioning to the civilian sector, Ramos worked for a couple of engineering firms before launching his own business, Raymond Global, in 1992. Over the past few years, the company has completed an impressive list of projects, including a renovation of Duke University’s Undergraduate Admissions Building and a restoration of the North Carolina State Legislative Building in Raleigh, home to the North Carolina General Assembly.

As he’s built his business, Ramos has been guided by what he learned at VMI. “I think the issue of honor has always been the big thing, because it’s easy to take shortcuts in life, and the shortcuts may be easy, but as I always say, there’s always a consequence for any action that you take, and a shortcut is going to get you in trouble eventually,” he commented. “It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but at some point, it’s going to happen, and it’s going to be the relationship that you have with a particular person or with a particular company. They’re going to eventually pick up on it and decide that this is not the person that we want to do business with.”

The Institute, he believes, makes a significant difference in a young person’s life—and that difference lasts throughout their lifetime. “When you graduate from VMI, you’re a different person,” he stated. “Your parents, your siblings, your friends see something different. I think VMI makes you grow up faster. … What am I going to do with my time, and how am I going to move forward? I think VMI makes you look at those things.”

Today, with an awareness and appreciation of all the Institute did for him, Ramos makes supporting VMI a financial priority, especially in these challenging economic times when the costs of higher education are out of reach for so many families.

“The alumni have a responsibility for what they’ve learned here, what they’ve gotten out of VMI in order to pay it back,” he said. “And so that’s why I do what I do. It’s not easy. I’ve done well financially, but this giving that I’m doing is pushing me. And you know what? I’m always up for the challenge.”