The Hall of Fame

Ric Gonzales – Class of 1967
Ric was a multi-year letterman in football and track, maintaining a 4.0 GPA. He led the 1966 football season by scoring nine TD’s, averaging six yards per carry, and being named Captain of the Detroit Free Press All Suburban and All Border City League teams.  Ed Werenet, Ric’s head coach was quoted as saying, “He gives no less than 100% … he expects the same from his team-mates … he won’t tolerate anything less”. Other quotes from rival coaches include, “real  competitor … a credit to high school football … a boy with real desire for the game.” 

While Ric set his sights on college and continuing his football career, on December 30, 1967, he was involved in a head-on collision returning from a ski trip. Ric sustained multiple injuries that left him paralyzed from the chest down. Even so, his life achievements were exemplary, graduating from Princeton with a degree in Architecture and Urban Planning, and working at Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, a leading Detroit architecture firm. In 1975 he joined his father, Henry Gonzalez, to found Gonzalez Design Engineering Company. For nearly three decades, Ric would lead the growth and diversification of the family-owned business, building it into a $100 million a year organization with over 700 employees. 

Perhaps Ric’s most well known accomplishment was the formation, along with three other hispanic-owned automotive suppliers, of the Hispanic Manufacturing Center (HMC). An empowerment zone spanning 22 acres of land in Mexicantown. They hired contractors to restore the area, help finance the environmental clean-up, and organized community policing programs that reduced neighborh,ood crime. They also created a job­training program targeting gang members and welfare recipients. 

While Ric was confined to his wheelchair for 36 years, he was never defined by it, involving himself in dozens of charitable causes, including meeting and mentoring troubled youth in Southwest Detroit. He sat on Boards of organizations dedicated to furthering higher education, minority business development, and stemming gang violence. Ric was married to Ricca in 1980 until his passing in 2004.