BIO

Guadalupe (Wally) Rendón was born and raised in Texas, Guadalupe Rendón, who is better known as Wally, moved to Racine from Pearsall Texas in 1967 with his wife Lisia.

 

Married for 53 years he has three grown children and 11 grandchildren. In his younger days, he enjoyed playing all types of sports, plus enjoys horseback riding. 

 

Like many other Latinos who moved here from the southwest part of Texas, he found work at a local manufacturing company. After seven years in that work environment, Rendón made a career change and in March of 1974, joined the Racine Police Department – he retired from the police department after working there for twenty-four years.

 

Prior to his retirement, Rendón founded his Spanish training business, Spanish/Second Language Training. He has been doing this training for many of the law enforcement agencies, hospitals, libraries and some manufacturing companies in southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

 

Rendón has been active in the Racine Latino community since his retirement in March of 1999. One of the organizations which he helped organize was the Hispanic Business and Professionals Association. He has been part of this organization since inception. He has been part of several other committees and board of directors whose mission or goal is to improve the quality of life for its citizens, especially the Latino community.

 

In his role as one of only seven Latino police officers, Rendón along with his other Latino colleagues founded the Fiesta Mexicana in 1973, at that time known as the Racine Scholarship Foundation. For the past 6 years, the fiesta has been hosted by the HBPA and continues to provide educational scholarships to Racine county Latino students.

 

For the past 12 years, Rendón has been employed by Educators Credit Union as the Member Education and Outreach Representative. In this role, he uses his bilingual/bicultural skills to provide financial literacy training in the southeastern part of Wisconsin focusing on serving the underserved community – he utilizes his bilingual/bicultural knowledge when offering these workshops.

 

Most recently 2014 - 2015 Rendon served on the RUSD School Board completing just shy of two years on board.

 

2018 Rendon was a candidate for the office of Mayor for Racine.