Clements tackled language barrier
How OSU assistant coach helped his wife learn English while at K-State
STILLWATER — Growing up in Venezuela, Pelusa Riera learned to never give her phone number to someone she didn’t know.
So when Kansas State football player Joe Bob Clements approached her at Lucky’s, a bar in Manhattan, and asked for her number, she didn’t write it down. Instead, she told it to him, figuring if he really had an interest in calling her, he’d remember it. Numbers, fortunately, fit into her limited English vocabulary.
He memorized the digits by associating them with teammates' uniform numbers and called the next day. Their first date was to Applebee’s. They didn’t talk much. Pelusa
ordered a salad, but when she normally ate out, she asked for chicken fingers. They were one of only a few items on
menus she understood.
After the date, Joe Bob told his roommate he had found the woman he wanted to marry. Two decades later, Pelusa is his wife and the mother of his four children. Saturday, he returns to Manhattan to face his alma mater as the coach of Oklahoma State’s defensive line, a unit that has helped the Cowboys lead the nation in sacks. Before joining OSU in 2013, he spent 16 seasons at Kansas State as a player, student assistant and full-time coach. He has a Wildcat logo tattooed on his right shoulder.
Pelusa grew up in Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city. Family wanted to send her and her cousins to the United States to learn English. Her uncle had a cousin who worked at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan.
Joe Bob first saw Pelusa while she and friends served the Wildcats’ pregame meals Saturday mornings. She had no interest in the games themselves — she didn’t understand football — so she had no problem returning to bed afterward.
When Pelusa enrolled at Kansas State, her English consisted of “numbers, colors, what, where, how,” and not much else. She spent her first year stateside surrounding herself with others from Latin countries, speaking mostly Spanish.
Meeting Joe Bob forced the opposite.
“I had no choice but to speak English,” she said. “He was always and still is very patient.”
At times, a friend of hers who wanted to be a Spanish teacher accompanied them on dates to serve as an interpreter, but to interact with Joe Bob, his friends and family, Pelusa had to speak English.
“She probably learned a lot of bad English,” Joe Bob said, "but she was definitely around a lot of English."
Before even meeting Pelusa, Joe Bob had started pursuing a Spanish minor. They helped each other with school.
“Meeting her was probably detrimental,” Joe Bob joked. “I probably learned less Spanish because of her."
Pelusa’s English, though, gradually improved. Within six months, she could comfortably hold conversations. Certain aspects of the language still caused humorous moments.
During one Kansas storm, she turned to Joe Bob and exclaimed, “It’s raining cats and dogs!” He couldn’t help but laugh.
“I thought I was so cool,” she said recently, shaking her head.
At times, she provided a source of entertainment. Joe Bob and his roommates lightheartedly asked her to repeat “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.”
“We used to do some cruel things,” Joe Bob said. “It seemed like the more beers we opened up, the funnier it got.”
He often called her a dork, a slight she took to mean a funny person. She once responded that he better hope their children would be as dorky as she is.
“They got a good time out of me, I guess,” she laughed.
As they neared graduation, Pelusa’s student visa approached expiration. She had a year to get a job that fit her major, ergonomics, but Joe Bob offered an alternative. During a trip to his parents’ home in Emporia, he took her out to the dock of their pond and proposed. They were married within the month, wanting to be sure the necessary paperwork to keep Pelusa in the United States was done in time.
From time to time, Joe Bob surprised Pelusa with his knowledge of Spanish. During one phone call with her mother, she complained in Spanish about him not putting clothes in the hamper. When she walked out of the closet, he gave her a disapproving look.
Some expressions, though, get lost in translation. She occasionally refers to “el papa de los tomates,” a phrase meaning someone who excels in their field. In English, it’s “the father of the tomatoes.”
Life has often been too busy for them to teach the children Spanish, but Joe Bob has made efforts for them to experience parts of Latin culture. They visited the Dominican Republic this summer to see some of Pelusa’s family. A few years ago, he wanted to be sure their oldest, Orianna, had a quinceanera to celebrate her 15th birthday.
“Joe Bob is good about whatever it is, to keep my kids like I grew up,” Pelusa said. “I’m like, ‘The kid doesn’t even speak Spanish.’
“He said, ‘But you had one so she should have one.’”
Orianna is a freshman volleyball player at Emporia State, while Chance, Emma and Kaden are in the Stillwater school system. Orianna and Emma, Pelusa said, are more like her, outgoing, talkative and open to dancing to any bit of Latin music. Chance and Kaden are more aligned with their father’s shy nature.
A self-described introvert, Joe Bob overcame that 20 years ago when he approached Pelusa in that bar. Getting past a language barrier, then, took only time.
“It was really just kind of communication in its simplest form,” Joe Bob said. “There wasn't a lot of lengthy talk.
“You just kind of find a way.”