It started off as a minor inconvenience: Who doesn’t have back pain when they work on a farm all day?
Jennifer Romero brushed it off because she didn’t have time for it. As the Hoosierland Pork sow farm manager for Martin Family Farms, she knew her team needed her to be strong. But as spring turned to summer, the pain continued to escalate.
After multiple doctor visits, tests with no answers and excruciating pain, she knew something was wrong. A trip to the emergency room followed by hospital admission finally resulted in a diagnosis: cancer.
Romero immediately went to Indianapolis where she underwent surgery. Unfortunately, the cancer had progressed and spread throughout her body. When she came out of anesthesia, doctors told her they couldn’t get it all.
“I remember when I was little, and we were under a tornado warning,” says her daughter, Alyssa Wyatt, who is also part of the Hoosierland Pork team. “My mom had the front door open — cleaning and listening to music. She had no fear of the storm and told me, ‘When it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go.’”
Gone Too Soon
Within three weeks of being admitted, Romero passed away in the hospital Aug. 17.
“It happened so fast,” says Melissa Bradford, a friend and operations coordinator for Martin Family Farms. “One day she was mowing here at the farm. Two days later, she went to the emergency room and was admitted to the hospital. Three weeks later, she was gone. We were all in shock because she was so full of life — a force to be reckoned with.”
Brian Martin, owner of Martin Family Farms, was in the hospital with Romero about a week before Romero passed away.
“While I was there, a young employee named Carlos was also visiting. He came to the farm as a TN visa worker,” Martin says. “Jennifer really took him under her wing. He thought the world of her. Watching her interact with him, and how affected Carlos was by seeing her in the hospital, was pretty humbling to me.”
During that visit, she made it perfectly clear that her job was not up for grabs yet.
“Don’t replace me, because I’ll be going back,” Romero told him matter-of-factly.
For her husband, Azael Romero, operations manager for Martin Family Farms, his wife’s attitude and strength during her hospital battle is something he will never forget.
“She stayed positive the whole entire time,” Azael says. “She was such a strong woman.”
One Day at a Time
Azael joined Martin Family Farms in 2009 when they more than doubled the operation, working his way up to operations manager overseeing all farms. Romero, his “city girl” wife, followed a few years later and had moved up to sow farm manager of Hoosierland Pork where she led a team of 18 people and managed 4,000 sows at two locations that shipped 2,000 pigs a week.
“She always wanted me to succeed, and I wanted her to succeed,” Azael says. “Our professional and personal relationship centered around communication. Work wise, she knew her role and I knew mine. We had great understanding of the jobs we both needed to get done.”
Even though her team was at a loss on how to move forward without their leader, they had to find a way.
“You felt insensitive going about your work when everyone’s heart was so broken,” Bradford says. “However, we knew we had to keep going. The animals needed us, and she would have wanted us to focus on them first. But it was really hard to come to work that next week.”
A True Barn Hero
In the eyes of all who knew Jennifer, she was the definition of a barn hero. Martin says her passionate and driven nature made her perfect for the role of leading a successful team in the sow barn.
“She would do anything to save a pig,” Azael says. “She tried to pass that on by teaching others everything she knew while constantly soaking in more knowledge along the way. She was a quick learner and started from the bottom delivering supplies, checking sows, scraping feeders, power washing and all those things. She didn’t want to miss a step in the entire process. That’s why she was so good at her job.”
Bradford remembers when a coronavirus struck the farm, Romero was determined to eliminate it immediately.
“The vets told her she may be better off to wait, and she said, ‘We’re going to do this one time, and we’re going to get it out,’” Bradford says. “And she did. Her farm was able to eradicate it, and the vets said they’d never seen a farm get rid of a virus so fast. But that’s how she was; she didn’t just say things. She was out in the barns showing how to do it.”
Romero was also known to wake up in the middle of the night to drive out to the farm and check on an animal.
“Even though she had 4,000 animals under her care, she wanted to make sure she did everything possible to try to save each one,” Bradford says.
Loving-But-Firm Mentor
Not only did she have a huge heart for taking care of animals, but she also had a huge heart for taking care of people.
“Jennifer was a direct communicator; there was not much floweriness about her,” Martin says. “She was a ‘get business done’ person who served as a great mentor, but she also was a mother at heart and shared that with everyone.”
If she believed in something, everybody would soon believe in it, Bradford adds.
“When Jennifer was a farrowing lead, she was fast-paced,” Bradford explains. “If she felt like you weren’t living up to that speed, she would bark orders. But over time, she learned and began to understand that not everybody was made like her, and everybody processes differently. That allowed her to be able to see other people’s perspective better and figure out a solution to get things done as a team.”
With time, Romero learned she had to balance her desire to constantly improve with some time to celebrate the success her team achieved. She firmly believed in team building and investing in people.
“I remember her saying, ‘We spend more time together than you probably do with your family, so we need to learn how to work as a team so we can get through any challenge,’” Bradford says.
The work of a barn hero is never complete, Martin adds. It’s a job that just doesn’t end.
“Things won’t ever be perfect, but Jennifer’s leadership was close,” he says. “She helped 18 folks see the same vision day to day while always having an eye on continued improvement. She also recognized we have to balance taking care of pigs with a life outside of it. You can’t do 18 hours a day in a farm and balance a life next to it, so through time, she helped herself and others achieve that balance.”
A Second Family
One of the ways she went above and beyond for her team was looking out for the TN visa workers as they adjusted to life in the U.S. Romero was known to take her team to the grocery store or help them get to doctor’s appointments.
“She always took time to explain the differences between our culture and where they came from,” Bradford says. “She taught them things about living in the U.S. that we take for granted.”
Jorge Ayala started working for Martin Family Farms in December 2018 and vividly recalls meeting Romero for the first time.
“She was always available to help me learn,” Ayala says. “Animal care was her highest priority. She was strict, but she was very kind. I learned a lot of things from her that have positioned me where I am now.”
Life to the Fullest
One of the most valuable lessons Wyatt learned from her mother was that you can’t always control what life throws at you, but you can control how you react to it.
“Hardship made her into the person she was,” Wyatt says. “She understood that life would always be life. She found a way to make the best of it always — no matter how hard it could be.”
She found joy in living it to her fullest. Whether she was riding a horse or driving a four-wheeler around the farm, she always wanted to make you smile, Azael says.
“My mom was a needle in the haystack, a diamond in the rough,” Wyatt says. “She was big-hearted and helped everyone she could, even if she did not get the credit. She didn’t do things to receive things; she did things to bring happiness to others. She always tried to make the impossible possible in this world — she was a hero.”
