Dallas “Dally” Willis was born in 1920 in Dallas, Texas but grew up in Cleburne, Texas, raised by a single mother of seven children after his father abandoned the family. Willis attended high school in Cleburne and joined the Marine Corps in 1941. In the Marine Corps, Willis worked as an aerial photographer mapping the Pacific territories controlled by Japan. Upon returning to Cleburne, Willis worked for Southwestern Bail and joined the Communication Workers of America union. He moved to Midland, Texas in 1949. From 1961 to 2005 he served within the CWA’s Political and Legislative Committee, lobbying in the Texas Legislature. Dally also began the Labor Day Celebration of the Permian Basin in 1957. He has been a delegate for the DNC convention and was the decades long president of the Permian Basin Central Labor Union.

Lydia Evaro Madrigal was born in Odessa, Texas in 1957 and grew up in the majority minority area of south Odessa. She attended Zavala Elementary, Travis Elementary, Ector County Junior High and High School, and transferred to Permian Basin high school for the higher level of academic classes. Madrigal graduated from high school in 1975. She then attended Odessa College, and began working in a local television station due to a suit by attorney Richard Abalos due to the lack of people of color in that television station. She initially reported on the Larry Lozano case and saw the bias of the local media against Lozano and his family. Madrigal had been part political campaigns since she was thirteen and was offered a job at the Texas House of Representatives while in college. Eventually, she graduated from the University of Texas-Permian Basin 1989 after having attended Southwestern Texas State University. Madrigal has been the Latino outreach coordinator for the DNC in Washington D.C., has worked to make Odessa College a Hispanic Serving Institution, and is now a business owner in Odessa and Midland, Texas.