 excuse me everyone could you please take your seats we're about to begin thank you congressman Henry be Gonzalez reports you have just heard are those that summon a congressman to the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington DC believing that it is the duty of a congressman to represent his district by being present and voting and also to report to them regularly on what he is doing and what he is thinking congressman Henry Gonzalez brings you now one of his weekly reports to the people of there congressman Gonzalez friends and fellow citizens I wish to thank again every one of you who has demonstrated a sustained interest in these programs it has been really about the only satisfaction that I have had that as many of you as it has surprisingly turned out to be watch these programs with interest on a sustained and faithful basis because I feel that this is the only way that we can keep faith one with another I don't know how else you can judge me other than to know how I think how I vote where I stand on issues and I think that I have been active enough and vociferous enough even on some of the most dangerously politically speaking controversial issues of the day but I feel that it is best to proclaim oneself rather than to have anybody support under false flags this doesn't make my detractors too happy of course but then what do we expect from detractors one must have a overriding sense of obligation to certain well-defined principles and convictions in order to have any satisfaction in this type of an activity and I must say that even though it has meant an outlay on my part of better than 46 percent of my total income last year in 1963 for me to provide these programs as well as my newsletter as well as radio tape reports as well as other special reports that I have mailed to you because these things are not paid for no matter what the critics say by the government good afternoon I'm Ricardo my newsletter as well as radio tape report as well as other special reports that I have mailed to you because these things are not paid for no matter what the by the government. Good afternoon. I'm Ricardo Romo, proud to be president of the University of Texas, San Antonio. And welcome to the University of Texas downtown campus. This is a great location, great place to have a symposium of this type. We are here today to look at the historical impact of Henry B. Gonzalez on politics and public policy. And speaking of politics and public policy, I do want to recognize Representative Diego and Bernard is with us. Put your hand up. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. Representative Justin Rodriguez. Justin Rodriguez is here. There he is back there. One of my favorite former Senators. Joe Bednan is here. Joe is one of my oldest friends in the auditorium. He and I go back to when I was about 10 years old. So that's about 30 years ago, Joe. So thank you for being all of you, thank you. And Congressman Lloyd Doggett will be at our reception. And this is the list that I got and I just want to thank all of you for your interest in certainly the life of a very, very great man in our community and in our country. There's so much that's going to be said today. I was asked to do some welcome remarks. Then I thought I would rather than to replicate and duplicate anything that's going to might be said here, just to give you my personal connection to the great Congressman and I made in 1958. That's a little, little boy. It's 19. So in 1958, Congressman Henry Gonzalez ran for governor. I remember he had been a city councilman. So he runs for governor and I'm thinking at the time he was probably either a rep or a state senator. But he runs for governor. He's one of the first Hispanics ever to run for governor and my dad had a little grocery store around the pop store on Guadalupe Street right near Santa Monica Street and across the street my dad and my uncle owned a little building that had once been a server station and we let him have it as a campaign headquarters. As far as I know, I believe it was the Westside campaign headquarters because I had a little extra time there in the summertime. My dad put me in charge of that office. I was there by myself. No one ever dropped in. It was just one of those things just pass out flowers and things. It wasn't too hard a job for a young boy. About that time and I'm thinking it's either about 56, 58 I had another opportunity to encounter what I perceived to be why we need great leaders and what great leaders can do. So my dad was the head of the American GI Forum and he was the head of it. One day five kids my dad and my mom got in the car and went to New Braunfels area to go to a lake there. We were there at the lake and they had a place that served food and we went up there and said waitress came and said what would you like? Then she looked at this and said are you Mexicans? And my dad said yes. She said well we don't serve Mexicans here. You don't have to go elsewhere. So all of us were kind of disappointed and got back in the car and I realized later that this was something that my dad wanted to do. He had heard of incidents happening there and he went to check on it and something he did. He wrote a letter to the Express News which I saved mine from many, many years. And it basically said I'm a veteran of World War II and I believe I serve my country and I believe in justice and the things that we fought for in justice and liberty. But I was turned away from Lake McKinney and I was turned away from eating there and having my family eat something there because of my ethnicity. And Eugene Rodriguez the historian who wrote the first account master's degree in 1965 of Henry Beacon's Honest can probably verify this in terms of when he took on the battle for desegregation. But certainly after that Henry Beacon's Honest went to that same spot and they said are you Mexican? He said yes. Proud to be Mexican but also American. They turned him away and the next day he was at the senate blasting away against segregation. So his early fights for civil rights came much earlier but he liked a good fight. So he found a good one there and we didn't win the desegregation battles until 1964 with ironically the passage of the Civil Rights Act which he voted for because by 1961 he was headed for the US Congress. And I think about Henry Beacon's Honest in terms of those terms but even if I hadn't been thinking about that symposium and even if this symposium wasn't happening today I would be wishing that Henry Beacon had lived to be a hundred because today Donald Trump said that Rafael Cruz the father of Ted Cruz had been involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and then he had proof that there was photographs of him with Harvey Oswald. So I think Henry Beacon's Honest loves conspiracies. This is how I would have thought about him and he was involved in the several committees on the examination of the assassination of Kennedy. You're going to have a great time today. I'm looking forward to the comments of our panel. I just kind of wanted to warm you up get you all going and thinking about the great Henry Beacon's Honest. Thank you. Good evening everyone. We can't see you. These lights are so bright. I'm Francine Romero. I'm an associate dean in the College of Public Policy here at UTSA and thank you all so much for coming. I am thrilled to be your host for this event tonight. We do have a wonderful panel and while I did not get to Texas soon enough to ever meet Congressman Gonzalez I was proud to be his constituent for a year. As we start with the panel tonight we wanted to go back to the beginning and show the front page of the San Antonio light on the day Henry Beacon's Honest was born on May 3, 1916. I know you can't really see it but it seems prescient to a life of spirited public service because the two big stories that were related is that there had been a bank failure and the mayor of San Antonio was facing a recall effort because he had something to do with that bank failure so interesting things on the day he was born. We'll follow this in a moment with what I think was the this was the first press mention I could find of Henry Beacon's Honest and it was from September 8, 1946 in the Corpus Christi Caller Times and you can see him way up there. He would have been 30 years old. This was announcing that San Antonio's chief juvenile officer Henry Beacon's Honest was delivering an address that was titled Kid Brothers in Crime at the Corpus Christi USL that evening. Well, we have a lot to cover tonight and we've assembled a stellar panel here. Together, our guests will recount to you an almost incredibly powerful and inspirational story of a man who encouraged people to imagine a more just city, state and nation. Well, our panel, oh my goodness, it is such an honor and a challenge to introduce this panel of gentlemen and so because of time constraints my introductions will be ridiculously brief given their backgrounds and I also want to mention while this part of the evening is all about the panel once we move to the reception it will be all about you because we're going to encourage you to share with us your recollections, your impressions and what we will be recording most this evening as well. So let me begin with Leonel Sosa. Mr. Sosa was the founder of Sosa, Bromley, Aguirre and Associates which became the largest Hispanic advertising agency in the United States. He is an artist whose portraits have been exhibited at the Smithsonian among other prominent places. I'm proud to say one of those places is in the common area outside of my office here so if you want to see my portraits you can come visit me. It's part of our UTSA art collection. Time magazine named Mr. Sosa one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in America. He was a media consultant to President Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush and he is in the Political Consultants Hall of Fame. He was a regent for Texas A&M University System. He is the author of numerous books and the author and director of Children Book and the documentary series. If you can hold your applause till the end we'll move along. Eugene Rodriguez Jr. He got his BA in MA in government at St. Mary's. A Master of Science in Environmental Management right here at UTSA. His thesis, Henry B. Gonzalez A Political Profile, I think Dr. Romo just mentioned this. It was, oops sorry, re-released in Bookform in 1976 from Arno Press. This is a beautifully written book if you get a chance to read it. Good luck finding it. It's selling for about $100 on eBay right now. So. Gene was a captain in the U.S. Army in South Korea. He was on the Constituent Services staff of the Office of Henry B. Gonzalez. He served as an Executive Director of the Economic Opportunities Development Corporation, the Director of Field Operations for the National Urban Corporation, Associate Director of Center for Studies in Business, Economics and Human Resources at UTSA, the General Manager of LaPrinza, and he served in numerous consultant and lecturer positions. Dr. Henry Flores is the Distinguished University Research Professor at St. Mary's University, and he was also the Graduate School Dean at St. Mary's from 2004 to 13. He served as an expert witness in over 60 federal voting rights and civil rights cases, including NAACP versus Harris in 2000. He was the author of numerous books, most recently Latinos and the Voting Rights Act. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Recognition from St. Mary's School of Law. He is a Graduate of Central Catholic, has his BA from St. Mary's, MA and PhD in Political Science from UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Flores is a Vietnam Veteran. He was a Captain of Field Artillery at St. Mary's. Henry G. Cisneros, currently Chairman of City View Companies, which works to create homes priced for average families. Mr. Cisneros served three times on the San Antonio City Council. In 1981, of course, was elected to the first of four terms as the Mayor of San Antonio. He was the first Hispanic-American mayor of a major U.S. city. In 1992, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton as Urban Development Secretary, where he was credited with so many things, including revitalizing many of the nation's public housing developments. In 1997, he became the President and Chief Operating Officer of Univision Communications and he continues to serve on their Board of Directors. He has his BA and Masters in Urban Regional Planning from Texas A&M. He has a Masters of Public Administration from Harvard University. He has a Doctorate in Public Administration from George Washington University and he was an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army. And the Honorable Charles Gonzalez. Councilman Gonzalez served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1998 to 2013. His committee assignments included financial services, energy and commerce, judiciary, small business, and he chaired the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He earned his BA from UT Austin and his JD at St. Mary's. He was elected to two judgeships prior to his legislative career, County Court Number 2 and 57th State Judicial District Court. He is currently of council with Ogletree Deacons. And I'd like to say if all you know about Henry B. Gonzalez is that he was Charlie's father and all the other siblings, you already be on your way to knowing what a great man he was. So please give a hand to our wonderful panel here. Well, we are going to turn it over to the panelists now, starting with Mr. Sosa. Let's talk about the life of the Los Angeles-Gorua family in Mexico before they came to the United States. And I guess they asked me to do that because I had involved in producing and directing The Children of the Revolution which is a documentary series as well as a book. But I didn't know very much about Henry B's family in Mexico or the life that they had in Mexico. But thanks to Henry his grandson and of course Charlie and the wonderful cousin in Mexico, Elvira I was able to have conversations with them and to get a feel of what the life in Mexico was all about because the Gonzales and Siboró families were families that came from the early 1900s to escape the Mexican Revolution. And so many of us are children of that revolution. We wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for the Mexican Revolution and the fact that we had to get out of there and go someplace else. Most of us of our ancestors always thought that they would go back. But few ever did. And so many names and places and dates, dear, I dare not try to do this from memory. So I'm going to read it to you. The story of the Henry V. Gonzales family goes back to Mexico in the little town of Mapimí in the state of Durango. A town that was established back in 1598, right about the time that Cervantes was riding Don Quixote. There in 1875 10 years after the Civil War ended, Henry's paternal grandparents, look at these names, I love these names, Jose Joaquín Genaro de los Dolores Gonzales Arranda and María Jacinta Siguroa Velasco were married. They had six children, Leonides, Celestino, María del Carmen, Carlota, María Otilia and Joaquín. The Gonzales and the Siguroas were very, very heavily involved in politics back in that little town. Henry V's great grandfather Joaquín became the jefe político at the young age of 21 years. He was a strong supporter of Mexico's first indigeno president Benito Juárez and Benito and he supported his liberal philosophy in Mexico. But it happened that Henry V's great grandfather, his grandfather and father all served as jefe político in Mapani, which was pretty amazing. You can tell that that dynasty was already built in Mexico. And today there is a beautiful museum there and it's called Benito Juárez and it stands in the original, in their original home that has a beautiful sign that says Familia Gonzales Siguroa. Henry's father was born there in words and pictures that museum tells a history of the beginnings of a political dynasty that made a powerful and positive impact both in Mexico and in the United States. And there's a logo there that depicts the time when president Benito Juárez and his staff were guests there. In 1902 about nine years before the start of the Mexican Revolution Henry V's future father, Leonides married Canodeva Rosa Prince but 11 years into their marriage their life was totally disrupted. The Mexican Revolution that had started in Puebla, down south in Puebla came to their doorstep. Revolutionary factions and their armies came riding in and out of town sniffing around because there was a nearby mind that produced gold, silver and lead. This was an asset that would prove to be very valuable to whatever revolutionary group would control it. In the town center bunch of Vs followers the Vistas were clastic with the Porfidistas there were supporters of the the post president Porfidio Vs others were just plain bandits out to steal and pillage and take advantage of all of that confusion. One day a Gonzales family member looked out her window and saw an army of about 200 men they were slowly riding by. They had about half a dozen handcuffed men in tow and were marching them toward the town square. Leonides was among the captured and he was captured because he had been supporter of the post president Porfidio Vs because Vs had been very involved and supported the mind's efforts. It was clear that they were walking him to a firing squad. So quick to add the quick to act the observer sought to seek help and opened the corral gate and sent a trusted worker Moso on a horse to find Juana a woman who was living with one of Panchoviya's men. She was in command of that army of 200 men every once in a while there were women commanders of the Vista army. Just a few weeks before this just happened by chance Leonides had rescued her son from a similar fate so the cry for her help was quickly heeded. The woman commandante called the army off and Leonides life was spared. But now he had to leave his beloved Mexico the only home he'd ever known. He had to leave his family, his work, his business, his friends, his source of income, everything. But he wasted no time. That very day he fled with Genoveva and their two sons Leonides and Henry B's father and Carlos along with several family members. They left behind only the youngest brother Joaquin who was in school in Mexico City. He had to look after a home certain that they would return when the chaos would end. Luckily, he had some cash in his pocket so he had a little bit of money to make his way to the United States. But that road was really nerve-wracking. They had a long traverse just to get out of Mexico. They never knew when they might encounter another battle or another bloody scene along the way. They spent their first night in a small hotel in Torreón. But instead of sleeping in their beds, they slept on the floor and used the mattresses as window shields. Who knew when bullets would be flying again in the middle of the night. About that time another woman came to their aid. She was la señora Angela Madero, the sister to the now president Francisco Madero. She happened to be a good friend of Leonida's wife. It's amazing how these relationships work and help save lives and so forth. And Oveva arranged for them to secure train tickets bound for San Antonio, Texas. The children remember the train at that train ride as sheer luxury and a happy adventure. But not so much for the adults in the group who while putting on a brave face were just full of anguish. But you know the Gonzales family is just one of so many. Henry Cisneros's family also had a similar story. Salisbury Seño, Ricardo Romo, Charles Barrett, Rosie Castro, AJ Rodriguez, Sylvia Romo, Dr. Roberto Treviño, Maria Farrier, the Pete Cortez family, Pelli Elizondo and Frank Herrera, my own family and I'm sure many, many of yours had similar stories in Mexico when they came to the United States. But they did settle in San Antonio at 217 Upson Street near where the old fine silver building is now. And they started a family, begin a new life, a new country with a new language, a new culture and a totally different attitude about Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. So the Gonzales family and American had begun. The family's level of politics never waned. They became as involved here as they had been in Mexico. Beautiful story, beautiful. I do them on a read in order to make sure I stay on point and don't wander around too much. I want to share some insights into the person from my perspective as both a political ally and a participant observer. Especially during the two and a half years I worked for him during his early congressional career. I spent many hours with him during graduate school and especially when I started my thesis work on his political profile. Listening to him, interviewing family, friends and others who knew him. How many of you remember classes, the poem by John Dunn that reads No man is an island in tariff itself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Each man's death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind. Therefore send not to know for whom the bells toll. It tolls for thee. You know it's important to know that John Dunn is referring to bells that would ring in the English town square to announce a death. He's saying that we are all in this world together. When one of us dies we all feel the loss for no person is an island unto himself. Now let's examine the words that Henry spoke during his 22-hour filibuster in 1957 against 10 bills introduced in the Senate with the consent of the governor to circumvent the Brown versus Board of Education Supreme Court decision declaring school segregation unconstitutional. Henry said many things that he said over 22 hours the assault on the inward dignity of man which our society protects has been made. And this is an assault on the very idea of America which began as a new land of hope. What does a bell toll? You, the white man thinks it tolls for the Negroes. I say the bell tolls for you is ringing for all of us. Who was this freshman 40-year-old senator who invoked the poet John Dunn to provoke his colleagues to consider the implications of the 10 segregation bills? Many of these colleagues had welcomed him with a cold shoulder calling him that Mexican. Where and how did he gain the insights and knowledge that led him to speak these words of wisdom? I hope my words and my comments will help you understand the man his accomplishments and his foibles because he was human during his long public career. You saw in the paper in other places his timeline of his life I'd like to take it in stages with a major focus on his developmental years and discuss what he did, what he learned and to also consider some of his personality traits that influenced his actions. At each step he had experiences he took actions, he had accomplishments and endured difficult stresses that influenced how he performed in that and the next role. And as you listen to me and to others here on the panel I ask that U.S. citizens with a responsibility to engage in public discourse and vote in elections to consider the lessons we can gain from his life. As has been said he was born in 1916 right here on Upson Street just a few blocks from here actually and as Lionel has thoughtfully said his parents were political refugees fleeing the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution and he heard about his father almost being executed and just think had that happened we wouldn't be here now it's funny how fate works. You know while he admired his father and often clashed with him intellectually based on his many readings and an independent streak anybody would challenge that? An independent streak that was little tolerated in a traditional Mexican family of that era. Even as a boy though he often participated in discussions among the intellectuals and political exiles that visited his home. The neighborhood was economically, ethnically and culturally diverse which allowed him to learn from others in the neighborhood who were not like him. His mother taught him the wisdom of Mexican dichos or sayings. For example perlas en los ojos risas en la boca remember to have pearls in your eyes and laughter in your mouth. He attended public schools and doctrina at San Fernando Cathedral and then Ronnie Duggar a critical student of Texas politics and editor of the Texas Observer when he ran for governor described his early reading habits it took my breath away when I first read this at 8 Henry began and was admittedly acquainted with the San Antonio Public Library. His first devotion was to a series of western novels by an author he has forgotten. In time he developed his taste in history, biography, law and philosophy. He used a copy of Matthew Arnold's essay his word for word. He found at home a first edition of Ortega y Gassete's Revolt of the Masses. He read through the theorist history of the French Revolution in Spanish. Le Bon's Trieste on Atoms and Fission at 15 at 16 Descartes' Essay on Method all of Thomas Carlyle including his history of the French Revolution Le Plas, Le Compe Jeremy Bentham Locke Hobbes especially John Stuart Mill Henry said I read it like him Sarmiento Argentinian Balthazar Gracian Spanish Names St. John of the Cross Frey Luis de Granada Spanish Mystics Tremendous Writers he said Salvador Margariana Calderón Spanish Dramatist Pio Barroja St. Diana Now you know how he was able to pick just the right poem to use in attacking the segregation bills. Most of us know that he graduated from St. Mary's College attended the University of Texas for one year and graduated from St. Mary's Law School in 1943. Though his father was managing editor of the Spanish language Daily La Prensa the salary was just enough to get by so Henry worked part-time through much of the school years. The year at UT was tough in that there was little money to live on and Austin was a segregated city not very receptive to having Mexicans so he married Bertha Cuellar and in 1941 they had the first of their eight children and you know when he's on to something he's on like a laser beam and he would let nothing get in his way and an early example was that when he was courting Bertha his parents sent him to work in a relatives ranch in Mexico one summer so he could focus on his law studies. Well he missed her so much that without anybody's permission he borrowed a horse and rode to the train station and returned to San Antonio to be with her. You know at this point I must share with you my deep admiration for Bertha who unfortunately couldn't be here but would you believe that she is a sprite 98 years old and spent the whole day with a family visiting the library visiting the cemetery going to the Henry Buchanada School they had a wonderful time as a family but you know the spouse of a politician has to be not a hundred but a thousand percent supportive or the marriage will not survive or the political career will not last and their marriage lasted a lifetime that could not have happened without Bertha I remember her telling me that at dances before they got married they would dance the first song and then spend the rest of the night talking about books it's clear they were meant for each other certainly as children long for more time with their father but they too soon learned about the personal sacrifice needed to serve the public we all have to thank Bertha and the family for letting us share Henry V with us for so many years and I would like if you will family members that are here if you will stand and have all of us recognize you in 42 and through much of the war he served as a civilian cable radio sensor translator for military intelligence he was assistant and then chief juvenile probation officer as you saw from the early news story when he left office the county judge the reason he left county judge had ordered him to place a black worker in a segregated office and he refused before he left he had visited 10,000 homes and no boys from Berth county were engaged in the juvenile detention hall from 47 to 49 he had several jobs he was director of junior deputies of America working with problem kids he served as executive secretary secretary of pan-american progressive association or PAPA which was dealing with serious issues in the city he was educational director for the international ladies garment workers union he was a mathematics teacher for the reference training program at linear high school during these early years he was also active in religious and civic affairs often in a position of leadership he served as scout master for six years and even considered a career professional scouting got a scout over there at San Fernando cathedral he was president of the holy name society a picture on the catholic men's club baseball team and also served as the first president of the vicious committee for the spanish speaking and when he ran for office one of his opponents said that he was he was a leftist, a left winger and he said I'm not a left winger I pitch right handed, I'm a right winger there is no doubt that throughout his career he carried with him a deep belief in the church's teachings on social justice in 1950 to 53 and this is where the newspaper account is mistaken they said he ran for the city council he did not he ran for state representative and made the runoff for Henry Maverick who is well known in this city and they teamed up Maury won and Henry barely lost but that started something but you notice that he had these several jobs so he decided that he wanted to go out on his own and he said well I figured I could earn $300 a month on my own $300 a month he opened a translation service in the offices in the Houston building and he said he was a writer for Bicultural Publications he published English Spanish Review Magazine and he was deputy director of the San Antonio Housing Authority and actually was the first manager of me to sell homes but a growing family made it necessary to earn a living but it was clear that he was restless and had not yet found his true calling then it happened his runoff race for state rep led to being asked to run for city council and his true passion for elected public office representing the people being their voice was set on a true north course in 53 he was elected to the council they elected a mayor pro tem initially he was reelected in 55 and remember there were no single member districts there he had to run throughout the whole city he had to get votes from everybody to win in 56 he offered the council and approved ordinances desegregating all city facilities he studied every city budget carefully and often found waste and previously unidentified pockets of funds that were needed for basic services fellow council members reflected their admiration for him when one said he's done a pretty good job and besides he mixed the rest of his think but then the senate called and in 56 he launched the bear county wide campaign against an incumbent senator winning by a narrow margin of over 800 votes again county wide gaining enough votes in the anglo areas of the north and south to go with his huge margins in the east and west sides as the voice of the people he sponsored bills including for a domestic relations court for bear county establishment of a medical school in san Antonio which came to pass strict lobby control and regulation the state minimum wage of 40 cents an hour which didn't pass authorizing urban renewal in san Antonio after being called by many of his fellow senators that mexican when he first entered the senate over time he gained their respect when he left bill patman a colleague wrote I have seen you on countless occasions stand up as a true advocate for what you knew to be right your magnificent sense of humor criticism into a joke on the offender your dauntless courage permits no shadow of fear well in the senate you ran for governor in 58 where his opponents were governor price dangles and former governor papy leo dangles they called papy leo dangles bastard biscuits o dangles he had a band that he would play for his rallies he said he wanted to offer the people a choice since all they had before he announced was tweedly d and oh tweedly d now they could choose tweedly dum and then in early 61 he ran for the us senate in the seat vacated by vice president linden johnson he lost both races but he learned about the people throughout the texas who supported his quest for equal economic and educational opportunities and basic civil rights for everyone not just the moneyed few his overwhelming victories in bear county he had no choice to run for the vacated seat of congressman kilday who had been appointed by jfk to a federal court and by the way he had served as national co-chair of the viva kennedy clubs that's when he won a seat that he held for 37 years and included chairmanship of the house banking and currency committee when i was on his staff when he came to town every weekend i would pick him up at the airport and be with him most of the time family outings yes i would pile into the station wagon with bertha and all the kids y'all remember that don't you one of the slides that he's showing in fact they're showing it now is when we went to visit the army map center at fort sam you will see that uh i had a lot more hair and a lot fewer pounds i marveled at his memory as he would greet people by their first names everywhere we went and he would ask them about their family members by name when we went to a banquet at a hotel he first would go to the kitchen to see the cooks and the wait staff to inquire about their families by their names you could say that he had the memory of 12 elephants and the kids remember that because he would never forget remember what i said about his mother's details well a remarkable picture is the one that's now showing from a daily reminder booklet on one of the slides up there that is covered with sayings quotations from the bible shakespeare, george washington both spanish and english he would arm himself with these sayings every day including one that reads there faith in god was his armor his weapons valor and skill he had a love for people with a burning desire to help make their lives better to help them realize the american dream especially the children of immigrants just as he was he could see the inherent goodness of the value of a person he had the ability to turn a phrase or quote a passage that would draw media attention to his message unlike some candidates however money was never his goal there was no gold gilded bathroom fixtures in his bathroom and his interests were not were those of his constituents not his own ego it is well known that money was tight until he was elected to congress and then as the opening video shows he spent almost half his salary to the people and that's why some of the slides show the various news outlets because when he would come in if he did not record in washington he would go directly to kwex or keds to do his recording and i'd go with him and then he would go to the newsrooms at the express in the light to talk to reporters to report to them what was happening so they could report in the newspaper and then he had his newsletter where he said the 20th century program for the 20th district you know in recent weeks we all experienced the outpouring of sentiment for the unexpected loss of the musical genius prince in many ways henry b's life is described in the lyrics of one of prince's songs which i found interesting and it's about money it goes money doesn't matter tonight it surely didn't matter yesterday just when you think you've got more than enough that's when it all up and flies away that's when you find out that you're better off making sure your soul's all right during his political career as much as he loved people he wanted no entangling on lines except for membership of the democratic party the party of fdr, jfk, lbj and his mentor in congress the populist banking committee chairman right patman of texas so he traveled alone not part of any coalitions or subgroups he wanted the freedom to speak and act freely he represented to hold him accountable his loyalty was to the people who elected him into the constitution he always carried a pocket edition as is seen on one of the slides that they should have shown and he would have passed extra copies out often and those of you who visited his office remember that he had a sign that says this office will answer the people of the 20th district it's no wonder that when he was laid to rest in 2000 thousands of residents lined the streets to pay their respects from downtown san fernando cathedral all the way to the cemetery waving homemade signs it said gracias, thank you, henry b still beloved by his constituents to this day homes throughout the city have portraits of henry b next to those of beloved president john kennedy and our lady huela loupe he will always be remembered as a truly a son of the city voice of the people thank you wow jean you said half of what i was going to say already so anyway i really want to thank UTSA for putting on this this little symposium on congressman minzala's because he was truly a remarkable individual and a giant his legacy is expansive and it's difficult to try and encapsulate everything in just a short period of time because he did so much in so many different areas so i'm going to limit my comments to some general observations of his life and his legacy and then spend a little bit of time on a couple of examples that substantiate my observations my relationship with the late congressman is based on and what i understood of his life and what he did are based on stories from my mom who had a new birth and the congressman when they had a very young family and she helped actually babysit some of the children she lived right across the street from them and later my mother served in the same office with him in naval intelligence during World War II she used to tell me we were the only spanish-speaking spies in san Antonio and then of course my oela was the family and she was always ensuring that everybody would vote and she made sure we always watched this saturday morning language report from washington dc and you couldn't not do that in my home and then i was privileged and lucky to spend many hours with him interviewing him both at earl labels and at the holiday in i've gone and read dozens of newspaper articles besides looking at the being with him and interviewing him read numerous copies of the congressional record listened to countless stories from both admirers and detractors over the years and have come to several conclusions concerning his personality and his character i'm going to be reading and paraphrasing much of what i wrote because like jean linel i don't want to miss any details my problem is i'm the junior member up here i'm afraid that some of you might correct me because i hope i don't get too much wrong anyway he's been characterized as a man of courage standing up to powerful politicians and individuals and against what he thought were demeaning inappropriate and illegal institutional policies and regulations he's been characterized as a champion for the downtrodden the poor and he's been characterized as a lone wolf or maverick who challenged leaders of even his own party over positions that he felt strongly about indeed he was all of what what i just said but more so you know if i could when i used to teach a class on the national congress and i would try to describe a congressman to my students and he was the epitome of the classical congressperson he thought of himself as a representative of the people of his district and you know as jean said it was epitomized by the sign on his door and the sign is out there as you're coming in that said that this office belongs to the people of the 20th district of texas it wasn't his office the office belonged to the people he also made it very clear that he was probably the only congressman and i saw several reports on this that did not go to congress and become rich he left congress with his salary his benefits and just a small amount of money that he had accumulated over the years but he told me once that he says you know i must be the poorest congressman in the whole in all of washington but like i said he told me he didn't go there to get rich he felt also very importantly that his role as a congressman was that of the overseer of the government congress one of the principal functions of congress is to oversee what the government does and it protects the purse the revenues, the money, the people the tax dollars and his responsibility he felt strongly about was to hold the executive branch accountable for every penny they spent and to make sure the executive branch did what they were constitutionally supposed to be doing as a result he spent his career ensuring that our banking system a lot of people didn't think of him this way he was responsible for making sure that our banking system remain transparent and function for the general good as opposed to the benefit of the few he was concerned for the welfare of the downtrodden fighting for fair housing economic development opportunities and the civil rights of african-americans and latinos and the poor finally he fought to maintain the democratic integrity of our government and the political place of his institution in relationship particularly to the presidency and that latter one is really really important to understand a lot of people kind of intuited at that but he really was very very concerned about that evidence of his courage and concern with the democratic integrity of our political institutions can be found in the numerous times when he filed bills for impeachment against several presidents the one I am most familiar with was against president ronald reagan I'm sorry I know as a result of his actions in the now infamous iran contra scandal when congressman gonzalez was informed of a secret national security decision directive that president reagan had signed as a step before an intended military invasion of nicaragua he filed a bill he had evidence for all of this that he had dug up himself and had been presented to him he didn't even though people would laugh about him filing these impeachment bills they were based on real information he was serious about this stuff anyway the bill had the effect of stopping the invasion but also was one of the precipitating events leading up to the uncovering of the entire guns for drugs scandal that led to the resignation and indictment in the north although congressman gonzalez was vilified by reagan supporters he stood fast in his resolve and was proven correct in his insistence that the president had overstepped his authority and violated the principles of the war powers act that had been passed by congress another incident was when he chaired the house committee on assassinations and this one he was very very disappointed and he spent a lot of time talking about this that was initially charged with investigating the president Kennedy the doctor martin luther king and the robert kennedy assassinations although many felt that these dark pages in american history had been investigated thoroughly congressman gonzalez felt that a great deal in all three incidents had yet to be uncovered he was mostly concerned with his belief that congress had not performed its due diligence in all three incidents to both conduct an investigation and uncover all of the facts in each case his actions were thwarted by members of congress from both parties the intransigence of both the fbi and the central intelligence agency specifically and the executive branch generally as well as the media the congressman pressed his case because he felt that the warren commission that had investigated president kennedy's assassination had not sifted through all of the evidence and didn't perform a detailed enough inquiry most importantly however he felt it was congress's job again the institutional responsibility to perform this investigation citing those surrounding the assassinations of lincoln and mckinley as well as the investigation into the bombing of pearl harbor essentially the congressman was concerned that congress had not performed its constitutional and institutional responsibilities in these matters and finally the last example is the role he played in solving the savings and loan scandals in the 1970s his actions were important to ensuring the stability of our banking system the housing industry was the first real housing bubble remember the recent one but the first one was then homeowners and the general economy of our nation even though he was constantly under pressure from the leadership of the house he refused to do so until the issues were resolved the man of courage and stick-to-itiveness and principle his compassion for the underdog and the downtrodden was simply based in his understanding of his responsibilities as a representative of his constituents congressman gonzalez represented the 20th congressional district which was the heart and soul of the west side of san antonio and the mexican-american community he felt that this community his community had never really had a voice in the halls of government whether in city hall the state or national representative chambers because the people elected him and continued to elect him he felt that his responsibility to be their voice congressman gonzalez' style reflects the concern that political institutions would continue to ignore this community if he wasn't forceful and unwavering as he often was when making his arguments on any policy issues that he felt strongly about on a lighter note visiting constituents was a favorite pastime of his i know many of you all and jean mentioned some of these stories have similar stories i can relate to what i'm about to tell you but every time i met with him i had to wait my turn as he met every person from the parking lot when he got out of his car to the table where we were sitting he seemed to know every waiter waitress, dishwasher, attendant of any sort from the moment he entered the restaurant until he sat down for our interview on the way out he would stop at almost every table in the restaurant to say hello and shake people's hands for those who worked in these establishments it appeared he knew and remembered many things about their families as well you could see in the faces of those he said hello to that they had a great deal of respect admiration and fondness for the congressman they just love this man from an academic perspective i'll put that hat on for a second congressman gonzalez fit the classical profile as i said earlier of a member of his chamber a representative of his district an overseer of the government and a guardian of the people's purse he was what i would call not necessarily in this order or sense of priority but a constitutionalist institutionalist with a progressive ideology although evident in his support of civil rights beginning with his efforts at overturning segregation laws in san Antonio when he was on the city council when he set a record for filibustering in the senate as he helped kill 14 segregationist pieces of legislation to support the civil rights act while in congress his progressiveness didn't reveal itself to me until he confided to me one day that if i wanted he got frustrated with me one day if you really want to know the truth of what's going on in washington read the nation i've had a subscription subscription ever since and i read it religiously once a week the institutionalist constitutionalist sides of him were revealed in his actions during the three incidents i spoke to above earlier in each case he was concerned with congress performing its constitutional duties trying to ensure that the executor branch did not have any constitutional boundaries while the entire time trying to make sure that our system of government worked for everyone congressman gonzalez's uncomfortable relationship with the leaders of the chicano movement in the late 1960s and 70s was a reflection of several issues and i really feel i need to address that because that was the topic that has come up periodically on one level though there was a lot of political tension that centered on how government should be made to work while the congressman was a devotee of working within the system to make sure the system abided by its own policies and laws the leadership of the chicano movement was more concerned with the narrower agenda and direct confrontational tactics additionally congressman gonzalez knew very well that if he were to side with the chicano movement's leadership he would lose many political allies as a productive member of congress finally he saw a confrontation as disloyal to a governmental system in a country he deeply loved in the final analysis congressman gonzalez will go down in history as a loving husband and father a consummate politician who loved his country had faith in our national institutions and always did what he felt was the right thing thank you thank you henry and it's a great honor to be here and be part of this group although i am reminded as i look at this group of what leonel was talking about a moment ago when he talked about the mexican revolution and the women leaders we have one coronela and five broken down warhorses i want to just share a few kind of principles and then maybe some that i saw over the years of the really special quality of this man my first thought really builds on what others have already said is as a champion of the working people as a champion of the strivers, the people who work so hard work with their hands and the system seems to be loaded against them and that person was just a person who articulated so often their concerns whether it was about excessive utility bills or high water rates or unfair treatment by the federal government but he was for the person who was marginalized, the person who is downtrodden and that message was far more powerful than any speech or any law of who he was and how he could be depended upon and so it's why he was able to run without opposition and why he was able to run without campaign fundraising and why he was able to talk over the heads of the newspapers and the powers that be and directly into the households of people in his district and all over the city and all over the state because he had a statewide and even national reputation one day I was campaigning myself as a city council member many years later on Sarsamora street a block walking what was my district district one here downtown and I went into a gas station an independent, in those days independently owned gas stations they weren't all train stations and it was like maybe Sarsamora and Aztec somewhere in there small little station one man pumped gas and did mechanic work his hands were covered in grime his clothes were covered in grime and he recognized me we talked for a little while and then he said we went inside the place with the tires and all of the automotive equipment and he opened his desk and he had a folder and he opened the folder and it was a letter and it was a letter that was not about anything profound it said basically I'm sending you the calendar for this year but it was his most precious possession it was in a folder it was in the drawer it was a sign that he was in direct contact with this man who he loved you use the word correctly who took care of him totally and it taught me a good deal about the connection that a public person can make with their constituents and that was the case in household after household in family after family he once told me the congressman himself in one setting told me a congressperson is the only person who gets his office the only person in the entirety of the United States government you have to be elected if a senator slot opens up it can be named by the governor if a governor dies a lieutenant governor can succeed if a president dies a vice president can succeed but there's only one way you get to congress there's no such thing as an appointment in any state in the United States they call a special election and you have to get elected to the congress makes him the ultimate representative of the people and I think as has already been said he completely embodied adopted represented that role and in a complete sense and not just in an abstract and academic sense but for individuals he fought for individuals that letter that that man got and that he showed me could have been replicated in other homes regarding a son who was in the military and lacked his benefits or someone who was in the military hospital or a veteran who wasn't getting his benefits or a family who wanted a son who's in prison to be moved to another facility so they were closer and they could visit with him all the practical things where government interfaces with people he worked he had a fantastic constituency service reputation and the forgivable sin in his office staff was not to answer people's calls and not to respond to their letters and not to take care of the problem that they had and if they wouldn't do it he did it himself and he spent many many hours in his office taking care of those things where an individual relates to the monolith that is the government and he did it over and over and over again for countless hours for countless people over the years not because he was running for office not because he was soliciting votes but because it was his concept of what a public servant should be and should do it made him very much a populist so that his span of of influence was much more than mexicanos the people who had elected him from the originally from the 20th congressional district very hispanic west side central city district but he had people who admired his populism as I say all over the city, all over the state all over the country and they just trusted him in a way that you don't see often in public life no matter who they were many were older, many were poor every ethnic group had my guess is his support among african-americans here was probably even stronger than among mexicanos there's this total sense of a congressman for all the people and so it was very clear he represented everyone he was also, as has been said characterized by great courage courageous and I always thought of it as not just intellectual courage although it was that but even a physical courage because when you filibuster that long that's a physical act of stamina but he had been a boxer in his younger years and he wasn't ashamed to show off that photo of him in his boxing tugs in his boxing outfit and he did other things that were physical like the baseball games at the congress he was a very good baseball player but there was a physical quality to the man that said look I'm gonna represent you whether it is on ideas or whether it takes physical strength whatever it takes and I always had the sense this was a very strong man of great stamina and the courage came through in that way as well he of course was unflinchingly honest you could say to a flaw if you were talking about traditional politics because he rejected fundraising and all of the traditional things of politics in order to be scrupulously honest and frankly there were years in the early years when he was on the city council the city council didn't pay when the degree of his honesty was of great sacrifice to him and to his family and they used to be kind of sub-rosa rumors in the business community that somebody was taking care of him or they used to use a phrase no visible means of support he has no visible means of support he kept his family in the necessities but public service balanced off against those responsibilities but never once did it bleed over into any self-serving act or anything that could be called dishonesty in fact his honesty in Washington was renowned years later when he was on the banking and currency committee I think this was before he was chairman of the committee but he was a member a very important member a delegation of bankers led by some San Antonians but included bankers from the Texas bankers association and others went to see him and they wanted some changes and some bank regulations and somebody made the mistake of saying something like if you can help us with this legislation it will be worth your while if you can help us with this legislation we're here to help you and his response was gentlemen this meeting is over and this is the door and he was just unshakeable in terms of any suggestion that he would do anything in public life in exchange for some reward in exchange for some money so the honesty was a big part of his political persona now all of these things make him as has been said independent iconoclastic a standard of his own but he also knew how to balance that off to do the traditional things that need to be done to build a city build a community and an example of that was the kind of vision he brought to issues of delivering for San Antonio perhaps the greatest evidence is one of the turning point events for our city of modern history as has already been said the motto on as Gene said the motto on his newsletter was a 20th century plan for the 20th congressional district and when you look at that original articulation of that plan one of the elements was to bring a world fair to San Antonio and the result was hemisphere in 1968 which he helped get the money from the federal government and also from the state and the result was a turning point we wouldn't have had it I mean that was our first convention center that was the renovation of the river walk that was the new hotels on the river that was our first arena which later made possible the spurs it wouldn't have been able to come here except for the arena that existed it was the clearance of the land for hemisphere it was the urban renewal that followed around it in the downtown as well but he had a plan now imagine this this is 1966 1967 the powers that be in San Antonio the people who ran the town were people like Mayor Walter McAllister and Mr Bartel Zachary they had little tolerance for the Mexicano community in those days or its leaders but here was a person with whom they had to deal directly they wanted they bought together into the idea of a world's fair that started with the congressman Gonzalez and had to in the course of things determine that they had to go through him to make it happen because it was his relationship with Lyndon Baines Johnson and the White House that got the funding for hemisphere that was so badly needed so the congressman not only got these things done but he created a new sense of inclusiveness and balance in the politics of the city in the leadership of the city and some of those powers knew it the same kind of approach applied to Kelly Air Force Base which grew to some 17,000 employees at its prime Kelly Air Force Base Viva Kelly on the west side in my neighborhood that I grew up on there are five houses on one side of the street five houses on the other side of Monterey Street about six blocks from here and every single one of those ten houses the head of household worked either at Kelly or Fort Sam Houston or Lackland one man was a butcher another man was an aircraft mechanic another one worked in communications my dad worked at Fort Sam Houston but everybody knew that congressman Gonzalez the jobs flowing at Kelly Lackland Brooks Fort Sam Houston Randolph et cetera the Brooke Army Medical Center again he delivered time and again that headquarters of army medicine the war on poverty in 1967-68 when the Model Cities program was announced that was something that he got San Antonio on the list to get the Model Cities program education funding at all levels and when the federal government under Lyndon Johnson began to talk in terms of funding for schools and college accessions and Pell Grants congressman Gonzalez was right there making sure that San Antonio was in it so he knew how to get for our community and had a vision a vision of building a city that would be better for all its people in short let me say a standard for public service that was huge in two respects one everybody who came after him had to be measured against that standard all of these years has passed and nobody has ever measured up but we tried but it was nearly impossible because no one could make the sacrifices or was willing to make the sacrifices in due respect that he made and no one had the energy and no one had the full time effort and no one had the self-sacrificing abilities and the intellect frankly that he had so he was the Paragon I was a city council member later a mayor but I knew that the standard was Henry B. Gonzalez in fact when I was on the city council the newspapers used to talk about the 10th member of the city council we had nine who sat at the dais and one other which was Henry B. Gonzalez just like that bumper sticker that says what would Jesus do our question was what would Henry B. do what would Henry B. say and you didn't act on a city council without at least checking with his office as to what he would do because the last thing he wanted to do was have him blast you the next the following Saturday and that's the word the papers used they used his initials HBG which is usually reserved for presidents but HBG blasts the city council for a water rate increase blasts the city council for approving an electrical power increase so that was one aspect of his influence on the political culture the other is he just established the culture that I believe has influenced the way San Antonio has evolved we're basically an honest city a clean city we've had some aberrations and we've had a few public officials go to jail over the years but for the most part people play it clean here and political relations are decent and there's a sense of cross-cultural communications respectful across our ethnic groups and Henry B. Gonzalez was responsible for a lot of that and he cleaned up a lot of it one of his most notable acts of courage was to go after people who were doing wrong no matter what they're standing in the political life of the community and there's a lot of people who ended up in real trouble I mean courts and jail because of his intervention of people who were abusing the public interest so in that sense I think we owe him a great debt of gratitude even on his 100th birthday even well past the years that he actually served for establishing the culture that has served our city so well let me close very quickly with just two kind of personal observations if I may Leonel talked earlier about the families that came here during the revolution in Mexico and other unrest in Mexico and my grandfather came in 1926 his name was Romulo Munguia and he came on for the reign of assassination he was going to be literally shot in Puebla when he boarded the train and arrived in San Antonio he went to work at La Prensa which was run by a man named Ignacio Lozano and Ignacio Lozano eventually moved to Los Angeles and that's the same family today the Lozano family of Monica Lozano who runs the La Opinión and a network of newspapers that's going to be on the screen now in any event Ignacio Lozano was the publisher the editor was Leonides Gonzales and that's who my grandfather went to work for so that generation was Don Leonides and my grandfather Romulo the next generation was the sons of both of those men Henry V. Gonzales and my uncle Rubén Munguia agreed and Buenavista and ran it all those years Rubén Munguia ended up being the campaign manager for Henry Gonzales's state representative run in 1953 the one that he lost and Rubén told stories about what a bad night that was he did not want to lose that election and promised never to lose the election again but it's interesting because the families sort of have stayed together over the years I went to high school with Charlie Gonzales in the next generation after that so just some personal observations on sort of some interconnections in the family the other is that I was one of those in that generation that came after him and that not only respected him but was afraid of him as you had to be because as I say it was to get blasted and as we said earlier there were a lot of cross currents in the politics of the city that are more complex than perfection a lot of cross currents that made it a very complex time and some of the people who came behind him didn't stay in his track and he broke with them like Albert Pena for example that was a fairly severe break and Pete Torres who made the mistake of saying that Congressman Gonzales' support for Kelly Field put him on the wrong side of the Vietnam war that he should be more opposed to the Vietnam war while the congressman was literally working hard to continue to get jobs at Kelly and standing with OBJ during that period so it was a very very difficult time with a lot of different cross currents and the civil rights movement and as Henry said the Chicano movement there were even physical altercations that occurred during that time well I was coming up on the city council and I concluded that my best course was to write the congressman a letter and tell him the following I will never run against you I will never support anyone who does I will not be part of any plan that opposes you I will not be in the room when that conversation begins I wrote it down and my uncle said Ruben Mungier who was his former campaign manager but had a falling out because he was a compadre of Albert Pena they didn't have a real falling out Ruben adored him but they didn't speak for some years because he was a friend of Albert Pena so he said you did what I said I wrote him this letter and I want him to have it and I told him put this in your file this is for you to keep if I ever go crazy and think in any form of opposing you in any shape or form on any issue or anything you can use this letter my uncle said you don't do that I said no no no if you want to survive you do that so I did and the long and short is I got to be mayor of San Antonio in 1981 and in that election he never endorsed in those races and there's no reason in the world why he would have endorsed me because there were some things that we were on opposite sides we were on opposite sides of the nuclear power plant for example but he said one of the greatest things one of the greatest moments of my life there was a newspaper story on a Friday in which the congressman said I'm not endorsing but I'm going to vote for Henry Cisneros wow all of a sudden this election was actually possible we could actually do this thank you very much I never heard that story of that letter but we're going to start looking for it real quick on behalf of the Gonzalez family we want to extend our sincere thanks to UTSA of course President Romo and everyone in the College of Public Policy for making all this possible Francine y'all have been incredible this was Gene approached me one day we had breakfast tacos we said we got to do something and we reached out to UTSA the San Antonio Public Library it was wonderful and it's the result of that initial conversation but it really is about the hard work of the public library and of course UTSA and I believe that if Dean Stephen Shepard from the St. Mary's Law School is here Dean of your stand please Dean, thank you for being here and St. Mary's University the School of Law is going to also commemorate Dad's 100th birthday and it will culminate a year from today and they've got some great things that they're going to be doing so thank you very much I also want to express on behalf of the family sincere thanks to Congressman Castro State Senator Menendez State Representative Trey Martinez-Fisher State Representative Roland Gutierrez and especially to Councilwoman Shirley Gonzalez for the resolutions and proclamations in the respective capacities that they were able to obtain and present to the Gonzalez family we will treasure those and thank you so very much I'm just going to skip around real quick I know that time is somewhat short what I'm going to do is just basically play off on some of the comments that y'all were making and my observations from what might be a totally different vantage point and hearing some of his comments and so on and you know being there when mom was trying to raise all of us when dad was not home and such it's so funny that Secretary Cisneros touches on the calendars those calendars so when I took over in 1989 all of a sudden there's this big list of people that dad would send calendars to now I want you to know that it is a member of Congress and you pay for those calendars and you pay for the postage even though it's got the name of the member of Congress you're still charged postage and so I asked staff what I was going to cost and I went wow and so the first thing that some of the staff that had worked for dad and were working for me they said you better send those calendars first of all your father will never understand why the calendars aren't going out it'll be a firestorm if they don't get them and they were absolutely right because sometimes the calendars wouldn't get to a constituent they'd be calling, they'd be writing because it really was a connection that they had with the federal government if that calendar was in the mail every year they knew that their government was functioning it was and it was really quite simple so we sent those calendars out to the very last day dad's appreciation for the House of Representatives he loved it and it's 435 members it's this giant big community neighborhood and there's a snob appeal to the Senate and the comparison and I never really appreciated dad talking about the diversity of the House and Republican Democrats everybody and the difference with the Senate it was a different culture and so the way I, when I went there I really understand it the House of Representatives it's like a big community you know gender-wise, ethnicity and race and everything else then you went over it was just a big neighborhood you went to the Senate and it was like 100 people living in a gated community so I think I understood dad's great great great appreciation I think I mentioned in that he wasn't materialistic and I do want I want to tell you what Secretary Cisneros told me back there a minute ago when there were, when dad was in reporting from Washington and he was boasting about how much of his income he was spending on the job Henry said something, well now you know where your Christmas went in those days the government paid for only so many trips home dad came home every weekend every every weekend and so most of those trips were covered out of his salary I don't know if anybody would do that today today you have a budget and you just have to figure out how many times you're going to go home and it is now assumed you will be coming home every weekend and that's just the way it is on the about not being materialistic and such and living off of your salaries and elected official dad used to say something to the effect that you know if you leave Congress with more money than when you arrived you probably should have been indicted so and he was brutally, let me tell you he was a big Democrat and let me tell you there was a reason he really believed the Democratic Party was a party with a social conscience you know and Leonel of course has been with the Republican Party but the beauty of Leonel's involvement the Republican Party is that he brought a social conscience to the Republican Party and I thank you for that Leonel yes you have I read your article the other day and I think it really Leonel and it's good because we have to have two strong parties with vibrant and robust personalities and with ethics and that social conscience so this really happened and when I went to Congress I think I was more of a team player I understood coalitions I understood leadership and things like that so Dad had been a senior member of the banking committee financial services I think at that point he had been chairman and that was an incredible thing I mean the financial world didn't know what to expect right Henry but there was a race and there was a Republican incumbent who served on that committee and his opponent the Democrat said something about his performance on the committee on a vote or an issue which was not accurate it just wasn't true so the Republican incumbent came to my father and said do you mind setting the record straight so my father thought sure all I'm doing is telling the truth the problem is you're telling the truth and you're probably defeating the Democrat so Dad told the truth and he really received an unwelcome response from Democratic leadership because it appeared that he was endorsing the Republican incumbent when Dad all Dad was doing and he always said just tell the truth people can handle the truth it's when they find out that they've been misled or lied to or not told the truth by omission avoidance tell them the truth and they will prepare for whatever you have to do and the consequences of the truth Dad's all talking about you were talking that his whole attitude was he did everything I'll never forget this is one of his favorite sayings you got to do everything standing and facing meaning you know right in somebody's face and that's the way he was and if someone said did you say this or say that about me he'd say no because I would have said it to your face I mean that's the way Dad was the other thing too is talking about the support and talking about my mom Bertha raising the kids because once Dad got elected in 61 Jean will tell you he was gone and it was really tough so you did have people that made my Dad's whole career possible and you have to start with my mother and my brothers and my sisters and they had support if it wasn't for my aunt my mother's sister my mom probably wouldn't have gotten around to go to the grocery store and do everything if it wasn't for Thea Luce who was Dad's sister heaven knows how some of us would have gotten to many of our school functions and such so we had just wonderful people and I do at this time I hope he's still alive in our neighborhood you remember the old days you had a policeman that was assigned to your neighborhood and you better know the local policeman if you're a teenager we're telling stories the other day and on behalf of my brothers and yours truly I want to say to Officer Jesse Porter thank you for taking us home rather than to jail they were wonderful so Dad would say some things and all of you remember his stuff was pretty harsh and so he had said something about a political leader and later that political leader was instrumental in getting some funds for a project here in San Antonio and so Dad had to acknowledge it so the reporter said congressman I thought you said you wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole and Dad said that is not true 50 foot pole the other thing is there are no filling his shoes we know all about that it's just not going to get done but so this is what they do in congress at the end of the year whatever it is you have to follow your financial reports you report everything and if you don't you're in big trouble and so then they list like the top 10 wealthiest members of congress generally they're in the senate by the way but anyway but Dad never made it he used to make like the top 10 poorest members of congress I'm proud to say though I carried on that part of his tradition when we would go down to the house recording studio they actually have a recording studio where members of congress get to tape their programs and I was telling somebody earlier so they would tape the program and they fly it over here and they would present it because Dad couldn't get here in time to go to the station sometimes and Dad would start some of these reports something like thanks to the miracle of videotape I was going Dad videotape is not a miracle you know but everyone loved him especially in the recording studio because they would say he would just come in and have a script and he would just start talking and then he would invite members of congress you know and my dear friend congressman Smith from Michigan come over here Bill and they would just start talking but they would be reporting to their districts about bills that were being considered and the impact in the different communities I was the right age to be with my Dad more than my brothers and sisters so I'll never forget the campaigns for governor I'll never forget the campaign because there were statewide and this is the way my father conducted a statewide race in a station wagon with two mariachas one with an accordion one with a guitar and me in the back seat too and Dad driving that thing all over the state of Texas with his press secretary who was in the front seat with one of those little typewriters they used to come and pop them open and he'd be hitting the next press release as we're going from town to town so then I heard that Price Daniel, the incumbent had a plane and he was flying so I thought I'm in this 57 Shibby station wagon with two mariachas a press secretary with a portable typewriter and my old man driving and Price Daniel was flying over us so one day you know we stopped eating and Dad is it true about this plane thing well yeah I think he's got a plane available to him I said it doesn't look good for us and you will hear people and there are a lot of young people here or younger and they would come up and we were talking about it such as the Professor Flores he says hey I used to watch your dad when you think about the age you're going well how could you possibly have been watching my father in 62 or 1963 the reason all these young people were watching my father is that he came on right before the cartoons so the kids would wake up they turned the TV on waiting for the cartoons and so my father would have to entertain them before the cartoons came in so they got to know Dad at a very early age the other thing too is if you come from a political family you do take it personally and so when the newspaper was endorsing or the opponent is saying terrible things so Dad was running for Congress and a really fine gentleman was running against him and he had a stellar military career a decorated Marine and they would show Iwo Jima and the raising of the flag you know and it was Dad's opponent decorated and such and they would say so where was Henry B you know you didn't know about it either so I stayed up and it was about 2 in the morning Dad came in from campaigning I was in the kitchen waiting he says what's up he says I got a question for you Dad where were you where were your kids Steven's here because Steven really worked in my older brother Henry we would go out we would put up campaign signs that's the way it was done you had a hammer you had nails and you had these cardboard signs can I put this sign up on your tree you would tack them up to trees and fences and we were I forget it was somewhere in the east side and God it was a great lot it had a great tree I mean we were good man I mean we you know it was a tree on a corner two sides ah man you know this is it man so we saw the man on the porch and we said excuse me sir can we put up a couple of Henry B Gonzalez for state senate signs and he looked at us and it was a Saturday kid's doing and he says I bet you that SOB is not paying you a penny for doing this and we looked at him and he said sir you're exactly right we're not getting paid so he felt so sorry for us we got to put the signs up but those those are some of the stories um but I I mean it the all of the credit really goes in mom's not here tonight um she gets around but by after today's couple events it's been real hard on her but dad I think was beloved not by the power structure not by the privilege or the riches he was just loved by the people and that's what really made him so happy whether it was in San Antonio to this very day people coming up they will hug me because I look like my dad and they'll say thank you for what your dad did for my aunt son and on and on they have not forgotten and I think it would have made dad so incredibly happy same thing in Washington when I got to Washington it was the waitstaff it was all of the janitors maintenance in operations people their ones that would come up are your dad was the greatest guy ever I still remember Harry Reid the majority leader he says yeah your dad he Harry Reid when he was going to school was uh capital police officer and so he had the night duty and he'd be reading and dad would bring him sandwiches to eat he said I'll never forget your dad for bringing me food when I was in school you know things like that it was just these really amazing stories that people would tell about dad and continue to tell uh those those stories so I'm gonna end it you know my story was you know what are the lessons that we could all learn whether he was your father or not about his public service uh and what he always said is I said tell the people the truth and he says you never can achieve equality by separating yourself that's whole thing was always about inclusion uh you distinguish yourself in different ways but you have to be included in the big picture he had a genuine concern for every person and it wasn't just about legislation it was about that personal crisis question problem concern that that person had dad had to personally help them that public service is more than a full-time job Henry will tell you that because that's what it requires and it requires sacrificing a lot of good things including family but I want to say this about dad as hard as he worked as tired as he was it brought him absolute joy so if your family or you're a supporter and you're working hard for somebody if it brings someone that kind of joy and it means so much to everyone because that joy translated to greater opportunity for all of those people and to this day I mean dad only lived two years after leaving congress and I think it was just there was no more public service and I just really believe that that point in his life there just wasn't all the meaning that life had at one time and that was public service so thank you very much for honoring my father with your presence tonight thank you so much gentlemen this is just I have one quick one I have really loud voice just what a wonderful gift you have given us all tonight I'm really inspired to continue this legacy in your own unique way especially the young people the students here tonight and we just have a couple last things to do if you can bear with us we will get you to the reception as soon as we can again we want to hear from you at the reception we'd like to hear your recollections your inspirations as a result of all this we're going to announce the launch of a UTSA scholarship just 30 seconds of thanks I need to get out to people I want to thank the entire Gonzales family thank you so much for allowing us to host this and for all your support on this the organizing team for this event Charlie and Jean Dr. Jude Valdez, Dean Rogelio Sines Roger Enriquez, Frank Salazar and Rachel Blunkies our wonderful senior communication specialist Michelle Skidmore in our college the University of Texas Dolph Briscoe Center for American History who has helped us with these clips and we're going to show you one more short one in a second our UTSA tech team Homer, Louise, Robert and Rudy Nowcast for the live stream and the taping you'll be able to watch this entire event on Nowcast they will archive that event and it was already being live streamed tonight and the donors who made that possible Jane Macon and Max Navarro so if you could all thank everybody that helped to make this possible tonight we will turn to Congressman Henry B. Gonzales one more time there's just about a four minute clip to close this portion of the event and we will see you all at the reception I'm going to show you the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the and the the the the the the the the the la cultura nuestra, el idioma, las tradiciones, con la tendencia de menospreciar este abolengo cultural, dada, como digo y repito, la evolución histórica y el choque entre los intereses en tiempos históricos de los dos grupos que predominan en ese ambiente nuestro, muchas personas que tienen la ambición humana muy natural de avanzar en la vida, de ser aceptables con el grupo dominador, de tener las propiedades y esas cosas materiales de la vida que dan cierto gusto y cierta satisfacción a las personas que buscan el progreso, el gusto natural humano, de sentirse, sentirse aceptables y de convivir especialmente con esos segmentos de la sociedad que todos afrueban o consideran son de alto rango, pero en el concepto mío la persona sensata y de responsabilidad y sobre todo que se respecta sí mismo, pone ciertas limitaciones a esas ambiciones, por ejemplo si al subir en el curso de sus esfuerzos en la vida únicamente puede subir sumerciendo a sus asociados de su mismo origen, entonces se me hace a mí que es un precio muy alto para pagar por este adelanto, por consiguiente una persona como yo que ocupa un puesto público y que soy del origen que soy, es decir de origen mexicano, siempre tiene la lucha de contra arrestar esta tendencia de menos precio o como dicen los psicólogos de un sentimiento de inferioridad muy arraigado y en cambio también luchar en contra de los enemigos tradicionales mal querientes que gracias a Dios ahora comprenden un grupo minoritario pero que sin embargo es fuerte y poderoso y aún existe en nuestros territorios y a la misma vez tiene la responsabilidad de la tarea pesada que tienen y llevan en sus hombros todos sus colegas aunque algunos de ellos no tienen el peso adicional que yo menciono en este caso nuestro pero yo jamás he deseado o he tenido la intención de pagar el precio de olvidar mi propia dignidad de voltear mi espalda al grupo del cual yo vengo de sentirme avergonzado porque el primer idioma que yo escuché fue este idioma en cual yo les dirijo la palabra o que mi apellido me haya en cualquier tiempo me haya hecho sentirme incómodo un millón de gracias y hasta la siguiente vez thank you everyone we'll see you at the reception