Dr. Hector P. Garcia

South Texas loses a remarkable fighter for equality who showed what one committed person with a passion for justice can accomplish.

By the Corpus Christi Caller-Times Sunday, August 11, 1996

The death of Dr. Hector P. Garcia represents the loss of one of this city's most honored citizens, a friend of presidents, and a humanitarian who won the respect of all who believe, as he did, that each American deserves a chance to share in this country's opportunities.

Garcia's life was a remarkable demonstration of what one person with a burning passion for justice and untiring energies can do to uplift the world around him. By the sheer will of his personality and his unwavering commitment to the downtrodden, the poor, the sick and the neglected, Dr Hector, as he was affectionately known, reminded us that we cannot declare the ideals of America as having been met until even the humblest of its citizens sits at its bountiful table.

That passion and commitment was first evident in 1948 when the remains of a South Texas World War II veteran, Felix Longoria, were refused burial by a Three Rivers Funeral home. The cases symbolized the inequality and bigotry which prevailed in Texas and it gave Garcia and his fledgling American GI Forum a national stage.

For Garcia, that kind of injustice was a mirror which perfectly reflected a society which let discrimination, neglect, insensitivity and apathy blind it to honor, patriotism and service. His job then, as it was throughout his life, was to put that mirror in front of us. The Longoria case ws to be his first victory (Longoria was buried in Arlington National Cemetery) in an extraordinary career.

Through more than four decades, Dr. Hector untiringly worked to wipe out the blight of poor housing, to open up job opportunities, to uplift the underprivileged, to spread the richesof education and to erase the affliction of racism. He made the American GI Forum one of the most highly effective instruments in fighting discrimination against Hispanics and other minorities.

He never sought elected office and spent his professional life tending to the sick out of his Bright Street Office, an office which became a landmark on the city's Westside. Only his failing health forced him to close its doors earlier this year.

Perhaps typical of his efforts and his approach was the American GI Forum's investigation of living conditions in the infamous colonias of the Rio Grande Valley in 1988. There, wearing his everpresent GI Forum hat and standing amidst the squalor of open privies and ramshackle homes, he told its residents, "I'm here not as politician because I'm not. I'm here as a doctor and a humanitarian."

That kind of selfless service won him a string of honors: Appointment as a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and most prominent of his national recognition, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This community showed its own love with dedication of the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Plaza and statue on the campus of Texas A&M Univesity-Corpus Christi earlier this month.

Yet what this community owes Dr. Hector goes beyond his years of service as a physician or his role as a civil rights leader. He, perhaps more than any one single person, helped this community travel through a difficult period in its history, a time when ethnic and racial feelings were at a flashpoint. He did this by his appeal to higher ideals and his allegiance to the bedrock ideals of this country: fairness, equity, and patriotism. His was a remarkable life. We have all been enriched by it.

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