Discover 361 April May 2024

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VVictoria has been around a long time — 200 years to be precise.

Looking back over the two centuries since founding couple Martin and Patricia De Leon arrived, we have a lot to celebrate. This city’s deep history is certainly something special.

In this edition, we offer readers a fascinating history lesson on the De Leons and their family. We look at how they arrived at this place we now call home as well as the trials, tribulations and triumphs they experienced after arriving.

We take a deep dive into Victoria’s founding family, learning about not only Martin and Patricia, but also many of their friends and family. We examine how Victoria was shaped during its most early days from the city’s earliest history to the present day.

We look at the modern day descendants of the De Leon family and how they are related to the city’s founders. Also, read about the creation of statues cast in the likeness of Martin and Patricia De Leon and the artists who made that artistic vision a reality.

Get a close look at a restored De Leon carriage on display at Victoria’s Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art.

From there, we trace the educational history of Victoria through the experiences of famed former Victoria teacher Gary Moses, a former Victoria College professor and the first students to graduate from the University of Houston-Victoria.

Through the lenses of Citizens Medical Center and DeTar, we learn about how health care has changed over the decades in Victoria as well as how those institutions have cared for our residents during that time.

St. Mary’s Church and Temple B'Nai Israel, two of Victoria’s oldest places of worship, offer lessons on how faith has nurtured this community. We get in-depth looks at both organizations.

Businesses have also played a crucial role in our city’s history. We learn about three local businesses that have and continue to serve our residents, their histories and what makes them special.

A fashion feature highlights styles of old as well as how old clothes continue to play an important role in apparel.

Two stories on two different and yet similar artists show us the importance of music and culture and the different heritages that inform how we as Victorians think of ourselves.

Finally, we end on a tasty note with recipes handed down through many generations by one local family.

Jon Wilcox

Local Editor

GENERAL MANAGER

Clarice Touhey

ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER

Kyle Motal

LOCAL EDITOR

Jon Wilcox

DESIGNER

Kimberley Bailey

WRITERS

Tamara Diaz

Chase Cofield

Kyle R. Cotton

Christopher Green

Patrick Sloan-Turner

Jon Wilcox

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Chase Cofield

Kyle R. Cotton

Christopher Green

Patrick Sloan-Turner

FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY BY

Chase Cofield

CONTRIBUTED PHOTOGRAPHY BY Emily Henderson

ON THE COVER

Melissa Canahuati and John Foster dress up as their ancestors

Martin De Leon and Patricia De La

Garza at Five Points Museum.

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY

Chase Cofield ©

How the De Leons shaped

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY TAMARA DIAZ

Two hundred years ago

On April 14, 1824, Martin and Patricia De Leon established the small town of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Jesus near a fordable passage through the Guadalupe River, discovered and named by Martin’s great-grandfather.

Eighteen-twenty-four was also the year when the Marquis de Lafayette, the famed General Lafayette of the American Revolution, returned to the United States for a grand tour; and Noah Cushing of Quebec patented the washing machine – albeit a primitive model.

The first section of New York City’s Fifth Avenue was laid; and a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, newspaper published the results of the first public opinion poll conducted in the United States.

Also in 1824, Guadalupe Victoria, a friend to the fledgling town, took office as the first president of the United Mexican States.

As Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Jesus, now called Victoria in honor of the first Mexican president, celebrates its bicentennial, it is fitting to trace the city’s founding story – the story of the De Leon family, the originators who lived, ranched, worshiped, loved, adjudicated and multiplied in and around the colony they created.

Beginnings

Martin De Leon was born in 1765 to Bernardo De Leon and Maria Galvan.

A Franciscan tutor educated Martin where his family lived in Cruillas, Nuevo Santander, New Spain, just south of modern-day Texas.

On hand at the Victoria Regional History Center, is a copy of Ana Carolina Castillo Crimm’s “De Leon, a Tejano Family History,” a superb source for information about the De Leon family. The history center also has a plethora of other historical materials related to the founding of Victoria.

“Martin’s family, proud of their light skin and Spanish heritage, disdained the dark, single-room adobe homes of the Indians,” Crimm wrote. “In his own eyes, he felt his family was as good as anyone born in Spain. To the newly arrived Spaniards, however, Martin and his family were second-class citizens, untrustworthy criollos.”

The De Leons were Spanish but born in the Americas.

Martin’s father, Bernardo, was a pioneer, modeling the spirit for his son. He was among 2,500 other colonists who went north to settle Nuevo Santander.

He originally settled in Burgos, “the westernmost of the settlements in the foothills of the Sierra Madres,” Crimm noted.

Sometime after 1749, he married Maria Galvan.

By the 1760s, investors in the northern colony, “discovered veins of silver, copper, gold, zinc and lead in the mountains around the towns.”

Settlers moved to the mining towns.

“Within a year, the population at San Carlos and Cruillas jumped to 15,000,” Crimm wrote. “Among those requesting permission to move to Cruillas was Bernardo De Leon, with his wife, Maria Galvan, and 1-year-old Martin.”

Bernardo gained wealth from Cruillas.

Important to the story of Victoria, Bernardo instructed his children “just because they had not been among the elite class did not mean that avenues of opportunity were closed to them, especially not on the northern frontier of New Spain,” Crimm wrote.

extensive fuero, or military legal right,” Crimm wrote. “Martin could be assured of a pension and a land grant.”

He also “caught the eye of his commander’s daughter, Patricia de la Garza.”

She had a sizable dowry and he had earned a land grant.

“The young couple, looking hopefully across the river and into the new century, were part of the slow but steady, ongoing Spanish expansion northward,” Crimm wrote.

The couple had two ranches, at two separate times, in Texas, one on the Nueces River and one on the Aransas.

Their ten children – Fernando, Maria Candelaria, Jose Silvestre, Maria Guadalupe, Jose Felix, Agapito, Maria de Jesus, Refugia, Augustina, and

When Martin was grown, he became a mayordomo, the owner and leader of a mule train. These trains were the only way to get supplies into the northern reaches.

“Martin de Leon, as a mayordomo, hired his own staff of assistants, consisting of between three and ten or more men,” Crimm wrote. “During his five years in the profession, from 1785 to 1790, Martin de Leon concentrated on the lucrative mining trade.”

It was during this time, Crimm added, when he may have become familiar with “the lands north of the Rio Bravo del Norte [later, the Rio Grande].”

At the age of twenty-five, De Leon enlisted in the Spanish army in New Spain.

Since he was not born in Spain, he could advance only to the rank of captain, which he did.

“He could still gain social distinction, some political influence, and an

Francisca – were born between 1798 and 1818.

Blanche De Leon, a sixth-generation descendant of the founders, claims both Felix and Augustina, among her forbears.

The De Leon sons owned land surrounding Victoria. The women married well and became influential figures in both Victoria and Goliad history.

Unsettled Spanish and Mexican politics and rebellions interfered with both De Leon ranching ventures.

Around 1812, the family went back to Burgos and Soto la Marina – home of Patricia’s family – and to the relative safety of the settled region.

From here, Martin De Leon would apply for an Empresarial contract to settle a colony on the Guadalupe River.

“They were resolute in their relationships and mission. Architecturally building on the past, they envisioned the future and beyond,” Blanche De Leon said of Martin and Patricia and the family Jan. 21.

Guadalupe River: SITE CHOSEN FOR COLONY, GUADALUPE VICTORIA

It begins with the river.

Victoria’s founder chose the location of the town, two hundred years ago, simply because the Guadalupe River was close-by and fordable near town.

The Guadalupe River historical marker on S. Moody St. reads, in its first sentence, “Discovered in this vicinity on April 14, 1689, by Alonso de Leon.”

Alonso De Leon was Martin De Leon’s, great-grandfather.

All the land over which the river flows belonged to Spain and was called New Spain at the time of the Spanish discovery and naming of the Guadalupe River in 1689. Native peoples had lived along the river’s banks for tens of thousands of years at the time of its discovery by Spain.

When news reached Spanish officials, in the mid-1680s, that the French had founded a colony on the northern Gulf Coast, they sent Alonso de Leon to “find the foreign interlopers and extirpate their colony,” according to a TSHA article.

De Leon would lead four expeditions north of the Rio Grande in southeast Texas.

De Leon’s first two expeditions found no evidence of French colonists; however, he was sent on a third expedition, launched in May 1688, “in response to news that a White man dwelled among Indians in a rancheria (temporary settlement) to the North of the Rio Grande.”

De Leon’s fourth expedition discovered the ruins of Fort St. Louis near present day Victoria and named the Guadalupe River in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, all during the month of April in 1689.

Moving forward in time to another April day, this one in 1824, and the final two sentences of the historic marker, “Here, at a ford, used since Indian days, Empresario Martin de Leon founded the town of Victoria in 1824.”

“On April 8, 1824, [Martin] de Leon … respectfully petitioned for permission to found a colony on the Guadalupe River in Texas,” Crimm wrote. “De Leon promised, as empresario, to bring 41 families from Nuevo Santander at his own expense to establish the town of Villa de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Jesus [later named Victoria Guadalupe and then simply Victoria].”

Thus, Victoria was born of a passable spot – a ford – of the Guadalupe River.

The De Leon family’s TRAIL TO VICTORIA

Fourteen-year-old Maria Candelaria planned to marry her childhood companion after she turned fifteen. Her 1818 marriage would join two influential ranching families in New Spain, the Aldrete and De Leon families.

The De Leon family traveled from Soto la Marina (in present day Mexico) to southeastern Texas, where the young bridegroom, 17-year-old Jose Miguel Aldrete waited with his family, near present-day Victoria.

“The choice of bridegroom was no

surprise,” wrote Crimm. “Seventeenyear-old Jose Miguel Aldrete had grown up with Candelaria, and the two had known each other for most of their lives.”

This journey into Texas was the family’s second attempt to establish themselves here, and the size of the family was growing. Martin and Patricia De Leon soon celebrated the birth of their tenth child, a daughter.

Martin De Leon wanted to ensure he would have enough land for his children as they grew into adulthood and started families of their own. He grew concerned as he watched AngloAmericans colonize the land around him and decided to seek a colonization grant himself before nothing was left, Crimm wrote.

Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, and De Leon and most of his family had returned to Soto la Marina to recruit colonists. He had to have a sizable number of willing colonists before his grant would be approved.

Meanwhile, some Mexican officials grew uneasy because “Texas had always excited the envy of the United States and colonization would afford the United States the easiest and most advantageous method to obtain it,” Crimm noted in her book.

De Leon managed to recruit fortyone families and his colonization grant

was approved April 13, 1824, according to the Texas State Historical Association. He became an empresario and founded Victoria with that grant, the “only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas.”

“Driven by and delivering every bit of what they (Martin and Patricia De Leon) promised, they were successful because of the love and respect they had for one another and others, for the land, and its creatures,” Blanche De Leon said Jan. 21. “With their wits and each other, they raised this community out of the wilderness that it once was not too long ago. And often, they thanked God for His blessings and asked for His continued guidance,”

“Martin’s main purpose – providing lands for his sons and daughters – would be accomplished,” Crimm wrote.

On Bridge Street, next to the Victoria Police Department, a historical marker designates the home of Empresario Martin De Leon.

As previously reported in the Advocate, the author of an undated article in the De Leon collection at the Victoria Regional History Center, wrote that the first home of Martin and Patricia De Leon was on ‘the present-day site of St. Mary’s Church.’ The home consisted of ‘one large room, a 10-foot hallway and a small room.’”

While the family had this home in town, they also had a 22,140-acre ranch in southeastern Victoria County.

“De Leon stood six feet tall and was skilled as a horseman and Indian fighter; Indians called him ‘Capitan Vacas Muchas’ (‘Captain Plenty of Cows’) since he often placated raiding parties by feeding them beef,” according to the Texas State Historical Association.

Even though the family had large tracks of land outside of town, most of what remains today to mark the De Leon’s founding legacy is in downtown Victoria.

For example, Patrica De Leon donated the land St. Mary’s Catholic Church sits on upon her death.

The De Leon ranch and other De Leon properties were taken from the family when they were exiled shortly after the Texas Revolution, even though they supported and assisted the revolutionaries.

“The bitter aftermath of the Texas Revolution was felt most directly by the Mexican settlements along the Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers, those closest to the Anglo-American colonies of Austin and DeWitt,” David Montejano wrote in “Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986,” “Here the Mexican communities were subjugated and in many cases expelled.”

Martin De Leon died years before the expulsion. The revolution scattered his children, but Patricia De Leon and her remaining children were forced to leave Victoria with few belongings.

As Martin Dryer put it in a 1972 Houston Chronicle article in the De Leon collection at the history center, “They were persecuted, murdered, robbed of their land and properties and driven into exile.”

Dona Patricia de Leon: HONORING OUR FOUNDING MOTHER

She fell in love with a dashing young captain in her father’s command, married him and helped finance their move to a frontier “drenched in blood.”

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Martin and Patricia de Leon

Cash Canahuati

DESCENDANT OF: JOSE FELIX DE LEON

HOMETOWN: HOUSTON

13 YEARS OLD

"Being a part of the de Leon legacy and knowing what Martin de Leon did to help expand and grow America, is an honor to have. A reason to be honored by his great achievements is from how helped the U.S. grow to what it has become today. Another reason is just to have a fun little bragging right that someone this important, and significant was in my family tree."

Cole Canahuati

DESCENDANT OF: JOSE FELIX DE LEON

HOMETOWN: HOUSTON

10 YEARS OLD

"My ancestors originally came from Spain. They moved to Mexico and received permission to move to Texas with settlers known as “The Ten Friends”. My ancestor’s name was Martin de Leon."

FERNANDO

Married twice, second wife and widow: Maria de la Luz Escalera, no children

MARIA CANDELARIA

Married Jose Miguel Aldrete

CHILDREN

Jose Maria (born 1820)

Jose de Jesus (born 1823, married Salome Lozano)

Jose Trinidad (married Andrea Ramirez)

Rafael (born 1826)

Pedro Cantu Perez

JOSE SILVESTRE

Married Rosalia

CHILDREN

Francisco (born 1830)

Martin (born 1832)

Frank (adopted)

MARIA GUADALUPE

Married twice: 1st husband

Desiderio Garcia, 2nd husband: Cesario de la Garza

Unknown number of children, undefined line, according to Blanche de Leon

JOSE FELIX

Married

Salome Leal

CHILDREN

Santiago (married Lupita Lozano Moreno, then later Guadalupe Berlanga)

Salome (survived just 2 years, 1853-1855)

Patrico (married Librada de Leon Benavides, his cousin)

Silvestre

Olivia (married Crisoforo Lozano)

Maria de Jesus

Samuel (married Patricia de la Garza)

Candelari

Anna DeLeon Harrison

DESCENDANT OF: FELIX DELEON

HOMETOWN: VICTORIA

73 YEARS OLD

"

Being a part of the DeLeon Legacy fills me with a tremendous sense of pride. It was my dad, Wence DeLeon, who first told me about our rich family history. This event, the statues, the celebration was a dream of his that has become a reality. He would have loved it."

DESCENDANT OF GUADALUPE DE LEON

36 YEARS OLD

HOMETOWN: ROCKWALL

"Growing up Hispanic in Texas means always being close to a history and heritage that has arisen out of Texan conflict. Indicators of identity, no matter your background, can be unclear and complicated. For now, honoring an ancestor, as a descendant, reflecting on how I got here and where I am now, helps to contextualize my experience as an American and what that can mean."

Children and Grandchildren

AGAPITO

Married Maria Antonia

C. de la Garza CHILD

Leon de Leon (born 1824)

MARIA DE JESUS

Married Rafael Manchola CHILD

Francisca (married Cristobal Morales)

REFUGIA

Married Jose Maria

Jesus Carbajal

CHILDREN

Antonio (born 1833)

Jose Maria (born 1834)

AUGUSTINA

Married Placido Benavides

CHILDREN

Pilar (married Cristobal de la Garza)

Librada (married Patricio Leal de Leon, her cousin)

Matiana (born 1836)

Nancy Riojas

DESCENDANT OF: GUADALUPE DE LEON

HOMETOWN: HOUSTON

"I am so thankful of our Grandmother, Mercedes De La Garza, daughter of Manuel De La Garza when she had the time to sit us all around her as we listened to her stories of long ago. She wanted so much to find her family in Victoria, Texas. It is so important for our children and grandchildren to know about our Texas History. My family and I are so grateful for your tribute and have answered so many of my questions."

FRANCISCA

Married Vicente Dosal CHILD

Jesus (born 1850)

Sage Canahuati

DESCENDANT OF: JOSE

FELIX DE LEON

HOMETOWN: HOUSTON

16 YEARS OLD

"Being apart of the de Leon legacy makes me feel closer to my Spanish heritage. As I spend more time embracing my Spanish heritage, I learn more every day."

Jenna Perez Broadway and Julia Broadway

5TH AND 6TH GREAT GRANDDAUGHTERS OF GUADALUPE DE LEON

HOMETOWN: ROCKWALL

AGES: JENNA 39, JULIA 1 MONTH

Jenna is in Commercial Real Estate, and Julia enjoys testing her lungs and observing her new world.

Melissa Canahuati

DESCENDANT OF: JOSE FELIX DE LEON

HOMETOWN: HOUSTON

47 YEARS OLD

"Being descendants of the de Leon Family offers a direct connection to pivotal figures in Texan history, symbolizing a direct link to early Mexican colonization efforts and the multicultural foundations of Texas. The de Leon’s contributions to establishing a peaceful and prosperous community in Victoria, Texas, underscore the values of leadership, vision, and community building, traits that are inspiring for current and future generations. This lineage offers a profound sense of belonging and pride knowing that their contributions continue to be recognized and celebrated. "

Joshua DeLaRosaMartin

DESCENDANT OF: FELIX DE LEON

LIVES IN: VICTORIA

48 YEARS OLD

"Being a part of the DeLeon legacy brings back fond memories of my grandpa, Wence DeLeon, who loved the history of his family and shared it with me as a young boy."

She brought “religion, schools, and an enriched social and cultural life to South Texas,” a land once thought uninhabitable, historian Teresa Paloma Acosta wrote.

She was among the first Texans, a Tejana, a wife, a mother, and a pioneer. She was many things throughout the course of her life: first a devoted mother and grandmother, a patriot, an outcast, once one of the wealthiest women in the state, at another time stripped of her possessions.

She held sway over her four sons, as all Tejana mothers did, urging them not to possess firearms at a time when Texas was wrapped in a vicious uncertainty that saw military excursions of unusual cruelty.

She was nearing 50 years old when she and Martin founded Victoria. He was in his sixties. Patricia bore ten children within 20 years and had four sons and six sons-in-law and more than twenty grandchildren.

“The Tejana women like Dona Patricia made their own decisions and played an important role in family matters. Women may have remained subservient to their husbands, but they were never subservient to their sons, nephews, or grandsons,” Crimm wrote.

“Spanish and Mexican cultures gave their women the right to demand respect, obedience, and power within the family.”

Years earlier in 1795, 33-year-old Martin married 20-year-old Patricia de la Garza of Soto la Marina.

She was “born about 1775 on the east coast of Mexico not far from present-day Brownsville,” Acosta wrote in “Las Tejanas: 300 Years of History,” on hand at the Victoria Regional History Center.

She was born into a wealthy family, but “on the frontier, the number of appropriate suitors was slim for someone of the landed aristocracy such as the de la Garza family.”

“[Martin] was not wealthy, but he was hardworking, and with the potential for a successful military career, he was still a promising prospect for the twenty-yearold Patricia,” Crimm wrote. “With the family’s approval, the self-confident and dynamic captain courted and won her hand.”

From her father, Patricia received forty-nine animals to start a ranch, a common dowry on the frontier. But from

her Godfather Don Angel Perez of Soto la Marina, she received 9,800 pesos, a rich sum.

The money would always be legally hers “although Martin could administer the dowry and invest it for profit,” Crimm wrote.

On Jan. 1, 1801, Patricia and Martin went before a notary public at Presas del Rey in the Eastern Interior Provinces of New Spain, where she “signed over her dowry of almost 10,000 pesos in cash, goods, and livestock to her husband,” Crimm noted.

The couple was investing everything to establish a ranch on the Texas frontier. They would have two at two separate times, one on the Nueces River and one on the Aransas before applying for and receiving an empresario grant to found Victoria. During that time, Mexico changed hands several times.

In 1821, Mexico gained independence from Spain, but the Mexican government teetered as many newborn governments do. It eventually fell into the hands of a dictator: the selfstyled “Napoleon of the West,” General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

But, many years before Santa Anna, there was blood on the Texas frontier, once delivered in 1813 by a Barcelonaborn general named Jose Joaquin de Arredondo y Minono, historians Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford wrote.

“Arredondo was renowned in Mexico for killing every prisoner he took, no matter the number, no matter the conditions,” they wrote. And he went on a killing spree in Texas, trying to put down uprisings for Mexican independence. Texas Mexicans fled, but he killed everyone he caught.

And riding with Arredondo, perhaps taking notes, was a young officer named Santa Anna.

This cauldron of revolution, counterrevolution, and bloodshed was the setting for Dona Patricia De Leon’s family rearing. But she and Martin persisted, returning to Mexico when the family’s safety demanded it.

This may be why Patricia insisted in later years that her sons not possess firearms. She had reason to disdain them.

In a period of brief stability within the nascent Mexican government, Martin applied for and was granted a colonial contract to found Victoria, which he named Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Victoria. Patricia became a founding Mother of Texas.

“Before it all fell apart in 1835, more than thirty empresarios attempted to bring settlers to Texas,” Stephen Harrington wrote in “Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas,” A University of Texas Press Austin publication.

“Among those who succeeded was Martin De Leon. De Leon, who was just approaching his sixties, was one of the most renowned figures north of the Rio Grande when he filed for empresario status. The son of aristocratic peninsulares [pure blood Spaniards who were born in Spain but had moved to live in the Spanish colonies], he and his equally industrious wife, Patricia, had staked out a future in Texas.”

Patricia immediately established a church and school in the fledgling colony, overseeing the educational and spiritual needs of the frontier families.

Martin died of cholera before the Texas Revolution, leaving Patricia and her sons to decide a course of action. They supported the Texians, smuggling goods to support the Texian Army and fighting alongside them in the bid for independence from Mexico.

It would cost her everything.

When Martin died, he left her a wealthy widow, if not the wealthiest woman in Texas; however, prejudicial feeling against anyone of Mexican origin after Texas gained its independence would see her stripped of most of her belongings and exiled, with her family.

She would fight for and gain much of her land back, dying in 1850, still embroiled in lawsuits which her children would assume after her death.

In her will, she left her homestead, at the corner of Main and Church streets, to the Catholic Church.

Martin’s death and THE ASCENDANCE AND TROUBLES OF HIS SONS

Ten years after he founded Victoria, on July 18, 1834, Martin De Leon died of cholera at the age of seventy. Two of the Empresario’s four sons, also considered founders of Victoria, were murdered within a decade after his death.

Two cholera epidemics swept through South Texas, one in the summer of 1833 and another in the summer of 1834, Crimm noted.

San Antonio and Goliad were the two largest towns in South Texas at the time. Victoria was home to only about three hundred people.

“Ninety-one of Goliad’s less than

1,000 residents died” in the cholera epidemic that claimed De Leon’s life, Crimm wrote.

Historical markers at Evergreen Cemetery within the Historical Grave Shrine of the De Leon Family honor all four of Martin and Patricia De Leon’s sons. Fernando, Silvestre, Agapito and Felix De Leon helped their father found and govern the Guadalupe Victoria Colony.

Don AntonioRafaelManchola:

DE LEON POLITICAL ALLY, FRIEND, AND SON-IN-LAW

Martin and Patricia De Leon had ten children, born within a twenty-year span between 1798 and 1818.

The couple had four sons: Fernando, Jose Silvestre, Jose Felix and Agapito. They had six daughters: Maria Candelaria, Maria Guadalupe, Maria de Jesus, Refugia, Augustina, and Francisca.

The youngest daughter, Francisca, by Spanish tradition, took care of her aging mother. After Patricia died, she married Vincente Dosal in Victoria, in 1849, and had children of her own.

In 1825, Maria Guadalupe married Desiderio Garcia, one of the colonists in Victoria Guadalupe, but the couple never had children.

“Maria Guadalupe married a second time to Cesario de la Garza,” Blanche De Leon said. The union produced many descendants. “This family has 10 hotel rooms booked for the Bicentennial, so they will be here.”

In 1831, Augustina married Placido Benavides, and in1832, Refugia married Jose Maria Jesus Carbajal.

The oldest daughter, Maria Candelaria married Jose Miquel Aldrete in 1818.

Daughter Maria de Jesus married Rafael Antonio Manchola in 1824, the year of Victoria’s founding.

Maria de Jesus was fourteen years old when she was betrothed to 24-yearold Manchola.

“It was an excellent match for Maria de Jesus, but it was even better for promoting Don Martin’s political connections, since the Manchola family were influential at La Bahia [Goliad],” Ana Carolina Castillo Crimm wrote in “De Leon: A Tejano Family History” on hand at the Victoria Regional History Center.

At Goliad, the government consisted of a mayor and town council, De Leon’s sons-in-law, Aldrete and Manchola, had influence they used in favor of De Leon, Crimm noted.

In Goliad, on the courthouse square, a marker designates the contributions of Manchola as an “early Goliad leader.”

He “was born to a Spanish aristocratic family circa 1800. In 1822 arrived in La Bahia,” the marker reads, in part, he “became a state deputy in the Coahuila and Texas Legislature [Mexico]. He also served as alcalde in Goliad.”

“Hidalgo was a priest with a pistol in his cassock,” T.R. Fehrenbach wrote in “Fire & Blood: A History of Mexico.”

Important to Victoria’s formation, “during the 1829 legislative session, Manchola helped establish the municipality of Guadalupe Victoria.”

This gave De Leon more control over the fledgling town, allowing for legal control from within, rather than having to rely on all adjudications from nearby La Bahia [Goliad].

Manchola served his father-in-law as his “attorney and agent in legal matters and official correspondence,” according to an article in “The History and Heritage of Victoria County,” at the regional history center.

“Manchola was considered one of the key persons involved in the establishment of the new community and thus was included in the list of the ten friends,” according to the article.

Historian A.B.J. Hammett wrote it was Manchola who petitioned the legislature to have the name La Bahia changed to Goliad.

“He explained that the name of La Bahia del Espiritu Santo had little meaning but that the name of Goliad, and anagram from the important letters in the surname Hidalgo, the heroic giant of the Revolution had great meaning,” Hammett wrote in “The Empresario Don Martin De Leon,” also on hand at the history center.

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was a Catholic priest who called the common people of Mexico to revolt at the outset of the Mexican War of Independence.

The war began in 1810 and lasted until Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821; however, Hidalgo was killed by a firing squad in 1811, raising him to martyrdom and making him a powerful symbol in Mexico’s fight.

Hidalgo was a hero to Manchola and the people of La Bahia.

Manchola served in a military capacity at one point.

“In the year 1831, Rafael Manchola commanded the troops at the Presidio La Bahia,” Hammett wrote. “Like the other members of the De Leon family, Rafael Manchola acquired large tracts of land and established himself in the cattle business. His famous brand was one of the first registered in Don Martin De Leon’s capital city of Guadalupe Victoria in the year 1838.”

Manchola died in 1833, however, leaving Maria de Jesus the land.

“She became one of the large landowners around Guadalupe Victoria by reason of her husband’s services to the Republic of Mexico,” Roy Grimes wrote in “300 Years in Victoria County.”

“As wife, she would become a huge landowner in Goliad,” Blanche De Leon noted Jan. 12. “Madame Manchola received lands as did Patricia after both their husbands were dead. Rare for women to have received, but they were Spanish, and unlike Anglo women, had that right.”

Maria de Jesus had one child with Rafael, a daughter named Francisca who married D. Cristobal Morales in Soto la Marina, in 1846, Blanche de Leon noted Jan. 25.

When Patricia De Leon died, she left cattle and mortgages she owned in Louisiana to Maria de Jesus. She also left her “title to one of the two building lots in Victoria on which she held income-producing mortgages,” Crimm noted.

in Heritage motion

The De Leon family’s historic carriage is restored

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHASE COFIELD | CCOFIELD@VICAD.COM

Most people don’t often get a chance to wear clothes modeled after their ancestors but, on a Saturday evening in early March, John Foster and Melissa Canahuati did.

As a part of Five Points Museum’s new exhibit: Timeline: 200 Years, the De Leon family donated their family’s carriage from 1880 to be shown in the exhibit with Foster and Canahuati wearing clothing modeled after their ancestors.

The exhibit features artwork from local artists that represents the history of Victoria through various mediums.

Foster and Canahuati are sixthand seventh-generation descendants of Martin and Patricia De Leon, the founders of Victoria.

The two dressed up in periodappropriate replica clothing the De Leons would’ve worn in 1824. The De Leon family have many descendants in Texas, but the two were chosen for the exhibit because their ages matched

their ancestors around the time they founded Victoria.

Foster, 55, a geophysicist and rancher from Port Lavaca, played the part of Martin De Leon with Canahuati, 47, an accounting controller from Houston, portraying Patricia De La Garza.

“It’s definitely been interesting to learn about the period and understand the fabrics and the choices that were made,” Canahuati said.

“I learned a lot about the history of the period—their connections with more European styles that they would have got when they did their cattle drive to New Orleans,” Foster said, adding, “It's a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, the restoration, and it's pretty unique piece of history for Victoria … and it really gets people's attention, particularly when you got a team of horses pulling it.”

Blanche De Leon, a seventhgeneration descendant, was responsible for donating the carriage and researching the clothing.

“We researched the time period of 1824,” De Leon said. “We hired a professional costumer to assist us in that endeavor. It's from 1824, the Regency period.”

The De Leons’ carriage that’s featured in the exhibit was originally just a heap found in a barn in Mission Valley belonging to Leonard De Leon, Blanche De Leon’s uncle.

“They took nothing and built something from it and and honored their ancestry and doing our the ancestry … and doing so with this carriage in this particular show,” she said, adding, “That was the same spirit that this colony was built on, as well. So I think that's kind of cool. It's really cool.”

After the death of Leonard De Leon, Blanche’s father sought to restore the carriage with the help of the De Leon Club. With their craftsmanship, they were able to restore the carriage to its original condition.

The process took a year and a half to complete and the carriage made its debut in 1984 at the 1984 Victoria Livestock Show. It’s been under wraps at Blanche De Leon’s home in Mission Valley for over 15 years.

After 40 years, the De Leon Family alongside the De Leon Club of Victoria passed down ownership of the carriage to the City of Victoria in time for the bicentennial.

VICTORIA’S OTHER FOUNDERS The story behind

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY TAMARA DIAZ

In a lecture she gave at the Victoria Public Library in February, Blanche De Leon told an audience of about sixty that the bicentennial is an occasion to celebrate all Victorians who have shaped the city over the years.

She named in particular Margaret Wright and John Joseph Linn as cofounders who pre-dated and then collaborated with her forebears, Martin and Patricia De Leon.

“The bicentennial is not an occasion to celebrate only Martin and Patricia but to celebrate all of us now and all of the people of Victoria from the past twohundred years,” De Leon said Feb. 12.

Certainly, Linn was a great friend to the De Leon family and helped shape the colony, and Margaret Wright -- who was established in the Victoria area at least two years before Martin De Leon came north -- was called the “Little Mother of Texas” by none other than the great hero of the Texas Revolution, Sam Houston.

Houston called her such because she is credited with saving several survivors of the Goliad Massacre on her Lower Mission Valley ranch on the banks of the Guadalupe River. Apparently, she even hid some of the wounded Texas soldiers under her wide skirt.

Back in 1984, Henry Wolff Jr. told the story.

Robert D. King, of San Antonio, descended from one of those men who hid in Wright’s skirt, Wolff wrote.

“King said the story told in his family was that Margaret helped get some of the wounded soldiers out of Mexican reach in a rather ingenious way.

“She wore a big skirt,” he says, “and she hid them under that,” Wolff wrote.

MARGARET WRIGHT

Widowed twice in Louisiana, with five children to support, Wright came west to the Lower Mission Valley — either in

1821 or 1822 according to Roy Grimes’ “300 Years in Victoria County.”

She settled down in present-day Victoria County and began ranching.

“She was born Marquerite Theresa Robertson in New Orleans in 1789, of an English father and a French mother, and she died in Victoria on Oct. 21, 1878, and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery,” Wolff wrote in a 1985 Victoria Advocate column.

Wolff goes on to explain, however, that a fifth-generation descendant of Wright “has determined without a doubt that this pioneer woman then known as Marquerite Trudeau didn’t arrive in Texas until 1825 and on the Guadalupe by the end of 1826.”

It is generally accepted, though, as Blanche De Leon pointed out in February, Wright was here before Martin De Leon.

“There is no question that when Don Martin De Leon arrived with his first

colonists in 1824 she was already here,” Grimes noted.

De Leon accepted her as a colonist, just as he accepted John Linn and others already in the vicinity, granting Wright a “league of land under Mexican law, 4,428 acres, and the additional labor, 177 acres.”

“[She] was a rather rough looking woman,” he wrote. “She did have a hard life.”

She was widowed twice before coming to Victoria and then married De Leon colonist John David Wright of Tennessee.

Apparently, life with John David Wright was difficult and often painful for her. She alleged in divorce proceedings that he killed her son, Peter Hayes, and “[contended] she had been abused, threatened and otherwise maltreated by her husband,” Grimes noted.

John David Wright also claimed her headright without her knowledge, effectively stealing her land out from

under her. She learned of it in 1836, the same year she became the “Little Mother of Texas.”

After the Palm Sunday 1836 massacre of Colonel James Walker Fannin and his troops, several escaped Texian soldiers were successfully hidden by Margaret Wright.

She said her husband was nowhere to be found during this period, from 1835-1842.

This is the time when King said she hid the soldiers in her skirt to keep them from General Urrea’s Mexican forces.

Despite being a hero of the Texas Revolution and at one time owning and operating a large Ranching enterprise in Mission Valley, Wright died in destitution.

A Sept. 14, 1876, article in the Victoria Advocate, then edited by Edward Linn, pleaded her cause.

“We are informed that Mrs. Margaret Wright, an old and respected citizen of this city, is now suffering for the want of proper care at home in the middle part of town. Mrs. Wright is connected with the early history of our town, coming here among the first American settlers, some 50 years ago. She is now old and feeble, and her condition excites the pity of all. We suggest that the town authorities pay some attention to this matter and give her aid required by this helpless person.”

children by herself while starting a ranch, as ‘helpless,’ is a sad outcome. She outlived at least two of her seven children.

She had two with John David Wright, in addition to the five she already had.

JOHN JOSEPH LINN

Like the hometown he adopted, John Joseph Linn, one of Victoria’s original colonists, was an ever evolving figure – he was a merchant, politician, father of fourteen children, Victoria’s first mayor, a soldier and a historian.

He was also as complicated as the times he inhabited. He was an immigrant, at first unlawfully in Texas.

He was an intense patriot, loyal to the De Leon Colony and to Texas, but not to every government

The two resided under. He was a freedom fighter, and he held men and women in bondage.

Most of all, found in the pages of his own reminiscences, is a man who loved Victoria, Texas, and the De Leon family, speaking admirably of Silvestre, one of Empresario Don Martin De Leon’s sons.

The foremost scholar on the De Leon Family, Carolina Castillo Crimm, said Linn helped Dona Patricia De Leon flee Texas when the remnants of the founding family were exiled for a number of years.

He was lovingly called “Juan” by the Mexican colonists in Victoria.

He died there in 1885.

Linn was born June 19, 1798, in County Antrim, Ireland, according to the Handbook of Victoria County, on hand at the Victoria Regional History Center.

His father, John Linn, a college professor, had to flee Ireland after participating in the Irish rebellion of the same year, 1798. He was branded a traitor by the British but escaped to New York.

John Joseph Linn was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a merchant and later “established his own merchant business in New Orleans in 1822 and became interested in Texas during business trips to Mexico,” Craig H. Roell wrote in the Handbook article. Linn had his sights set on the De Leon Colony.

Martin De Leon “needed additional colonists,” Crimm wrote in “De Leon, A Tejano Family History.”

“Among the later arrivals were the Carbajal family and the four Benavides brothers,” Crimm noted. “De Leon also found sixteen Anglo-American families who had already moved into the area illegally, including John Linn, John D. Wright, and Joseph Ware.”

De Leon accepted these men, Crimm wrote, making the Victoria Colony remarkably inclusive.

To imagine this pioneer woman, alone on the frontier, caring for five

On the corner of Bridge and Juan Linn Streets, next to the Victoria Police Department, sits a historic marker, honoring the beloved Victoria colonial. The marker is across the street from Linn’s homesite.

One Mexican official who visited the colony in 1828, “indicated that there were individuals in the Victoria colony from Canada, the United States, Ireland, France and Germany. Unlike Austin’s settlements on the Colorado, Martin de Leon’s colony was, by necessity, multicultural from its inception,” Crimm wrote.

The Mexican authorities did not all “approve of the varied ethnic flavor of the Victoria colony,” Crimm noted.

Linn was one of those varied flavors but at heart he was, above all else, a Texian. He appreciated the beauty of his adopted homeland.

“In traveling from Corpus Christi to Victoria I was delighted with the appearance of the country,” Linn wrote in his “Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas.” “It was in the last days of April, and the landscape was rendered charming by the profusion of manycolored wildflowers that greeted the eyes on all sides.”

Linn received land grants in both the De Leon and Power settlements, according to Roell, but kept his residence and business in Victoria.

“I purchased a lot fronting the public square in Victoria and caused the framework of a house to be | CONT. FROM PG.

Gravestone of John Joseph Linn

Margaret Wright

erected, of cypress timber, of which a quantity was then to be had in the bottom south of town,” Linn wrote. “This house was completed in 1831, and I have continued to reside in it up to the present date (1883).”

Once Texas declared its intention to seek independence from Mexico, Linn was all-in. “Linn was intensely loyal to Texas and the De Leon colony and was among the first to oppose (Mexican president and commander) Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna,” Roell noted.

Linn wrote that after Santa Anna’s capture by Sam Houston, Linn himself spoke with the Mexican president in captivity.

Linn was elected the first mayor of Victoria on April 16, 1839. He served in the Second and Third Congresses of the Republic of Texas.

“By 1850, at age 52, Linn had $20,000 in property, and the 1860 census listed him as owning seven slaves,” Roell wrote.

Linn’s son, John Jr., fought for the Confederacy and died at Brownsville, Roell wrote.

In 1883, Linn published his memoir “Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas.” The Texas State Historical Association suggests that Linn’s dear friend and admirer Victor Rose ghostwrote the book but noted the story is authentically Linn’s.

Of particular note in the book is a delightful description of Victoria’s first jail.

“In the year 1843 or 1844 it was concluded that Victoria had attained to that degree of enlightenment that demanded a jail in which evil-doers could be confined,” Linn wrote. “It was constructed of hewn logs, about a foot square, and pinned together by wooden pins. Between the door and one corner a log four and a half feet long was fastened to the jamb of the door by an iron spike.

“The building was soon occupied by two evil-doers, who readily observed that the wooden pins constituted the key of the position.”

Those first two convicts escaped, Linn noted.

Linn lived through the greatest changes in Victoria, as did Wright, from birth as a Mexican colony to a city in the Republic of Texas, to annexation by the United States, then secession to a Confederate state and back to an American state again and for all time since.

Found in the rich story of Wright’s and Linn’s lives is the story of Victoria.

The two artists who created Victoria’s De Leon statues

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY

BY TAMARA DIAZ

Larry Stevens, of Bulverde, and Armando Hinojosa, of Laredo, are leaving their artistic marks on Victoria’s history.

The two experienced octogenarian artists have come together, 50 years of friendship and counting, to create the bicentennial statues of Victoria’s founders, Martin and Patricia De Leon.

Stevens and Hinojosa are

interesting bits of history in their own rights, having sculptures on display in several Texas cities and beyond.

Steven’s father used to live in Hollywood where he did custom work on Clark Gables’ cars (photos proudly displayed in his shop), while Armando Hinojosa’s father was an immigrant in Laredo who did artwork for signage at the former Laredo Air Force Base.

“That’s where I got my talent –

from my dad,” Hinojosa said Tuesday, standing near the clay statues he sculpted to be cast in bronze and placed in De Leon Plaza during Victoria’s bicentennial festivities.

The De Leons founded Victoria in 1824.

“Only Austin sits with De Leon as a successful empresarial contract during Texas’ colonial period, Austin’s grant occurring first then, De Leon,” sixth generation descendant Blanche De Leon said.

Stevens, owner of Stevens Art Foundry, 31806 Bartels Road, Bulverde, and his team of artisans are preparing to cast the statues in bronze.

The 6-foot 3-inch statue of Martin De Leon arrived at the foundry Tuesday, while the statue of Patricia arrived there Jan. 9.

The statue of Martin De Leon cuts an impressive figure, from his widebrimmed top hat to his ruffled cravat, adorned with a De Leon-brand brooch, tucked into his gentleman’s tailcoat, with

fancy brass buttons on the wrists and waist.

He wears knee-high boots, with his trousers tucked into the tops.

The statues will stand together, Patricia’s hand on Martin’s as he points outward toward the land.

“When it is finished, he will have his hand on a cane under her hand,” Hinojosa said. “The cane will also have the De Leon brand on it.”

The statues of both Martin and Patricia have a stately air, suited to their place as founders. He was a gentleman of the era, and she was a lady.

Blanche De Leon pointed out in an Oct. 2023 lecture that the statues bear a true likeness of Martin and Patricia, as European people.

“They’re not Mariachi and she’s not Frita Kahlo,” De Leon quipped. “They were of an elite class of Spaniards born on this soil.”

The statues will be cut into sections – about seven sections for Patricia and four for Martin, Stevens said – so that they can be molded with wax.

The wax molds are then then covered with a concrete-like mixture, Hinojosa added, opening a vat of the thick liquid gray matter.

Next, when the concrete dries, the wax is melted, leaving the space where it was empty, with all the details of the sculpture intact.

Finally, molten bronze is poured into the empty space within the dried concrete mixture where the wax once was. The concrete mold is vented to release air as the bronze – heated to nearly 2,000 degrees -- is poured into the space, Hinojosa said.

Next, the concrete shell is removed, and the bronze is welded together, cleaned, detailed and shined by metal room artisans at the foundry, like Adam Zaccaria and Stevens.

The individual pieces are about “a quarter inch thick,” Hinojosa added, and the bronze statues will be hollow.

“The clay statues are returned once we’re done with them,” Stevens said, pointing in Hinojosa’s direction.

The statues will weigh over 1,000 pounds combined.

“You’re going to need a little crane to lift them,” Hinojosa said. “Once they’re bolted down, they aren’t going anywhere.”

A fitting and permanent return of the city’s founders, to the plaza named for them.

DETAR HOSPITAL: OF HELPING VICTORIANS

STORY BY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY KYLE R. COTTON | KCOTTON@VICAD.COM

From working the phones to being a primary care physician, Dr. Nevin Anderson, 77, has seen it all at DeTar Hospital over the last 50 years.

In August, Anderson retired as the last member of the DeTar family to go into medicine as the hospital enters its 100th year of service to the Victoria community and surrounding counties.

The hospital started in 1924 out of a two-story white wood-frame residence converted into a 10-bed hospital where the DeTar Navarro Hospital stands today.

The cost was $8,750 for Dr. William T. DeTar and his son Dr. Webb T. DeTar Sr. to buy one of the largest residences in the city at the time from the R.L. Groce family, Anderson said.

“They were in competition (with Victoria Hospital), and they didn't really want to use that one,” Anderson said. “That facility was old even back then 100 years ago and decided that they wanted to do it their own way and have something new and modern for the day.”

In 1936, the hospital went through

its first expansion. A new $40,000 30bed Spanish-style structure that Webb T. DeTar Sr. officially named DeTar Memorial Hospital after his father, who died in 1930.

The family would later buy Victoria Hospital for its staff in the 1950s to bring the doctors eho were admitted there under its banner, Anderson said.

Victoria Hospital was in the Diamond Hill neighborhood, an area loosely defined as bounded by South Cameron, River, Convent and South Liberty streets.

“There was some equipment there, but at that point it was just dilapidated, so it was demolished,” he said.

The original DeTar Hospital structure continued seeing use as physician offices, laboratory and nurses' quarters before it was also torn down in 1960 for a west wing addition that later became the hospital’s intensive care unit and is now where administration is located.

“The only thing that’s left from the original building is a ramp at the current entrance that was part of the loading dock,” Anderson said.

The hospital has always focused on

putting forth the best care possible, Anderson said. It had the latest in X-ray machines and electrical appliances for disease treatment through Dr. J.L. Smith, a well-known physician in Victoria at the time.

This has remained a trademark focus of the hospital as well as it reportedly being one of two hospitals completely air-conditioned in 1951, he said. The other was Memorial Herman Hospital in Houston.

The need to provide the best care to the area eventually had the family sell the hospital to the Hospital Corporation of America in 1972 to keep up with the increasing costs and take them in the future, Anderson said.

In the 50 years since, the hospital grew to over 300 beds and DeTar Healthcare System has spent more than $600 million in capital improvements, including purchasing Victoria Regional Medical Center in 1989, which is now known as DeTar Hospital North.

Anderson is the grandson and great-grandson of the founders of the hospital.

Portraits of DeTar Hospital are displayed inside the office of the hospital.

His grandfather had three children, including his father and uncle, he said.

His uncle, Dr. Webb T. DeTar Jr., continued the family’s medical legacy as a urologist at the hospital.

Anderson was born in that hospital and even had his first job there working the phones in the hospital’s business office, he said.

“At 17, they decided to see if I really had what it takes and they sent me to the (operating room),” Anderson said, noting he was there to help out with what the doctors needed.

While that experience was invaluable as he went off to get his education with his medical education coming from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, he decided to stick to family practice, he said.

“I was 27 at the time, and if I wanted to be, say a cardiothoracic surgeon, it would’ve been another seven years,” Anderson said. “It was very different back then. Family practitioners did almost everything.”

Now, it is more specialty focused and insurance companies dictate much of

what care can be provided, he said.

Throughout his career, though, Anderson has continually enjoyed working with patients and sharing his experience and his family’s legacy with many of the residents who come through DeTar Hospital, whom he provided tours on the institution's history.

“It was a joy being able to take care of them from their teenage years or even younger all the way to taking care of their kids,” he said. “Before I retired, I had a number of patients that would come in and say you’ve been taking care of me since I was a teenager.”

Anderson’s family guided him toward the family business and every day for the last 50 years. He is glad they did.

“It would’ve been a disappointment if I hadn’t been able to do it for whatever reason,” he said.

The legacy of Anderson and his family has profoundly impacted the hospital and the surrounding health care community, said Bernard Leger, DeTar Healthcare System CEO.

Even though he is retired, Anderson

still comes by the hospital to visit and chat people up, Leger said. So, he’ll continue to have an impact in retirement.

“We have served as a trusted health care partner for generations and play an integral role in the growth of our community's health and wellness,” he said. “As we reach our 100th anniversary, we remain focused on creating a destination for healthcare in Victoria County where progress is promised and evidenced by our historical performance.”

The hospital was the first to reach Level III trauma center recognition in the Crossroads from the state and was the first to introduce robotic-assisted surgery, Leger said. It hosts Victoria’s only Level III neonatal intensive care unit and opened its cancer center last year.

It’s an honor to lead an incredible team in this celebration year as his job would be impossible without their dedication, he said.

The hospital will continue to serve as a resource in the community, looking to how it can expand to service their health needs and continue to strengthen the partnership with the surrounding county hospitals as well as their clinic services, which allow patients in the outer Crossroads counties to stay closer to home for most of their treatments, Leger said.

“As we celebrate a century of caring for the residents of the South Texas Crossroads, we reflect on our legacy of providing high quality, compassionate medical services, and we are encouraged for the future and our dynamic presence in our community,” Leger said. “Thinking of the advancements medicine has seen in the past 100 years, it’s difficult to imagine what health care will look like in 2124, but I know the caregivers at DeTar Healthcare System will continue to meet the needs of our community.”

Dr. Nevin Anderson and Bernard Leger, DeTar Healthcare System CEO.

DeTar history is displayed inside the hospital.

The original DeTar Memorial Hospital Building.

Victoria’s health care THROUGH THE YEARS

STORY BY KYLE R. COTTON | KCOTTON@VICAD.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KYLE R. COTTON | KCOTTON@VICAD.COM AND CHASE COFIELD | CCOFIELD@VICAD.COM

Fror the last 200 years, health care in Victoria has changed dramatically from a “Doc Hollywood,” doeverything type of care to the forwardlooking institutions of today.

Among the longest-serving institutions that have seen the changes firsthand include Citizens Medical Center and Rogers Pharmacy.

However, through all the changes, both organizations have done what they can to provide the best services to their patients and customers.

Citizen Medical Center has been serving Victoria and the surrounding region since 1956, when D.H. Braman donated the land on which the hospital currently stands.

One person who has been with the hospital for much of the time in one capacity or another is Dr. James Neumann, a current member of Citizens’ board of directors who has been with the hospital since the 1970s.

At the start of the hospital, many people would actually go to get their annual checkups as doctors at the time were jacks of all trades, Neumann said. Among them included Dr. Marvin Cheshire.

“He took in anybody any time at an office across the street (from Citizens).

He got paid literally in chickens and this and that or never got paid, but he never turned anybody down, and he was the most generous man,” he said. “That kind of physician doesn't exist anymore.”

This is largely because of how the implementation of Medicare in 1983 completely changed how the medical industry operated with diagnosis-related groups or DRGs, Neumann said.

“That changed the whole spectrum of medicine because suddenly, you had to justify why the patient was coming in. You couldn't bring them into the hospital for screening studies unless there was some obvious reason for them to come into the hospital. It all shifted to an outpatient environment, and that has done nothing but continue in that outpatient environment. Today, we still deal with those sorts of issues,” he said.

In rural areas like Victoria and the surrounding counties, such a shift was difficult to adapt to compared to metro area hospitals that have larger demand for emergency services and bigger outpatient facilities, Neumann said.

In fact, the current location of the DeTar North Women’s and Children’s Hospital was once Victoria Regional Medical Center to deal with the

outpatient backlog created by the change, he said.

“There were sometimes 10-to-14day backlogs to get somebody in if they have something not emergent but routine,” Neumann said, noting examples of internal lesions and ulcers. “So there was a two-week waiting list to get people in.”

In addition, the change ended a lot of collaboration between local hospitals as they had to be full-service hospitals that offered everything in the changed environment, he said.

“Everybody had to do everything. Everybody had to do dialysis. Everybody had to do obstetrics, and everybody had to do surgery, which was obvious, but you had to do everything under the sun,” Neumann said, noting private insurers followed suit and in some cases refused to negotiate with the hospital believing they could send patients to Houston.

However, the hospital's quality leadership over the years has helped them navigate through the challenges and keep up with the community's needs through updated technology, particularly in the decade, he said.

The hospital was responsible for the first open-heart surgery in the region in

Lobby at Citizens Medical Center.

1971 and purchased the first CT scan machine in the region in 1978.

That investment has continued throughout the life of the hospital, Neumann said.

However, Citizens isn’t the only one that has adapted to survive to provide quality health care to the community through an ever changing market.

Rogers Pharmacy, one of the largest independent pharmacies in the region, was started around the same time Medicare’s 1983 regulations were implemented amid growing national chains.

The pharmacy was founded in 1979 after Skillern's Drugstore was closed down by their parent company Zalles by Bruce and Elizabeth Rogers, Rogers Pharmacy Manager John Rogers said.

“There used to be a lot more pharmacies in town. People were scared to compete with chains, and so when they got to retirement age, they decided to sell out or just close,” Rogers said. “It's how we grew our market share in town. He bought Totah's Pharmacy and Ladner Professional Pharmacy.”

Early adoption of computers and working with other health care agencies in the area to aid expansion were critical to compete with the changes Medicare brought to the pharmacy industry, he said.

“As Medicare comes in and they start dictating you know what you're being paid, you got to combat that with volume,” Rogers said.

The pharmacy had four locations for years in response to Medicare before it changed again with the introduction of Medicare Part D in the mid-2000s leading to further expansion.

Rogers’ father Bruce Rogers opened Medicine Man Pharmacies around the region, starting with Santa Fe and Port Lavaca.

TEACHER TURNED

ICON

How

decades in the classroom molded a young man into ‘Brother Gary’ Moses

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER

As a local celebrity and the most recognizable man in town, for many, Gary Moses and Victoria, Texas go hand-in-hand. Attend any local function and you're likely to see the man emceeing and making the rounds with Victorians.

But what turned a city's son into the "Brother Gary" persona he's known for today?

Looking back, Moses said a major ingredient to who he's become is the decades spent connecting with Victoria's youth in front of a blackboard and through the halls of historic what is now Patti Welder Middle School.

Years after sitting behind the desks of the school's classrooms, Moses would find himself standing in front of them.

In 1971, after finishing college, Moses began what would turn into a 37-year stint as teacher at Patti Welder Intermediate School as it was known then.

"You never know what you're going to do when you get out of college," he said. "Well, the job opened up right when I was finishing up school ... And I said, 'Yeah, I'll take it.'"

Moses, 74 today, said he immediately fell in love with the profession. His almost 40-year career at the school was spent teaching U.S. history, Texas history, government and economics.

Although he was known to many as "Mr. Moses" then, he was still close to the likable man that makes up "Brother Gary" today.

"He was just like one of us kids in ways," said Veronica McCants, a student of Moses' during his early years at Patti Welder. "He just made learning fun ... he was a friend to us (students) as much as he was a teacher."

Over the years, Moses would end up teaching generations of students. He has taught children of his former students and “maybe even some grandchildren,” he said with a laugh.

For Moses, memories of teaching many of the city's residents are aplenty. He can remember being in class with them during many major events like Watergate and the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

One major local event that Moses remembers like it was yesterday happened on a Sunday in 1985.

"I was running around, doing my stuff and I looked up and saw this black, black smoke. I said 'that looks like it's in

Gary Moses

town,'" Moses said.

Lightening had struck his place of work that day and started a major fire at Patti Welder. He watched alongside others as firefighters put out the blaze.

"They had to put us in portable buildings and we also used the gym," he said, about the temporary classrooms used as the building underwent repairs. "It was big thing to get through that tough time ... the slogan was 'we survived '85.'"

In the same way he can't go anywhere today without saying hello to most everybody he passes by, a former colleague said Moses exhibited that extroverted quality at Patti Welder more than 50 years ago.

"When he walked down the hall, he greeted everybody," said David Urbano, who taught alongside Moses at the school. "He was still that very social, very caring man."

Urbano called Moses a mentor and said the man showed him by example the qualities that make a successful teacher. His former colleague said he learned that the better you treat your students, the more effort they'll put into their schoolwork and the more respectful they'll be.

"I observed the way he handled his classes and he never had any problems with students," Urbano said. "It's because he treated everybody with dignity. He had a lot of compassion for those children ... And those kids loved him, they would die for him."

Moses calls what he does today his passion but also said it's really no different than what he did as a teacher years ago. Connecting with students every day and helping them get further in life made it easy to get out of bed in

the morning, he said.

"You can't measure the value of an education. It's priceless in my book," Moses said. "I loved it. I was able to impart some knowledge to the kids and help them move forward. You're also a teacher, but you're also addressing other parts of their life."

Urbano said he can recall seeing his friend pay for students' lunches who had no money or taking extra time to talk one-on-one with parents of a struggling child.

It makes sense how the man has continued being a major parts of so many former students' lives like McCants.

"He has really been a part of my life since then," she said. "And I'm not the only one."

Both Urbano and McCants will tell you those years as a school teacher laid the groundwork for the man who is

synonymous with Victoria today.

"He was the same way," Urbano said. "Now, it's just benefits and barbecues."

A meme recently made the rounds, showing Moses photoshopped into a picture next to Taylor Swift inside a suite at a Kansas City Chiefs game. The caption read "He really is everywhere."

Today, he might be a local celebrity Victoria's residents. But for Moses, as he walked through the halls of his old school on a recent day, he said he still sees himself as a teacher first and cherishes all those years spent in the classroom.

"I would do all over again the same way," Moses said. "I was a teacher first and my heart is in teaching ... It's what really made all of these lasting relationships ... All those years with students, those are the long-lasting, best memories that you could ever have."

Innovative leaders, dedicated teachers:

The secret to Victoria College’s 100-year evolution

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER

Victoria is home to a wealth of education-related history. Its public school system is home to the oldest operating campus in the state but it also has educated students after high school longer than almost any place in Texas.

On Feb. 4, Victoria College turned 99 years old.

The 60-acre campus of 16 buildings is now a staple in the Crossroads. But VC has come a long way from its early days as a stable of classrooms adjacent to what is now Patti Welder Middle School.

Those who were around for the early years at its present location would say the campus is almost recognizable

compared to when it began.

“It’s a huge difference,” said former Victoria College student and then professor Mike Hummel. “In General, the coastal ban was smaller at that time.”

For those who want to learn more about the school, Hummel is the guy to talk to.

He first attended the school for two years before completing his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Baylor and then returned as an instructor in 1965. Add up his time as a student and the 48 years he taught at VC and Hummel has been part of the school for most of its existence.

“It’s been a steady growth,” Hummel said. “But it's always played an important role in the community.”

When the campus opened at its present location off Red River Road in 1949, it wasn’t much more than a few buildings, including a home economics cottage.

Through the 60s and 70s, campus life was much different than today. The campus used to house a dormitory, mostly filled with the college’s football team, a student newspaper called the “Jolly Roger,” covered walkways between buildings and more.

While the college has evolved significantly, some things - like the

Mike Hummel outside of the Victoria campus.

program director Mary Ann Wright.

“Eventually, we ended up in the Division of Allied Health building, which is very modern compared to being in an old homemaking cottage,” she said.

Today, the program sports all kinds of bells and whistles in its nursing department like a lab with bed-ridden mannequins that simulate real-world ailments for students to train with.

“(Students) have always gotten that

...it's ALWAYS played an IMPORTANT ROLE in the community

- Mike Hummel

Lyceum Lecture Series - have been around for nearly forever.

“The Victoria College Lyceum programs are worthy of an article themselves,” Hummel said. “Worldfamous people have spoken (at them).”

The ongoing series has featured some notable names over the years, including Donald Rumsfeld, Jean Michel Cousteau, Charlton Heston, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., VC and “Jolly Roger” alum Jim Lehrer, Martin Luther King, III and Maya Angelou to name a few.

Hummel is proud of the college’s own accomplishments but is also just as proud of the maturation he saw in countless students over almost five

decades.

“It was good to see them grow and develop,” he said. “Just after Vietnam, some students were veterans who had attended both before and again after. Several of them said to me … ‘Oh, now I understand why we were fighting.’ They gained perspective … I saw many (become) very active in the civil rights and anti-war movements.”

VC’s curriculum has also grown and developed mightily over the years.

Years ago, the school’s nursing program was housed inside the aforementioned on-campus cottage, but has since outgrown its original facilities significantly, said former nursing

real-world experience,” Wright said.

In February, the college hosted a retiree reception for those who staffed the college in years past. Hummel, Wright and a couple dozen others - whose experience totaled more than 660 years - spent the afternoon reflecting on fond memories.

While some colleges might hold a somewhat contentious relationship between faculty and administrators, Hummel said his experience was the opposite at Victoria College.

“For example, Jimmy Goodson and I were great friends,” Hummel said about the college’s president from 1989-2008. “We had disagreements. But when I left his office, on a couple of occasions, he said, ‘It's so good to be able to disagree and walk away friends.’”

A dedicated faculty was an important part of the school’s sustained growth over the past 100 years, Hummel said. But perhaps no ingredient has been more significant than the institute's leadership.

“We've always had a strong supporter in the Board of Trustees,” Hummel said. “They provided leadership, direction and support but they never tried to dictate what needed to be done … We've had strong leaders, effective leaders.”

‘We felt like pioneers'

One of UHV’s first graduates remembers the school’s earliest days

STORY BY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER | PTURNER@VICAD.COM

Almost 53 years have passed since the University of HoustonVictoria first opened its doors. Today, the 20-acre campus is home to four academic colleges, an athletic department and also holds a satellite campus in Katy.

But five decades ago, what was then called the University of Houston Victoria Center looked mightily different.

For one of the school’s first graduates, despite the university’s primitive essence, it was an exciting time, as students felt they were laying the groundwork for a major institute’s future.

“We felt like pioneers,” said 1975 Master of Education graduate Martha Jones.

Jones was one of the 63 students at the school’s very first commencement

ceremony back on Aug 13, 1975.

It was a hot summer day with temperatures reaching 91 degrees, when families of students packed into the nearby Victoria College Auditorium. Being the first ceremony of its kind, students from 1973 and 1974 classes were also honored for achieving bachelors and masters degrees.

“We knew that we were the first ones and we were very proud of that,” Jones said. “My sister was doing the same thing, and so we felt special because us two girls were getting their masters at the same time in that first class.”

Jones, 83, later went on to receive her doctorate from Texas A&M and worked as the principal at the math and science magnet schools in Victoria for years. Looking back, she has fond memories of the early days of UHV

...we were a part of something new

- Martha Jones

where she said she learned much that would later inform her as the leader of a school.

Innovative education curriculum was being taught at UHV by top-notch instructors, Jones said.

“We had an instructor, Dr. Dave Tucker, that was really an excellent leader and innovator,” she said. “We all

enjoyed his classes very much. And we took what we learned and taught it in schools for the first time.”

Locally, the community identified a need for a 4-year school for students who wanted to earn a degree. Like today, Victoria College was just next door, but the founding of UHV presented an opportunity for Victorians to earn a bachelor's degree or master’s degree.

UHV served as a school for juniors, seniors and those seeking graduate degrees until 2010, when it began admitting freshman and sophomore students.

In 1971, it started as an off-campus University of Houston center. In 1983, the university became its own entity and was renamed to the University of Houston-Victoria, making it the fourth school in the University of Houston system.

At the beginning, UHV Center was just one building, but while small, Jones said the university had an impressive stable of instructors.

“We had some excellent instructors,” she said. “They were probably hand selected to come here to begin this new adventure with a four year university.”

Today, the school has grown to more than 4,000 regularly enrolled students.

For the few who walked the stage in caps and gowns all those years ago, the day did not just serve as the first step into their professional lives, but also the first steps for a university that would become an important institution for decades to come.

“We felt very special because we knew that we were some of the first people to come from the university,” Jones said. “It has done so well since then, and prospered. But we just felt that we were a part of something new and part of something very special.”

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DIFFERENTDRESS

decades-old fashions offer new looks for Victoria

Gabriel dons an 80s bomber jacket and a 90s Polo Jeans Company turtleneck. Fiona wears a 70s inspired flare sleeve top.

STORY BY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHASE COFIELD | CCOFIELD@VICAD.COM

MODELS

GABRIEL LEE AND FIONA BLEU

FASHIONS PROVIDED BY ICONIC CONSIGNMENTS

PHOTO SHOOT LOCATION

OUR LADY OF LOURDES CATHOLIC CHURCH

Gabriel wears early 2000s Dickies jeans with Converse Chuck Taylors.

In 2024, many members of Victoria's youth look to the past for style inspirations.

Whether it's dressing up in clothing reminiscent of the 70s or the 90s, there's a collective interest fueled by social media among Generation Z in wearing vintage fashion.

Iconic Consignment helps provide those fashions to locals looking for vintage clothes in Victoria.

Owned by Xavior Turrubiartes, the store specializes in selling vintage clothing from the 90s and 2000s. Turrubiartes opened the store in 2022 after years collecting clothing from thrift stores all over Texas. Through finding clothes from thrift stores and putting together outfits, his love for vintage fashion was born.

"I always loved to express myself and dress differently than other people," Turrubiartes said. "I felt like there was no better way to do that than through thrifting."

Turrubiartes pays close attention to what styles of fashion are trending on social media especially in the world of vintage. He does this to get a good gauge on what his customer base would be interested in.

"The customer base for Iconic is definitely people in our generation, Generation Z," Turrubiartes said. "I cater more towards high school and college students."

What Turrubiartes enjoys the most about thrifting is finding rare pieces of clothing from the past. Clothes that may have been overlooked years prior that are now rarities in the present.

With Victoria's bicentennial coming up, customers can find clothes from the past 3040 years that bring back memories about the trends and fads from yesteryear.

"I feel like the coolest part about Iconic is our unique variety of one of one pieces, especially the ones that are from the 80s and the 90s," Turrubiartes said. "There is nobody else in Victoria with these specific clothing pieces."

Top Right, Gabriel wears a 90s vintage Levi's jacket with an early 2000s Victoria Harley-Davidson t-shirt and corduroy jeans.

Bottom Right, Fiona wears an early 2000s ribbed off the shoulder top paired with a 90s La Belle skirt.

Fiona wears a 90s Talbot ribbed turtle with a pinstripe vest and 90s Polo Jeans Company jeans. Gabriel wears an 80s Ferrari jacket and unbranded "dad" jeans.

Persevering

Faith

St. Mary’s helped define Victoria over two centuries

STORY BY CHRISTOPHER GREEN | CGREEN@VICAD.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHASE COFIELD | CCOFIELD@VICAD.COM

Ashley Hunter has been going to St. Mary’s Catholic Church with her family for two years, and it has become a fun activity for her family as they get the chance to pray and celebrate their faith together.

Hunter is also the music director for St. Mary’s and said she really enjoys the liturgy and how the community of the church feels like a family to her.

“We're a community that's focused on God and worship of God and there's

really a beauty and a simplicity to that,” Hunter said. “The building is very grand, and I love the vastness of it.”

For 200 years St. Mary’s Catholic Church has been one of the defining features of what is now downtown Victoria. The church was founded in October of 1824 when Martin De Leon brought 41 Mexican families to a point on the Guadalupe River to found the colony of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Jesus Victoria. One of the first things

De Leon did in the new colony was establish a Catholic church.

At the time, it was a requirement to build a church in the newly settled colony, but De Leon’s faith went beyond just the law and he founded St. Mary’s as a place for people to come and worship and have peace of mind while they pray and celebrate their faith.

He oversaw the construction of Our Lady of Guadalupe, what is now St. Mary’s Catholic Church, which was built using logs and native timber. However, the church would later be used as a place of refuge, post office, an auction house and a Presbyterian church following the defeat of Santa Ana in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836.

As the church persevered through the years, it would get a new home starting in 1898 with the construction of the current St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Completed in 1904, the new church was constructed by mostly Italian immigrants

using stone masonry, and the church is a primarily Gothic structure.

Father Kristopher Fuchs, pastor of St. Mary’s, enjoys the architecture of the church because many of the building’s features point upward to the sky. Fuchs said the history of the church is important because it shows the tradition of faith being passed down for 200 years.

“There’s been Christian worship and faith here that has been passed down, which is very special for Victoria’s first church right here in the heart of downtown,” Fuchs said “There’s a special connection with all the people that come here whether that be just visiting or every Sunday.”

Fuchs also feels his own responsibilities as a pastor is something that he takes great pride in.

“It’s a great blessing to be able to have the opportunity to continue in the long line of carrying the faith forward,” Fuchs said. “There have been many priests that have come before me, and there will be many that come after and to be a part of that has been a very special part of my life.”

There are usually around 400 to 450 people who attend service every Sunday, and with a lot of young families coming to services on a regular basis the future looks bright for the church, Fuchs said.

“This points to a great hope for the future and how the church will continue to be a place of faith and one that provides the foundation of faith for the future,” Fuchs said. “Another big opportunity we have now is our ownership of the Nazareth Convent next door.”

Another historic feature of the church’s location is where it sits in the downtown area. Many towns and cities throughout Texas have a courthouse situated in the middle of the downtown square. However, since the founding of Victoria dates back to the early 1800s the laws at the time required the church and courthouse to be in certain geographical positions to one another, Fuchs said.

100 yearsOF HISTORY

Temple B'nai Israel has long served as home for Victoria’s Jewish residents

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER GREEN | CGREEN@VICAD.COM

For a century Temple B'nai Israel has stood as a place where Victoria’s Jewish families and friends can go to worship as well as find education and camaraderie.

Victoria's first Jewish residents came from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France and entered the United States through the port of New Orleans. Victoria’s first Jewish residents were involved in banking, railroad, ranching, government and business.

As early as 1849, local Jewish services were conducted by rabbis from Houston, Galveston and New Orleans. Congregation B'nai Israel was organized in 1858, and the temple's first president was Abraham Levi. Levi, who had founded a dry-goods establishment in the Southwest, subsequently established the A. Levi Bank and Trust, which in 1875 became the largest state chartered bank in the state of Texas.

By 1907, the congregation was meeting in a building they shared with the local Masonic lodge, which was on the second floor while the synagogue was on the first.

The Jewish population in Victoria had around 120 people in 1920, and at that time a new temple was being built by renowned architect Jules Lefland. Construction of Temple B'nai

The platform where the Bimad stands.

The two Torahs at Temple B’nai Israel.

Dave Lack was instrumental in major remodeling efforts and additions to the temple over the years he served as the president of the temple.

Israel was completed in 1923 with the first Jewish couple married there that same year.

Lefland worked on a number of architectural projects in Victoria. He designed the temple with eclecticclassical structure that has paired windows, round arched transoms, brick corbelling, brick pilasters and boxed columns with banded caps.

Another prominent president for Temple B'nai Israel was David Lack who was born to Russian immigrants in 1916. Lack and his wife Rebecca purchased an auto supply store in 1938, but due to World War II, the business suffered. Lack then decided to turn his business into a furniture store to maintain a sales volume, which proved to be highly successful. The business later went on to become one of the largest independently-owned retail furniture stores in the country.

Dr. Gary Branfman, a current member of the Temple B'nai Israel congregation, said Temple B'nai Israel is an important symbol.

"It represents the whole concept of Judaism, which has been around for close to 4,000 years and throughout that time, Jews have faced antisemitism, but we are still here, and will always be here," Branfman said. "The temple exemplifies that after 100 years we are still here and just like the Jewish people who have been around for 4,000 years the temple will continue to be in Victoria."

The temple no longer holds regular services because many of the Jewish families in Victoria have seen their kids move to other cities, which has caused the Jewish population in Victoria to dwindle, Branfman said.

Melvin Lack, another member of the Temple B'nai Israel congregation, said in the 1950s and 1960s there was a large Jewish congregation.

"Back then we were able to have Sunday school with four different levels, and we had another building that had classrooms, and we had community gatherings and dinners and things like that," Lack said. "Those times have since gone, but the temple still remains to me as the center of our religious beliefs and where we go to congregate."

The temple used to have traveling rabbis who would come to services, but Lack said rabbis are now harder to find.

"We had for many many years student rabbis or traveling rabbis that would come into our community, and we would have services and Hebrew lessons for young kids," Lack said. "Now, rabbis are in scarce supply, and it's hard to find someone to come to our congregation to do a service for six to ten people and then have to travel two hours back to where they came from."

Branfman said he remains optimistic about the future of the congregation in Victoria.

“Recently, a few young Jewish families with small children have moved into Victoria. With only 15 million Jews in the entire world, we don’t need too many in Victoria to call ourselves a Jewish community,” Branfman said. “We may be among the smallest nations, but we are among the largest families.”

Marshal and Janna Wiener, members of the congregation.

Janna Wiener sits in the prayer hall.

Insurance business celebrates 70+ years of service with EASY Easley

Margaret Easley sold their client book in 1991 as part of their retirement.

Through Hurricanes and a changing insurance landscape, who is covering your interests in the event of a disaster has always been an important question for the Victoria community.

While those options have grown fewer as the commercial insurance landscape has changed, Easley Insurance remains a local option people can count on.

Founded by Don and Margeret Easley, the local insurer has been serving the residents of Victoria since 1953.

The company hasn’t consistently operated these last 70-plus years, but through it all, the company remains in the same building they opened on Red River Street all those years ago.

Don Easley, a World War II veteran who has worked in construction, decided to start his insurance business with his wife Margeret Easley as a way to provide for their family, said Donna Easley Doane, Easley Insurance president and their daughter.

“Insurance comes easy when you insure with Easley,’ was his slogan,” Doane said. “They wanted something that was sustainable, something that would be here for a long time.”

The business went through multiple hurricanes and helped people with their claims for decades before Don and

Doane started working at her parents’ insurance company in 1989 and followed the book to the company it was sold to..

“They had four children, and really, I was the only one interested in the business,” she said.

However, the name Easley Insurance and the building it operating in was never sold.

Easley Insurance displays newspaper clippings from The Victoria Advocate inside their office.

In 2005, Easley Insurance was reestablished in the same location with many of the clients they’ve had over the years coming back to the company.

That dedication was particularly highlighted during Hurricane Harvey, Doane said.

In the wake of the hurricane, the staff of Easley Insurance worked tirelessly outside their office trying to get people’s claims fulfilled and lives back onto a path of normalcy, Doane said.

“As soon as we could be at this agency, we set up generators outside the office, and we had customers coming in to file their claims for their commercial properties and their homes and others,” she said. “We couldn't even get into our computer because we had no power, but we were able to go through files because back then we weren't 100% paperless, and we were able to find policy members and call insurance companies to report claims. We were all on our cell phones, assisting customers, and it's pretty wild.”

Don Easley even came out of

retirement during Harvey to do what he could to help out, Doane said.

In recent years, the challenges insurers have faced have been immense with larger insurers that can write their own policies being hesitant to insure in the Texas Coastal Bend region.

Major insurers, such as Zurich, have left the commercial property insurance market entirely in the state, while other insurers treat Victoria to higher premiums because of how they see the risks in a coastal region, a growing trend across the country as home insurers pull back coverage from fire and flood-prone areas.

“Texas is probably looking at a crisis too similar to California, Florida and Louisiana as the severe weather events are occurring more often,” Doane said, noting there are more chances of these weather events causing severe damage.

While direct writers of major insurers are hesitant to work in environments like this, an independent insurer like Easley Insurance can operate outside of the box to figure out appropriate coverage

for a person’s insurance needs, Doane said.

“We can make it happen. You could have claims. You can have bad drivers and bad credit. You can have businesses sitting on the coast. We can make it happen here. We are definitely outsideof-the-box thinkers. The more challenge you give me, the harder I’m going to work,” she said.

For Doane, being able to carry on the legacy of her family’s business and soon her sons taking on the torch have been an incredible honor. She particularly noted how the great staff over the years have made them successful with the service they provide.

“To sit back and know that we've done a good job for the customer and protected their assets, which is, besides a life, that's the most precious thing that they worked so hard to build is heartwarming. We come in, and we protect them, and we cover the gaps and all the exposures,” Doane said. “We're there to help them do that and take the pain out of it for them.”

Donna Easley Doane with her two sons, John and Mark Doane, and their dog Yelsae.

A photo of Easley Insurance’s founders, Margaret and Donald Easley, is displayed in Doane’s office.

100 years of helping build the Crossroads Bank: Trust Texas

STORY BY KYLE R. COTTON | KCOTTON @VICAD.COM PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHASE COFIELD | CCOFIELD@VICAD.COM

With no more than $408,000 in assets, Trust Texas Bank, then Cuero Building and Loan, opened its doors in 1921.

Since then, through the Great Depression, multiple wars and housing crises, the bank has remained a stalwart.

For much of its existence, Trust Texas Bank was a federal bank, said Jay Howard, Trust Texas Bank president and CEO. However, it is now a statechartered bank where half of its assets are required to be involved in real estate or mortgages.

That strategy has been consistent throughout the bank’s history and has allowed it to focus on what it knows best and its customers, Howard said.

“We cater to mortgage loans and people buying houses and home improvement loans. We still do commercial stuff, too, but our bread and butter is pretty much the mortgage industry,” he said. “That's where we've been thriving all along. And I think that's one of the reasons why we survived through those time periods.”

Even during national housing crises, the business strategy offered stability where other banks struggled, Howard said.

“We were kind of secluded from that, primarily because the Texas economy typically does better than the rest of the country at any given point, and so real estate prices held pretty solid in Texas,” he said. “The difference was that we don't sell (our assets). We keep everything, so if you get a home loan from Trust Texas Bank, that loan stays here, and your payments are made here, and if you get a loan for 30 years, and it pays off, the payoff is done here. So, we hold on to all of those and don't sell any of our assets. That's kind of what makes us different, too, is that once you start banking with us, you're always banking.”

Over a century of business, the financial institution has grown and expanded beyond Cuero and played key roles in the development of the communities they became a part of, including Victoria.

“We started popping up in Victoria back in the 70s, and it was because there was a need for people to finance mortgage loans, make home loans, and we saw that as an opportunity,” Howard said.

The first Victoria branch opened in an old gas station building on Laurent Street.

Local builders and real estate companies such as the Ron Brown Company and Hogan Homes came to lean on Trust Texas Bank, then known as Cuero Federal Saving and Loan Association, to help with their businesses, he said.

While development may not be as active as it was then, developers still utilize the bank to meet their goals.

One such business is Blanton Builders, a Victoria-based custom home builder.

“It’s one of the few small-town business banking that’s based around here,” said Bradley Blanton, Blanton Builders president. “With other banks, you’re dealing with people who are in other states, cities further away to make approvals on the loan process. Having a smaller net of local people who can approve it makes everything go so much faster.”

In his experience, it takes only a couple of weeks for his clients to get a response on approval for a home loan.

When it comes to other banks, it can take months before that happens, making it difficult to plan for, Blanton said. This is because the client's circumstances could’ve changed, as well as his schedule.

Over the years, he has worked on countless custom home projects and has had 20 of them go through Trust Texas Bank, Blanton said. Each time it was always an easy process to go through.

In addition to the bank’s history of helping build the community, two of the other things that have made the bank successful are its relationship with its customers and its ability to

retain its employees.

“Our bank is owned by our depositors and our loan customers, so we don't have any stock, so when you open up an account with Trust Texas Bank, you take out a loan, essentially, you are part owner of the bank. That's what keeps a lot of people coming back is because they know that they've got a vested interest in the bank. They have a say, so they get a vote,” Howard said.

The bank is a mutual holding company, which effectively means they are structured similarly to a credit union where members drive the decisions as opposed to stockholders who typically demand a large return on their investment, he said. That structure allows the bank to play the long game where other institutions can’t.

“People bank with people. They bank with somebody they know. They bank with people where they're treated well, and they keep coming back, and I think that's what makes us different for our customers owners,” Howard said.

The average tenure for employees at the bank is 18 years, and there are a couple who have been with the bank for 47 years, he said.

While the bank is still considered small with about $430 million in assets, it will continue to put its customers front and center into the future, Howard said.

“(Our customers) really are why I think we've been around for so long. It's just we try to have good people that treat people like family and our customers are just really loyal,” he said.

Jay Howard,next to a photo of his father, John Howard, at the Trust Texas Bank in Cuero.

A photo of the bank’s founder is displayed on Howard’s desk.

Community Spirit of FAITH

Oldest school in Victoria endures today and

STORY BY KYLE R. COTTON | KCOTTON @VICAD.COM PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHASE COFIELD | CCOFIELD@VICAD.COM

rom Victoria’s very founding, two important values were front and center: faith and community.

After the death of founder Martin De Leon, his window Patricia dedicated herself to serving the community and the Catholic church. Even when she was chased out of Victoria because of anti-Mexican sentiment in the state, she returned to Victoria County in 1844 to continue work with the church until her death in 1849.

However, despite the loss of the community’s matriarch, it wasn’t long after when the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament arrived, establishing a convent on Dec. 21, 1866, and the Nazareth Academy on Jan. 7, 1867. The academy is the oldest educational institution in Victoria and has continued that spirit of faith and community as its core values to this very day.

They were able to launch the new monastery and build what would become Nazareth Academy in a matter of weeks, said Sister Kathleen Goike, academy alumni and now a sister of the order that established the academy.

The order spent $160 with a contractor to build a 35-foot-by-16-foot room with a six-foot-wide gallery that was home to the first 55 students of the academy.

That building, known locally as “The Convent School,” was home to Nazareth Academy for almost a century.

“With it being a cloistered convent, the students had to come to the convent to be taught,” Goike said, noting there was very little in terms of educational options in the area at the time. “It was part of what you might say our mission to spread the knowledge of religion and the Incarnate Word and education was very important to us with

that, and that’s what we did.”

Eventually, the academy moved to its current location in 1951, where it continues to serve the community by providing a Catholic education in Victoria.

The one constant throughout that time, though, was the desire of those who went through the academy to give back.

Goike attended the school in 1971 when the academy still offered high school education. Academy Principal Leslie New attended the school in the 1990s and many of the other staff are also alums.

“It’s a desire to give back what you've received, to spread the word of God and to be a presence, a presence that can give people comfort,” Goike said.

For both Goike and New, a Catholic school's religious education was extremely important to their parents.

First grade students Ivy Flores and Adonis Ramirez practice reading at the Academy.

Goike’s mother even stressed to other Catholic schools when she lived in San Antonio that she promised God that her child would go to Catholic school.

Goike came to Nazareth Academy to finish her education after she had

already decided to become part of the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament.

New’s time with the academy was so special to her that she has returned as a teacher and now as an administrator.

She also has set her own children through the school.

“What makes us so special and it was true for my parents when they chose to send us here, they were looking for an educational environment that reflected the values of our home to where they could send us and know that it was an extension of the values of our home, and that still holds true today for our families,” New said. “That's been a joy and then another neat aspect of being an administrator at the school and being able to teach with several of my classmates who are back as employees, or parents and teaching the kids of my classmates.”

That focus on strong community connections and relationships is combined with keeping up with the latest academic technology for its students, New said.

This includes Chromebook computers for research, touchboards and more, she said.

“Just because we’re traditional doesn’t mean we aren’t developing and growing with the needs of our society,”

A student practices tennis Coach Brent Smiga during P.E.

Above - Nazareth Academy as it stands today. Bottom Left - Academy of Nazareth, St. Mary's Church and Sister's Chapel, Victoria, 1873. Bottom Right - Nazareth Academy Convent School, 1904.

New said.

There have been many challenges over the years, with the adjustments to the COVID-19 pandemic being particularly challenging, Goike said.

“We had to close our classrooms and do it all via computer, remote learning, and then to bring back students the next year. That was a struggle on enrollment, too, because parents, and rightfully so, parents were scared about whether it would be a safe environment.”

The school now has more than 350 students and whatever challenge comes next, they will likely tackle it as they have throughout the last century and a half, as a community.

Nazareth Academy's chapel.

Sister Mary Jean Bludau leads a prayer in her sixth grade religion class.

First grade students Emma Merta, Adaline Griffin, and Ethan Salazar color their worksheets during an activity.

Saturday, May4,2024

Riverside Park Special Events Area EventsArea 7 AM Registration-7:45 AM- opening ceremony Registration -7:45 AM -opening 8 AM-1.5 MileWalk- Resourcefair 8AM-1.5Mile Walk -Resource fair

This is a FREE event, but all walkers/teams are requiredtoregister. Thisis aFREE butall walkers/teamsarerequired to register. Registration on the day of the event will befrom7:00 am- 7:30 am. Registrationonthedayofthe eventwillbefrom7:00am -7:30am.

Allparticipantswhopre-register by April8th,will receiveaFREE eventt-shirt! April8th,willreceive aF -shirt! Pleasenotethatshirtswillnotbesold at the eventthis year. Pleasenot otbesoldatthe hisyear.

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Handed over generations, the Russchhaupts' recipes

down

connect past with present

FSTORY BY JON WILCOX | JWILCOX@VICAD.COM

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHASE COFIELD | CCOFIELD@VICAD.COM

amily recipes remind us of who we are.

"It's a constant reminder of our grandparents, the happy days and the memories," Dawn RuschhauptZaplac, of Mission Valley, said. "I can remember riding horseback and my grandmother would walk outside with her drop donuts and they were hot with cinnamon and sugar. We would grab a handful and ride by."

For six generations, their ranching family has called Victoria County their home. Memories of their happy childhoods still burn bright in the sisters' minds, and throughout those memories are countless times when their grandmother Virginia Russchhaupt fed them with her cooking.

Their grandmother, the matriarch of their Mission Valley ranching family prepared meals for the working men in her family. But she also was equally at home at elegant dinners enjoyed with friends and neighbors.

"She would cook when the guys would work cattle," Ruschhaupt-Zaplac said. "She would make cowhand lunch,

but she also could clean up and go to the fanciest dinners after getting down and dirty."

Their grandmother's coffee cake, German butter noodles, squash casserole and more have stood the test of time as family favorites. Many family gatherings felt incomplete without them. Other dishes were simply so delicious the Ruschhaupts gobbled them up whenever they would make an

For years and years, the instructions for preparing those recipes lived in family members' minds, until Timmermann Asdahl decided they deserved to be preserved more permanently, finally compiling them and recording them in a family cookbook, which she has printed and circulated amongst her family.

These are just a few favorites of those

Squash casserole

6-8 tortillas torn in bite-size pieces

1 quart sliced squash, precooked

8 oz cheddar cheese, grated 1 can cream of celery soup

1/2 can milk

3 Tbsp. chopped green chile

Grease a casserole dish and layer first three ingredients in the order given. Make two complete layers, if possible, ending with cheese on top. Mix together and pour over casserole: celery soup milk and green chile peppers. Bake at 350 degrees until bubbly.

The homemade cookbook displaying Dawn Zaplac and Nicole Zimmerman Asdahl's family recipes.

Grandma's coffee cake

2 1/2 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup oil

Mix and take out 1 cup. Then add to the rest of the top 1 egg, 1 cup sour milk, 1 tsp. soda, 1 tsp. vanilla and 1 cup pecans. Sour milk is Tbsp. lemon juice or vinegar to 1 cup of milk. Mix well and pour into greased and floured pan. Sprinkle the 1 cup mixture on top. Bake at 325 degrees.

German butter noodles

1 package of thin egg noodles, cooked

1 1/2 stick butter

Saltine crackers

In a large skillet, melt butter. Lay saltine crackers in butter and brown them. When you turn them over, break into pieces. After butter and crackers are brown, pour over noodles.

GRANDMA'S COFFEE CAKE

When the Ruschhaupts recently prepared this coffee cake, which they had once enjoyed years ago as children, it quickly disappeared, RuschhauptZaplac said. It was simply too good to put down.

"We couldn't stop eating it," Ruschhaupt-Zaplac said. "We ate the whole plate."

The recipe was originally transcribed from a handwritten recipe penned in flowery cursive by their grandmother's own hand.

Virginia Ruschhaupt was many things, but she also was certainly a baker.

"Incredibly delicious," RuschhauptZaplac said. "Oh, it just melts in your mouth."

The cake is versatile enough to be enjoyed at many meals — dessert, breakfast or simply as a snack.

SQUASH CASSEROLE

The Ruschhaupts don't know the exact date this recipe was first enjoyed in their family. But it was definitely one of their grandmother's most enjoyed creations.

The dish, which features a Spanish flair, is definitely unique.

"It's different than any squash casserole we've ever had," RuschhauptZaplac said.

Featuring green chilies and corn tortillas, it almost tastes like an enchilada.

The sisters remember eating the dish at family barbecues. People were always asking for the recipe.

"It's one of our favorites," she said.

GERMAN BUTTER NOODLES

Ruschhaupt-Zaplac and Timmermann Asdahl remember sometimes seeing homemade egg noodles drying all over the house — even on the backs of chairs.

The noodles were an essential ingredient for one of their grandmother's most beloved and often made dishes, German butter noodles.

Either bread or saltine crackers, and she would brown the butter and just pour it over the noodles," RuschhauptZaplac said. "It's so simple, and it sounds ridiculous, but it's really great."

The noodles, with their rich flavor imparted from the caramelized butter, became a favorite at holiday meals and barbecues. The versatile dish also goes perfectly with most any kind of protein from chicken to steak to even fish.

If making egg noodles is too time consuming, store-bought egg noodles will suffice.

Dawn Zaplac and Nicole Zimmerman Asdahl

HOBO BAND

Czech and German culture run deep in Victoria.

And for more than a century, one band has celebrated those cultures with their music, delighting local fans with music of the old country.

"That's the music they grew up on on. That’s what was played at events and at their houses," Dalton Nollkamper, a 74-year-old saxophone player who has performed with the Shiner Hobo Band since he was a sophomore in high school. "It will give you some goosebumps."

It's not uncommon, he said, to see older folks in the audience singing along in Czech, lyrics they grew up listening to in their homes and at community events.

Famed for their fun, hobo-like antics, like conducting the ensemble with a toilet plunger, the band has entertained countless fans in Victoria and throughout the Crossroads with a

traditional Czech and German sound. Over the decades, countless articles have been written in the Victoria Advocate, lauding and announcing their performances.

Czech, German and Polish heritage have a long history in the Crossroads, dating back at least to the late 1800s when immigrants began arriving in large numbers through Galveston and other Texas ports, said John Dujka, keyboard player as well as vocalist for the band and a professor of music at Blinn College in Brenham. Many settled in the region, seeking good farmland, establishing homesteads, churches and beer joints and bringing their unique food, music and culture with them.

"The music they play is the music their ancestors brought with them," Dujka, a Brenham resident who claims Czech and German heritage, said. "It was very much the music of the vibrant

communities of this area."

Tracing the exact history of the Shiner Hobo Band can be difficult because that history is so long and now distant. But according to one Victoria Advocate article, the band has history going back the close of WWI when the Spoetzl Brewery started supporting a band made up of local firemen who dressed in ludicrous costumes and performed not only traditional music but also hilarious antics. The band found a resurgence in the 1930s when director Emmett Busch began directing them with a toilet plunger.

These days, the Shiner Hobo Band persists, despite the passing of many decades, continuing the traditions of the original musicians and their European heritage.

The band continues to wear hobo inspired costumes and carry on with their slapstick comedy.

Nollkamper prefers Goodwill finds — suspenders with lots of buttons, jeans with plenty of holes and patches, along with an outrageous shirt.

The band plays by memory and feeling, eschewing sheet music, sometimes resulting in an interesting sound. Wrong notes are not mistakes but rather simply part of the fun.

Once during a performance for the televised Big Joe Polka Show, they even managed to play two different songs at the same time. The important thing, Nollkamber joked, is just starting and stopping at the same time.

"That’s part of being a hobo," he said. "We pride ourselves in playing two different songs at the same time."

Despite the antics, the group does carry plenty of musical expertise and impressive ability to entertain.

"I love the music," he said. "I love playing."

The band boasts a host of musicians who play accordion, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, bass horns, drums, keyboard and sometimes something called "a salt box," where a player sprinkles salt onto a board and rubs a broom stick over the salt, producing a rich bass sound. Together, they produce a sound that heralds back to a sound that dates back to old Prague and Central Europe.

It's part of a culture that continues in the Crossroads and also is represented through traditional foods like kolaches and sausages as well as a shared and beloved language.

Left, One of many Shiner Hobo Band articles featured in the Victoria Advocate. Right, Dalton Nollkamper, Shiner Hobo Band member, plays to the crowd.

The Shiner Hobo Band features instruments like the saxophone, bass horn, trombone, accordion, drums and more.

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Keeping that culture alive is important because it honors those who came before, Dujka said.

"It's important to keep the heritage going and teach the next generation about their parents and grandparent and about what they went through," he said.

Plus, he added, bands like the Shiner Hobo Band and the music they produce are simply good fun.

"Things have changed, but the music has stayed the same," he said. "It's a link to the past and a source of pride."

2024 SHINER HOBO BAND SCHEDULE

APRIL 13

Shiner Volunteer Fire Department

MAY 19

11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

Anhalt Hall

MAY 26

2-4 p.m.

Shiner church picnic

JUNE 29

1-3:30 p.m.

Luling Watermelon Thump

JULY 6

1-4 p.m.

Shiner Half Moon

AUG. 11

11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

St. Michael’s Catholic School

SEPT.

4-6 p.m.

Hallettsville Knights of Columbus Hall

SEPT. 22

11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Victoria County Czech Fest

OCT. 6

1-5 p.m.

Come and Take It Celebration in Gonzales

OCT. 12

2-6 p.m.

Shiner brewery

Revelers dance to the sound of oom-pah music played by the Shiner Hobo Band in 2022.

Shiner Hobo Band member

Laddie Janik plays an unusual instrument known as a salt box.

Mariachi group reminds Hispanic Victorians of who they are, where they came from

Barbie Landers and John Gamz enjoy a performance from Mariachi Nuevo at Riverside Park.

Martin Rios Sr.

Maria Huerta plays the violin with Mariachi Nuevo.

Mariachi music runs deep in Martin Rios Sr.'s blood.

"When I was a young boy in the late 50s, I heard my dad playing some of the mariachi music he liked to listen to on the radio," Rios, a 71-yearold Victoria native and trumpet player, said. "That is the music I grew up on."

For Rios, mariachi is about more than just music. For him and the other seven members of Mariachi Nuevo Victoria, it's about celebrating Hispanic culture. It reminds Hispanic people of where they came from, they said.

"That is one thing we the Hispanic community must never forget," Rios said.

For the past three years, the band has spent nearly every weekend performing at weddings, quinceañeras, birthdays, anniversaries, marriage proposals, festivals, events and even funerals. They are also often called to serenade special someones on the behalf of misty eyed lovers. Each year, they might find themselves with a mere half dozen or so weekends free of playing.

"My true love is mariachi music," Rios said.

Dating back to the late 1700s, mariachi is a traditional and varied genre of Mexican music that combines string and brass instruments along with vocals. Mariachi Nuevo Victoria, winners of the Victoria Advocate's Best of the Best music award, is composed of eight musicians aged 19 to 71. Many bring decades of experience playing the genre. Seven of the eight sing vocals, often in complex harmonies.

The group even has the expertise to

BAND MEMBERS

Martin Rios Sr., Trumpet

Martin Rios Jr., Trumpet

Xochitl Alvarado, Violin

Ignacio Vargas, Violin

Maria Huerta, Violin

Juan Lozano, Guitarron

Steve Solis, Guitar

Angel Lozano, Vihuela

HOW TO BOOK THEM

For pricing and availability, call

Martin Rios Sr. at 361 676 9498

play hours and hours of unique songs. Some songs originate from various regions of Mexico and carry their own distinctive sounds.

The group has all the necessary elements for musical success — experience, heart and talent, Rios said.

With three violins; two trumpets; a guitar; vihuela; a small guitar-like instrument; and its bigger, deeper sibling the guitarrón; Mariachi Nuevo Victoria features the needed instrumental elements for a truly traditional sound. They also wear traje, the traditional three-piece mariachi suits, which are tailored and handstitched with jangling metal accessories and luxurious fabric.

Playing in the group is like being in a "super tight family," said Martin Rios Jr, the group's other trumpet player and Martin Rios Sr.'s son.

The younger Rios, 49, has played mariachi since he was a boy of 12. As the youngest member of his father's former group, he remembers at first being terrified to play with them.

Mariachi was new to the boy, who at the time was mainly focused on 80s hair metal bands like Van Halen and White Snake.

"It was a really new experience," he said. "There was a lot of nerves."

But as he continued to play and the years turned to decades, he realized he, like his father, had fallen in love with the traditional Mexican music. Now, he can appreciate the genre with the ear of a practiced expert, picking out influences

and melodies like a pro.

For those who grew up listening to mariachi, the music has a way of bringing past memories to life.

Nostalgic tears are all too common at their performances.

The genre is certainly aging, but it's also finding new life.

Around the world, it continues to inform many new musicians' work, whether they be Tejano or Norteno artists like Grupo Frontera or Christian Nodal.

"Mariachi is still alive," he said. "You just need to know where to find it."

Hearing the music continue with the next generation is a beautiful thing, Xochitl Alvarado, one of the violin players for the group, said.

Alvarado, a Victoria Independent School District music teacher who has played mariachi for about 20 years, said the music has a power to bring people together, whatever their ages may be. She is inspired when she sees young people enjoying the tunes, just like their elders.

Playing and enjoying the music, she said, continues a tradition, reinforcing and reminding a heritage that is vital to Victoria. The city, after all, she said, was founded by Hispanic people. It's only apt that Hispanic music be celebrated here by those of all backgrounds and age groups.

"It’s transcends generation," she said. "It just bonds people together."

ABOUT TOWN

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VICTORIA!

City kicks off bicentennial with NYE fireworks show

STORY BY and PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER PTURNER@VICAD.COM

Hundreds gathered at Riverside Park in Victoria for a special New Year’s celebration.

Victoria did more than just say goodbye to 2023, it kicked off a year’s worth of festivities to celebrate its 200th birthday.

“It’s just a great way to kick off the 2024 bicentennial,” said city Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Joel Novosad. “So many people came out tonight. Huge turnout. Couldn’t ask for a better crowd.”

Festivities started at 6 p.m. with live music from Dream Stereo and Texas 361 playing for families outside Riverside Stadium.

Trevino’s Concessions, Ganga’s Eats and Events, Kona Ice and Sip & Shine Café provided refreshments, while children enjoyed inflatable rides and face painting.

The celebration was a change of venue from years past.

“This is a new tradition of doing it here in Riverside Park,” Novosad said. “It’s a great place for it.”

A 20-minute firework show kicked off at 9 p.m., as rockets blasted off from the Riverside golf course.

Attendees watched the show from all over the park, with many enjoying the view from inside Riverside Stadium which was open for families.

“It’s gonna be a big year for Victoria,” Novosad said. “There’s gonna be a lot more than just tonight going on.”

Events honoring the 200th anniversary of Victoria’s founding in 1824 by Mexican empresario Martín De León will take place throughout the year. Those interested can find a list of bicentennial related events at ExploreVictoriaTexas.com.

“Tonight is just a great kickoff to everything that’s to come,” Novosad said.

UPCOMING Calendar of Events

BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION

VICTORIA

VICTORIA PRESERVATION, INC

BICENTENNIAL FIESTA HOME TOUR KICKOFF

April 4 − 6:30-10 p.m.

306 E. Commercial St.

Join us at our fiesta to celebrate the kickoff of the bicentennial edition of our Historic Homes Tour. Tickets are presale only and available at the Victoria Preservation Office. Come by 205 W. Goodwin Ave. or call 361-573-1878 to reserve your seat today.

BICENTENNIAL CROSSWALK ART PAINTING

10 a.m.-noon

City Hall Courtyard

The Victoria Fine Arts Association and The Victoria Main Street Program

will be coordinating the painting of a bicentennial themed crosswalk on the corner of Juan Linn and Main Street across from city hall by a local artist.

BICENTENNIAL HISTORY SYMPOSIUM

April 11 and 12

UHV north, UHV commons, Museum of the Coastal Bend and Borchers Leon Exhibit Hall

Free and open to the public. Take a deeper dive in Victoria's rich history than you ever have before at this fascinating two day history symposium

DE LEON PLAZA RIBBON CUTTING & STATUE UNVEILING

April 13 − 1:3 p.m.

DeLeon Plaza

Honor our city's founders, Martín de León and Patricia de la Garza, as we host a ribbon cutting for the brand new De Leon Plaza expansion and the unveiling of the Martín de León and Patricia de la Garza statues. The program will feature guest speakers, a special ceremony by the De Leon descendants to honor their ancestors, performances by local mariachi and Ballet Folklorico groups, fantastic photo ops, and more.

BICENTENNIAL BALL

April 13 − 6-10:30 p.m.

Victoria Community Center

On this date 200 years ago, empresario Martin de Leon received approval from the Mexican government to found the colony of Nuestra Señora Guadalupe de Jesús Victoria in the state of Coahuila y Tejas. The city will host the Bicentennial Ball, presented by Prosperity Bank at the Victoria Community Center, a ticketed event that will include food and drinks, live entertainment, and a celebration of all things Victoria.

DE LEON HONORARY MASS

April 14 - 10:30 a.m.

St. Mary's Catholic Church

Patricia de la Garza was instrumental in the founding of Victoria’s first church, St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Celebrate a special Mass in honor of founder Martin De Leon and his wife Patricia de la Garza. If you are interested in attending a bicentennial brunch after this Mass, please contact Blanche De Leon at 361649-4680 for tickets and more details!

VICTORIA SYMPHONY MONUMENT DEDICATION

April 24

VISD Fine Arts Center

The Victoria Symphony Orchestra

celebrates 50 years of bringing beautiful music and world-class artistic talent to Victoria with a dedication of a new monument sculpture next to their performance venue, the Victoria ISD Fine Arts Center.

ONGOING

BICENTENNIAL 2024 OLD VICTORIA TROLLEY TOUR

April 20, May 11, June 8, July 13, Aug. 10, Sept. 14, Oct. 12, Nov. 9 and Dec. 14

9 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Victoria County Courthouse

To celebrate as Victoria Turns 200, we'll be offering just that. Once a month, the beautiful trolley from Texas Coast Limousines will take attendees along the oak-lined streets in and around downtown Victoria to see our most venerable structures.This is a ticketed event.

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"EverythingRealEstate"

Servingthecommunityforover40years

PLEASE REGISTER BY JUNE 1ST !

PLEASE REGISTER BY JUNE 1ST

Camp K9 is for kids 10-15 years of age. Your child will experience specific training techniques to use on a current or future pet. Campers have the opportunity to work with and socialize our shelter dogs. This enrichment is vital on their journey to finding forever loving homes. Safety of all campers and dogs is our priority.

REGISTER EARLY, SPACE IS LIMITED. Call, fax, or email your registration today. Make a difference one pet at a time!

CAMP K9 IS A FUN & EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE!

CAMP K9 PROGRAM:

• Canine body language

• Basic dog training and agility fun

• Learning about pets and pet responsibility

• Grooming & pet care

• Take a behind the scenes tour to view our mission in action

CAMP SESSIONS:

Monday-Thursday • 9:00am-12:00pm

CAMPS INCLUDE:

• Dog Treats

• Shelter dog

• Camp K9 T-shirt

• Camp dog photo

• Water

• Fun, educational, hands-on experience

• Treat bags

• Hands free leash

ATTIRE:

• Cool, comfortable clothing

$150 (non-refundable) per child; per camp session

Please no dropoffs before 8:30 am

Camps will be held in DOCPAC’s

Marsha Shanklin Education Building

Camp schedule is subject to change.

• Tennis Shoes (no exceptions)

• Sunscreen

• Optional: Water bottle with child’s name written on the bottle (no soft drinks)

Closing ceremonies held on Thursday at 11:00am. Campers will show off their skills and talents they have achieved with their shelter dog during Camp K9.

Make checks payable to: DOCPAC, 135 Progress Dr., Victoria, Tx 77905