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Roy Barrera Sr., Among His Souvenirs: Part II
By Steve Peirce
This is the second of a two-part series on legendary trial lawyer Roy Barrera, Sr. In Part I, which appeared in the July-August 2020 issue of San Antonio Lawyer, we followed Roy’s early life growing up in South Texas, his Army service, his law school experience, and his early years as a young prosecutor with the District Attorney’s office. Part II, below, recounts more of Roy’s stories.
Nicholas & Barrera
In August 1957, Roy and Anthony Nicholas formed the Nicholas & Barrera law firm on a handshake, opening up shop in the Frost Bank Building. They remained partners until the death of Nicholas on May 7th of 2011.
Albert Wechsler made the newspapers in 1962 when he was hired as an investigator by the DA’s office despite having a criminal record. Later, Wechsler was accused of stealing files from the DA’s office and selling the information to criminal defense attorneys. Wechsler was given immunity by the DA’s office if he told the truth and later testified at the grievance proceedings against the defense attorneys, but the Texas Attorney General obtained an indictment and conviction against Wechsler, notwithstanding the granted immunity. “I thought Albert got a bad deal because they didn’t prosecute the attorneys, and he had testified based on the grant of immunity,” Roy said. So, he represented Wechsler and obtained a reversal on appeal.
In 1972, Nicholas & Barrera moved to their current location cattycorner to La Villita at the corner of East Nueva and South Presa. Upon purchasing the property, Roy found out that it had allegedly been the home of Texas Revolution spy Erastus “Deaf” Smith and couldn’t be altered. And Nick’s wife was the president of the Historical Survey Society. What to do? Unbeknownst to Nick, Roy hired Wechsler to bulldoze the structure at midnight on a Saturday night. The cops arrived, recognized Roy there, accepted his lame excuse that he was doing the bulldozing in the night to avoid traffic problems, and left. Well, Deaf Smith may have lost a house, but he got a whole county named after him.
The Page Junior High Stabbing
At Page Junior High in the Sixties, if you were walking down the hall or in the yard and you saw a rush of students running in the same direction, you knew a fight was happening. The students would form a circle around the combatants and watch until a spat-board-carrying vice principal would arrive and break it up. (I know. I’m a former Page student.)
In 1964, Refugio Gonzales (15) and Jesse Sanchez (14), a football hero, were in one of those fights, circled by twenty to thirty students. Some of the girls were yelling “chicken” at Gonzales for not wanting to fight Sanchez. In the scuffle, Gonzales pulled a fishing knife and stabbed Sanchez in the heart, killing him instantly. Roy was Gonzales’ courtappointed attorney. Roy recalls:
I insisted to the judge that that Gonzales be tried as an adult. Back then, juveniles had few rights. Juveniles could be held without bond. They couldn’t get a jury trial, and the prosecution could call juvenile defendants to the stand. The DA wanted to try him on a lesser charge, like possession of a knife, then try him for murder as soon as he became an adult. So, I got him tried as an adult for murder. We were making new law at the time because no juvenile had ever been tried as an adult. So we had a jury trial, and Gonzales took the stand. He was new at the school and had been bullied. He told his mother he didn’t want to go to that school anymore. They went to the principal to request a transfer, which was denied. Sanchez was a football star who was beating up on Gonzales when one of the students pulled Gonzales’ sweater over his head. Gonzales grabbed his knife and thrust upward, killing Sanchez. The jury found Gonzales not guilty, based on self-defense.
Friends in Low Places
In September 1966, Roy received an unexpected gift from two prisoners at the Texas Department of Corrections Eastham Farm: a beautiful, brightly colored, hand-tooled parade saddle. Roy is particularly tickled by this story:
In 1958, I defended Raymond Lee Flanagan, a Fort Hood soldier, who went to prison for murder and robbery. Flanagan had learned to work with leather while in prison, and he met a fellow prisoner, James David Green, whom I prosecuted in 1956, and who was sentenced as a habitual criminal. The two got together and made this saddle for me. I rode it in the Fiesta parade, and I still have it.
Mr. Secretary
Roy’s collection of letters includes a December 1963 letter from him to Governor John Connally, thanking the Governor for a Christmas card and wishing him recovery after he was shot in President Kennedy’s motorcade in November 1963. In 1968, when an opening came up for Texas Secretary of State, Governor Connally appointed Roy to the post. During his stint at the Secretary’s office, he commuted every day between San Antonio and Austin. Among his duties was approving the applications of candidates to be placed on Texas ballots. Over the opposition of Republicans and Democrats, he put George Wallace’s party on the Presidential ballot because it met the requisites. He also handled requests to extradite Texas residents to other states for prosecution. And he attended the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago as the Secretary of the Texas Delegation and had run-ins with hippie protestors.
There were the fun parts, too. A Korean children’s choir attended a session of the Texas Legislature. Roy surprised them all by singing Arirang, a folk song he learned during his Army service in post-World War II Korea. He later repeated the feat in federal court during a citizenship ceremony for Korean immigrants. Roy returned to Juan Seguin Elementary School to give a speech and honor his old principal. And more often than not, Roy was the state official who greeted foreign dignitaries arriving at the HemisFair ’68 World’s Fair. In April 1968, Hollywood actress Grace Kelly became Princess of Monaco when she married Prince Rainer, III. Roy recalls:
My wife Carmen and I received her and the Prince at HemisFair. Of course, I welcomed her in English, and she responded in English, and then at the close of her response, to my surprise, she broke off into perfect Spanish, and the crowd loved it. I couldn’t help but get up and say in Spanish, “In reality she may be a princess, but to us (meaning Hispanics), she will always be a queen.” I told the Governor that the greatest thing that you ever did for me was to be absent when Grace Kelly came to HemisFair.
And, of course, there are great pictures of the Barreras with Princess Grace.
Secretary of State Roy Barrera visits with Princess Grace of Monaco at HemisFair ‘68.
Then there was the trip to Chad. As part of his HemisFair duties, Roy had met the First President of Chad, Francois Tombalbaye. The week before Roy’s last day as Secretary, the Chadian President invited Roy and Carmen to go to Chad at Chad’s expense for the country’s National Day ceremonies over the weekend. Roy and Carmen didn’t have passports, but the Chadian Embassy told them they did not need them. Roy needed to be back in Austin the following Tuesday to officiate and give a final address to the legislature. At the New York airport, a Chadian Embassy official met the Barreras, and he spoke little or no English (Chadians spoke French), but he communicated to them that they needed passports. Unfazed, Roy called the Governor and two Congressmen, but could not reach them. Then he called the White House and asked to speak to President Johnson. Instead, they put “Tom Johnson” on the phone. A few minutes later, they were cleared to go. But when they arrived at the Paris airport, they were again asked for passports. They got out of the airport and made it to the Chadian Embassy. Roy was called at the embassy by the American Consul, who offered to give him a temporary passport. Roy dug an old photograph of himself and Carmen from his wallet to use for the temporary passport (which of course, he still has). They caught a plane just in time and made it to Chad. After the ceremonies, they returned to their hotel room and found two unwrapped giant elephant tusks and a giant snakeskin, gifts from the Chadian President, which Roy hoisted on his back through the airports on their way home. President Tombalbaye would later be assassinated on April 13, 1975.
When Roy returned from Chad, for his final legislative address, he didn’t want to give an empty talk of meaningless platitudes and thankyous. Instead, he gave a civil rights speech to the legislature, stating, among other things: “For too long have theories and philosophies of the superiority of certain peoples over others been permitted to seed, take root, and flower into hate, prejudice, suspicion, and distrust and ultimately untold suffering, death, and destruction.” On this, he was complimented by the press and by private citizens. Roy’s collection includes this eloquent and moving speech in its entirety.
Roy and John Connally remained close friends. In 1971, Connally, as recently appointed Secretary of the Treasury, sent Roy and Carmen an autographed uncirculated one-dollar bill that “conveys a million thanks for your kindness and friendship.” And Roy’s collection includes a March 1980 letter of thanks from Connally for helping with Connally’s presidential campaign.
The Barreras have dined at the White House with President Lyndon Johnson (Democrat) in 1968 and again in 1983 with President Ronald Reagan (Republican). In 1973, Roy ran an unsuccessful bid for mayor, and has not run for public office in San Antonio since.
ABRIDGED SPEECH BY ROY BARRERA TO THE TEXAS LEGISLATURE IN 1969
From the House Journal, 65th Legislature, Regular Session, January 14, 1969: The Honorable Roy Barrera, Secretary of State of Texas, then addressed the House, speaking as follows:
I am not aware of any greater privilege that I have ever had as Secretary of State than that of functioning today as Temporary Chairman of the 61st Legislature of Texas and of the present opportunity afforded me, thereby, to address this assembly of the Representatives of the House and, through you, the people of Texas.
* * *
Today, we live in a world which has shrunk to the size of the picture tube on our TV sets and no part of which is any farther than our telephone or a few hours distant. Our exploding populations and our dependence upon the peace, prosperity, and stability of most other nations, for our own, makes it even smaller. As our world shrinks in size, our relations with other nations become more entwined and interdependent, thereby making necessary that we know and understand them and, conversely, that they know and understand us. This can only be brought about through communication and association.
In this melting pot of the world that we call America, we have been blessed as a nation with representative peoples from all over the world. With them they have brought their language, culture, skills and crafts, their customs, habits, and characteristics. This very diversity of these people has made our country the greatest in the world. We, as Americans, therefore, have the world within our borders. We have the colors of the rainbow, the religions of the world. Indeed, we have a melting pot.
Before we can know and understand these nations, we must know and understand each other. We must know that all of us—irrespective of our ancestry, of the pigment of our skin or of our manner of worship—were created in the image and in the likeness of God. We must believe, therefore, that as human beings we are possessed of reason and, accordingly, can love or hate, be friendly or hostile, and are subject further to all of the wonderful attributes of man as well as his frailties.
For too long the world has suffered strife and turmoil due to man’s inhumanity to man. For too long have men sought to enslave and make vassals of others. For too long have theories and philosophies of the superiority of certain peoples over others been permitted to seed, take root, and flower into hate, prejudice, suspicion, and distrust and ultimately untold suffering, death, and destruction. Today, in this country, hate and violence have become a part of our daily lives as a result of our ignorance and lack of understanding of our fellow Americans who may not look, speak, and pray as we do.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Today, in this “new nation”—long years after that conception and that dedication referred to by Abraham Lincoln so simply, yet eloquently, in his immortal Gettysburg Address—there are those who would have us believe that this is not so. There are those who would still stand in the schoolhouse door and deny to some Americans their fair share of America.
We are further blessed as a nation with all of the wealth and potential that any land could have in geography, climate, soil, and minerals. We are a conglomerate of races, nationalities, creeds, and colors that would shame a kaleidoscope in variety, composition, and beauty—a land where most of the languages of the world are spoken, where East meets West, and the customs, habits, and characteristics of the world’s nations are exhibited. This is a land of beauty. This is the promised land. To this day, there are some
Americans who do not share in this beauty, who enjoy only the promise but not the reality of America.
Regretfully but true, for various and sundry reasons—some obvious, some quite subtle—over the course of time and history laws, rules, and regulations have been enacted and found their way into the statute books of this and other states, and of our nation, that have favored some Americans over others; that have relegated some Americans to second-class citizenship and worse; that have deprived some Americans of the fulfillment of their ambitions and their dreams—laws that have, in some instances. deprived some of life and liberty.
America and Americans have lived and suffered with some of these laws for generations after generations, but “their cup has now runneth over.” They have had their fill. Much of the unrest in our country today can be attributed to long sought, but never obtained, remedies to grinding and degrading social and legal injustices. Falling back on my ancestry and the language of my fathers, “No hay enfermedad que dure cien años, ni enfermo que los aguante”—”there is no illness that lasts for one hundred years nor an ill person that can endure them.” America and Americans must face up to this fact, for unless and until we do, we shall continue to experience strife and turmoil throughout our nation.
Due to this also, there are now other Americans who espouse and preach a willful disobedience to any law they deem unfair or unjust. To those, let me say, that the violation of the law cannot be condoned in the guise of correcting it. The willful and concerted disobedience and violation of the law can only lead to civil disorder and anarchy. This is not the way of America nor of Americans.
* * *
Texas is not of one color, nor of one race, nor one creed. Texans all, we must live and work here side by side. We all want what is best for Texas and the nation. We want to progress, to educate our children, and to afford them every opportunity available to other Americans—to not only dream and aspire in the promised land, but to share in her—restricted only by their personal ambitions, and not by their ancestry or the color of their skin.
We have fostered and condoned second-class citizens and worse. We can no longer afford to do so. We must no longer do so. With all of us as citizens, with you primarily as lawmakers, lies the legal and moral responsibility to ensure that this will be so. With you lies the responsibility not only to your respective communities, but to the State of Texas and to all Texans, to strike down any and all laws that are unjust and unfair—any law that would perpetuate second-class citizens in Texas—all laws that discriminate against or segregate any Texan because of his birth or belief. With you also rests the responsibility to enact such laws as will inure to the benefit and common good of all Texans generally, giving vent to the will of the majority with due regard to the rights of the minority.
* * *
As you take your oaths, gentlemen, pray God that He give you guidance, intellect, and moral fortitude that you may accordingly discharge your duties. Gentlemen, in closing may I say to you that it has been a great honor for me to serve the people of the State of Texas as Secretary of State of Texas. My tenure of office terminates in a few short days. I have tried to serve all Texans as a Texan. I have traveled to many different parts of our great State, finding no alarm or consternation at the pronunciation of my name or in the manner in which I part my hair. After the long drought, I do believe I see rain clouds on the horizon. For this I, and a great number of other Texans, shall always be grateful to and never forget Governor Connally.
I also wish to thank the people of Texas for their reception and understanding. It’s still the greatest State in the Union.
The Orta Case
In 1970, the mother of Felipe Orta (19), arrived at Nicholas & Barrera seeking representation for her son, who had been charged with capital murder in the death of a highway patrolman near Waxahachie. Since she spoke little English, Nick sent her to talk to Roy so that he could tell her in Spanish that she needed to seek an attorney elsewhere, or by court appointment, since she couldn’t afford the fees. Roy remembers thinking:
If he gets the chair, I’m gonna look at myself every day in that damn mirror and say, “You didn’t even try because he didn’t have any money.” Orta’s mother, during her plea for help, prevailed upon my mother and all the Saints in the Catholic Church, so I said okay. We were able to get $3,500 for the case to use for expenses.
Orta and two other Hispanic teenagers (who were 14 and 16, respectively) were returning from a roofing job in Dallas. They quit early and didn’t get paid, so they stole a car, stole some beer from a grocery store, and headed south, picking up two Anglo GI hitchhikers. They were pulled over by patrolman Travis Locker for speeding. Locker had them get out of the car. The sixteen-year-old jumped Locker and grabbed his pistol, and the other two jumped into the fray. According to Orta, he was trying to get the gun away from his friend, but it was too late. In the struggle, Locker was shot, but not fatally. The youths jumped into the car and took off, hiding for three days in the creek bed while the whole town and 300 peace officers searched for them. The two GIs stayed there and assisted the patrolman and the other officers. The youths ultimately made it back to their families in San Antonio, and they turned themselves in. While Locker was in the hospital, just when it looked like he would recover, he fell back and died with a rupture of a main artery. As Roy recalls:
I visited Orta in jail. Orta told me that a deputy called him a Mexican s-o-b and that they were going “to burn his ass.” In response. I said, “If they leave that gate open, get as far away from it as you can because they’ll say you tried to escape and shoot you in the back.” Then I went to the judge and told him what my defendant had told me and that “if anything happens to that boy of mine while he’s in your jail, you’re gonna have more FBI agents down here than a dog’s got fleas.” The judge assured me that nothing would happen.
Locker had been born and raised in Waxahachie, married there, and had kids there, so the next thing to do was seek a change of venue, which required evidence that the defendant could not get a fair trial in Ellis County. As Roy explained:
I went to several local defense lawyers and to the editor of the paper, and they agreed that Orta couldn’t get a fair trial, but they refused to sign an affidavit for fear of getting run out of town themselves. So, I filed my own affidavit, naming the people that I had talked to, the lawyers and the editor, what they had told me, and why they wouldn’t sign. The judge said the venue motion wasn’t proper, but I filed it anyhow, which he promptly denied, so we started empaneling a jury. In a capital case, you voir dire the panel one person at a time. The courtroom was on the sun side of the building, and the state was complaining about the heat in the courtroom. The judge offered to let everyone remove their coats. I thought of my Chilean Indian grandfather, who had told me that the mind controls the body, and if you don’t admit that it’s hot, it’s not hot. So I kept my coat on.
The prosecutor complained about the length of my questions and the heat. The judge asked me to hurry it up a little. I told the judge we could finish right now if the state would agree to a plea for life or 99 years. The state refused. We went through the whole week. We examined all the jurors and exhausted the panel. At that point, out of a hundred and some-odd people, we had selected six jurors. We still had six more to go, and the panel was gone. So, the judge relented and granted the change of venue to Dallas County.
For the Dallas trial, the two prosecutors from Waxahachie teamed up with two prosecutors from Dallas DA Henry Wade’s office against Roy. The prosecution sought the death penalty. Given the odds, Roy was offered help by the local defense bar, but he declined: “It looks bad, and that’s the way I want it to look,” he said. Picking the Dallas jury, if he liked the look of the juror and still liked them after the prosecution’s questions, he wouldn’t ask questions, prompting his opponents to think that he wouldn’t accept a juror without asking questions, so they didn’t challenge those jurors either, which is what Roy wanted. One woman on the panel, a mannish-looking cab driver, made long eye contact with Roy. The bailiff noticed and kidded Roy that she was his “girlfriend.” She ended up the foreman, and Roy liked his jury.
The GIs, having come to Dallas for questioning on Friday, showed up at the Monday morning trial obviously hung over, and Roy had the transcript of the earlier statements they had made in Waxahachie, which the prosecution forgot or ignored. They tried to change their story to put all the blame on Orta, but they withered under Roy’s cross. Although Locker’s widow had no relevant knowledge, the prosecution put her on the stand for jury sympathy, where she tearfully testified on direct. Roy recalls:
I said, “Mrs. Locker, I want you to know that my boy’s family and he himself, they’re all personally very disturbed and regret the situation that has brought you to this courtroom.” She turned on me like a tiger. I mean her tears were gone, she destroyed what she had built in nothing flat.
In the end, the jury returned a verdict of murder without malice, which carried a five-year maximum sentence, but denied probation. After the verdict, reporters flooded the hall. Roy noticed the young prosecutor from Waxahachie in tears and approached him. Roy explained. “He said that he was going to lose his job over this case. I told him, ‘I’ll fix it.’ I went to the reporters and told them that he had done a fine job, and that the prosecution would have won if it hadn’t been for those Dallas prosecutors.” The Waxahachie prosecutor’s job was saved, and he thanked Roy for the favor. Roy’s collection includes a June 10, 1970, letter from attorney Sam Coats (“In talking with judges and lawyers alike, the opinion is unanimous that you tried one of the best cases ever tried in Dallas County.”); a June 13, 1970, letter from the Dallas
County District Trial Judge John Vance (“All jurors seemed to be in agreement that Orta had an outstanding attorney. The Court agreed.”); a letter of June 17, 1970, quoting assistant DA David Pickett (“You’re the finest criminal lawyer that office has ever come up against.”); and a 1991 letter from Judge Stephen B. Ables to Roy Jr. (“My dad was on a jury in Waxahachie and was observing a lawyer in action named Roy Barrera, who was the best attorney he had ever seen.”).
In 1987, Orta, at age thirty-six, was shot to death at a bar room on the South Side by the same man who, in a June 2000 incident, held Archbishop Patrick Flores hostage for nine hours in the Archbishop’s chancery.
El Charro de Mexico
Antonio Aguilar was a renowned Mexican singer and film actor who recorded over 150 albums and appeared in 120 movies. Known as El Charro de Mexico, he was famous for singing songs while riding on a horse, which he was doing one night at the Alameda Theater downtown. A trap door on the stage floor gave way. Aguilar fell to the side, but the horse fell through to the basement, onto its back with its legs in the air. A patron at the show figured he would call the smartest person he knew, Roy Barrera, to help get the horse out of there. Whereupon, on Roy’s advice, they knocked out a wall, stuck a lift under the horse, and pulled it out. The horse survived. The Barreras and the Aguilars became fast friends, with Aguilar always recognizing them in the crowd when he performed.
The Mercy Killing
On November 16, 1981, Woodrow Collums (69) a retired rancher from Atascosa County, walked into a San Antonio nursing home and shot his brother, Jim Collums (72), three times in the head and twice in the stomach, killing him. Jim Collums was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and was being kept alive with a feeding tube inserted into his stomach. Woodrow was arrested at the nursing home and charged with murder. He pled guilty. Released on bond, Woodrow wrote a letter that was published in the papers, saying that he could not stand to see his brother suffer any more. Roy represented Woodrow, and sought deferred adjudication, which was strongly opposed by the prosecution. A sentencing trial was held before Judge Tom Rickhoff, with family, nursing home attendants, and Jim’s widow all testifying. A letter from Jim (written after his diagnosis) that he wished to be put to sleep, if he would not recover, was introduced into evidence. Woodrow was given ten years of probation and community service. The case gained national attention, and Roy was interviewed about it on 60 Minutes. A letter in Roy’s collection states: “Frankly, Mr. Barrera, I continue to be amazed at your abilities. I know of no other attorney who could have obtained the 10-year probated sentence you did.”
Autumn Hills
After six years of investigation, in 1985, a Galveston nursing home, Autumn Hills, was the first nursing home corporation indicted for murder, based on the neglect of the residents. The case was presided over by Galveston Judge Don B. Morgan, but the venue was moved to San Antonio. Upon the venue transfer, Roy represented the corporation and became the San Antonio member of the Autumn Hills team of lawyers representing other individual defendants. Roy procured a courtroom at the Bexar County courthouse to use for the first few months, then they used Judge William Sessions’ courtroom at the federal courthouse, then back to the Bexar County courthouse. On a day off, the Galveston Judge asked Roy to take him to the Zoo, and Roy obliged. On another day, the Judge wanted Roy to bring him Mexican food, so Roy brought tamales (from Karam’s) to the federal courthouse to share. The janitor found the tamale shucks and told Judge Sessions, who wasn’t pleased. (On another one man and five women. To lose the trial might have meant the end of Tesoro, a major employer. Roy opened the closing arguments for the Tesoro team. Roy charged the plaintiffs with “leading the jury up the yellow brick road to the land of Oz on a fantasy trip, mixing truth and fiction as a blender to combine apples and oranges in a concoction difficult to comprehend.” He argued that the absence of any indictments served as “proof that the presumption of innocence still prevails.”
For thirteen days, the jury poured over a sixty-four-page jury charge and six months’ worth of evidence before reaching a verdict, on July 22, 1987, of no liability on all thirteen charges. After the trial, the jury foreman, a thirty-year-old student and electronics technician, was quoted in the paper as wanting to “get together” with some of the other jurors, indicating that new friendships were made. But in September of 1987, two of the jurors charged the foreman and another juror with bringing up matters not in evidence, intimidation, and “browbeating” the other four jurors into the verdict. A United States deputy marshal took that information and tried to sell it to the plaintiff side for $1 million, but he was arrested by the FBI in a sting operation and ultimately pled guilty. The shareholder plaintiffs filed a motion for new trial, which was denied.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story about this trial’s being the vindication of Richard Miller from his Texaco defeat. Miller would write in a September 17, 1987 letter:
[Roy] confirmed again what most of us know: litigation skills in the hands of an intuitive and perceptive trial lawyer are readily transferable from one field of law to another and from one case to another. The Tesoro case was a civil securities fraud case (some said), and I assure you as far as anyone could tell, Roy performed like he had for years recited Rule 10b-5 every night before bedtime.
Among Roy’s Souvenirs
Among Roy’s souvenirs, my favorite picture is a black and white photo of him in a courtroom, circa 1960. It looks cinematic. The court is obviously in recess; maybe waiting on a verdict. Opposing counsel is standing on one side. There’s a newspaper reporter in the middle, and there’s Roy Barrera, leaning back in a chair in the jury box, his feet propped up on the railing, smoking a cigarette, looking like he owns the place. There’s a 1993 letter from attorney Larry Macon (who was also on the Tesoro team) that says in its entirety: “Thanks for being my friend as well as the best attorney in the state.” And a 1996 letter from County Clerk Gerry Rickoff, inspired by simply seeing Roy and son Bobby together: “Last evening through the lengthening shadows I was privileged to observe a most moving sight, that of yourself and your son, Bobby, leaving this grand old Courthouse together.” For many of us, at one time or another, we dreamed that someday we would become legendary trial lawyers. Roy Barrera’s lived that dream, and then some.
Post-Script. In 1965, while watching the news of Nat “King” Cole’s death from lung cancer with his daughter, Roy had her flush his cigarettes down the toilet, and he never smoked another cigarette. Roy’s collection includes a plaque of a shellacked five-dollar bill he received from a friend: Roy’s winnings in a bet with him that Roy couldn’t quit smoking.
Steve A. Peirce practices business bankruptcy law in the San Antonio office of Norton Rose Fulbright. He can be reached at 210.270-7179 or steve.peirce@ nortonrosefulbright.com.
