Columnists
Dr. Hector's office is a tragic indictment
By Nick Jimenez (Contact)
Originally published 12:00 a.m., July 29, 2007
Updated 04:46 a.m., July 29, 2007
There are three vacant buildings in Corpus Christi whose future remain unresolved. All played a significant role in the life of the city. All stand vacant. That the buildings have stood for years without a dignified resolution is a travesty. But of the three, the suspended state of the former offices of Dr. Hector P. Garcia is the most tragic.
The building that once housed Garcia's office on Bright Street is so small that one can hardly believe that a giant worked there. He was a giant of human compassion who worked big dreams on behalf of humble people. The politically mighty and those who wanted to be mighty went to those small offices on Bright to wait their turn among the families so poor they could only pay in small increments, or sometimes not pay at all. He was a doctor who decided that what ailed the poor needed more than medical treatments; they needed to be healed of the afflictions of discrimination, of poor schools, of the squalor of privies and bad housing and of being denied simple human dignity. Garcia was the voice for people whose cry for help would not otherwise be heard in the halls of Washington, D.C. and Austin.
Now those offices are silent. And why the building has remained in limbo for more than a decade is frustrating to anyone who desires to honor the memory of the man who worked to show what "all men are created equal" really means.
Memorial Coliseum, one of the other two buildings, is caught in a question of whether it should survive at all. Recent efforts to stop the most visible signs of decay haven't erased the fact that it's a building without a use. And the search to find a use is now under Council member Mike Hummell. There is sentiment attached to the Coliseum because of its dedication to war dead. But new and better memorials can be re-dedicated elsewhere. Unlike the Coliseum, preserving the memory of Dr. Garcia can't be done by turning the Bright Street building into a mercado.
The old Nueces County Courthouse, I think, simply defies the public will to be rid of it. There's significant public support for keeping the Coliseum in some form, but, outside of historical preservationists, it's hard to work up a civic soft spot for the courthouse. Many cities restore old courthouses so they become sources of community pride. But this is Corpus Christi, where civic pride goes to ruin. Too expensive to fix up and too expensive to tear down, the courthouse simply makes our collective head hurt.
Unlike the courthouse, the building on Bright Street would, under the right leadership, undoubtedly attract enough supporters to turn it into something that would honor the memory of Dr. Garcia. No one wants to tear tear down the building, though for a while, neglect seemed to have a head start on its demise. Unlike the historical buildings that have been moved to Heritage Park, you just can't pick up up the building and plunk it down somewhere else and still retain its place in history. Its significance is tied to the people and neighborhoods Dr. Garcia ministered to. There's no architectural signficance to the non-descript brick structure. It only stands for the spirit of caring that resided in it.
A story by reporter Adriana Garza on the occasion of the 11th anniversary of Dr. Hector's death this week recounted the depressing history of the building since it was vacated. How every effort to launch a preservation effort has come to nothing. The building is owned by the National Archives and Historical Foundation of the American GI Forum. The foundation chairman, Amador Garcia, refuses to acknowledge the failures. "This is something I call a work in progress." Yes, if you consider resignations of board members, calls for an investigation, and unresponsiveness to demands for an audit a "work in progress."
Garcia's daughter believes the building should become a clinic for the indigent; others say a museum or a place of scholarship to study the doctor's life. Yes, to any and all of those ideas. Just don't let the Bright Street building remain an indictment of our uncaring memory to a great man.
Nick Jimenez is editorial page editor of the Caller-Times. Phone: 886-3787; e-mail: jimenezn@caller.com.
