Oral History Transcript - Ofelia Vasquez - October 16, 1986
Interview with Ofelia Vasquez
Interviewer: Michelle Brown
Transcriber: Michelle Brown
Date of Interview: October 16, 1986
Location: Community Action, Inc., 415 South Mitchell Avenue, San Marcos, TX
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Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Michelle Brown: This is Michelle Brown, and I’m interviewing Mrs. Ofelia Vasquez at her office at 415 South Mitchell [Avenue] on October 16, 1986. Could you give me a little information about your background?
Ofelia Vasquez: Yes, thank you Michelle. I was born in Seguin, Texas, in 1932—December 28. When I was nine years old, my father was asked by the Freeman Brothers to come to San Marcos and take charge of the Freeman Ranch out on the Wimberley highway, about seven miles from San Marcos. I was raised at the Freeman Ranch. At the age of seventeen, I married Joe Vasquez Jr. I dropped out of school and married Joe Vasquez Jr. Joe and I had seven children: five girls and two boys. When the children were in school, I went back to school myself. I got a GED [General Educational Development; equivalent to a high school diploma], and then I went on to Southwest Texas State University. I got only about forty-six hours there and then transferred my credits to a university, which is a branch of Antioch University, and I got my BA degree from Antioch University in 1979. I also started working part-time when the children were little, and that’s when Community Action came into being. It was back in 1965, and a group of people got together in San Marcos under the direction of Dr. James McCrocklin, who was then the president of the university. The Office of Economic Opportunity War and Poverty Law had just come into effect. They were trying to establish programs to help the disadvantaged, and they were trying to set up health programs, daycare centers, training programs, anything that could help people get out of poverty. I was one of three volunteers who conducted a house-to-house survey to do a needs assessment to see what was needed in the community to alleviate the poverty in San Marcos. We discovered that we needed health programs; we needed daycare centers; we needed housing very badly. We still do. We still need daycare centers, but at least we have made a dent in daycare. Community Action operates five daycare centers in a three-county area. We have a daycare center here in San Marcos with sixty children. We have one in Kyle, one in Luling, one in Blanco, and one in Lockhart. Total children: 185.
Brown: When the program first began, it began as a survey to see what was needed?
Vasquez: Yes, and like I said, that survey showed that we needed health programs; we needed daycare centers; we needed housing, transportation, several things. But what came out on top was a need for health services. So, we got a small grant called Community Health Services, and we worked out of the health department office at the second floor of the courthouse. That’s where the branch of the health department was back then. Now it’s over on Broadway Street.
Besides the daycare centers, we have a Rural Family Planning Program covering eight counties. This program is funded by the Texas State Department of Health. The goal of the program is to provide participants the necessary knowledge and services to choose parenthood when they want it. We do not provide abortions. We have approximately fifty clinics per month. They’re held in San Marcos, Lockhart, La Grange, Bastrop, Georgetown, Burnet, Taylor, Johnson City, Round Rock, and Luling. A sliding fees scale schedule is used to determine fees. And if the woman does not have any money, the services are provided for free. We have a sex educator in the program, and sex education is offered to schools, churches, clubs, and social service agencies. We provide quality medical care, human dignity, confidentiality, and concern for the patient. Those are the central themes of this program.
There is also a Rural Health Program for older adults. This program will help identify the elderly who need a more definitive study of their health programs and provide health education dealing with those health programs common to them. Every person identified with a health program through the health screening program will be assisted to receive further evaluation of that program. There are twenty service sites in the four county-area of Hays, Caldwell, Blanco, and Bastrop. The program is targeted for low-income elderly, but anyone who attends the congregant meal sites can be seen if they wish. The congregant meal sites are in the different daycare centers. There are two here in San Marcos at Allen Woods and one in Georgia Street. There is one in Johnson City, one in Blanco, one in Lockhart, and one in Luling.
We have a Legal Aid Program, and the objectives of the Legal Aid Program and Assistance are directed primarily at providing advice in advocacy by our attorney for low-income people. The legal aid program is funded by the City of San Marcos. The staff of this program consists of one part-time attorney and one full-time legal assistant, or a paralegal if you may, who also acts as manager and secretary for the office.
The Senior Citizens Program is funded also by the City of San Marcos and Hays County. The senior citizens are provided with nutritional meals, which are provided by the Community Action in Smithville. But we provide the workers who distribute the food, serve the food, and clean up afterwards. This is eligible to anyone who is sixty years or older. They can participate in ceramics, quilting, macramé classes, sewing classes, crochet classes, furniture refinishing, or any of the many recreational activities now being offered, including forty-two in dominos. The men like to get together and play forty-two in dominos.
The Transportation Program of Community Action is one of our largest programs. The source of funds for this program comes from the Department of Human Resources, from the Capital Area Planning Council, or CAPCO, from Hays County, from Blanco County, from the City of San Marcos, from the Capital Area Transportation Systems, that’s CARDS, and passenger donations. Maybe about the first of the year we’re going to start charging fares because of the cost of the Transportation Program has really gone up, and a lot of the reason for that is the high cost of insurance. Two years ago, we used to be able to insure twelve vehicles for about $8,000. This past year, we had to pay $30,000 for insurance; liability insurance. We have to have it, otherwise we’ll have to park the vans. The transportation system provides thirty-three thousand rides per year, traveling some eighty-four thousand miles per year in the twelve vans in the three counties. Transportation is provided for people who need to go to the doctor, either here in this area or in Austin. Sometimes the local doctors refer patients to specialist out of town, and if the patient does not have transportation, we provide it.
Brown: How long have you had that particular program?
Vasquez: This, the Transportation Program, we have had about nine years. All the other programs are older than that. Legal Aid is about fourteen years old. Our daycare center, through the Head Start Centers, was one of the first three that opened in the State of Texas.
We have a Weatherization Program. The Weatherization Program was established in 1985, and it’s totally funded by the federal government. The Department of Energy, DOE, is responsible for program administration at the federal level. The Texas Department of Community Affairs, TDCA, is a state agency responsible for administering the program in Texas. We are their contractors. The Weatherization Program assists low-income persons, particularly the elderly and handicapped, by installing insulation, storm windows, caulking around the windows or doors, weather-stripping, and other improvements to conserve energy.
We also have a program called the Energy Crisis Intervention Program, and it is funded by the Texas Department of Community Affairs. This program is funded by the federal government, and the Energy Crisis Intervention Program assists low-income persons who experience eminent termination or lack of energy for heating or cooling. That means if someone gets a cut-off notice, they’re going to cut off their gas or electricity, and this is an elderly or a handicapped person, or maybe it is a young couple with several small children, and their circumstances are such that they are eligible to receive assistance through this program, we will do it on a one-time basis once a year.
We have a free Doctor’s Care Program. The local doctors got together and are assisting us by providing free medical care to people who come here and apply, and we verify the fact that they are indeed indigent. They don’t have any money coming in, no insurance, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no third party reimbursement whatsoever. Then we give them a voucher, they go to the doctor, and the doctors are on a rotating basis. They differ; people see different doctors every day. After the doctor has prescribed medication, if they do, and the people do not have the money to pay for the medication, they bring the prescription here, and we issue a voucher to the pharmacy of their choice. That medicine is paid for by the United Way. United Way contributes a little over $2,000 a year towards the Prescription Program. And that about wraps it up, Michelle.
We are starting a brand-new program. It’s called the Primary Health Care Program, and this program has new health services that include diagnosis and treatment, health information, preventative health services, some dental services, health education. We are going to put a lot of emphasis on health education. And these services will be made available to existing medical resources in our four county-area. In other words, we are going to ask all the doctors in the four county-area to participate with us and let us refer people to them. This time only and this year only because it is a pilot project, we will pay the doctors at the same rate Medicid reimburses them. To be eligible for the Primary Health Care Program, clients must meet the guidelines for Community Action, Inc., Primary Health Care Program. This is our newest program. We have about twelve social service programs. We are a private, non-profit organization. We are governed by a twenty-one board member of directors from a cross section of the community. We have people from all three counties, and we feel indebted to these board members who contribute so much of their time, free of charge, to see that the agency operates well. They set policy for the agency; I merely carry it out. It is a tremendous amount of work that these people volunteer to the agency for the benefit of the low-income people.
Brown: Most of the help and the programs and things is on a volunteer basis, like the board of directors and the doctors?
Vasquez: Yes, the board of directors volunteers their services free, gratis. The doctors provide the services that I mentioned to you free of charge. There are some bills that we do pay. For example, the doctors who see our Head Start children or who provide services to our Head Start children, we do pay for that, and we do pay for some dental work for the children. We do pay for all the food that we buy. We’re really mobiliz[ing] all these funds that come from the different sources of funding. We are a $2 million operation. We have about eighty employees. Like any other business, you know, we try to cut corners. We’re frugal. Whenever we purchase something, we take bids so that we can take the best bid. We also try to spread our business around. For example, the food that we buy for the day care centers. We like to go to the different grocery stores, not just to one. The same goes to pharmacies. This is for every other thing that we purchase; materials for the Weatherization Program. Of course, the utility providers, we have no choice. We pay whoever charges. But we do try spread our business around in terms of purchasing supplies. Medical supplies, we buy a tremendous amount of medical supplies for the Family Planning Program. That about wraps it up.
Brown: Okay, I have a couple of questions. In 1965, when it started, it started out relatively small. What problems, did you encounter any problems trying to increase the size and number of programs?
Vasquez: At first, it was fairly easy to get money for different programs. If you had a good grant writer, you could almost be assured of getting your program funded. We were fortunate enough to get the medical program funded. We got a daycare center funded, and then from one we grew, and [now] we have five. We were fortunate to get funds for a senior citizens center and the Legal Aid Program. And the idea that the government would give us a certain amount of money; provided that the local community matched it. In other words, for every dollar that the government gave us, we had to come up with about twenty cents local funds. So, local organizations, the cities, the counties, did come up with matching funds. We were fortunate that when the federal monies started drying up we were able to continue to some of these programs either on their own merit by introducing sliding fee scales or donations, or both. Then the revenue sharing money came in, and we got part of that money. From three or four programs back in ’65, we have grown to twelve now.
Brown: Have the needs of the people changed, like you mentioned that at first they needed health care. Has that stayed the same?
Vasquez: I think that the health programs are still there, with the exception of tuberculosis. Back in 1965, [we] had quite a bit of tuberculosis in the community. You almost never hear of anyone contracting TB now. But we have other illnesses. We have a lot of diabetes, a lot of diabetics, a lot of people with hypertension, high blood pressure, undernourished babies, children. Not so much because there is not enough food. Many times we just don’t know what types of food to feed the children and the elderly. Sometimes they need it at a very regular basis. You know, you take an elderly person who is weak and needs to maybe eat every two hours instead of three times a day. A sick baby needs to be nourished maybe every two hours instead of twice a day, and it’s things like that sometimes we do come across. Somebody who’s sick, undernourished not because there is no food in their refrigerator or the pantry, but maybe it’s an elderly person who lives alone and does not know how to cook or does not want to cook, does not feel well enough to cook for himself or herself.
Brown: What programs would you like to see increased, or are there any that you would like to get started in the future?
Vasquez: We have a tremendous need for housing. If there were some, we could get into some program. Maybe Community Action together with the City Housing Authority of the City of San Marcos. If we could just some way, somehow come up with something where we could get the low-income people housing, affordable housing, something sturdy, something clean, and for a reasonable price. Right now, we still have many people living in shacks. It’s not uncommon to find six or eight people living in a two-bedroom apartment, hoping that the landlord will not find out or just living there. There is nowhere else to go. We have houses where there is two and three families living together, and this causes problems. Being too crowded, being too many other people. Sometimes little children don’t have any place to play. Young people going to school don’t have a corner to themselves where they can study. So, this affects children in school. It’s just bad. People need a place that they can call their own, that they can feel comfortable, that they don’t have to worry, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do at the beginning of the month? Am I going to be evicted because I’m not going to have enough money to pay the rent?” This sort of thing.
End of interview