Oral History Transcript - Ofelia Vasquez - January 28, 2008
Interview with Ofelia Vasquez-Philo
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: January 28, 2008
Location: San Marcos, Texas
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Interviewee: Ofelia Vasquez-Philo – A consummate volunteer and San Marcos community activist, Mrs. Vasquez-Philo was the first director of the Hays-Caldwell-Blanco County Community Action Program. She also has served on the San Marcos School Board and as an active member of the Hispanic Historical Committee of the Hays County Historical Commission.
(This transcript has been edited for nonessential words and conversation for the sake of clarity.)
THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is January 28, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Ofelia Vasquez-Philo at San Marcos, Texas.
Mrs. Vasquez-Philo, even though you have agreed to the terms and conditions of the release pertaining to this interview in writing, will you also verbally acknowledge your acceptance with a yes or a no?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you very much.
I’m not quite sure of your background. Were you born and raised in San Marcos?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: No. I was born in Seguin, Texas. But at the age of seven, the Freeman brothers, who had a store in Seguin and who had the Trinidad family living in their farm, where my father was born, approached my father. My father by then was a young married man with three of his nine children that he eventually had, and he was approached by the Freeman brothers and asked if he would come and help run the Freeman Ranch here between Wimberley and San Marcos. So my father agreed to come because it was during the Depression and—well, towards the end of the Depression. I grew up and was born during the Depression years. And it was 1941, so in May of 1941 we moved to the Freeman Ranch in San Marcos—that is between San Marcos and Wimberley.
THIBODEAUX: Did you attend school in San Marcos?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes, I did but it was parochial school, St. John’s Catholic School. My father and mother were both firm believers in education, but I guess they felt that—well, they were protective and they probably felt that parochial school was the school for their children because in Seguin they enrolled me in Catholic school although there were some public schools there. Although it was somewhat segregated, not very many Hispanics went to the Anglo schools, and so my father and mother felt that we would be better at a Catholic school.
THIBODEAUX: In San Marcos at that time, what elementary schools were there? Were there just two?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: I believe that there were three. I believe that there were the school for the Anglos, which used to be held—which I think that by that time used to be at the university. We did not have a public school building here because the one that we used to have burned down sometime in the late ‘30s. There was a school for Mexicans—that’s how we were called in those years—at where now is Bonham. It used to be South Side School. That was the Mexican school. And then there was the one for the Blacks at Dunbar. So there was Dunbar, and there was South Side, and there was the one for the Anglos, and the Catholic school. And of course, there was the academy and normal school for girls that later became the college and on and on.
THIBODEAUX: Do you know how did the South Side School compare to the Anglo school?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Well, from what I hear—I never went there—but from what I hear, their textbooks were the leftovers from the Anglo school, and of course we didn’t have all the facilities like at the Anglo school, but other than that it was—the teachers were Anglo and a couple of Hispanic ones. If a Hispanic graduated from the teachers college here in San Marcos, they would be asked to either go teach at South Side or in San Antonio or down in the Valley close to the Mexican border.
THIBODEAUX: Did any changes come about as a result of Brown vs. Board of Education in the segregation?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Well, I think that, yes, there have been some changes for the better. After the desegregation of the schools, anyone who wanted to go to the Anglo school up at Evans—where Evans Auditorium is now that used to be the public school—could go there. Prior to that Mexicans could go there but they were kind of discouraged and only a very few that were in the upper grades were encouraged to go to the high school—I mean, to the—yeah, to the junior and high school up on the hill, as we called it at that time.
THIBODEAUX: Did you go to San Marcos High School, or did you go to parochial school throughout the—
VASQUEZ-PHILO: No. I went to parochial school up to the eighth grade. That was the limit. And then my father suggested that since my sister and I, the two older children of the Trinidad family, were girls that we really didn’t need that much education. So we should stay home and help Mother with the younger siblings and let the boys and the younger children go to school. So in those days you didn’t say no to your parents, you just say, Yes, sir, and yes, ma'am. Okay. So that’s what we did. But I loved school. I had wanted to stay, and I loved to read and I would read everything I could get my hands on. And so I guess in a lot of ways I taught myself because to this day I just love to read. I would much rather sit down and read a book than watch television.
THIBODEAUX: So what prompted you to run for the school board in 1969?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes. There were some issues in the schools that I did not feel comfortable with, me and other Hispanics in the community. The children could never find any history books for Hispanic—that talked about the history of Hispanics in Texas, and after all, you know, we had a lot to do with—even with the Alamo, but in those days people didn’t mention that Mexicans had also died in the Alamo fighting for Texas.
We had a superintendent that as far as I was concerned cared more about the dress code of the children than what they were teaching the children and just several things like that. The cheerleaders were never given the same opportunity as the Anglo cheerleaders and the same in the football field and just a lot of things that you could see that just didn’t feel right. So that’s what prompted me to run against the then president of the school board, June Davis.
THIBODEAUX: Oh. So you won that election and you were on the school board until 1972?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes, for three years. And the reason I did not want to run for a second term was because by then I was so busy I met myself coming and going. First of all, the meetings would last sometimes until one o’clock in the morning. And then I would have to get up, get several children ready for school, transfer them all over different schools, you know, with leave one in high school, leave one in elementary, one in kindergarten, even one in college because the children all lived at home, of course, and then go to work. And then come home and do the other things that a busy mother has to do, and I liked for the children to also have extracurricular activities. So I had to run around and take these two little girls to Brownies and this boy to practice and this—oh, just all over. I kept myself—I saw myself going and coming constantly, so it was too much and I couldn’t handle it.
I’m the type of person that if I am going to do something, I want to do it thoroughly and I want to do it properly. I like to be on time. I don’t like to say I’m going to do something and then not do it. So it was hard for me to keep up, so I realized that and it was getting to my health and so—
Oh, and then I decided I wanted to go back to school. And so in a period of a couple months I lost about eighteen pounds. And my father came and told me that I didn’t look healthy, that I should go to the doctor, which I did. Dr. Moore, our family doctor, says, “Ofelia, the only thing wrong with you is that you’re pushing yourself too hard. You’re killing yourself running up and down those stairs up on the hill trying to get smart.” He said, “Slow down or you’re going to ruin your health.” So I listened to him because he was right, you know. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: So you enrolled at—was it Southwest Texas State College at that time?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Southwest Texas State Teachers College, and I tried to take easy courses like home economics and history and I think social studies was a year there because I wanted to become more verbal in English. I used to have this feeling about me that I knew what I wanted to say and I would work it out in my mind, but when it came time for me to stand up and verbalize it, I kind of had to stop and think, translate it from Spanish into English, and then I was worried about my accent. I was so self-conscious that I was kind of shy about speaking out. It wasn’t until years later that I heard people on television—important people that had important offices on television that their accent was so thick that I said, “Well, if they can do it, I guess I can too.” (laughs) So that’s what I did.
THIBODEAUX: What changes did you work for while you were on the board?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Well, we sat down with other community leaders in the community. We wrote a letter to the school board and we said that we would like to have textbooks in the library that Hispanic children could check out and read, something that talked about their history in Texas when Texas still belonged to Mexico. That we wanted to see more involvement of Hispanic people in committees or groups, clubs in the school other than the PTA, and that we wanted the school board to hire more Hispanics and blacks.
In other words, we wanted a more diversified staff because at that time I think we had three or maybe four teachers at most in a school that has always been the majority Hispanic students, and yet we didn’t even have a counselor that could relate to Hispanic children. And like I say, very, very few teachers that could relate—or that could be role models for our Hispanic children in school. So we put all of this in a letter and gave it to the school board, and slowly, slowly the wheels started turning and they started hiring people. I think that’s when they hired Frank Contreras, who had been asked to go teach in the Valley. We told him to come back and apply here and he did. He ended up being principal of Owen Goodnight until we lost him to the TEA in Austin, and we got Dr. Carlos Rodriguez to come back. He had also—when he applied here—he graduated from our college here and he applied to teach here, and he was told that he wouldn’t get hired here, that it would be best if he went to San Antonio or somewhere else, and things like that. So that’s what we asked for in that later, and like I said, it might’ve taken two or three years but things started getting better.
THIBODEAUX: I was talking to Judge Rodriguez. We were talking about the Upward Bound program, and she told me that, I think, your son-in-law—and I forgot his name. I have it written down at home—and that maybe your daughter, Norma—
VASQUEZ-PHILO: My daughter, Norma—
THIBODEAUX: —did they go through—
VASQUEZ-PHILO: —and my son-in-law, Dr. Joel Rodriguez, who’s an orthodontist in McAllen now, went to the Upward Bound program.
THIBODEAUX: Do you remember anything about it? Can you describe the activities or what it involved?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: First of all, Upward Bound, of course, came about after Lyndon Johnson signed the Higher Education Act and after the Gary Job Corps came into being and the community action agencies came into being, and we had the Upward Bound program put in the university.
The first thing that was done, children from the high school—I guess, started in the junior high maybe—would be put on a bus and brought to the campus grounds and were allowed to walk through the campus grounds, visit the dormitories, and just get acquainted with the campus, which up to then was something like a palace up there on the hill for the Anglos. It wasn’t for blacks and Mexicans.
It was very interesting to note that the people that came to college at that time here in San Marcos were usually people from the Valley who were more sure of who they were, and they had a lot more—oh, more of a dignified persons, like, hey, we’re people too. We can come to college here. And a lot of them were higher middle class families from the Valley. Of course, San Marcos has always been a poor community of lower income people, and it wasn’t until the people from the Valley started coming here, the girls started coming to college here, meeting local boys, marrying local boys, and staying here. It’s very interesting to look back at that.
Linda’s mother Soila Rodriguez Rodriguez came from the Valley. Yolanda Menderes came from Goliad. She’s now the assistant superintendent in the schools. Anna Lopez, who is now with the university, came from the Valley. Dr. Galvan is not originally from here. You look around and all these people that came and made an impact on the Hispanic community actually came from out-of-town, but it wasn’t until the second generation came along, which would be our children and their children that have started to come up in the community and become very well-to-do professionals, like my son-in-law being an orthodontist. I have two daughters who are dental hygienists. I have a daughter who has a Ph.D. in psychology, very, very well-versed, very articulate, very—she’s in high demand as a public speaker. She has really done well for herself and her family, I’m proud to say. Ruben Ruiz, Jr., I could just go on and on about the many successful Hispanics that are in San Marcos now or in the surrounding areas. Yes.
THIBODEAUX: Well, this general question may tax your knowledge here. What federal legislation of the Johnson administration when he was president do you think worked best in tandem with Hispanic activism to create changes in educational opportunities?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Oh, the Economic Opportunity Act. That was the program that started really changing not only San Marcos but the whole nation, I believe. Of course, South Texas more so than any other part of the world. And I believe that a lot of the successes here were because at that time we had a college president, whose name was James McCrocklin, and he was a close friend of Lyndon Johnson. So when Lyndon Johnson signed the office of economic opportunity law, he told James McCrocklin, “Okay, get going. Do something for the people,” and so James McCrocklin got busy. And of course, down in the Valley people were waiting for this program. They had heard so much about what was coming down the path that they were ready, and maybe we were a little bit slower because we are the third community action agency in this state. But community action agencies in Texas were the programs that put a lot of Hispanics in leadership roles— (Recording stopped)
THIBODEAUX: We’re back up and just ask you to kind of sketch the political landscape for a Hispanic community in, let’s say, the ‘40s, ‘50s. What was it like?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Well, in the ‘40s I was still living at the ranch growing up. But I got married in 1950 and came to live in San Marcos proper, and the streets in the barrio were not paved. The people did not have delivery of mail, no street lights. It was just very, very—I don’t want to use the word, neglected, but unplanned, I guess, is the word.
And of course, the people had to buy a poll tax to vote. So my new husband and I became very involved in the American GI Forum, which I’m told that GI stands for government issue. I don’t know. And the women were called the Women’s Auxiliary of the GI Forum. We walked the streets picking up petitions so that people could get mail delivered on their streets, not necessarily up on their porch but at least in a mailbox in front of their house. We tried to get street signs up so that people would know the name of the street where they lived. Then we tried to do away with the poll tax. So those are the kinds of things that people were involved in those years during the early ‘50s. And so we’ve been active in all that, my husband and I.
THIBODEAUX: In fact, I was reading—I’m sorry, I keep forgetting the name—in Dreams and Memories?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Oh. Suenos y recuerdos del pasado [Dreams and Memories of the Past: A Community History of Mexican Americans in San Marcos, Texas]. Yes, that’s the book that I co-authored.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you. I don’t know why I left off the title of that. And you relate an interesting story—if you don’t mind repeating it—about how the GI Forum encouraged people to register to vote.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: (laughs) Oh yes. Of course, we loved dancing, you know, most people. We love music, any type of music. So what we would do is we would arrange to have a fundraiser—a dance, and everybody that came in would pay $1.75 to come in to dance. But really what it was, was the payment for your poll tax, so that’s how we got around that, and it was very successful. Or maybe we charged two dollars. Maybe we kept twenty-five cents to pay for the band and used the rest to purchase a poll tax.
THIBODEAUX: And it was against the law at the time for someone else to pay your poll tax, correct?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Correct. You had to come in and pay yourself and fill out your own form, and you had to do it yourself. But if you were going to go and have fun somewhere, you know, well, you didn’t mind doing it as much. It was just a way to get people together, and then people would talk about how important it was to get out and vote and get involved in the community and all of that, so it worked for us.
THIBODEAUX: So that situation was corrected with the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes. Yes, it was.
THIBODEAUX: And how did that affect the community?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Well, the increase in voters, of course, was very noticeable. And every year more and more it seems that it’s—especially the younger and better educated people are seeing how important it is to get out and vote. There were a few years—I would say, like about ten years ago—where there was a lot of apathy. I don’t know if that was all over the nation, or was it just here?
THIBODEAUX: All over. Hopefully, that’s being corrected this year.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Oh, have you noticed? Oh, wow! (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: So far. I hope we come out with a democrat. (laughs)
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Oh, I’m so happy about that. Yes.
THIBODEAUX: Me too.
There’s such an interesting relationship between Lyndon Johnson and the GI Forum, so I’m going to be peppering you with some of those questions. But just thinking back to when—well, you were still very young—but LBJ became a congressman, I think, back in 1938, and he was a congressman for about eleven years and then became senator in 1949. Do you know—have any knowledge of the relationship that President Johnson had at that time with Dr. Garcia or, you know, with the GI Forum?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Oh, absolutely. Dr. Garcia and Lyndon Johnson were good friends. And when Felix Longoria, the young army man—young man that was killed in action in World War II—when he came home to Three Rivers and his family went to the funeral home to make arrangements for his funeral, the funeral director said he couldn’t have the funeral there because they didn’t allow Mexicans in that funeral home. Of course, the family was devastated. Here was this young man who went to fight for his country and got killed, was brought home, and he could not go into—they could not put his body in that funeral home because the Anglos there said that no Mexicans allowed.
In other words, it was like we used to have a restaurant here in San Marcos that—I never saw the sign, but they said that once upon a time they had a sign that said, “No Mexicans or dogs allowed.” I never saw the sign but I did see my father try to go in and buy some hamburgers for us, and he was told to go around the backdoor.
But anyway, getting back to Felix Longoria’s funeral, Dr. Garcia—well, the family in Three Rivers called Dr. Garcia because by then the GI Forum was getting activated. Dr. Garcia was trying to organize and have this big veterans organization that could fight for the rights of the veterans. So the Longoria family contacted Dr. Garcia, and Dr. Garcia called Lyndon Johnson in Washington and told him what was going on. So Lyndon Johnson said, “You and the Longoria family are going to come to Washington, and Sergeant—” I don’t know if he was Sergeant Longoria—Staff Sergeant Longoria, I think it was—I think it’s in the book somewhere. “—are going to come, and he’s going to be buried at Arlington Cemetery.” So that’s what happened.
Do you know that I was extremely disappointed? Sometime last year—I don’t know if you know about this—I saw an article in the Austin paper, I believe, that said that they had built a new library in Three Rivers and they had wanted to name it the Longoria Library, and there are still people out there against it. So they didn’t do it.
THIBODEAUX: That is amazing after all these years.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: After all these years there is still that—what is it? Hatred? Jealousy? What is it?
THIBODEAUX: It may still be resentment that, I think, their town was brought to national attention in a very negative light, so all of those things I’m sure contributed to that. That is a shame.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: It is a shame.
THIBODEAUX: Was there a sense that LBJ valued his Hispanic constituency here in San Marcos and wherever it stretched?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: I think he was a true friend of Hispanics, and let me tell you why. And this is my personal opinion. Lyndon Johnson was very poor himself when he was a young man. Lyndon Johnson came to school here in San Marcos, and he lived in a boardinghouse, which supposedly it was moved to the corner of, I think at University Drive and Guadalupe. He was so poor that sometimes he didn’t have any lunch to eat. I know a family here, the Contreras family, who used to do his laundry, and Mary’s mother used to iron his shirts. Sometimes he wouldn’t have enough money to pay, so Mrs. Contreras would say, “That’s okay. Just forget about it,” because she knew what it was to be poor.
But I have a very interesting story that came from Corina Jaimes, my Head Start director at Community Action. Corina Jaimes comes from Cotulla, Texas between here and Laredo. When Lyndon Johnson graduated, the first school where he went to teach was a poor Mexican school in Cotulla. The Jaimes family had a little grocery story right across the school, and they used to see Lyndon Johnson during his lunch hour come out and sit on a bench surrounded by little Mexican children. Poor little Mexican children ate their little flour tortilla with beans or whatever. People were so poor at that time that—I knew the Garza family in San Marcos, who said that their mother would get up in the morning and make tortillas and some kind of flour gravy and put the flour gravy in the tortilla and roll it up, and that’s what they would have for lunch at school. So that was flour with flour, right? Well, Lyndon Johnson, according to Corina’s parents, would have a little can of sardines and a little package of crackers, and that was his lunch. Even then, you know, if a poor child stood close to him watching him eat, he would hand them a cracker.
THIBODEAUX: They were all very poor together sounds like.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: But how many Anglo people would have done that? To me that’s very moving.
THIBODEAUX: So did LBJ actively seek Hispanic votes when he was running for—in the Senate, did he come out? Like, San Marcos, I think you talked about he’s been here several times.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes. He would come out and speak and, of course, go down to the Valley, and he had Mexican friends in the Valley. Of course, there are so many ugly stories and you don’t know what to believe. I’ve learned now that I’m old and read more and hear more that—never believe everything you read, everything you hear, and half believe what you see. (Both laugh)
So you never know what went on down in the Valley. Certainly, there’s corruption, like there has been corruption everywhere, all over the world. But there were stories about dead people voting for Lyndon Johnson and that sort of thing. I don’t know. I don’t think anything like that ever happened here or in San Antonio or in Houston. If it happened, it happened way down there and close to the border, and who knows?
THIBODEAUX: The GI Forum was a nonpartisan organization, wasn’t it?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: It is.
THIBODEAUX: It is.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: It is.
THIBODEAUX: So it never got involved in any of his campaigns?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: No, they couldn’t. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: I think that may have been why they had such an interesting relationship because I think there were many times that even Johnson says, “I can’t help you because there’s so much against doing this for the Hispanic community.”
VASQUEZ-PHILO: That’s right.
THIBODEAUX: And then at the same time Dr. Garcia was saying, “Well, we can’t deliver for you because we’re nonpartisan.”
VASQUEZ-PHILO: That’s right.
THIBODEAUX: But they did try to work together when they could.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes, that’s right.
THIBODEAUX: That’s a very interesting relationship.
In hindsight, do you think that President Johnson or Senator Johnson—Congressman Johnson delivered for the community, that he did what he could for the Hispanic community?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Well, I believe he did in terms of education, you know, like opening doors for youth to go to college. I don’t know—I don’t recall right now what part he played in the—what do you call the law that allowed Mexicans to go into college, that at least 10 percent had to be Hispanic? What do you call that, do you remember?
THIBODEAUX: Affirmative action?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Affirmative action, yes. Do you remember what part he played in affirmative action?
THIBODEAUX: You know, I’m not sure. I haven’t really heard that term—or read that term associated with his administration.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Um hmm. Maybe that came later.
THIBODEAUX: I think it may have.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: I think it came later. But let’s say things like the Gary Job Corps Center. The Job Corps centers were set up so we could teach a trade to dropouts. And who were the dropouts? Mainly blacks and Hispanics. And so in that sense, he did open opportunities for education for blacks and Hispanics.
THIBODEAUX: Were there things that he could’ve done that didn’t get done?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Oh, I’m sure there were. I think that—I don’t know what role he could’ve played in—not forcing—I don’t know what the right word would be—school boards, city councils, county commissioners to do more for Hispanics. I don’t know whether he could not or would not. I really don’t know because those had to be our own fights. We had to fight to get on the school board here, to get on the city council, to get on the county commissioners courts. All that had to be local, you know. We had groups, like the Brown Berets, and we had a Spanish group called Uno Voz, which means one voice. We tried to unite ourselves to work towards getting a place on the school board or the city council or the county commissioner’s court.
THIBODEAUX: I remember reading in your book also some of the things you did to—the Hispanic community did to counteract the Good Government League.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: That they had a slate of, I think, white candidates.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Um hmm.
THIBODEAUX: Can you talk some more about that?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Well, we started getting some liberal college professors that came from other states into Texas, and they would come to Southwest Texas and get a job at the university. Then they would look around and see what was going on in the community and, of course, didn’t think that what was going on here was very fair to everybody. So they started working with the Hispanic community and helped us in a lot of ways.
I know that when I ran for the school board—of course, I have always been the type that likes to get involved, and I joined the League of Women Voters and a couple of clubs. Believe it or not, the Daughters of the American Revolution, which are known to be very conservative, they actually gave a scholarship to my oldest daughter because she was on the top ten graduates with a gold cord and everything. So they honored her by giving her a scholarship, which I was very proud of.
So we had these professors—I remember Dr. Emmie Craddick, Dr. Betty Kissler, Frances Emery, the wife of Bill Emery, and ladies like that that were influential in the community because of their stature at the university, and they helped me get elected to the school board. I also remember Dr. Betty Kissler being just appalled at the fact that when she came here and she tried to hire a housekeeper, other ladies in the community would tell her, Now, remember, Betty, don’t pay them more than fifty cents an hour because that’s what we pay them and we don’t want you to start, you know, raising the pay for them because we don’t think they need it or should get it. Betty just was flabbergasted. She couldn’t believe that. But that’s the way it was.
THIBODEAUX: Amazing.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Amazing is the right word.
THIBODEAUX: On to your position as executive director for the Community Action, Incorporated. Was that an umbrella for several federal programs?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: It became that. At the beginning the first thing we did was conduct a survey to find out what the needs in the Hispanic community were for the poor. Dr. McCrocklin, again, went to the different churches in town asking for volunteers to conduct this survey, and we had a very intelligent priest here that could see ahead. He called me one day and said:
Ofelia, you know, there are these federal programs coming and we need to know where the greatest need is for poor people. So I know you know a lot of people in the community. Would you be willing to help conduct this survey?
And I said, “Sure, Father Torino, I’ll be happy to.” So they got me, they got a lady from the black community and another Hispanic lady, Esperanza Hernandez, who happened that—she’s passed on how—but she happened to be the mother of later of Councilman Rick Hernandez and all the Hernandez boys. One boy is the president of the chamber of commerce in Kyle right now, Ray Hernandez.
Anyway, we conducted the survey, and we found out that the greatest need was a health clinic for the poor because at that time we had an epidemic of tuberculosis here in Hays County. The next thing that was most needed was a daycare center for children—for poor children because they could not afford the kindergartens or the daycares where the Anglos went. They were too expensive. And the third need was housing because we’ve always had a problem with housing, not enough low income or affordable housing for people in San Marcos.
So Dr. McCrocklin’s staff, I guess, wrote up a grant request asking for funds to fund these programs. That’s when a community action agency was devised. They didn’t want—the county didn’t want to be in charge. The city didn’t want to be in charge. I guess Dr. McCrocklin couldn’t see the university being in charge. So they formed—they started doing it in the Valley. Like I say, we were the third agency in the state of Texas. So Dr. McCrocklin got it started here, and he happened to know of a couple from Kingsville, Texas, who were dear friends of his, Margaret and Gilbert Herrera. So he called them and said, “Would you be willing to move to San Marcos?” Gilbert was a coach in some school in Corpus Christi and Margaret was a teacher, an excellent teacher. So, yeah, they agreed with him and they came down to San Marcos and they started Community Action Agency.
I was hired when Margaret came in and set everything up and applied for a health grant. They put it—the health department—in the courthouse where the head nurse was a nurse by the name of Josephine Mann. Josephine Mann said:
I need an assistant and she must be bilingual if we’re going to be dealing with all these Mexicans that have TB. We’re going to need somebody that can speak good English and good Spanish and that’s willing to take these people to the hospital in San Antonio, and that sort of thing.
So guess who was hired. I was hired to do that, so I started out as a assistant to the nurses in the health department.
From there Mrs. Herrera hired me as her assistant because she needed someone that was known in the community that would help her start other programs in the community.
And then of course, she applied for a grant for a Head Start program and got it. In those days you could get almost anything you wanted because the funds were there, the law was there. It had just been signed, and President Johnson wanted it to move. You know, get moving, do something. And so we started a Head Start program in Kyle and one here in San Marcos.
We started out here in San Marcos with a summer program. Well, the schools were still reluctant about those federal programs. Oh, it’s mostly for Mexicans. We put it in the Catholic school building because after all it was closed during the summer. There was nothing going on. So what better place than to put it there, and they needed community support. Of course, the church wasn’t going to charge anything. The building was there for free, and so that’s where we started our Head Start program here in San Marcos. And then we set up another classroom at the Presbyterian church, also a free building. And from there we grew until when I left twenty-five years later, our Head Start program had grown from thirty-six children to about six hundred children with a budget that had started, I think, with two hundred thousand dollars up to almost a million dollars. Teachers—I don’t know how many teachers, I don’t remember now, but it just grew and grew and grew. We had Head Start programs not only in Kyle, San Marcos, we had three different ones: Blanco, Lockhart had two, and we just grew and grew.
Oh, and let me tell you this interesting fact. San Marcos Community Action Agency—in a couple of years, Lockhart wanted a community action agency. Well, by that time they were not funding any community action agencies any longer. So the commissioners court in Caldwell County came and petitioned our county commissioners—because we were under the county and the city overlooking us sort of as a pass-through—and they petitioned to come with us—to affiliate with us, and the commissioners asked me if I would be willing to do it. I said, “Of course.” Caldwell County has a lot of poor people. So we did it, and then Blanco County wanted a community action agency. Well, the same thing happened. We’re not funding them anymore. Go petition San Marcos and the county commissioners over there, which they did. And again, Bud Burnett said, “Well, it’s up to Ofelia, you know. Can she handle it? Can she do it? Is she willing to do it?” “Yes, I am. If I get the funding, I’m willing to do it.” That’s how we became Community Action, Incorporated of Hays, Caldwell, and Blanco Counties. But we started out as Community Action of Hays County only.
THIBODEAUX: And that was funded by the federal government, but now it’s being funded by local—
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Yes. Yeah. After several years—I don’t remember the year—I guess it was when Nixon came on board? I think it was after the election of Nixon that it changed from federal to a state—they called it—oh, I can’t remember right now what they called it. Human Development Grant or something like that. Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: I’m going to jump back to your father at Freeman Ranch. I don’t know if he and Lyndon Johnson ever crossed paths or not. I’ve heard stories of President Johnson going to the Freeman Ranch for the poker games.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Um hmm.
THIBODEAUX: Did your father ever see or meet or know of President Johnson going out there?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Oh yes. He saw him a couple of times. I don’t know if he ever shot a gun and killed a deer there, but what the Freemans liked to do was put visitors in a Jeep—an open Jeep—and just drive them all around the ranch and let them see the cattle, the deer, whatever came across. They would just get a tour of the ranch. It’s a huge ranch. And so my father would sometimes be there waiting at the gate, waiting for the Freemans and their visitors to arrive at the gate so he could open the gate, let them pass through, and then close the gate so the cattle or the horses wouldn’t get out. So he did that several times for the visitors. So he got to see them, and often times the Freemans would say, This is our right hand man, Fernando Trinidad. He’s lived here x number of years and he takes care of the ranch and the rest of the hands here. And then they would go on.
THIBODEAUX: Well, do you have any other stories related to LBJ that I just have missed or anything else you can think of?
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Only that I got to see him a couple of times when he came to San Marcos because people—we knew that he would be coming and that he was going to come to the university especially when he came to sign the higher education bill. I remember a huge—it seemed everybody was so excited and the streets were lined up with people on either side—and that’s the picture that I was looking for and I don’t know where it is, but he’s bending down shaking hands of people. You’ve probably seen the picture because I’ve seen it, I think, at the library or some other places.
THIBODEAUX: I haven’t seen that one. I think I’ve seen one of him signing it but not where he’s bending down and shaking hands.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: He was among a group of people shaking hands. If I find it I’ll—I’ve been so busy and then I was down with the flu and what have you that I didn’t get a chance to look for things, but when I find it I’ll give you a call and maybe you can make a copy of it.
THIBODEAUX: That would be wonderful. I’d like to do that. I could do it the same day, just pick it up and take it to the university and then come back with it.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Okay.
THIBODEAUX: That’s all the questions I have. If that’s all the stories that you can think of right now.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Okay.
THIBODEAUX: Well, thank you very much. I certainly enjoyed interviewing you.
VASQUEZ-PHILO: Well, I enjoyed talking to you. (end of interview)