Jeannette Garcia, a former accounting technician who worked with Juliet V. García for 10 years, and her husband Cesar Garcia pose for a photo earlier this evening in the PlainsCapital Bank El Gran Salón on the Brownsville campus. Arisbeth Rodriguez/ THE RIDER
Today, UTRGV hosted a “one-of-a-kind” event honoring Juliet V. García, former president of both Texas Southmost College and legacy institution University of Texas at Brownsville and, now, an awardee of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Dozens of people, many of whom used to work for or with García, gathered in the Gran Salón in the Student Union on the Brownsville campus to celebrate her, one of 17 people to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor from President Joe Biden on July 7 in Washington, D.C.
“There are a lot of things I could say about [García] but if you simply go to Brownsville, and you walk the campus you will understand who she is, what she’s about, what she’s done,” UTRGV President Guy Bailey said. “You continue to inspire and support us, and we see your footprint, your fingerprints here every day. We deeply appreciate that.”
García, the first Mexican-American woman to serve as a college president in the United States, continues to impact South Texas as a UTRGV communications professor.
She also serves as an advisory board member of both the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies in Austin and the Catholic Charities in San Juan and as a board member of the Ford Foundation in New York City.
“Every day, the university unfurls,” she said. “It’s in desarrollo, a strong word in Spanish, a young adolescent is in that moment … where they’re not sure what they’re going to be yet.
“They know they’re going somewhere and they know they’re going to be really good at it, wherever it is they go to. We’re in our desarrollo and we will be for decades to come. … We dreamed of having UT here. We got it. We dreamed of having a medical school. … There were so many stopping points and pauses along the way but every one of them was necessary to make the next one work.”
One of García’s most impactful successes was accessing the Permanent University Fund for the Rio Grande Valley.
“We had to crack PUF, a multimillion-dollar fund that had for so long not been available to the Rio Grande Valley,” she said. “It was wrong and people knew it was wrong and they tried to help us but couldn’t quite make it over that line, crossing that finish line.”
By dissolving UTB, therefore giving up her then-position as university president, García made way for UTRGV and brought PUF to the Valley.
“It wasn’t a perfect solution to what we all want to have here eventually, but it never is,” she said. “UT Austin’s not finished building itself. Why should we be so anxious to think it’s done here?
“We are simply stewards of our moment in our time and the best we can do is to do it nobly, honorably, honestly. And we did.”
Talent is universal, but opportunity is not, according to Nolan Perez, a member of University of Texas System Board of Regents.
“And that’s why it’s a deep honor here to honor Dr. García, because that’s been, really, the passion that she’s been gifted with,” Perez said. “It’s just the gift of service in providing educational opportunities for the region that she so deeply loves.”
State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. (D-Brownsville) said he and García go back 60 years and that they worked on so much together.
“Dr. García was a born leader back in junior high school,” Lucio said. “She was something special. … Leadership, as I’ve always said, is not the ability to tell people what to do. It is the ability to make people want to do the right thing through example.”
He then presented García with a Texas flag and the same state senate gavel used to officiate a lot of legislation she worked to have passed.
Jeannette Garcia worked for the former university president for 10 years as an accounting technician and said she is a great role model.
“Being the first female, and then being recognized … it’s something remarkable,” Jeannette Garcia told The Rider before the event. “It’s something to admire her [for], right. … I named my daughter after her.”
Juliet García said everyone at the event and many others who were not present are a part of the journey.
“All of us got a chance to do important work, a little bit of time, and that’s all we have,” she said. “We don’t have forever, just a moment, and that moment counts.
“Remember the old poem, ‘Casey at the Bat.’ The bases are loaded and it’s Casey’s turn to go up to bat, and I keep thinking, ‘Come on. You gotta knock it out of the park. It’s your turn.’ We had our moment and it was our turn and we did good work together.”
