Still, it can’t have come as a complete surprise, given the already remarkable results of the previous season.

“I was grateful as can be for the seven wins we got in my first full season with the team,” he says. “After all, college ball is such an inherently fair system. Everybody has the same number of scholarships to go around (85), the same size coaching staff, more or less the same strength staff. Really, we could have won all those games in 2020 but for one or two events. Most of them ended up being one-possession contests.”

But spend a bit of time talking with Coach Traylor and you get the impression that the team’s rapid transition to success is about a whole lot more than athletic talent on the field. There’s a new ethos to the team, one that’s hanging on the walls in the locker room, the team meeting rooms, and pretty much any place where the players meet or train. Traylor summarizes it with his five fingers.

“Your pinky represents integrity; you do what’s right, regardless of how difficult it is. Your ring finger is passion; you keep your heart in it no matter what’s happening. Your middle finger represents mental and physical toughness; you point to your brain and your heart. Your index finger is selflessness; you point it toward your teammates. And your thumb points back at yourself to demonstrate perfect uncompromising effort.”

He then closes his fingers up into a fist and smacks his other palm.

“Trust the process,” he says, “Control what you can control. Just focus on winning the day. Do that each day and we’ll all be just fine.”

There are 112 players on the UTSA football team, and when Coach Traylor walks into the locker room and shouts “Integrity!” they all yell back as one, “Win the day!” Ditto for a few days later when he walks in and shouts “Passion!” And so it goes, one day at a time, one win at a time. Next thing you know you’re winning 12 games and holding a loft a conference trophy.

But there’s another important element to what this new coach has brought to the UTSA team and indeed to the entire campus. It’s an enthusiasm for the local schools, kids, and community. When he arrived in late 2019 there were just eleven local kids on the squad. Today that number is forty and the goal is for even more.

“Every kid you recruit out of high school is a gamble—physically, mentally, emotionally, “he says. “If I’m going to gamble, I’d rather gamble on a local kid any day. And we stay connected to as many of them as we can, because even if we lose one to an out-of-state school, they might well decide after a year that they’d rather be back playing at home. The more local kids we have, the more it connects us to the community, and vice versa.”

That enthusiasm for community didn’t just materialize out of thin air. Traylor grew up in Gilmer, Texas and graduated from Gilmer High in 1986. But he swears that every step along the way, going back as far as he can recall, he always wanted to be a football coach.

“I wrote in my high school yearbook when I was eighteen years old that I wanted to be coach of our team,” he recalls. “It took me twelve years to make that dream come true.”

In the end, he coached at Gilmer High for fifteen seasons and compiled a 175-26 record, leading the Buckeyes to five state championship games, three state titles, and twelve district championships, in the process winning Texas State High School Coach of the year four times and coaching no fewer than six future NFL players. Throughout those years, more than 100 kids earned full college scholarships. Years later, the school would name their stadium after Traylor. The coach remembers with a grin a call he got many years later from a student he’d been working to recruit out of Marshall, Texas. At the time of the call the kid was running in a track event at Gilmer High.

“Coach,” he said, “guess what? The stadium here at Gilmer is named after a guy with the exact same name as you!”

One can imagine the kid’s surprise when Coach Traylor explained the reason for the similarity of names. His response?

“I thought they only named stadiums for people after they’d died.”

Back on the coaching thing for a bit, we talked about what makes a good one and what makes a person want to be an athletic coach, even more so than wanting to be a player.

“I’ve asked my parents about that,” he says. “What was there about my upbringing that could explain it? They honestly have no idea. All I can tell you is that I’ve always wanted to do something that made an impact on the lives of young men. And for as long as I can remember, football coaches were always my heroes, in particular Tom Landry (Dallas Cowboys) and Grant Teaff (Baylor Bears). But I can’t credit my parents with my love of athletics or coaching. They were both musicians who met at Texarkana Junior College on music scholarships.”

Coach Traylor recalls being pretty judgmental about his own coaches in high school.

“I could tell right away which ones truly loved their players and which were just doing it for a paycheck. Shortly after high school, I remember telling Coach Greg Owens (Sulphur Springs Wildcats) that one day I would return as head coach of the Gilmer team. And I also told him that when I did, I would make a point of teaching those kids all the things that no one in my generation ever learned from their coaches—how to jump, how to do squats properly, all the training things we never learned.”

If there’s an underlying philosophy to Traylor’s approach to coaching, it can be summed up in four words—turning boys into men.

“Boys take,” Traylor says. “Men give. At the end of all this, that’s going to be my real legacy. How many boys did I help to turn into men? And remember, even if a few of these guys are talented enough to make it to the NFL, the average career there is about three and a half years. So odds are that one day you’re going to be twenty-five years old and your football days are going to be over and you’ll be looking at what do I do for the remaining fifty or so years of my life?”

Coach Traylor has high regard for the leadership of the university and their emphasis on the futures of the young men who take part in the football program.

“No one at UTSA, including President Taylor Eighmy and Athletic Director Dr. Lisa Campos, has ever said one word to me about winning,” he says. “They are all about the complete student. Just be the best you can be every day and the winning will follow.”

Every week Coach Traylor meets with academic advisers and they share with him a report that details the academic status of each of the more than 100 young men in his charge—GPA, test scores, class attendance, all of it. The players—the students—are fully aware of this, and they know they aren’t going to be cut any slack when it comes to academics.

There’s a fundamental love of not only the game and the leadership challenges that go along with coaching, but also the recruiting process. Following his graduation from Stephen F. Austin State University, where he played as a walk-on quarterback, he held assistant coaching positions at Big Sandy High School (89-92) and Jacksonville High School (93-99) before returning to Gilmer. His first position after Gilmer was under Charlie Strong at Texas, where he earned Big 12 Recruiter of the Year honors.

“I learned an awful lot from Charlie Strong,” he says. “I’ve always loved the recruiting process. I just enjoy getting to know the kids and their families. I have to say, though, that I’m not a fan of the word recruiting. I don’t feel that it does justice to the discipline. Sure, it’s about identifying talented kids, but it’s also about understanding, getting to know them, their families, the whole package. You need to fully appreciate the impact that you’re in a position to have in these kids’ lives.”

Based on the success of his first two years with the program, Coach Traylor has just signed a new ten-year deal with UTSA.

“The school figured that there’d be some competition given how we’ve done so far, and they just wanted to get out in front of that,” he says. “I love the program here, the support of the campus and the community, all of it. We’re the seventh largest city in the country and we’ve got a great university. I want to be a part of building something truly special here.”

In fact, Coach Traylor had his eye on the UTSA program going all the way back to when it started in 2011 with the first full season under Coach Larry Coker (formerly a national championship winner with the Miami Hurricanes) and then Frank Wilson in 2016. Asked about future aspirations, whether with bigger schools or perhaps the NFL, Coach Traylor’s answer does not surprise.

“I love coaching young men. My purpose is to help make boys into men. In the NFL the players already have families and kids. In many cases, they’re making more money than the coaches. I feel like I’m just more suited for working with college-age kids. There are only two universities in Texas who in the last three signing classes have signed 100% Texas high school players, and we’re one of them. I’m as proud of that fact as anything else I’ve done in my career.”

We talked a bit about the recent changes to the NCAA rules on student athletes making money from their athletic work, the so-called “name, image, likeness (NIL)” policy changes handed down this past summer.

“Our boosters are the main ones who are going to have to deal with that,” he says. “There are plenty of businesses out there who stand to benefit from doing deals with a few of these kids. In the end, though, we have eighty-five kids on scholarships and we’d like to take care of all of them. These NIL changes will likely only affect maybe ten percent of the players. The biggest problems could come in the locker room with the kids who benefit from this and those who do not.”

And what have been his biggest challenges since coming to the UTSA program?

“Well, having Covid show up three months after I got here certainly didn’t help any,” he says without hesitation. “I basically had no team for the first few months. Heck, I had Covid myself around that time and couldn’t even attend our first bowl game. Once that was behind us, we had to deal with the George Floyd situation. The kids were fantastic with that. We have several on the team whose parents are police and who stood up to make clear that not all cops are bad. And then there was the big freeze last February—lots of kids’ families without power or water.”

And what does Coach Traylor do in those precious few hours when he’s not focused in one way or another on the team and his players?

“I read a great deal for one thing. I’m currently reading Built to Last by Jim Collins. Then I have teed up a Mark Batterson book called Do It For a Day. I learn a lot from books like that. My wife and I also travel a good bit, mainly to spend time with our kids in New Orleans, Manhattan, and College Station.”

Coach Traylor has been married to wife Cari for thirty years and they have three children: son Jordan, who coaches linebackers for the New Orleans Saints; son Jake, who works on the Today Show in New York City; and daughter Jaci, who’s enrolled in the Mays Honors Business School at Texas A&M.

“It’s rare that all five of us manage to get together,” he says. “But we try at least to meet up for Christmas in New Orleans.”

I did, of course, ask the obligatory bucket list question, but the answer was pretty predictable.

“I really want to be a lifer in coaching,” he responded without hesitation. “But if my kids ever get married and have children of their own, it’s possible my perspective on that will change.”

Does he have any overall thoughts on his career to this point, or where he might be headed next? Oh yeah.

“To walk into a stadium back home with my name on it; that’s pretty special,” he says. “And to have been a part of what’s happening here in San Antonio, to have played a role in building a brand new forty-five-million-dollar athletic facility, that’s awesome as well. I’ve been blessed in so many ways. Of course, now that we’ve had the success that we did this year and last, I have to face up to answering the question of whether or not we can sustain this level of performance or whether we’re just going to be a flash in the pan.”

But Coach Traylor is a guy you’d be ill advised to bet against. And no one is better than him at explaining what makes a successful team click. I asked what he would tell a young person who thinks they want to be a coach. With that, we’ll let him bring it home.

“I think every coach should have to take classes in psychology. You’re here to serve. If you get up every day and you serve your players, then your life will be extremely blessed. If you use your players, your life’s going to be miserable. I’ve seen coaches do it both ways. Servant leadership is seen by some as weak; I see it as the ultimate strength. That’s what I would tell anyone who thinks they want to be a coach. Win/loss records are something people will forget about. But how many men came out of how many boys you started with—that’s what it’s all about. You’ll be considered a man if you’re taking care of people. Otherwise you’re just a boy.”

The San Antonio Mastersingers (SAM) is the official chorus for the San Antonio Symphony, interspersing its symphony performances with standalone concerts from time to time (such as, for example, our concert at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower this past November). The chorus has been in existence for seventy-seven years, having started in 1944. SAM was the first symphony chorus to be formed in the state of Texas and it was originally created to take part in opera performances under its inaugural director Max Reiter. At that time, the chorus was called The Singer’s Society of the San Antonio Symphony or for short, The Singing Society. The idea was to enable the symphony to perform some of Wagner’s operatic compositions, and the legacy of that early effort is the chorus that has been together ever since.

The chorus has had six musical directors in its long history, with John Silantien being the longest serving one by a healthy margin. But in order to fully understand and appreciate his impact on this highly regarded San Antonio artistic institution, we need to rewind things a bit and delve into John’s upbringing and the forces—both personal and professional—that brought him to San Antonio back in 1980.

Born in Rhode Island into a blue-collar family (his father was a laundry delivery driver and his mom was a stay-at-home parent), John’s parents made the auspicious decision to purchase him a Gene Autry model plastic guitar at the age of eight. This humble beginning was, though, a harbinger of things to come. The only other musical member of the Silantien family was John’s paternal uncle Mike, who played stand-up double bass in a local polka band. Not exactly the sort of musical heritage that typically leads to careers with symphonies and choral music, but John’s path to today has been nothing if not circuitous. The Gene Autry guitar’s musical qualities notwithstanding, John dove into it enthusiastically, teaching himself the rudiments of chords and music theory.

“The polka band would broadcast shows every Saturday night,” he recalls, “and we’d listen to Uncle Mike on our old Philco antique radio. When he wasn’t working, he would show me a few things on the guitar, then a few more things. He eventually suggested to my mother and father that they should arrange for me to get some music lessons. But on what instrument?”

That all-important answer would—after a good bit of soul searching—turn out to be the accordion, his parents apparently captivated by the prospect of their son earning a living as an accordion player in polka bands. Still, the most consequential life choices often start with the most modest of intentions. And so John, having demonstrated more than a modicum of musical ability at this still tender age, threw himself into mastering his newly chosen instrument. And he was good—so good, in fact, that he stayed with it all through his high school years, playing in numerous competitions, both alone and with a partner. By the time high school was coming to an end, John was playing in national competitions, and even parlayed his abilities into a Presser Foundation music college scholarship and a Rhode Island state scholarship. John would end up attending Hartt College, a performing arts conservatory in West Hartford, Connecticut.

“There were only three buildings when I got there,” he says. “Now it’s a major university. I chose Hartt on the advice of some musical people I knew. This was, after all, the whole point of going to college, as far as I was concerned. I never for a moment thought of majoring in anything else.”

According to plan, John successfully majored in music during his time at Hartt. By sheer bad timing, though, around the time of graduation (1968), things were getting pretty crazy in Vietnam, what with the bombing of Cambodia and all that unpleasantness. So, rather than risk being drafted, John decided to apply to graduate school. However, the fates were about to intervene once more in the trajectory of his life, this time in the person of his college roommate who happened to walk back into the dorm one afternoon carrying his violin case, having just returned from an audition for the U.S. Army band.

“‘What’s that all about?’ I remember asking him,” John recalls. “‘Free rations and quarters and a rank of E5 out of basic training’ was my friend’s answer. He told me that the Army band had only one accordionist and he was getting ready to retire, so they were actively searching for a replacement. I promptly got a plane ticket and my accordion and I went straight down there and I guess I must have done a good job of impressing them. By sheer luck, I chose to play a piece called España Cañi (a famous Spanish bullfighting song). Everybody was laughing in the room, but I had no idea why. Turned out that was the theme song played whenever the Army’s strolling strings performed at the White House. They were all wondering how I’d known to play that.”

In the end, John got the gig and the next thing he knew they were taking his fingerprints so he could get into the White House, meaning that despite his best efforts to avoid the military, he still ended up as an E5 in the Army. After three years, though, he decided that the bureaucratic government life was not for him and he took a position in Washington DC teaching music at the junior high and high school levels. This, though, turned out to be a tough way to make a living, with multiple side jobs required to make ends meet. And so, after a few more years of public school teaching, he found himself reflecting and deciding that he didn’t want to still be doing that when he was fifty or sixty. The Army had already paid for him to get a Masters degree, and so the next question became where to apply for a doctorate in music. The answer would be the University of Illinois. The school had a great reputation for placing their grads into professional positions, besides which his GI Bill benefits helped to pay his way through the program, netting him a Doctor of Musical Arts degree four years later.

John’s goal upon leaving Illinois was to find a role that would allow him to simultaneously pursue scholarly research while also doing some conducting. As luck would have it, one of his grad school mentors, Jim Smith, offered him an assistant conducting position at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

“They were prepared to pay me a salary and give me a chance to work at one of the best music schools in the country. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance. And during my first year there I took the opportunity to apply for a Fulbright scholarship. But I was not accepted because it turned out I was competing against a lot of people who were pursuing careers in musicology, whereas I was committed to being both a scholar and a performer.”

But John has many characteristics that have served him well over the years, just one of which is his tenacity. And so he applied again the following year. And being that much the wiser for the nuances of the application process, he won one of the coveted positions to study in London for a year. His time in England was consumed with primary research into his thesis topic, which he then followed up on with two more years back at Eastman writing his thesis. Around the time he was wrapping up that work, his advisor mentioned that he had become aware of an interesting opportunity in San Antonio, Texas.

And so, one plane trip and a few interviews, class lectures, and chorus rehearsals later, John was offered a position with the UTSA music department.

“One of the people I interviewed with was legendary organist Bess Hieronymous,” he recalls. “She had spent a lot of time at Smith College and I think she liked the fact that I had a New England background. Getting that opportunity was a dream come true for a young choral director.”

That was 1980 and it was around that time that John began also learning about the local symphony chorus, one that was not, as it happened, doing particularly well at the time, due in part to a decreased emphasis on its original operatic focus.

“These were not paid singers,” he says, “and the attractiveness of performing operas wasn’t exactly resonating with them. Several guest symphony conductors were voicing complaints over the level of preparedness of the chorus.”

And so, in 1983, the symphony went looking for a new director for the San Antonio Symphony Mastersingers (the name they use when singing with the symphony) to replace outgoing director Roger Melone. Having come to UTSA to build a chorus from what were admittedly quite sparse beginnings, John took up the opportunity to work simultaneously with the local community symphony group. He would go on to lead both groups for the next thirty-five years, retiring from UTSA in 2018.

“The two roles were in many ways quite complementary,” John says. “The work at UTSA was during the day and the SAM group was in the evenings. The skills required for both positions were very similar, and it’s not at all unusual for a university chorus director to have a community job as well.”

In the end, John’s orchestral conducting credits would include not only countless performances with the San Antonio Symphony, but also the San Antonio Pops and New York’s West Side Chamber Orchestra. He recorded three Mozart piano concertos with the Moscow State Radio Orchestra and made his Carnegie Hall debut in May 1994 conducting Mozart’s Requiem, returning again in 2008 to perform Mozart’s Vespers. In May 2016, he conducted the Mastersingers in the Carnegie Hall premiere of Robert Cohen’s Alzheimer’s Stories. Also, in addition to his many performance accolades, John is widely admired for his active work with the American Choral Directors Association, both on the national and international level.

The San Antonio Mastersingers have sung on international tours in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, where in 2018 the group performed at the American Cemetery at Normandy Beach, at the Abbey Church at Mont St. Michel, during High Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and at the prestigious Church of La Madeleine. John will lead the chorus on a tour of Scotland, England and Wales in June of this year. Following his retirement after the UK tour, the chorus’s new director will be Yoojin Muhn, who studied at the Women’s University in Seoul, Korea, subsequently training at the Westminster Choir College at Princeton University. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts from USC.

After thirty-eight years of leading choral groups, what comes next for John?

“My wife and I really like to travel, particularly to fishing places, e.g., Jackson Hole, or to an island up in Canada that’s so out in the wilderness you have to fly in on a pontoon plane to fish for salmon. I also really like deep-sea fishing. My dream retirement has been for decades to keep this house but have another down in Rockport. I want to have my own boat where I can get up at 5:00 and go out for redfish or trout, or maybe just read the NY Times over coffee. My passion is our house, landscaping, working the yard. I’ve already done quite a lot on the property, building decks, sidewalks, just being outside. I want to focus on making a home that’s filled with feng shui, where everything is organized and just right.”

“All in all, I have no regrets about the career path I’ve pursued,” John says. “It’s been a struggle at times, of course, like any worthwhile endeavor. But the satisfaction I feel with the chorus is something I’ll always treasure. I’ve had the opportunity to make a difference. I’ve affected the lives of graduate students who are now out in the world teaching. I’ve just been so lucky, and I don’t believe I could have wished for a better path.”

If you’re interested in learning more about the San Antonio Mastersingers (or maybe even auditioning), you can reach them at www.samastersingers.org or samastersingers@gmail.com

The first transformation happened in the early 1900s, when the organization became an adoption agency for women facing an unplanned pregnancy (The organization was such an early entrant into Texas adoptions that their license number is 4). The mission of creating bright futures led directly to the construction in the 1960s of the organization’s current twenty-five-acre campus in northwest San Antonio. Providence Place continues to provide adoption services today, including programs that connect young women facing an unplanned pregnancy with families wanting to adopt. The majority of recent adoptions have been children placed in forever families through Child Protective Services. To date, Providence Place has placed over 6,000 babies and children in loving families.

Adoption trends began to shift in the mid-70s and the need for a “Maternity Home” decreased. These political and societal changes forced the organization’s leadership to pivot and begin serving young deaf people, a shift that soon led to work with other disabilities. Throughout those years, Providence Place would typically have 50-60 young adults with disabilities undergoing some combination of life and work skills training.

This revised mission continued for another forty-four years, until evolving state regulatory standards forced yet another change in direction. In 2017, the nonprofit opted to tackle the large and growing problems of human trafficking and domestic violence, adopting the mission of “working to eliminate the cycle of generational trauma through innovative services.” Judith, who became the organization’s CEO in 2015, recalls that time as one of research, soul searching, and great change.

“In 2016 we began exploring where the greatest community need existed and we just went ‘Wow!’ And shortly thereafter we started researching grants and other funding opportunities that would allow us to address domestic violence and other related issues.”

Providence Place provides these services through a transitional housing program called My Mariposa House, which provides residential support and rehabilitative services for up to twenty women at a time who have been victims of trafficking or domestic violence. The women typically stay for as long as eighteen months.

“These women,” Judith says, “have typically experienced very complex traumas and are in need of not only safe housing but also various training services so that once they leave us they can take productive self-sustaining roles in the community. We can provide for not only the women but also a single child up to the age of three. It thrills me to say that we’ve just recently had our first group of program graduates.”

Another program operated by Providence Place is known as Parenting with a Purpose. It’s a community-based parental education service for families with children three and younger.

“This is financially our largest program, “Judith says, “with a budget of about a million and a half dollars a year. We partner with San Antonio’s Avance head start program, the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA), and other community partners to organize parent strengthening classes and deliver material assistance for items like diapers, formula, baby wipes, etc.”

Providence Place’s third community program is known as Supervised Independent Living (SIL) and it is designed to provide transitional housing assistance to young women in extended foster care. The program is designed to help young adults referred to us through DFPS, so that they can be better prepared to age out of care through supportive services.

“We have apartments on our campus for these women,” Judith says, “and they can stay here until age twenty-two, though they have to be employed or in school during that time.”

The last program offered by the organization is called Oasis House, and it is a ninety-day emergency shelter program also targeting kids aging out of foster care who would otherwise be homeless. Judith describes the one unfortunate legal downside associated with the Oasis program.

“Prospective clients have to be officially homeless for one full day before they can be referred to us by South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless (SARAH). But once they come to our attention, they can stay here for up to ninety days or take advantage of HUD-funded rapid re-housing throughout the city.”

Providence Place can house up to forty people on their campus, spanning all four of its major programs. They’ve served over 4,000 people through their education classes, which take place everywhere from Bexar County jails to local housing authorities to public parks. They also work with many partners throughout the community, but with a goal of supplementing services and filling gaps rather than duplicating services offered by others.

Because it’s come up in some form in every interview I’ve done over the past two years, I had to ask about the impact of Covid on their services and their day-to-day operations.

“We didn’t have the option of shutting down during Covid,” Judith says. “We didn’t feel like we could neglect our families in parenting education, and so we continued providing services throughout and are still doing so. Several of our team members worked from home for a couple of months, but we simply had to keep everything going. We did, though, modify some of our processes a bit, including staggering our enrollment into the various residential programs. As it happened, we opened the Supervised Independent Living program in March 2020, just as Covid was getting started, so that was difficult. Like everyone, we’re still living with the pandemic today. We wear masks all the time, and take whatever other steps we can to help ensure that everyone here is safe—resident, employee, or visitor. As a result we haven’t had a single Covid case that originated here.”

And so, how does someone like Judith Bell come to join an organization that’s had such a history of change and that today has such a broad reach in the San Antonio community?

“I was raised in West Memphis, Arkansas,” she says. “My father was in law enforcement and he never hid us from anything about society, the good or the bad.”

Having pretty much always assumed she was headed for law school, she discovered once she got to college at the University of Arkansas that she didn’t much like Political Science. So, in the end she would leave Arkansas with BS and MS degrees in Child Development and Family Services. From there Judith went on to earn her Ph.D. in Human Development from Iowa State, a program highly regarded for their Family and Consumer Sciences programs. She picks up the story from here.

“My goal upon finishing my doctorate was to return to Arkansas or Louisiana (where my parents had recently relocated). I got a teaching position at Northeast Louisiana University, but discovered after a couple of years that I didn’t much care for the position there. After that I took a position with social services in Monroe, Louisiana, a role that gave me a lot of experience with domestic violence victims. A few years later, I joined Volunteers of America in northeast Louisiana, but unfortunately, after ten years of service, my position there was eliminated and I once again found myself looking for a position where I could pursue my passion.”

Then came a fateful day in 2011 when Judith happened to run across an ad for a nonprofit executive position in Texas.

“I uploaded my resume and a few days later I was interviewing in San Antonio,” she says. “A couple of weeks after that, I packed my things and moved to what for me was the big city.”

She served as Chief Operations Officer (COO) for four years before being named CEO in 2015, the role she has held ever since.

“It’s a real love story,” she says. “I love San Antonio. I love Providence Place, and I love the mission of our organization. We’re doing important work and our outcomes tell us that we’re having an impact on people’s lives. What better job could there be than improving people lives?”

What’s a typical day like with an organization whose mission touches so many people in so many different ways?

“For starters, it’s a lot of strategic conversation. We believe in collaborative leadership, so we operate with three key executive roles: CEO, COO, and Chief Program Officer (CPO). We meet each day for everything from reviewing and approving an annual budget to having strategic conversations about how to move the organization forward. We also do a lot of donor calls. We’re always looking for other funding options that allow us to stay within our mission. We lean heavily toward institutional donors, but we also have about 300 individual donors and direct mail is our bread and butter method of reaching these folks. We are trying something new this year—a Christmas Wish Book Gala. We’ve created a catalog of items that our clients need year-round, but we’re asking people to contribute now to help pay for those items.

“As CEO my greatest challenge is keeping us from going down the path of mission creep so that we’re not chasing funding sources ineffectively. Our main objective is to keep true to the mission at all times. But, of course, we’ll always be willing to do whatever is required to meet the needs of the community. In 2013 we went through a name change, deciding to move away from the Methodist Mission Home label. At that time the name was potentially confusing—some people thought you had to be Methodist to come here. Also, there was confusion with Methodist Children’s Home in Waco. But our broader thought was that having a name not associated so directly with the Methodist church would allow us to generate a broader pool of donors and church contributions.”

What’s on the horizon for Providence Place as we (hopefully) near the end of Covid and begin to branch out a bit more into our community?

“I see nothing but growth opportunities for us going forward. I know that we can do more in foster care and the prevention of child abuse. Most of the attention in San Antonio is on placing children in foster care, not on the prevention of abuse and neglect. But there are plenty of possibilities for growth in that area. There simply are not enough agencies in town to keep up with the number of young people aging out of foster care. We can expand our Supervised Independent Living program, as well as our community-based services for survivors of complex trauma. They need to get away from the toxic people in their lives who know where they are. Our program is a rest, pause, and restore opportunity. This is often the first stable home our residents have had, across the board. We want them to develop a sense of safety and security and learn to live without chaos. The end of that chaos is restoration. Lots of women have left our program but come back later for therapy of one sort or another. Our goal is for them to leave here, be employed, and have a stable healthy home. They have successfully broken the cycle of generational trauma, so that their children will not have to experience the suffering that they experienced.”

What sort of final message would Judith like to share with readers and with the broader San Antonio community?

“I want people to know about our organization, our team, and the work that we do. We’ve been an integral part of the San Antonio community for 126 years. Back in the sixties when this campus was built, it made perfect sense because this was where parents sent their pregnant daughters. It was out in a wooded area that few people even knew about, and being secretive was an okay thing back then. Now that is not the case. I know there are people in the community who are passionate about the work we do and about finding ways they can get involved, whether that’s helping kids in foster care, domestic violence survivors, or youth aging out of foster care. We offer a very comprehensive program that changes people’s lives for the better. And that’s just as true for our team members and volunteers as it is for the people we serve. At the end of the day, our goal is to help people write a new chapter in their lives.”

If you would like more information please email Providence Place at info@provplace.org or call 210-696-2410.

In past articles, I’ve mentioned that my very first trip from my Maine home was to Lackland Air Force Base for USAF basic training way back in . . . well, a long time ago. And now, after decades of traveling the globe for work and leisure, I’ve found myself right back here, calling San Antonio my home. Turns out, though, that I’m not the only person with that sort of circular life story. USAF Brigadier General Caroline Miller tells a similar story, except that in her case it was her parents who got married back in the mid-sixties at the Lackland AFB chapel. Now, all these years later, she is back in the Alamo City in command of the 502^nd Air Base Wing and Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA), an aggregation of formerly independent installations that includes Lackland AFB, Randolph AFB, and Fort Sam Houston, representing eight geographically separate operating locations and more than 250 mission partners. It’s the largest joint base in the DoD portfolio, comprising nearly 75,000 active duty personnel; more than half a million veterans, retirees, and dependents; and about $16 billion worth of facilities and infrastructure. It’s easily the largest responsibility yet for Brig. Gen. Miller, who took over the role in June of last year.

Gen. Miller is one of four sisters (she’s second oldest) and she had the itinerant upbringing typical of someone who grew up with a career USAF father (twenty-four years).

“We didn’t really have a home growing up,” she says. “We moved pretty much every two-three years. Fortunately now the military makes more of an effort to provide some measure of stability for its career families.”

Her mother is from Minnesota and her father is from Oklahoma, and the Lackland chapel nuptials came about because her father was working at the base. One of the menwho worked for him happened to be the husband of the sister of his future bride. The couple met as a result of the two sisters visiting at the base, following which Gen. Miller’s mother stayed on there as a teacher. All these years later, the parents are still together and living in California.

“My biggest mentor was for sure my mother,” she recalls. “She was a special education teacher and was really good with all four of us. She has the kindest soul and a unique sense of serenity. I remember playing volleyball in the living room once with my sisters and the Christmas tree getting knocked over. Instead of becoming upset, she just calmly asked if someone would pick it up.”

These days the family takes every opportunity to get together, whether for a birthday celebration or simply to spend time at their house on the lake in Minnesota.

“My sisters still give me a hard time because they’re convinced I’m our dad’s favorite (which of course I am!)”

Though it may, at this point, sound inevitable that the young Caroline would follow in her father’s footsteps and seek her fortune in the military, this was by no means a foregone conclusion.

“I was, for a long time, against going into the service,” she says. “All the moving around was just too much. I really missed having roots in one place.”

That said, the constant relocating was made at least somewhat easier on Caroline and her sisters by the fact that they were all active in team sports (swimming, tennis, and volleyball). Once settled into a new location, joining one or more sports teams helped the sisters to settle into their new communities. Still, military service was not at all on her radar when she graduated from high school.

“Growing up I was interested in math, science, and medicine. I even thought for a while that I’d go to college and then medical school. In the end, I went to the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California and got my undergraduate degree in experimental psychology. Then I worked for a couple years at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, but quickly decided I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. I was in the gastroenterology department and we did studies for the Army to find delivery systems that could stop bacterial infections. We used the same protocols over and over and it got pretty boring after a while. I’m not an introvert at all, so spending my days locked away in a lab wasn’t as fulfilling as I’d hoped. I realized that I just didn’t have a passion for the work. That’s when I decided to join the Air Force.”

By the time the future flag officer got to Officer Training School she was twenty-six and believed that her stint in the service would be limited to just four years before moving on to her next challenge. It’s now been twenty-eight years and she’s still going strong. And how long will she stay with it?

“I have three criteria that determine my time in the service,” she says. “As long as I’m making a difference, having fun, and my family is still willing to come along on the journey with me, I’ll stay with it.”

The military is definitely a family affair though. Her husband also served for twenty-seven years before retiring from his role as a USAF communications officer. Her dad, of course, was ecstatic when he learned that his daughter was joining up, if a bit belatedly. He wished that all four of his daughters had joined, though in the end only Caroline would. One of the highlights of his life was administering the reaffirmation of her service oath when she received her general star in 2019.

Lacking the qualifications for a medical position in the USAF, her initial position was in personnel. It wasn’t the greatest fit with her educational background, but in the end she was able to make it work. As with any multi-decade military career, Gen. Miller has seen more than her share of duty locations and assignments, ranging from Alaska to Qatar and everyplace in between.

“I’ve enjoyed all of my assignments, but not necessarily all my leadership. I spent a year in Qatar in the desert, where it was about 100 million degrees much of the time,” she says. “The team and leadership were phenomenal—the fact that there was no one trying to take all the credit. We were operating in surge mode for the entire year I was there, but we all just worked together to get the job done. The other great example is my team here now at JBSA. Everyone works well together, we socialize together, and everyone is trying to do the right thing. We’ve definitely had some challenges though—Covid, of course, preparing to bed down Afghan refugees, and processing unaccompanied minors from the border, just to pick a few. But whatever arises, the whole team does whatever’s necessary to get the job done.”

And what does the general recall as her greatest leadership challenge?

“Dealing with Storm Uri back in February certainly qualifies,” she says, referring to the weeklong sub-freezing period earlier this year that saw countless Texans without power or fresh water. “We really underestimated the impact of that event. We didn’t pull the team together fast enough to deal with all of the infrastructure problems—power outages, frozen pipes, all of that. When I was stationed at Langley in Virginia we had hurricanes all the time. The difference, though, was that everyone knew what to do in those circumstances. The freeze we had this past winter was unprecedented for south Texas, and it caught us a bit unawares. You can bet we’ve changed our processes as a result of that experience.”

The military community in San Antonio is immense, as anyone knows who’s lived here for more than a couple of days. Not only does JBSA encompass numerous huge installations and mission partners, there are also more than half a million military-affiliated individuals (veterans, retirees, dependents, contractors, etc.) living in the surrounding area, most of whom have some level of recurring relations with one or more organizations that fall under Gen. Miller’s control. Making that all work seamlessly in a city of over a million people is nothing short of daunting.

“Honestly, I thought when I was up at Langley that our relationship with the community there was wonderful,” she says. “But our relationship with the city/county government and business community here in San Antonio is even better. We are constantly working with city leaders on emergency preparation, infrastructure planning, and countless other initiatives. We also have a two-year ‘Honorary Commanders’ program in which city leaders (government, corporate, nonprofit) get together regularly with representatives from one of our bases to learn about all of our operations, from flying to infrastructure preparedness to military working dogs and everything in between. We take about fifteen to twenty city leaders at a time and really let them dig down into the nuts and bolts of what we’re doing at JBSA.”

And how has our nearly-two-year pandemic affected her ability to effectively lead such an immense and ever-changing organization?

“It’s left up to local commanders to set a ‘health condition,’ (rather like the old DEFCON 1-5 system),” she says. “Initially there’s high-level policy handed down from DoD and that gets propagated through all the individual services. We then look at our hospital space, vaccination rates, positivity rates, and available medical personnel. During the height of Covid we were holding crisis action meetings every day. Now we’re down to once a week, and getting ready to go less frequent. Putting together a staffing strategy is complicated. Our organization has so many folks who just can’t work from home, e.g., security force members, engineers, customer support, etc. A lot of our mission simply doesn’t allow it, so we’re in a hybrid situation for now.”

With the sheer immensity of the organization and the ever-changing conditions, how does the general assess how good of a job she and her team are doing?

“It’s mainly through formal performance reviews,” she says. “My boss doesn’t know the details of what I do from day to day. But we have plenty of inspections, climate assessments, etc. My people are very frank about this. I ask my immediate team for honest feedback all the time. The best feedback I get is from my chiefs (Chief Master Sergeants). They have no further career promotion opportunities, so they have nothing to lose from not being candid with me. They give great feedback. I also work hard to be super transparent. Someone will say to me ‘Did you realize how you came across in that meeting yesterday?’ People have walked into my office and said ‘Wow, you really blew that one.’ My husband was a trainer and he was incredibly direct with me. I remember one time I had to brief a four-star general and I clearly wasn’t as ready as I needed to be. He told me as much . . . but I married him anyway.”

Recent years and several rounds of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) initiatives have seen the creation of numerous joint bases across the U.S., with JBSA being the largest. What’s Gen. Miller’s take on the effectiveness of the consolidation efforts thus far?

“The original goal of creating the joint base structure was to create operational cost savings for the military. What they’ve found here in San Antonio is that we’re so geographically separated there isn’t all that much opportunity for savings or synergies, even on missions, except perhaps that we’re able to handle all the medical training in one place. Of course at this point no one has the appetite for trying to break apart the joint base structure, so we’re doing all we can to make the most of it.

“Instead, with our resilience programs we’re working hard to identify and implement best practices across all the services and provide one-stop shopping for all military and ex-military members here in the San Antonio area. We have airmen working with soldiers, coast guard, etc. The days of turf wars between the services are behind us. We’re all working really effectively together now, trying to pool resources to make a difference across the entire installation. We’re in a resource limited environment here, so it’s critically important that we leverage those resources as effectively as we can.”

And what are the sorts of character traits that have allowed Gen. Miller to accomplish her goals to this point?

“First and foremost, I’m big on team building; that’s incredibly important. With an organization this large and spread out, you have to build cohesive teams, have to be able to delegate where it’s needed. Culture, of course, is also really critical. When I first arrived here, I’d ask what it’s like to be in the 502^nd Air Base Wing and no one could tell me in a clear coherent way. So we put together a contest and developed a mission statement and a “beast” mascot to personalize what the 502^nd means. Now if I ask someone what we stand for, they’ll talk about ‘the beast.’”

She also believes strongly in the importance of resilience, both organizationally and personally. And it’s a topic she knows a thing or two about, having survived a recent diagnosis of brain cancer, which resulted in surgery and subsequent rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. She credits not only the quality and professionalism of her medical team, but also her physical conditioning for enabling her to make it through the arduous treatment regimen and subsequently continue in command roles with the Air Force.

“My leadership, my team, everyone was phenomenal,” she recalls. “Their priority was making sure that I was okay. That leadership made a huge difference. They demonstrated what we talk about in leadership training. The support throughout the process was awesome, from airmen up through the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. When my boss asked me if I wanted to command again, I didn’t hesitate in saying yes, absolutely.”

I noted that she and her predecessor Brig. Gen. Laura Lenderman were standouts in a historically male-dominated U.S. military. How does she think about the role of gender in the modern services?

“Things have evolved in that there are more female leaders now than ever before. Major General Susan Pamerleau was the first and only female general in the fourteen years from when I was a Second Lieutenant to when I was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Now you can’t be in a meeting without there almost being 50/50 male/female mix, and it’s just that we’re growing and are more present than ever. It’s not a gender thing, just an airman thing. You promote the best and you’ll get the best people. But it takes a while to grow them. The first females at the Air Force Academy were about thirty years ago and now they’re all three- and four-star generals. There are seven female general officers just here in the San Antonio area. The real challenge is being fair and equitable when rating soldiers and airmen. Someone once commented to me that we were doing quarterly award packages with built-in personal/gender identifiers included, e.g., a name that might indicate a type of person a reviewer doesn’t like. So we switched to a number-only system and instantly eliminated a potential source of implicit/unconscious bias. We’re just looking for the best candidates. I’m a big proponent of fairness, but also diversity of thought.”

As demanding as a military leadership position can be, even a Brigadier General has at least a little time for leisure and reflection. How does Gen. Miller spend that precious time?

“I’ve always been pretty athletic, so I golf and swim when I can. Once in a while I’ll break out my son’s archery equipment and try to hit a haystack with his bow. And I travel up to Minnesota at least once a year to visit my sisters and parents. We’re also a pretty musical family. I played saxophone in the high school band, though I can’t really say I’ve kept that up. Now I play guitar and piano, and my husband sings and plays theguitar too.”

And so, with twenty-eight years of service behind her, how would Gen. Miller sum up her career, her life choices, and whatever is waiting around the next corner?

“Joining the Air Force was the best decision I ever made. I originally did it for selfish reasons—just needed something to do—but it’s worked out wonderfully. I greatly value the opportunity and the ability to develop people, to see them build confidence, go to school, and get the education that maybe no one in their family ever had. I feel like I’m making a difference in helping people along. I tell people every day, ‘Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and try things,’ and I try to live my life that way too. It’s okay to fail or to be told no. We are making progress with leadership. Sometimes if we want to accelerate change we have to take more chances. Our competitors like China and Russia are outpacing us in many ways. We come from a culture of not tolerating failure along the way. We need to get over that, and I feel like it is getting better. We have to allow soldiers and airmen at all levels to take appropriate risks and then help them out and not crucify them because they made a mistake. I think the culture is changing but it’s too slow. We have to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I remember a quote I heard from someone a long time ago—‘I’m 100% sure I don’t have this 100% right, but we’re moving ahead anyway.’ Culturally we’ve grown to be risk averse and a successful future demands that we change that.”

Born and raised in Dallas, Joyce has two older brothers, one an attorney, the other a trained physicist, now retired from his role as supply chain manager for the chemical industry. Her parents divorced when she was quite young, and Joyce and her brothers were raised largely by their mother, though with plenty of assistance from maternal grandparents who lived in Victoria, as well as various aunts and uncles in the area. She describes Texas as a familiar and comfortable place to be from, and one she has happily returned to more than once (more on that shortly).

Joyce was never much into high school, so much so that she opted to leave after her sophomore year at age sixteen. Searching for alternative means of education that would be more effective and rewarding, she ended up speaking with a family friend who happened to be president of a small Illinois community college called Joliet Junior College. Believing that a change of scenery might be just the ticket to a better education, and overcoming the reluctance of her mother to her sixteen-year-old daughter moving away and being surrounded by college aged kids, Joyce enrolled at Joliet under a somewhat unorthodox arrangement, seeing as how the college had intended its early admissions program to appeal primarily to high school dropouts who were interested in vocational training. She was admitted on a provisional arrangement in which she was required to maintain a B average for three semesters, following which her status would then be upgraded to that of full-time student.

“I was definitely a girly girl growing up,” Joyce recalls. “I was into ballet, cheer, and drill team. My brothers were more intellectual, but I never considered myself to be that way, at least not until I got to college. When I was very young, I didn’t even anticipate having an actual career. I imagined I’d become a wife and a mother. After the divorce, I saw all of our neighbors kind of feeling sorry for my mom because now she had to work to support us. And no, my family and friends were most definitely not supportive of the idea of me leaving high school so early. But in the end my mom was very encouraging. She insisted that I take actual academic courses though, not just a bunch of basket weaving and ceramics classes. I guess in a way I was following in my brothers’ footsteps, since they also both left high school early to go to college.”

In the end, she successfully completed the program at Joliet and transitioned from there to Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, where she obtained her undergraduate degree in sociology and political science. Her vision throughout these years was that she would follow up her undergraduate studies with a stint in law school, ideally back home in the Lone Star state at UT Austin. But, as events transpired, her undergrad advisor was a graduate of the law school at St. Louis University, and he encouraged her to apply there. She later traveled to St. Louis for her admission interview, and, while waiting her turn, struck up a conversation with a woman who was also waiting there for a moment with the dean of the school. Later, upon receiving notice that she had been accepted to the school, she also received the good news that she had been awarded a full scholarship—good news and also totally unexpected since she had never even applied for the scholarship. Turned out the woman she had spoken with at the dean’s office had been someone intent on working with the dean to create a new family scholarship endowment, and she had quickly identified Joyce as a perfect inaugural candidate to receive it. In the end, accepting the scholarship was a less expensive option than returning home and attending UT.

Thinking back on her law school days, Joyce remembers discovering that for the first time she had to actually apply herself and study hard to make it through.

“I was smart enough to have had a relatively easy time of it in high school and at Joliet and Southern Illinois. But when I got to law school, it turned out everyone else was smart too. I pretty quickly got together with a good friend and we created our own study group of two. We were so totally connected that we ended up completing each other’s sentences.”

Joyce’s plan had always been to return to Texas after graduating from law school. And so, one day while flying to Dallas for the usual end-of-second-year round of law firm interviews, she happened to sit next to an ordinary-looking gentleman in jeans and boots. “We struck up a conversation,” Joyce says, “and he told me he was an attorney as well. He asked why I’d gone to St. Louis for law school rather than one of the better known schools, and I told him they’d given me a great scholarship and a great education. When we reached Dallas and were getting off the plane, the man asked for a copy of my resume. Well, turned out he was on the recruiting committee for a Dallas law firm called Johnson and Swanson, one of the most prestigious in the city at that time. Years later, after I’d been working there for a while, the fellow admitted that he’d recommended hiring me because the firm ‘desperately needed someone who didn’t have their nose in the air.’”

Joyce did eventually begin searching for a new opportunity, having grown somewhat bored with tax law, which she describes as ‘spending countless hours in the library reading tax codes.’ Through a friend, she got a lead on an opportunity at The Southland Corporation, the firm that owned the 7/11 chain of convenience stores. She would subsequently go on to spend almost ten years there doing international licensing and franchise work. She deeply enjoyed the work and her colleagues, and it allowed her to remain in her home town of Dallas. However, the job entailed frequent travel, which, in turn, meant lots of time in cars traveling to and from the airport. And it was in one of these cars that her life would change once again, this time a bit more dramatically.

“My favorite driver was a guy named David Davodi, and we would engage in long conversations each time I traveled with him. Turned out he was a frequent driver for a woman named Sheryl Leach as well, also from Dallas and an executive with Lyrick Studios, and the creator of the wildly popular Barney TV character. Davodi repeatedly exhorted me to take a meeting with Leach, and he had also, as it happened, been spending a fair amount of energy talking up my background with Sheryl. Long story short—we finally met over coffee, and what was supposed to be a half-hour meeting turned into three hours. She offered me a job as in-house counsel for the company, and that’s how I became Barney’s lawyer!”

Any hesitancy Joyce had about leaving a large established law department and creating a new one from scratch was quickly overcome and Joyce took to her new role with the same verve she had applied to her other positions. In the end, she would spend fourteen years with the company, handling everything from the legal aspects of having a Barney balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to creating agreements for child television actors and their parents. Eventually Lyrick was merged with HIT Entertainment and that meant Joyce’s portfolio of responsibilities grew to include not only Barney, but other beloved childhood properties like Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder.

In 2008, as Joyce began giving serious thought to her next career move (HIT had been acquired by a private equity company that was planning to close the Dallas office), she was approached by a colleague from PBS who had become aware that the general counsel for National Public Radio (NPR) was planning to retire soon. And so, although she wasn’t terribly keen on moving from Dallas to Washington D.C., she took the plunge and applied for the position.

“It was actually quite a process getting in the front door at NPR. The first woman I interviewed with quit the company two days later. Immediately after that, my scheduled interview with then-CEO Ken Stern was cancelled because he had just been fired. When I expressed a bit of concern about the way things were going, a couple of NPR board members got me on a video conference and assured me that they had a vision for the role and they very much wanted me to take on the challenge. When I got there I discovered that the department was still operating very much in the dark ages. It felt like they were chiseling legal documents onto stone tablets.”

What was intended as a two-year stint to modernize the NPR legal department turned into five and a half years with the organization. Joyce arrived at the start of the 2008 recession with its associated steep drops in philanthropic contributions, which meant that her unfortunate first challenge would be organizing the laying off of a significant number of staff. In addition, union/management relations at that time were so fraught that there were over two hundred outstanding grievances awaiting the new lead counsel’s attention. While serving as head lawyer for the organization, Joyce also served as Chief Ethics Officer. She found herself in the midst of the Juan Williams imbroglio as well as various other controversies. After conservative activist James O’Keefe III released a video of NPR development staff meeting with representatives of the purported Muslim Education Action Committee—later determined to be heavily edited to distort the actual conversation—then-CEO Vivian Schiller tendered her resignation, opening up the CEO position, for which Joyce was asked to serve in an interim capacity.

“It wasn’t a role I particularly wanted at that time, but most of the rest of the executive team members were quite new. I had worked with pretty much every other department within the organization and so I agreed.”

It was while serving as NPR’s interim CEO that Joyce became instrumental in creating one of their now flagship programs, the TED Radio Hour, which came about from a series of conversations she had with TED executives, one of whom she had become acquainted with during her days at Lyrick/HIT.

She would serve in that interim role for nine months before NPR finally hired Gary Knell as the new permanent CEO. In response to the obvious question about why Joyce wouldn’t have made an excellent candidate to take the role full time, she clarifies that the board had, as part of its succession planning, included a provision stating that interim candidates were not eligible to be considered for the full-time role. However, in an ironic (and perhaps inevitable) twist, she did end up being strongly encouraged to apply for the permanent CEO position when Knell left a short time later. But in the meantime, Joyce took on the new role of Chief Administrative Officer, a position that included responsibility for organizing the construction of a new headquarters building for NPR. This responsibility would last an additional couple of years and would turn out to be excellent experience for when she made her way back home and took over the reins at Texas Public Radio.

By 2013, Joyce had had enough of the Washington DC weather, traffic and politics and was looking for a new opportunity that would get her back to Texas. In a fortuitous confluence of events, the prior CEO of TPR had recently left and the role was being temporarily filled by a team of TPR’s existing executives. In the end, there were a few fits and starts and postponements getting unwound from her NPR responsibilities.

“The TPR board was very understanding about my desire to leave things at NPR in good order, but they understandably wanted their new CEO in place. I finally set a firm date to leave NPR in December of 2013,” she recalls. “My last official act at NPR was serving as the executive sponsor for the office holiday party!””

When Joyce arrived in the Alamo City, TPR was still working out of their original building on Datapoint Drive near the medical center. But relocation to someplace newer and better was already being talked about.

“We wanted a location that was much more centralized, one that would provide better access to the community and to our staff members. After much searching up and down the Broadway corridor and other places across San Antonio, Judge Wolff suggested that we consider building out the brand new (but still empty) building abutting the Alameda Theater. It had originally been constructed as part of a larger project intended to revive the theater, and was intended to be a back-of-house facility for constructing sets, handling wardrobe, and things like that. In the end, that revival of the theater never happened, which left the building available.”

Joyce now sits on the board of the Alameda Theater Conservancy (among numerous other community roles) and she envisions a time in the near future when the theater and the station will be very collaborative. With funding for the theater revival now back on track with money from the city and the county, the prospects look more optimistic than ever.

The new TPR headquarters building, located at 321 West Commerce, adjacent San Pedro Creek, provides a wealth of facilities that include a small theater and a variety of conference facilities for community gatherings, or at least that was the plan before Covid.

“We had a big calendar of programs on tap when we first moved in, but of course we had to pivot like everyone else when the pandemic struck. We definitely want people in this space though, just as soon as it is practical to do so. We’re also excited to see the completion of construction projects along San Pedro Creek, including St. James Plaza. It will celebrate the St. James AME Church that used to be there and be used as a performance space. Our bigger vision is for this part of town to be a walk-able cultural hub, with the Tobin, Aztec Theater, and other facilities nearby.

“What I really love about our new location is that we’re creating a place of unity at a spot that was historically considered a dividing line in San Antonio. West of San Pedro Creek was thought of as Hispanic, east as Anglo. We want to be an organization that helps to bridge those sorts of gaps. We have a series called Dare to Listen that’s designed to get people together who have widely disparate views on social issues, and to then talk honestly about those issues. But we’re careful every day to not take a political stand on things. Our job is to give people context and share facts and then let them make up their minds, to provide an opportunity for civil discourse.”

Another big challenge for Joyce and her colleagues at TPR is creating a more cohesive platform for all of the stations that comprise the TPR family. It isn’t just about San Antonio. TPR operates stations in the Hill Country, Llano/Marble Falls, Del Rio, Midland/Odessa, and Gonzales. But those stations do not have their own dedicated news teams or other resources, relying instead on content coming out of San Antonio.

“They are not,” she says, “providing truly local coverage, although making that happen is part of our long-term vision. We also need to figure out how to get better coverage in the Rio Grande Valley, which happens to be the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. without its own public radio service.”

Joyce has also led the creation of several new podcast projects, including one called Demented, which is about becoming a caregiver for one’s parents. It’s being sponsored by UT Health, which is an excellent fit because they have the Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases that has just received an important NIH Center of Excellence designation. They’re also launching a podcast program entitled Out of Uniform about veteran’s issues and the challenges of reintegrating into the community following military service. Finally, a program called Cross Country is being developed to help create a broader understanding of the far-reaching impact of issues happening at the border.

In summarizing her long career, Joyce comes back repeatedly to her original mantra about being nice to one’s colleagues and contacts, and she attributes all of her opportunities and successes to instances in which she had collegial conversations, whether with adjacent passengers on a flight, a limo driver, or someone in the seat next to her in a waiting room.

“When all is said and done, I am about building community. That’s so important; it’s how we overcome all the polarization we’re feeling today, this seeming inability to come together. I want to draw people together and make them feel like they’re part of the same opportunity—to help highlight our shared values and goals.”

However, in order to fully appreciate the architectural, cultural, and economic contributions the Pearl has made to San Antonio during its brief lifetime, it’s worth stepping back for a moment and considering the history of the area and how it achieved its current status as one of the preeminent urban development projects in the United States. The story starts in 1881 at the Kaiser-Beck Brewery in Bremen, Germany, and an enterprising brewmaster who immigrated to San Antonio in the early 1800’s. Upon commencing operations here in the Alamo City, he observed that a freshly poured glass of the new brew resulted in bubbles that resembled sparkling pearls. From such inspirational moments are enduring brands born, and so it was with what would become Pearl beer. A brewery was promptly opened in San Antonio, known initially as the J. B. Behloradsky Brewery.

Fast forward to 1902 and Otto Koehler had by now taken over the top job at the recently renamed San Antonio Brewing Company and begun brewing Pearl beer at a site just north of downtown along the San Antonio River. Ever ambitious, Koehler in the ensuing fourteen years would grow Pearl beer production to more than 110,000 barrels/year, making the San Antonio Brewing Company the largest brewer in Texas. By this point, the beer had been named “XXX Pearl,” the three X’s an homage to European nomenclature asserting that the symbol was indicative of the highest quality. Otto remained in charge at the Pearl until 1914, on which auspicious date he passed away and control of the brewery passed to his wife Emma.

We need to digress here for a moment and note that the phrase “passed away” is a bit of an understatement in Otto’s case. As it happened, Otto was a bit of a player when he wasn’t busy running the brewery. When his wife Emma was injured in an auto accident, he thoughtfully hired a live-in nurse named Emmi to help out. She, in turn, had another nurse friend—a third Emma—who also agreed to lend a hand, and Otto set both of them up in a small house nearby. In short order, he was conducting affairs with both women while his wife was home recuperating from her injuries. Then came the day in late 1914 when Otto went to the house to pay a visit, only to be shot dead by (the third) Emma, who laconically remarked to police following the incident, “I’m sorry, but I had to kill him.” A few years later she was acquitted of all charges by an all-male jury. Go figure (worth noting, though, that the defendant ended up marrying one of the jurors from her trial).

And so, Emma (the wife) took over the running of the brewery, just in time, as it happened (January, 1920), for Prohibition to come into effect a few years later. Emma was intent on keeping the brewery in business, though, and deftly managed the place through Prohibition’s end in 1933, manufacturing and selling a variety of non-alcoholic products throughout that long period—soft drinks, ‘near beer’ (whatever that is), groceries, ice cream, etc. She even did dry-cleaning and auto repair in order to avoid having to lay off any brewery employees. In the end, Emma proved to be a gifted businessperson, so much so that when Prohibition ended at 12:00 a.m. on September 15, 1933, she was ready to ship product, and had trucks and rail cars filled with beer rolling out just minutes after midnight.

By 1943, Emma was ready to step down from running the brewery and chose nephew Otto Jr. to take over the reins. Stepping on the gas here a bit (else this could easily turn into a book), suffice it to say that much drama ensued throughout the remainder of the forties and fifties (including changing the name of the brewery in 1952 to The Pearl Brewery), with the production of Pearl beer unabated throughout this period. By 1969, though, growth had become a serious challenge (this was, by now, the era of Anheuser Busch, Miller, etc.), and the Pearl brewery was acquired by a conglomerate, which, following another series of complex mergers and acquisitions, ended up combining the brewery with other properties under the Pabst brand. By this point, the writing was on the wall, and in 2001, the employees, after making Pearl beer along the San Antonio River for something like 118 years, departed the factory for the final time.

All of which left behind an industrialized property covering some twenty-two acres and no obvious plans for what to do with it. Enter, a year later, Christopher “Kit” Goldsbury and Silver Ventures, who purchased the property outright and promptly began an ambitious development plan that would ultimately revitalize the area into the urban enclave that San Antonians (and visitors from near and far) know and love today.

“When the property was first acquired,” relates Elizabeth, “it was one hundred percent ground cover, i.e., asphalt and concrete, without a tree to be seen. And the river was completed inaccessible.” Elizabeth is a native San Antonian, and so it was perhaps fate that drew her back to the site where many a father and grandfather worked back in the days when the brewery employed something like eighteen percent of the entire city workforce. In fact, her family on her mother’s side goes back eight generations and hails from the original Canary Islanders who first came to this area back in 1731. She had moved away and was working in Dallas when the call came asking if she might be interested in working to help continue the development and marketing of the Pearl. By that time in 2011, work on the development was already well along, Johnny Hernandez was preparing to open La Gloria, and the Culinary Institute of America was just gearing up to open its third campus on the site.

Elizabeth speaks with passion about the three pillars that have underpinned the vision for developing the Pearl site, pillars that apply as much today as they did when work began two decades ago. The first is preservation of the brewery’s history.

“Silver Ventures’ vision was always to preserve as much of the history of the brewery as possible,” she says. “If they hadn’t come along when they did, it’s nearly certain that all of this would have been torn down.” These preservation efforts are apparent every place you go in the Pearl complex, but perhaps no site more so than the Hotel Emma, the flagship structure (and original brew house) named for the founder’s wife. The original developers of the brewery back in the late nineteenth century engaged brewery designer August Maritzen of Chicago, who, in turn, hired German masons who used the limestone and brick that were prevalent in the area. “The fact that these structures were still here 100 years later, though they needed some love and care to bring them back, makes them important buildings to the history of San Antonio,” says preservation architect Jeffrey Fetzer. “These buildings have had a long, important history in San Antonio and Silver Ventures was committed to preserving that.”

“The craftsmanship of the industrial objects left behind was so high,” Elizabeth adds. “The chandelier in the Hotel Emma bar was once the top of a bottle labeler. There are just so many materials that are super high quality. The architects kept three tanks in the bar for seating, a room that once held thirty of them. And there was so much additional old stuff that has been saved for possible use in future building projects.”

The second pillar that would come to define the Pearl was the culinary arts and a passionate appreciation for the role that food plays in the community. Thus, attracting the CIA to open just its third U.S. campus here in 2011 was key to realizing that vision. “The school is the center of the wheel,” Elizabeth says, “and of our commitment to offering unique culinary experiences. You will see spaces here for chefs, makers, anyone who’s committed to culinary creativity. We were advised when we first started development that the maximum number of chef-driven restaurants that an area of this size could support was four. We now have twenty-three with more on the way. After all, getting together around a table for a meal is one of our core cultural activities. We’ve also run a weekend farmer’s market here since our inception, one with a 150-mile radius from which all of the products must come. When we say ‘local,’ we mean it.”

The third pillar upon which the Pearl’s vision rests is the notion of the urban plaza. “It’s a gathering place,” Elizabeth says, “one that offers a diversity of experiences that are available at all times and are representative of the city. Before designs were completed for the Pearl, much research was conducted in other plaza-rich locations like Mexico City, Granville Island Vancouver, etc. But at the end of the day, we wanted it to be a co-creation with the San Antonio community.” And because the Pearl is both in and of the San Antonio community, it contributes in ways that transcend the cultural and culinary. It is a significant draw for out-of-towners, whether for conferences or tourism, with all of the economic benefits that come along with that. The development has also had significant knock-on effects in the surrounding neighborhood, as demonstrated by the nearly completed Credit Human complex and other businesses that have sprung up along the south Broadway corridor.

“In addition to the original three-pillar vision for the Pearl, our ability to contribute to the creation of a growing, vibrant surrounding neighborhood is of critical importance,” she says. “These are the ways I always orient toward a city—most accessible and most intimate, i.e., ways to understand a city through its food and its public spaces. The Pearl never closes; we hold ourselves to a neighborhood standard, and a neighborhood doesn’t close. And yes, the top three things people talk about in San Antonio now include the Riverwalk, the Alamo, and the Pearl. What we’re learning as a city is that the more people travel, the more they want these unique cultural experiences. As our understanding of these desires evolves, we’re doing a better job of putting forward the story about unique experiences, foods, and spaces.

The Pearl’s very first tenant opened for business in 2006, The Aveda Institute, purveyor of environmentally friendly personal products, built on the site of the brewery’s original garage. Soon thereafter (2009) came projects driven by Chef Andrew Weissman, Il Sogno and the Sandbar Fish House and Market. That same year, the weekend farmer’s market began in earnest, featuring everything from farm-fresh produce and dairy to honey, salsa, and gourmet candies. 2011 saw the opening of the amphitheater as well as La Gloria and the CIA campus, along with its student restaurant Nao (recently replaced by Savor). And, finally, in 2015, following an epic renovation of the original brew house, the Hotel Emma, and its marquis culinary properties Southerleigh and Supper, was opened along with the Sternewirth—Hotel Emma’s Bar and Clubroom—and the Larder. Finally, in 2019, the Food Hall opened in the former bottling department building, offering six eclectic casual restaurants and a large courtyard with splash pad, all sitting atop the underground JazzTX club, run by pianist and entrepreneur Doc Watkins.

The Pearl works closely with numerous city nonprofits to create memorable events and experiences. These include, for example, Dios de los Muertos celebrations, monarch butterfly festivals (San Antonio is a pathway city through which monarchs pass on their annual pilgrimage to/from Michoacán, and during the festival schoolchildren are given their own chrysalises to grow butterflies.), and Chanukah events in coordination with Rabbi Teldon that feature kosher food prepared by CIA students.

In addition to contributing to San Antonio in cultural, culinary, and economic ways, the area also serves as an icon for what is achievable on the sustainability front. When the Pearl developers re-opened the Full Goods building, it was the largest solar installation in the state of Texas. “We have significant rainwater recapture capabilities,” Elizabeth adds, “as well as a purple piping system that recycles all HVAC water. We have property-wide recycling, and we also worked closely with CEO Steve Hennigan at Credit Human to create one of the most sustainable LEED Platinum certified buildings in the country, a facility that is ninety percent more efficient than comparable sized buildings elsewhere.

What’s next for The Pearl? Elizabeth was a bit coy on this one, but assured me that plenty more plans are in the works—both cultural and culinary—some of which they expect to announce in the coming few months. “For sure there will be more food, more engagement, and more creativity. Also, the Pearl owns more land on the other side of the river, so we have plenty of room to grow.”

So, yes, the Pearl is about providing economic opportunity for the city. But more importantly it’s about connecting San Antonio to its traditions and its history. “A lot of the traditions that we celebrate here,” Elizabeth says, “are about the people who have been at this for generations—brewing, cooking, making. But there is also an entire world of really creative new people who want to come here and innovate and be makers for the modern generation. On some level it’s about realizing and embracing the fact that what’s old can be new again. To be a part of creating a special place where that can happen is a wonderful thing.”

Born in Merced, California, Bruce spent his childhood in Fresno, a childhood which, without getting into too many details, was more challenging than many, so much so that Bruce realized from an early age that the way he was going to get ahead in life was through education, and the way he was going to obtain that education—since his family was not in a position to pay for it—was going to be by leveraging his athletic abilities, which were abundantly apparent during his time playing basketball for the Edison High School Tigers. Reflecting back on his youth, Bruce has now harnessed his experiences and committed himself to work with young athletes in a way that helps them understand the impact that sports discipline can have on their own later lives.

“That upbringing was simply my reality,” he says. “I know kids who were more desperate, worse off, than I was. But we are all handed struggles of one sort or another in life and it’s up to us to deal with them. On the flip side, those realities created the person I am today. People often wonder how so many great athletes come from impoverished backgrounds, but Jesus wasn’t born in a mansion with butlers. It’s the struggle that we are obliged to go through, and it’s that same struggle that makes us stronger in the end.”

Edison was, first and foremost, an excellent high school academically. But, still, teenagers are teenagers, and so most of the focus—Bruce being no exception—was on athletics. But the lesson about the importance of education was imparted nonetheless, as even the future NBA’er and three-time champion was by no means guaranteed time on the court.

“The only reason I got to play as a junior on the varsity team was because five of our starters were declared academically ineligible. Turned out if you wanted to be on the court, you had to do the work off the court, one of the many life lessons I work hard to instill in my players today.”

Over the years, Bruce has amassed many such lessons, from teachers, from coaches, from family members, and even from the kids he’s coached. Sometimes, though, the most enduring lessons come from when we mess up and someone holds us accountable for it. Like the time he missed the bus for a game against Colorado State during his collegiate time at Cal State Fullerton.

“My freshman year in college, the night before a big game against Colorado, I had my bags all packed. But I turned the room heater up too high and ended up oversleeping the next morning. The coach called asking where I was and I grabbed my bag and ran down there. But he told the bus driver to leave without me and I ended up missing the game. Later, I called my brother Quinn, crying and upset that I’d been left behind. All he said to me was ‘That’s on you . . . it’s your fault for being late. You need to get to the point where you’re not making excuses. If you think it’s tough for you, what about all those other kids out there, the ones who have bedbugs, neighbors playing video games all night, stuff like that?’ He wouldn’t allow me to get away with throwing out excuses. It definitely wasn’t the response I wanted to hear, but it sure was what I needed to hear.”

The moral of that anecdote for Bruce wasn’t so much about being on time—though that’s certainly an important thing to know in life—but rather about the importance of owning it when you make a mistake and not trying to make it someone else’s problem. (Historical note: Bruce was only ever late one other time in his entire basketball career, and that was when he was playing for the Celtics. “I was closing on a house in Boston,” he says, “and I grossly underestimated how long it would take to sign all the paperwork. But in the end Coach Pitino just hit me a fine and then let me play in the game.”)

Nearing the end of his collegiate career at Cal State, Bruce, in the end, opted to leave school nine units short of his degree. Having gone undrafted by the NBA, he left college in order to pursue professional playing opportunities in France, an alternative path he was counting on to eventually land him an NBA opportunity. But by this point in his life, he had not only learned lessons about the importance of education, but also about finishing what you start, and the unfinished degree never stopped weighing on his mind. And so, years later, Bruce would complete that communications degree, studying in the team hotel during road games, and taking a final exam in the midst of the 2003 playoffs between the Spurs and the L.A. Lakers, reasoning all the while that if he was going to lecture kids in the future about going to college, he’d better finish doing it himself.

Another important lesson had to do with the inherent value of working hard to achieve your goals and dreams, and keeping at least one eye on the long game rather than insisting on everything coming your way right now. It’s all about work, and discipline, and commitment.

“I will not talk with the kids about the NBA,” he says. “What I will talk about is how hard it was to get there. It’s not about you doing it your way. You have to help your teammates at every opportunity. My experience should help them to understand that. I was never a phenom like Kobe or LeBron. I had to work constantly to get noticed, to get time on the floor. Now I feel like I have a voice, someone who’s been there who can offer young kids a better blueprint because of my experiences. And, in the end, not getting drafted worked out well for me. I have drive and desire. There’s real value in getting kids into the gym at 6 a.m. to practice. You’re working your butt off while everyone else is sleeping. As we get into games and playoffs, it’s important to keep that perspective on things. Meantime, leading up to that, I’ve got kids running up and down the court, throwing up in trashcans, and the sun is barely up! But later, when those kids go to college and end up working in corporate America, they can utilize all those old experiences, teammates, and life lessons. That’s what I want from my time here at TMI.

“Yet another important lesson I want these guys to take away from their time here is the importance of being satisfied with yourself and what you’ve gotten out of life. For instance, I learned early on in my professional career to not worry about how my paycheck compared with anybody else’s. Dwelling on that is a recipe for constantly being unhappy. As long as you’re happy with yourself, that’s what it’s all about. And related to that, of course, is the importance of not being afraid to fail at things. That’s one of the most important lessons in life, one that contributes directly to being contented with yourself. It allows you to process and learn from failures, and ultimately become a better person. You don’t want to live the rest of your life wondering what-if.”

That goes, as well, for the sorts of opportunities that come your way. Bruce certainly didn’t come out of high school thinking ‘My goal is to become one of the best defenders in NBA history.’ It simply turned out that that was where his particular opportunity manifested itself, one that he seized enthusiastically and made the most of.

“A big part of my embrace of defense was simply to get on the floor. There are plenty of guys who are talented offensively. You have to be able to score at any level to play. For me defense was my opportunity to get into the game. But, of course, part of it is your skill set as well. You have to be realistic with yourself, continue to work at it. I had struggles creating shots at this level and so I had to learn to adapt. And then in the off-season I made myself a better three-point shooter, better ball handler. I didn’t come back telling Pop to get the ball to me. My job was on the defensive side. Now that I’m in the role of coach and mentor, it’s my responsibility to put kids in positions where they can succeed. If you’re going to win games, you have to have a game plan that benefits from what all the players can do. Whether you’re playing at sports, or doing a corporate job, you’ve got to play to your strengths.”

Newly married to wife Sarah (5 months), Bruce has two sons, Max (9) and Bruno (8), as well as sons Ojani (15) and Ozmel (14) from a previous marriage. He has embraced the lessons from his experiences with the family every bit as much as those from his playing days.

“Teaching my sons the value of hard work, the value of communication, is not so different at home from what I’m doing in my new professional position,” he observes. “I have so many lessons from childhood that help me to be present as a father. I’m a man who went through a divorce, so now I don’t just look out for myself, like someone broke the promise. I have even more responsibility to be there for my boys. It’s all about learning from every situation we encounter. All those things we want to get them to do aren’t for right now, they’re for building them up later in life, utilizing the situation we have here. Being that I am a father, I hear the music, I see what the kids are doing. It’s important for me to pay attention to that so I can utilize lessons from my own childhood and career. How do I get that young man’s light bulb to come on? That’s what’s exciting to me. The reality is that who’s better to convey that message than me? I think it’s absolutely important for kids to have a passion, but I also want them to get that scholarship and that education. That sense of accomplishment is fulfillment beyond anything someone can give them.”

Back on the education theme (we come back around to that a lot), Bruce talks about a sign that hangs in the TMI locker room. It talks about three things: 1) What are your goals? (2) What is your attitude? (3) And only when you have the goals, the education, and the right attitude, will you accomplish the things you want to accomplish.

“The biggest thing for me here at TMI,” he says, “is the opportunity to be at an outstanding institute of learning that is recognized for all its educational achievements. I’ve come across more people here who have accomplished great things. There are a lot of faculty members and alumni here who’ve impacted San Antonio in important ways before I ever got here. It’s gratifying to be a part of this institution and to have the opportunity to give something back to it. In the end, the basketball side of things is a vehicle for giving these boys the foundational skills they will need to prepare for life out in the real world. These experiences will allow them to function more effectively in a university setting and then later in whatever profession they choose. Too many times young athletes are focused on the money and not on what life can teach them. All those guys who left college early or skipped college and then didn’t make it in the pros, they missed out on so much in life that you can’t get back. Teaching the kids here discipline and accountability will help to make sure that doesn’t happen to them.”

Preparing yourself for whatever happens next is another compelling theme that Bruce comes back to time and again. His great grandmother seems to have had the philosophy down on that particular issue.

“‘There are certain states in life,’ she would say to me, ‘when we receive things only when we’re ready to receive them.’ I can reflect now and see that this is where I missed out in certain areas. What’s the next step for me after not getting drafted? What’s my trajectory going to be and how am I going to make it happen? This was my great grandmother’s thing: you don’t know what the next thing is until it happens. The ant is a creature that’s always moving, never taking it easy. That’s how I’ve tried to apply all these lessons to my own life. If I’m handed lemons, what can I do with them? I decided to go get some sugar and water and make some lemonade.”

It’s interesting in retrospect how little we actually talked about the game, what with Bruce having three NBA championship rings and all, but I did manage to sneak in a couple of basketball questions, one of which had to do with the nature of how the defensive role has changed in the NBA since his time. No big surprise, though, that his answer brought things right back around to the lessons life offers.

“You just have to adjust and become better. If you do nothing but complain about the changes, life is going to pass you by. You have to operate within the rules, exert a little more energy. These days, training camp is only two weeks when it was a month in my time. You don’t get better during the season; you get better during the off-season and during practice. Now you definitely have to be more creative. I spent a lot of time watching Michael Jordan when I was growing up, but obviously everybody can’t run and jump like him. You work with the tools you’ve been given. I was able to look at Michael Cooper, Reggie Miller, guys like that. I was skinny like them, so I was watching them closely to see what kind of impact I could have.”

When I first sat down with Bruce, I led off the conversation by mentioning that during my pre-interview research I’d come across a quote from Spurs beat writer Johnny Ludden who had observed (back in 2007) that whereas ‘the NBA requires every player to make twelve community appearances each season, with a week still remaining in the season, Bowen has made forty-four.’

“When I first got to San Antonio,” he responds, “the community received me really well. Of course, people are looking for different things from sports figures, but anytime you get out in the community, that resonates with people. There have been more teens that have come up to me and said ‘you came to my school once when I was in third grade and I just wanted to say thank you.’ How can we get our kids to want to give back if we don’t set the example now? Throughout my time with the Spurs, it was about Pop’s leadership and constantly looking for ways to get the Spurs engrained in the community. If you don’t have the backing of the community, you don’t have anything.”

So, back to where we started it all: Where do you go once your pro days are behind you? For Bruce, that question has never really been in doubt.

“In the end, this all boils down to I just enjoy coaching kids and being able to impact their lives. I don’t look past that. When I first got here, I sat down with the team and asked, ‘How many of you guys love the game of basketball?’ Of course, all the hands went up. To me love is patience; love is enduring. The school needs to understand that there’s a process to what we’re doing here. You don’t just plant a seed and have a tree in a month. There are things you need to do to make sure you can cultivate the ground. My goal is developing kids to be the best they can be and to get the most they possibly can out of each opportunity.

“Through all of this, I have to acknowledge my wife Sarah, She has allowed me to realize that even though you may have failed at one particular challenge in life, you keep on living and there are plenty of opportunities to make the necessary adjustments along the way. She’s been a fantastic influence for me. I’ve had issues with trust and fully committing in the past, but I enjoy being vulnerable to her. That’s what she’s given me. I know that despite whatever else is happening in the world, I don’t have to worry about what she might think of me. The thing that makes me appreciate her most is how she goes about making sure that there’s always something she can do to contribute to overcoming obstacles with me. That’s a beautiful thing to have in life.”

Chef Hernandez currently owns nine restaurants in San Antonio, with an additional two under construction and two in development. These include favorites like La Gloria (four locations with a fifth on the way), Burgerteca, Villa Rica, and others. Oh, and he also has a fleet of margarita trucks (how did that take so long to become a thing in San Antonio?!), a catering company (True Flavors), a food supply company (Tortilleria La Gloria), and an event space (Casa Hernan) for conferences, festivals, etc. And, because he’s not busy enough operating all of these properties, Chef Johnny is also deeply involved with the San Antonio nonprofit community, but more on that in a bit.

So, yeah, he has a lot going on. But never make the mistake of believing that all of this came easy, because even though it can be argued that his entire life has been steering him toward this sort of career, getting here has, nevertheless, been the product of a tremendous work ethic, mixed with a little dash of good luck.

We chatted outside on the patio at Burgerteca, and it seemed that every person who walked or biked by while we were speaking knew him and offered a wave or a greeting. That’s no accident, as will become more apparent here shortly.

“I was raised in the restaurant business,” Johnny recalls. “My parents were restaurant owners. My father owned a place called Johnny’s, the very first cafeteria-style restaurant in San Antonio. That’s basically where I grew up. Every day was a trip to the restaurant before school. I would hang out, cook breakfast for myself, then make my lunch and take it to school. I started working there when I was just four or five years old. I wasn’t even going to school yet, but that was my introduction to food service. I just loved the kitchen, loved getting my hands into the masa to make tortillas. It was a great day when I was finally tall enough to cut things on the chopping block. I’d peel dad’s potatoes for breakfast tacos, tomatoes for salsa, anything that needed doing. That was every day for me before school.”

Johnny’s father recognized his son’s cooking skills from an early age and strongly encouraged him to pursue a culinary career.

“My dad never got more than a second-grade education. He spent much of his life as a migrant worker before starting the restaurant,” Johnny says. “The first things I learned to read were order tickets and food inventory sheets. That was my early education. My dad always wanted me to go to chef school. The only question was which one.”

Johnny was not into your typical after-school activities like sports and clubs. Most of his adolescent life was centered around food and the family restaurant. In his sophomore year of high school, his father became ill and had to close down the restaurant. That led to Johnny’s first non-family job, cooking at Kareem’s Lebanese restaurant in San Antonio.

“I worked there for about a year. Later, I enrolled in a work-study program at school and the teacher asked me what I wanted to do. When I told her I wanted to be a chef, she responded, ‘Well then, let’s get you a hotel job.’ My first position was during senior year, working at the Marriott on the Riverwalk.”

And that’s where Johnny met someone who would change his life. She was an intern from the Culinary Institute of America’s Hyde Park campus (the only campus at the time. They’ve since added San Antonio at the Pearl and Greystone in Napa, CA). She filled in the young Johnny on all of the culinary options available, but told him in no uncertain terms that if he wanted the best education, CIA was the place to be.

“She definitely set me on the right path,” he says. “I applied right away and got in based on all of the restaurant experience I had amassed by that time. I applied early senior year, stayed at home in San Antonio through the summer following graduation, and was at Hyde Park in New York in time to start the semester that fall.”

That was the autumn of 1988, and Hernandez completed the two-year Associates program. Since then, and in addition to all of his other pursuits, he has remained active with the school, serving on the alumni board, the national board, and the inaugural entrepreneurial program board, not to mention delivering commencement remarks for graduating classes of the school here at the Pearl. Immediately after graduating from the Hyde Park program, the newly minted Chef Johnny made his way to Las Vegas, where he helped Steve Wynn open the new Mirage hotel and casino.

“I was there for about a year and a half and I learned a terrific amount about the catering business. Wynn always pushed for having the best of everything. We did large-scale events for folks like Michael Jackson and other Hollywood and Vegas personalities.”

After learning all that he could at the Mirage, Chef Johnny got an opportunity to move to Santa Barbara, California and work as a sous chef at The Four Seasons. It was a definite reduction in energy level from the nonstop nightlife of Vegas, but it afforded the still-young chef an opportunity to ply his craft in a fine dining environment, learning important skills like working a line and focusing on plate presentation.

“My work at The Four Seasons was definitely very different from catering. But through all of it, I always knew I would eventually come back to San Antonio and start my own catering business. I grew up catering and that was always what I felt I was destined to do. With catering your goal is to create unforgettable experiences. But I admit there was a moment there when I thought I would move over to the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur with Wendy Little. In the end, though, I knew my window for getting back to Texas was narrowing, so I stayed put for a while longer. In the end I was away from home for about five years, counting my time at school and in Vegas and Santa Barbara.”

In that time, Johnny’s father had passed away, which was a tough loss, one that affected not only his family back home, but also his plan to spend time in Europe traveling and learning the cuisines of France, Italy, and other countries.

“In the end, that dream kinda came crashing down,” he says. “My original plan had been to come home for a bit, help out my mom, maybe take some computer classes that would help me in starting a business. Then there was a fire in my mom’s kitchen. It was one thing after another—I guess life just got in the way.”

Johnny would end up taking a part-time cooking gig at the Junior League’s Bright Shawl restaurant. It was there that he found himself doing a bat mitzvah catering event for the owner of The Old San Francisco Steakhouse, Barry Brown. Brown was so impressed with the food at the event that he went into the kitchen and demanded to meet the chef.

“My vision in that moment had been to move to Palermo, Italy, but Mr. Brown handed me a business card and said ‘Come see me in my office on Monday morning.’”

Following that auspicious meeting, Johnny was offered the job as head chef at Brown’s family of steakhouses, and with the flagship property right here in San Antonio, he didn’t even have to leave town.

“I had never been executive chef anyplace before, never been in charge of the entire operation. It was a great opportunity to learn leadership. I was responsible for everything, so I stayed—two years when all was said and done.”

While working for Brown’s steakhouse chain, Johnny helped develop the company, set up their catering business, and create their lunch program. They were still in the throes of designing a new restaurant when, two years on, Johnny decided that the time had finally come to do something for himself. That ‘something’ became True Flavors catering, a business that began twenty years ago and which still flourishes.

“I’ve got a brother in the business and a sister as well. It was a tremendous amount of work, especially in the early days. I would definitely say that catering is a young person’s business—the pace, the physical demands, the schedule. I used to go two days at a time without sleeping. Believe me, I’ve lost my share of girlfriends to this business. Our first clients were big companies like Bartell Zachry. We did loads of events, weddings, rehearsals, quinceañeras, you name it. In catering you specialize by not specializing.”

Hernandez continued working as head chef for True Flavors for over twelve years, stopping only when it came time to open his first restaurant, La Gloria.

“I had always dreamed about starting my own restaurant, and it was around that time that I started traveling to Mexico regularly. At one point, my mother asked me to come to where she was doing nonprofit work at a children’s camp in Aguascalientes, just north of Michoacán. ‘We need you to help us run the kitchen,’ she said to me. So I went.”

While there he traveled throughout the country in his van, learning about regional cuisines and wondering all the while why no one had thought to bring all of it back to the San Antonio market.

“Maybe people don’t want authentic regional Mexican food?” I thought. “That sounds ridiculous. I was blown away by all the different foods down there. Fifteen years ago everything in San Antonio was TexMex. There were no taquerias. True Mexican food didn’t come on the radar here until we opened the first La Gloria in May of 2010. We were the second restaurant to open in the Pearl.”

Now, ten years on, there are four La Gloria locations. Besides the Pearl, there are restaurants at the airport, on the northwest side near The Dominion, and at the AT&T Center. Soon a fifth location will open at Brooks City Base. Once La Gloria was up and running, Hernandez began opening Burgerteca locations and other properties, exploring new concepts and introducing San Antonians to cuisines they’d never experienced before.

“It didn’t always work out though. We opened a place called El Machito in Alamo Heights near The Quarry Market. It was a mesquite-wood-fired meat concept, but it never really caught on there. We’ll be reopening a new location on the south side sometime soon.”

Ever enthusiastic about trying out new concepts, Hernandez has begun developing and marketing a line of packaged foods under the La Gloria brand at select H-E-B stores. These include chips, taco kits, and other items.

And, of course, like all restaurateurs in the country, Hernandez’s properties were not untouched by the past year of pandemic chaos.

“Covid was really tough for us, especially at the start. But now I feel like we’re through it. We’ve adapted, learned new things, adjusted where we needed to. It’s different for everyone though. If you’re downtown, you’re hurting because for a long time there was no one downtown. We’re a company that’s fifty percent convention and airport, but when it all started getting bad last year we shut everything down. We began feeding 10,000-12,000 seniors a week through Meals on Wheels and curbside service. We converted several of our restaurants to grocery stores. We did everything we could to help the community and keep as many of our employees as possible. We’re pretty stable now. Hopefully there’ll be no more surprises.”

In the midst of all this, Chef Johnny has also managed to fit in time to tackle culinary consulting in Europe, doing development work in the UK and elsewhere. And he aspires to someday open a La Gloria in London.

Finally, because this all began with his father’s support and his mother’s work at the children’s camp in Mexico, Hernandez does a great deal of nonprofit work here in his home town, most notably through an organization called Kitchen Campus, a group he started in 2014 to honor his parents. The organization was established to connect youth to culinary opportunities through education and advocacy. It’s an after-school program that introduces children to food, nutrition, and cooking while exploring careers in the culinary arts through classes, demonstrations, field trips, and guest chef workshops. Funded by annual events like the Paella Challenge, the nonprofit is dedicated to helping children “follow their dreams, without limitations,” to use the chef’s own words.

Chef Hernandez has been recognized many times over for his culinary achievements, as well as his nonprofit work. Hispanic Business magazine recognized him as one of the Top 50 Influential Hispanics, and Siempre Mujer magazine named him one of the Top 5 Hispanic Chefs in America. In 2014, the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau awarded Chef Hernandez the “Con Corazón” award for his work spotlighting San Antonio as a culinary leader and destination, work that culminated with the city’s designation in 2017 as one of only two Cities of Creative Gastronomy in America. He has appeared as judge or participant on numerous cooking shows, e.g., Top Chef; Man, Fire, Food; and Beat Bobby Flay. And then there was the time he was invited to the White House to cook for President Obama and his family.

“It was simply an amazing experience. We were called to come and cook for a Cinco de Mayo event and they were terrific. We really took care of them! And we definitely hit it off with the staff, even got invited back.”

So what comes next for a guy who’s never let up since returning to his home town.

“I’ll definitely continue to grow the H-E-B venture. Expanding with them will be really important for the next five years or so. We’re also developing two new restaurant concepts, one a high-end Mexican dining experience, and another in La Villita, specific concept yet to be decided on, but perhaps a reimagination of Johnny’s, the restaurant that his father started all those years ago when Chef Johnny got his start as a five-year-old, still too short to reach the cutting board.

Anything else we should know about this accomplished son of San Antonio—something that maybe has nothing at all to do with cooking?

“I collect koi and I’d love to take part in a koi contest sometime,” he says, “The skill is picking them when they’re really small and then carefully nurturing and growing them. You don’t quite know what you’re going to get while they’re young though.”

Which, as it happens, is an apt metaphor for the life that Chef Johnny Hernandez has led since those early days making masa and tacos in his father’s restaurant. In a lifetime of accomplishment, he has changed his hometown’s perspectives on Mexican food, helped it to get through a year-long health crisis, and, throughout it all, managed, as well, to contribute meaningfully to the culinary education and inspiration of a new generation of San Antonians. It’s been a journey of culinary proportions, one that shows no signs of letting up anytime soon.

Funny how life turns around sometimes, particularly when you’re a street artist who grew up doing something many people regarded as little more than vandalism. David (Shek) Vega, one of San Antonio’s best known urban artists, fondly recalls the marked differences between the San Antonio of his teenage years and today.

“These days, Nik (artistic collaborator Nik Soupé) and I are free to create as much art as we can find the time for. It makes San Antonio a more attractive city when visitors can come here and see our work and the work of the other muralists we support.”

Vega and Soupé are collaborators and co-owners of Los Otros Murals and have been working together since they were teenagers growing up on the Alamo City’s south side. It was a time and place where simply staying out of trouble was a never-ending challenge.

“Gangs were super prevalent in the nineties,” Vega recalls, “but I managed somehow to stay out of that. I gravitated toward counterculture: punk rock, skateboarding, and, ultimately, graffiti. But I vividly remember one day seeing a guy I was skating with signing a dumpster with a strange kind of marker and with a font I’d never seen before. It totally blew my mind and captured my interest. The guy was not only creating something other people would see, but he was doing it using tools that didn’t exist, that he’d had to create for himself—guerilla tools! It was a transformative moment and I jumped into it with both feet. It got to a point where the main goal was to out-create our peers—almost like a sport that you play with your neighborhood friends. But after a while it became clear I couldn’t hide it from my parents any longer. At that time graffiti was considered vandalism, and the only expectation anyone had was that it was a pursuit that would eventually get you locked up. After years of dedication and passion, now they couldn’t be prouder of what I’ve accomplished. In 2019 we were the first street artists to be commissioned by Fiesta to represent one of the largest festivals in the nation. Now my mom says ‘I never imagined my son would be representing the city of San Antonio.’”

Nik grew up in the valley and his take on how his art life began is a little different.

“I remember just wanting my art to be bigger and bigger. I never imagined in my wildest dreams I’d be doing it as a career. My dad was a car painter, and that’s how I grew up—sanding and priming cars. I remember one day seeing a movie that had graffiti in it and my reaction was to run back to the garage and use a bunch of my father’s paints to create a huge eyeball on the wall. Only then I covered it up with tires and stuff because I didn’t want to get into trouble over it. My dad was kind of the machismo type and he told me that an art career couldn’t happen for me.”

But the idea refused to ever leave his head. Walking around the neighborhood, Soupé would see other people painting murals on walls.

“And so naturally I began wondering how can I get to do that? A lot of my friends were into words and letters, but I quickly went in the direction of creating backgrounds and photorealistic figures. As kids we’re told by our parents NOT to color on the walls, but ever since I was very young it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.

“Now when I meet old friends from childhood, I often hear, ‘Oh you’re still doing that?’ Our connection has stood the test of time. Shek and I are like brothers and we definitely get after each other from time to time. But you can never stay mad! We’re part of a close-knit art community where everyone knows everyone. It’s interesting to see every year the latest new batch of artists. It has been that passion that fuels our work. The goal has always been to just get the work out there to influence other artists and create a more colorful city.”

It’s obvious from the easy give and take of our conversation that these two guys play uniquely well off one another. After all, it was Nik who first got Shek into showing off his work. And it was Shek who exposed Nik to the freedom of painting walls.

“Seeing different people paint in an enormous range of styles was an incredible experience,” Soupé says. “Some of the best times of our lives have happened painting walls, working in Houston, Austin, etc. It feels so much like a family—a group of creative misfits. It’s something I’m so thankful for. We all have this connection through art. Even people we work with who don’t speak the same language get connected through wall painting.”

Shek and Nik met about twenty years ago, at a time when Shek was painting graffiti and Soupé was running his gallery/studio/art spot. The original idea had been to locate as many graffiti artists as possible and get them all together into a controlled environment where they could support one another. And while the two are definitely different personalities, in many ways they are driven by the same sorts of forces.

“It’s evolved over time for sure,” Shek says. “When I was young it was about out-doing the other guys—out-creating them. Before long, though, it became about loudly declaring your place in the world. It was almost a spite thing in our younger days: ‘I’m gonna show you that I’m here. I’m gonna force you to see me.’ And all in a part of the city where art isn’t typically made available to the community.”

Layer on top of all that a persistent desire to legitimize a long-underappreciated art form, and you get the sort of motivation that has kept Shek and Nik doing this for a very long time. Possibly the most rewarding aspect of their work—aside from plenty of personal recognition and accolades—is the degree to which the city has come around to their form of art and creation.

“We’ve always had a great culture here in San Antonio, but something shifted pretty dramatically about ten years ago when street art started getting recognition,” Soupé recalls. “All those people who grew up watching us do our thing on walls and street corners—well, now those are the people who are lawyers, doctors, professionals, people in positions of influence, whether political or cultural, who have helped us transition this art form into a more validated state.”

In addition to their own artistic projects, Vega and Soupé have been busy on the business side of things as well. In 2010 Shek started Gravelmouth Gallery, San Antonio’s first contemporary gallery with a focus on street art. The two founded Los Otros (the others) Murals, a mural and multi-art service, in 2014. In addition, because of his dedication to the promotion of the arts in San Antonio, and street art in particular, Shek created the San Antonio Street Art Initiative (SASAI) to recognize and promote mural and street art painting in central Texas. SASAI affiliated artists have, thus far, completed more than fifty murals in the area of North St. Mary’s Street, with plans for plenty more artwork as soon as the Covid pandemic relents. As the Los Otros Mural duo, Shek and Nik have painted over seventy-five projects around town, including commissioned work for the Spurs (2016-2019), wall mural work inside the Aztec Theater (the first artists to touch those walls since the 1920’s), the first street art mural on the Riverwalk, a live painting of a four-foot skull for the Dios de los Muertos river parade thrown by Chef Johnny Hernandez, and an immense project across the entire SA Current building on Dallas Street.

“Our first reaction on getting the call from the Current (our first mural painted as Los Otros) was ‘OMG, how the hell are we going to tackle this?’ Then we just started unbolting awnings, taking down signs, everything. We painted the entire front of the building. But it’s a tricky thing, one we learn a bit more about with every project. You first have to treat the stone or brick properly (because you want to ensure that your artwork lasts as long as the elements will allow) and then ensure that you only use the very best products. If you try to cut corners to save a buck, the work simply won’t last.

“After all this time, it’s still an incredible learning experience. It never gets unscary. But you learn how to guide that energy. We learn something new with every project. When we’re working big, for example, it’s important to keep in mind the perspective of the viewer.”

The SASAI thing has been a real opportunity for Shek to give back to the city he loves and to promote the work and careers of others who aspire to work on large-scale street projects.

“We’re always trying to validate the street art genre and its value to urban communities. We love San Antonio and we felt that there were a lot of opportunities the city was missing out on with galleries, murals, etc. We wanted to exert influence where we could so people wouldn’t feel like they had to leave the city in order to pursue their artistic dreams. In 2018 we started the nonprofit to focus on those sorts of conversations. The point of the initiative was to help artists fine-tune their craft in the public realm and create a career and résumé that would allow them to achieve their goals. SASAI is currently focused on the development of public art and mural work, while creating an ecosystem where artists who contribute their talents for the benefit of the city can also afford to live and continue practicing their craft in the city they love. We’re only two years old and we’ve already created fifty murals and have aided in the careers of thirty-six artists. We’re constantly looking for funding and potential project opportunities to help facilitate this growing initiative. As much as we’ve done through SASAI and Los Otros since 2014, a lot of the institutions out there who might support the arts are still unfamiliar to budding street artists. And many of the artists we support have never had the opportunity to work on a large scale before. Connecting people willing to commission art projects with talented local artists who are looking to grow their experience is a big part of the initiative’s mission.”

Nik and Shek have now been painting together for over twenty years. They have worked all over San Antonio, and have also done work in Florida, California, even Nebraska.

“Once the Spurs got onboard,” Shek recalls, “things really began to take off locally. “That work created lots more legitimacy and awareness of the art form, lots more understanding which then translated to greater community and city acceptance. Many people who don’t have the luxury, or who feel uncomfortable in museums or institutional art settings, can now enjoy artwork just by driving or walking around the city. People have said to me “I got into art because I saw your work on St. Mary’s Street or wherever. Instagram alone is creating a whole new generation of mural hunters, including tours to see our work and the work of others.”

Shek picks up the thread. “Street art and graffiti are the only forms of expression that you get in some neighborhoods. Although it was frowned on at the time, it was our way of saying I’m here. Growing up in some areas, you don’t always believe you’re going to make it out of your neighborhood. But we’re here and we have a voice. Nowadays murals are our way of pushing that message while creating a place where people can see community expression when they’re out in their neighborhoods. It’s a way to legitimize the street art form, to show people that expression and careers in public artwork are obtainable.”

What thoughts would Nik and Shek like to leave with readers who may be unfamiliar with their form of artwork?

“We want people to know what we’re doing, and why. We’re trying to share our art with people, make it more accessible. The really fun part is showing what we’ve accomplished and where we’re going with our next projects. We’re very happy to be doing what we’re doing. It’s important to let people know about supporting the art. We’d like to invite people to get involved in helping the city grow its public arts awareness, just to keep it going and develop enough traction so that when we pass the baton the structure will be there for the future. We live in a magical and supportive city, and it’s incredibly exciting to see the mural scene growing.

To learn more about Los Otros, Gravelmouth Gallery, and the San Antonio Street Art Initiative, check them all out at:

http://losotrosmurals.com/

https://gravelmouthgallery.tumblr.com/

https://sanantoniostreetart.org/

http://shekvega.com

San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo 2021

Let’s get the bad news out of the way right from the get-go, shall we? Contrary to what you may have heard from friends, colleagues, or certain political figures running for office, 2021 is not magically going to see the end of the pandemic, at least not for a few more months. There will still be masks and Zoom calls and daily case counts on the news. But it’s not all doom and gloom. It looks like there are vaccines right around the corner (and who doesn’t enjoy a good shot in the arm?) and, with luck, many of the annual events we had learned to take for granted before 2020 will begin making comebacks, albeit cautiously. One such event will be the 2021 San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, scheduled to take place from February 11^th through the 28^th. But for regular past attendees, there’ll be changes this time around. We’ll get into these directly.

I went straight to the source to get the lowdown on the coming rodeo festivities—the source, in this case, being San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo CEO Cody Davenport. Even if you had no idea what Cody did for a living, you’d figure it out once you’d sat in his office for about thirty seconds. It’s chock full of rodeo photos, banners, and memorabilia from the event’s seventy-year history. The rodeo in San Antonio actually started out as a livestock show in the late forties, with the first actual rodeo taking place in 1949. But, despite all that history, the main thing Cody and his crew of volunteers want folks to know (and the thing that many seemingly do not know) is that the entire event is one big nonprofit, its mission focused squarely on providing a showcase for kids to compete and generate funds for scholarships and other educational opportunities.

On that score, there are a few important points to make: in 2020 alone, the rodeo educationally impacted 21,275 Texas youth and generated over $12.2 million in scholarships, endowments, junior livestock auctions, premiums, horse and livestock shows, calf scrambles, etc., with 1500 scholars currently attending Texas colleges and universities using rodeo proceeds (luckily the event squeaked in just under the wire in early 2020, i.e., before everything began shutting down). Through its entire seventy-year history, the rodeo has generated more than $223 million to be put toward educating future generations, and it’s one of the largest educational assistance providers in the state. Helping to drive that mission are the dedicated volunteers who make it all happen. With thirty-one full-time staffers and more than six thousand volunteers, there’s no question it’s a big operation, and Cody is just the guy to keep it all flowing smoothly. He’s native to the San Antonio area and grew up around all things rodeo.

“The cultural diversity here is so unique,” he observes, “and so suited to the rodeo. I’ve always been a big history buff, going all the way back to when the rodeo began with vaqueros coming out of Mexico and moving cattle out of the brush. They started teaching the skills to the natives, and they, in turn, started holding competitions—breaking horses, roping, that sort of thing. A lot of the sport of rodeo derived from right here in south Texas. I love San Antonio because no matter what direction you look, you’re in some aspect of agriculture—cattle, sheep, goats, wine, you name it. The Hispanic culture here is the birth of the sport of rodeo. We have a very enthusiastic and rodeo-savvy community in south Texas: a good strong rodeo following.”

Born in Uvalde and raised with his sister and two brothers by an old-time rancher, Cody is a sixth-generation Texan. He came out of Texas A&M University as a construction guy, and spent years managing home and small land development. But how do you get from construction to leading one of the country’s biggest rodeo events?

“Growing up the way I did, rodeo just seemed like the most natural thing in the world. We started a little group once back in the day called the Corral Club, and it was a heck of a good party. We booked Robert Earl Keen for a concert one time, then used the proceeds from that to go to a junior livestock auction where we bought animals for the kids. Shortly after, I got a call from Keith Martin, who was the CEO of the rodeo back then, and he said ‘I want to do a barbecue cook-off for the rodeo and I’d like you to run it.’ Well, I called some folks I knew in Houston and asked them how to do it. We got our hands on all the rules and regulations we could, just studied it and figured it out. Now, all these years later, we have 330 barbecue teams that net us about $333,000/year. After that, they named me the chairman of the barbecue committee and I ran the thing for about eight years. Then they asked if I wanted to join a middle management team to overlook various parts of the show. It was there I learned all the different aspects of the show, looking over different areas, learning more about how it all came together. That was my first real look at it all as one big thing, and my first understanding of just how huge it really was.”

Cody would go on to serve on the rodeo executive committee, then president for three years, and, finally, Executive Director & CEO three years ago.

“The biggest challenge to this job is surrounding yourself with great people, a challenge that’s even bigger, and that much more rewarding, when the vast majority of those people are volunteers. At this point I’ve seen just about every element that’s involved in bringing a rodeo to life. There’s nothing I’m going to ask someone else to do that I haven’t done at one time or another myself. I am genuinely grateful for all my years here.”

A casual walk around the rodeo offices near the AT&T Center provides an immediate sense of the dedication staff members have to the event and its mission.

“It takes a unique style to manage people,” Cody says. “You have to learn how to make them feel fulfilled. I’m surrounded by folks like that on my staff. I think that on a daily basis I’m just doing my best to arm everyone with the tools and knowledge they need to do their jobs. I’ve got communications professionals, concessions people, livestock directors, plenty of others. Everybody has their own area. Thinking back, the hardest part of the job for me was the transition from being a volunteer to being on paid staff. Sometimes I feel like I’m too married to it. The staff members here are living it; it’s not just a job for them. They sincerely believe in the mission. The group is very stable; we don’t do a lot of recruiting. We’re a pretty unified team. The ones who aren’t really flexible don’t last too long around here. Fluidity and agility are the keys to making it all work. I’ve had to kick people out of here at night because they’re staying so late. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between volunteers and paid staff members. It’s a great mission or we wouldn’t have 6000 volunteers doing it.”

So, with all that roping, barrel racing, mutton bustin’, and bull riding going on, it’s not as though COVID is the first thing to come along and raise safety concerns, right?

“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t seen some strange things during my time here. We‘ve had horse and bull riders get bucked off into the stands. A spectator at the post-rodeo concert once got stuck in the fencing trying to catch a drumstick thrown by a band member. One year on Valentine’s Day we nearly had a stampede because the planners thought it’d be a nice idea to paint a big heart on the ground right where the Palomino Patrol was supposed to come riding out. Well, the horses didn’t take too kindly to seeing something new and bright on the ground under their feet and they went a little berserk.”

And so, yes, the rodeo staff members have plenty of safety and medical resources at their disposal, as you would imagine. There are medical committees provided by both the rodeo itself and the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association), as well as volunteer doctors working in the bottom of the facility to take care of riders and other event participants.

“Handling the schedule and the logistics are always interesting challenges,” Cody adds. “Remember, we’re also (in normal times) smack on top of the Spurs season schedule at the AT&T Center, which led to the evolution of the team’s “Rodeo Road Trip” that has become a tradition over the years. Of course, like so many things these days, this coming event might look a little different.”

For starters, the event will take place where it all began years ago: The Freeman Coliseum.  “We’re going to provide a whole lot of nostalgia and old-time tradition for our ticket holders in 2021. We’ll run an old-school rodeo at the coliseum. We’re recreating the feel of the fifties, complete with original Roy Rogers footage and other throwback elements. It definitely won’t be the sort of rodeo people have gotten used to in past years. We’ll only have space at Freeman for season ticket holders though. But we’re trying our best to be fair about allocating tickets while adhering to health and safety guidelines. As a season ticket holder you’ll have the choice of opting in or out, or you can donate your tickets to the cause. Remember, we’re a nonprofit, so our goal is still to maximize how much revenue we can generate to support our mission.

“Normally we have a blend of competitive events. This year, our main goal is to ensure livestock exhibitors will have a venue to showcase their animals and compete in agriculture events in order for us to fulfill our mission. After all, the rodeo is just a big fundraiser to create more resources for the youth of Texas. But it’s a crazy world right now. With other big rodeos and stock shows cancelling outright either this past year or for 2021, we really have to work closely with local officials to host our event. Problem is, of course, it could all change tomorrow. But we believe it’s worth it to provide for the kids.”

Moving ahead with such a large-scale event in the midst of a pandemic can create challenges, including everything from musical acts cancelling at the last minute to state or city regulations changing underneath of the event planners. And it’s not just financial risk. Cody is sensitive, as well, to the public perception around what they’re planning. Will folks be upset if they can’t get tickets? Or maybe that the event is even moving ahead at all when so many others are being left behind? The go/no-go decision had to be made this past October 15^th, and Cody and his leadership team looked carefully at what was happening with college football and other large events in order to come to their own decision. That preparation even included visiting several other rodeos around the country to see what sorts of things they were doing to ensure safety for participants and spectators.

As our conversation wrapped up, Cody was keen to encourage potential volunteers to visit the rodeo web site (https://www.sarodeo.com) and complete a volunteer form. In parting, he reiterated the importance of the rodeo’s mission and its role as a nonprofit organization that supports the education of the youth of Texas.

“Many people still don’t realize that we’re a nonprofit, but it’s how we get so many great volunteers and are able to support so many students and other young people. I’m confident that we can put together a winning show for 2021, even given the many constraints and uncertainties we’re facing. In some ways it’s an opportunity to try some new things and to really test just how flexible and agile we are as an organization. Maybe it wouldn’t have been my first choice for how to accomplish that, but we will make the best of what we’ve been given.”