THE DAN REYNA STORY: AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 YEARS

By Juan Montoya

He’s shaken hands with presidents and would-be presidents, dodged bullets in the Korean War, led a political revolution in Willacy County, held elective public offices, and even had a taste of prison life.
Whether you like Daniel Solis Reyna or not, there’s no denying that he’s lived – as the Chinese curse goes – in interesting times.

(At right there's Dan with Al Gore. On the photo below, he poses with Honduran president Oscar Reyna, no relation.)

Dan was born in Brownsville on May 11, 1930. At that time, the state of Israel as a state did not yet exist. The atomic bomb was a science fiction nightmare, and “The War to End All Wars” had ended just 13 years before.

Six months before, in October, 1929,
Black Friday had caused the Wall Street Crash, and its repercussions were just being felt in the United States and throughout the world. Dan might not have known it at the time, but he and his generation were children of the Great Depression.

In the next few years, when Dan was just five, more than 25 percent of the working-age males in the United States were unemployed. Hunger was widespread, and the Dust Bowl forced thousands of Okies west to California where they endured humiliation and poverty in the fields of the Golden State.

In South Texas, the government moved to deport Mexican laborers who just years before had been encouraged to come work in agriculture. Hundreds of men and women – entire families – were herded aboard open trucks and dumped at the border ports of entry, no longer welcome in the country which first enticed them to exploit them for their cheap labor in agriculture.

It is noteworthy that in that same year, the planet Pluto – later downsized to a large asteroid – was discovered and photographed. Or that later, in August, Neil Armstrong was born in Ohio.

But the stars and planets were far from the mind of Reyna as he grew up in poverty stricken Brownsville, and later, Willacy County. He and his generation of Mexican Americans not only suffered the economic woes other Americans did, but also the ignominy of the prevalent racism from their Anglo countrymen.

Dan’s road to achievement started out in ranch country in rural Raymondville, in Willacy County. He was able to attend St. Joseph Academy in Brownsville on a charity scholarship and later graduated from Raymondville High School. He was the first Hispanic to receive a track scholarship.
Too young to serve in World War II, when the Korean War erupted, he served there as a B-27 flight engineer. Upon discharge, he went on to earn his Bachelor’s Degree from Pan American University in Edinburg, Texas, his Master’s from Antioch and his PhD. from the London (England) School of Humanities.
Coming from a ranch family (and being light-skinned and blue-eyed), when he ran for Willacy County’s Tax Assessor-Collector, the King Ranch’s 500 poll tax votes went for him and he won. The king makers there didn’t know what they had started. Since his office also registered voters, he set about to deputize Mexican-American grocers, teachers, gas station owners, etc., and built up a formidable voting block.

From there on, this block decided most elections and the first Mexican-American school board members, city council persons, and county commissioners were elected soon afterwards.
Before long, as the Chief Executive Officer of Cameron-Willacy Counties Community Projects, Inc., he brought until-then-unheard services to its neglected, poverty-stricken Mexican-American population. Among these “firsts” was the provision of Texas Legal Rural Aid services for the poor, family planning, a Head Start program for needy children, and accessibility to federal food assistance programs.


His high water mark as a “Great Society” warrior came when he was named CEO of a five-county program with a $69 million budget with a staff of 2,500.
For years, the power brokers in Willacy County had tightly controlled the provision of these services in a kind of benevolent despotism. No food stamps, no legal aid, no family planning. The churches, they argued, would take care of that. Give them those things and some of these people might want even more, like making their own decisions or choosing their own representatives.


Richard Nixon appointed Dan to serve on the National Commission on Ageing. And three Texas governors called upon Dan to serve on commissions that addressed the needs of Texans over the years. Gov. Dolph Briscoe appointed him to the Texas Urban and Rural Development Commission. Gov. Alan Shriver appointed him as an Admiral in the Texas Navy, and Gov. Connolly also called upon to serve on the board that looks after the Museum and Battleship Texas.
For 30 years, Dan served as a teacher for children with Special Needs, was a member of the Lion’s Club, and active in the Masonic Lodge, Temple #3, where he attained a 32-degree Scottish Rite rank.


He ran for office and was elected as a commissioner for the Brownsville Navigation District in 1996. During his term of office, he and his fellow commissioners on the board built Brownsville first (and only) Hazardous Materials capable fire station, a new Harbor Master’s building, began construction of anew docks, lowered the tax rate, raised the bond rating of the port from C to A, and capped a 40-year effort by former boards to attain a presidential permit for the construction of a port bridge.


But just as there have been ups, there have also been downs. He has worked his way through a couple of divorces and lot of strange affairs. Now, at the ripe age of 79, he feels Alicia is the keeper.
“I couldn’t ask for more,” he said. “Even if I did, who would listen?”
Another low point was the fallout from his stint as city manager of Los Frenos, where incestuous politics have claimed more than one victim.


The city was bankrupt when he took over. Then, after he tried to make some changes, he found out that just about everyone there is related to someone else. When he tried to cut positions, the people would complain to their relatives on the city commission and nothing would get done.
“Even the local newspaper wouldn’t publish our ads because we owed them money,” Dan recalls. “Contractors wouldn’t even bid on our projects.”


The last straw was when he informed the commissioners that the city police chief had spent $500,000 without authorization. The chief set about to make a case against Reyna. A dog pound that he built using his own workers, some bids he requested from friends to make things legal, were presented to a jury as bid rigging and fixing. He was out of a job, and into prison whites. The police chief, by the way, was himself fired later by the commissioners.


Now at home with his blind cat and a nonchalant dachshund, he is philosophical about his life.

"I gave my family, my country and my fellow men my all – my love, faith and charity. I have done many things and traveled the world over. I have eaten with kings and presidents, and even shared meals with fellow prisoners. But the most important thing to me was to teach a child to read and write and to help the widow and the orphan through the Shriners.”