25 YEARS LATER, HENRY SANCHEZ'S MEMORY STILL FRESH

By Juan Montoya

Has it been 25 years already?

It seems like only yesterday that we ran into Henry Sanchez at SombreroFest in February 25, 1995, and he was with his friend Floyd Dillinger, a land developer from Houston, Texas.

Sanchez was well known in the city, and he served in the state house for a decade representing this area in Austin.

After he left public service, Henry started a textile manufacturing plant in Guatemala for a few years and came back to Brownsville and started a news weekly, appropriately called Crossroads.

I still remember Henry walking into the county barn where I worked as an administrative assistant for the Pct. 1 commissioner of Cameron County. He seemed perturbed and handed me the bill that had been passed in Austin by his successor Rene Oliviera establishing a "partnership" between Texas Southmost College and the University of Texas System.

"There's no money in it," he said, rubbing his left thumb, a result of a fungus infection he contracted in Guatemala. "It's all coming from the taxes of the college district. We're going to get screwed."

That was when he started the news weekly to campaign against the TSC-UTB partnership. He asked me to join him in putting the weekly together and funded it himself. He was our only ad salesman as well as our marketing director. He was a tireless worker. When we got the new edition from the printer, he and his wife Maria Alicia Tijerina Sanchez would distribute it in the Rio Viejo subdivision aboard their robin-egg blue Cadillac.

Henry's call to end the partnership just two years after its beginning in 1991 was beginning to make some inroads with a growing number of adherents but shook up the proponents and supporters, many of them influential people like the former IBC president Fred Rusteberg, the Oliveiras, one of who was on the TSC board, and the upper rust of the local status quo like the Cardenas. 

They lobbied local businesses not to advertise in the Crossroads and Henry often had to foot the bill to put out the next edition. But just as he had served in the U.S. Air Force, won a Golden Gloves championship in amateur boxing, and won the "Iron Man" award when he played offense and defense for the University of Colorado Buffaloes, Henry was a persistent sort.

(Yet, this bear of a man couldn't stand to hear a child cry.)

His campaign against the partnership ended that same February 25, 1995, when he and his friend Dillinger invited me to the family condominium in South Padre Island. It would be 2011 after UTB-TSC president Julieta Garcia lost control of the TSC board that the district regained its independence. 

By then, TSC had "transferred" more than a $1 billion over 20 years and legislation had been proposed to transfer all of the assets to the UT System except for the bond debt accrued under Garcia and her pliant boards. The graduation rate over four years was 16 percent and tuition was charged at the university - not community college - level. Henry had been right. We were getting screwed.

A word here about Henry's idea of friendship.

Henry's friendship with Dillinger was typical. Dillinger said that when he was rolling in the millions with his developments Henry was his friend. When things dried up an he went through hard times, many of his acquaintances avoided him, but Henry remained his friend.

"When I was worth millions, I had Henry and my friends," he said. "Then things went bad and I had Henry."

That evening of February 25, 1995, Henry had grilled a redfish in the condo balcony and we sat down to eat. After dinner he sat down with a drink in his hand and we asked him if he wanted to go out to one of the clubs to hear some music. He sat on an easy chair and said he was going to relax for a while.

He lowered his head and snored loudly twice. Dillinger instantly knew something was wrong and rushed to his side. Henry never woke up from his sudden sleep. Apparently, he had suffered a ruptured aorta without knowing it and just went to sleep sitting on the chair. He died peacefully.

His wife Maria Alicia Tijerina Sanchez joined him in 2004.

At the time Henry died, my wife was pregnant with our oldest child and she gave birth to Jose Enrique (Henry) that next September. Like his namesake, Kike is a robust, intelligent man working on his Master's degree at UTRGV after attending the newly independent, accredited TSC.

I think Henry would have been proud. Peace be with you Henry.