THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
INTERVIEW WITH: Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
DATE: 8 April 1994
PLACE:
INTERVIEWER:
Guerras' home, San Antonio, Texas.
Sterlin Holmesly
SH: We're in the home of Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra
and we're going to talk about the changes in San Antonio in
the last 25 or 30 years. If you will, introduce yourself
Henry •..
HG: My name is Henry Guerra. I started with WOAI as a
radio broadcaster, both announcer and newsman, back in 1939.
So I've been around quite some time and if you don't mind
I'll go beyond ... back beyond ...
SH: Sure.
HG: ... the HemisFair to recall what I personally saw as I
was growing up in San Antonio, I was born here, baptized at
the Cathedral, and I saw the end of the ... from the middle
1920s on ... the '30s, the '40s •.• I went into the army
during ... 1942 to 1945 ... and then came home and have been
here ever since with an occasional trip. But mostly I've
been in radio broadcasting with WOAI and WOAI-TV. However,
I did work for the HemisFair and I saw the effect of
HemisFair in 1968. It really brought this town to life.
The downtown river had been fixed up some years before with
WPA labor and it was cleaned up and made a park, which you
GUERRA 2
HG: didn't dare go down into at night. But then the
Chamber of Commerce led the way, under a very fine volunteer
named David Straus, to bring business down ... to the downtown
river and ever since HemisFair and the development of the
river as a commercial success ... tourism has really taken off
in this town.
SH: The river is now the number 2 tourist stop in the
state.
MG: Yes.
SH: Mary Ann, you want to tell us about yourself?
MG: Yes. Well, my name is Mary Ann Noonan Guerra. I was
born August 3rd 1922, in Hondo, Texas, where my father was
county judge. But my father was born and grew up here in
San Antonio and so I was back and forth. Went to boarding
school here and eventually lived with my rel atives, Wanda
Ford and her mother, Elizabeth Graham, out at Willow Way,
where had a very wonderful life with people coming in from
all over the world.
But to get back to HemisFair, I think it was, probably,
the most important ... event ... that we've had in our history
to highlight this place ... to show it off. Because we can't
depend always on oil or cattle, we need tourism. And we had
beautiful, natural resources here. We had the river, we had
the missions, we had the Alamo. But we had to bring people
here. To let them see it. And we attracted people from all
over the world and I really think that this was the greatest
advertising piece that we ever did, because we sold San
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
MG: Antonio . The HemisFair did .
SH: Right . One of the ... well, it just occurred to me ..•
one of the offsprings was the Spurs basketball team which
would not have had a place to play had it not been for
HemisFair .••
HG: That's right .
SH: ... when they built the Arena .
MG: Well, the Federal Building and the Institute of Texan
Cultures.
SH: Right.
3
MG: The Institute of Texas Cultures ... ! have to put in a
word there because I use it all the time and I have friends
there, Tom Shelton, but we have .•• Because out of HemisFair
came this Institute where we have a collection of film ... of
photographs from all over Texas. And I think it's one of
the finest that I've ever come across, anyplace, and we go
into libraries and ask to see their records and their films
. •• there's nothing to compare to it . The way the Institute
has handled its library, it's a center for research. And we
wouldn't have had that. It also makes it possible for
people to study their families, it was an attraction for all
the ethnic groups to go in and see where they came from and
who their parents were and what they did and what San
Antonio was like in the past. Because that's what the
Institute featured, as you know, in the show in the rotunda.
So there were so many gifts that we have inherited from
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
MG: HemisFair that I don't .•• I honestly don't know what
would have happened to the city if we didn't have it. I
know that the Alamo brings in a lot of people. But as far
as the missions are concerned, the •.• the saving of them was
really desultory and not as strident as it is today ...
4
where we educate people, when people say ... this is
magnificent, these missions. And so now we've attracted all
kinds of citizens of San Antonio to contribute to that. And
you can say that that's a long drawn out •.. but when other
people come here and say ... this is magnificent ... people from
Spain were just shocked by what we had here.
SH: Because it was the Spanish Colonial missions.
MG: I think it began to educate our own people.
SH: That's right.
MG: Look what we have.
SH: You all married in 1955, as I recall.
MG: Yes, uh-huh.
SH: And this was a Noonan marrying a Guerra ...
MG: Yes.
SH: ... in the '50s. And Henry was a well known Hispanic,
famous ••. television and radio ... but in your little hometown
did you encounter any discrimination coming out of that?
MG: No. No, not at all. In fact, I think I became sort of
a heroine because where of course we had a separation of the
community where the Mexicans had their church and the other
people had their churches ... I never once ... in fact, it was
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1}
MG: like I was ... bringing home a movie star (laughter) and
with all of the community ..• it's true ... it was all over the
papers and .•• I would go down the street and everyone was so
delighted ... marrying Henry Guerra!
SH: But Henry, for you was it another story growing up in
San Antonio? A Hispanic •••
5
HG: The only .•. the real prejudice that existed at that time
against Hispanics ... now, there was very real prejudice
against the blacks .•.
SH: And legal discrimination.
HG: ... and there was legal discrimination, but some of the
legal discrimination had been done away with earlier by
various laws. And the fact that there were always a few
prominent Hispanics who were active in the legislature, some
of them were even Texas Rangers, there ... throughout the
history of this town of South Texas, yes, you'll find
prejudice, but you also find prominent, wealthy ... they had
to be wealthy ... Hispanics who were not discriminated against
as badly as the blacks were. Nonetheless there was the same
kind of discrimination, I say, that you find south of the
border, and it's an economic discrimination. It's a
discrimination where the rich feel superior to the poor.
They are not justified in that, but it exists and it exists
today in Mexico. It exists ...
MG: Yes.
HG: ..• today, not only among the Hispanics, but among other
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 6
HG: races and groups. The poor are the poor and the rich
are the rich. And ...
SH:
HG: If you're poor you're not going to join regardless of
if you're white or what-not. The poor are not going to join
the country club, they can't afford it. But, there should
be no legal barriers, there should be no educational
barriers that prevent the poor from bettering their
situation.
MG: Well, this is where World War II ... to go back .. •
SH: Right.
MG: ... made the real leap forward for most people, and that
was mostly the Mexicans who came back from World War II and
had open to them, paid for ... subsidized education and some
of our finest attorneys and some of our finest judges ... and
the doctors ... and I think Henry B. Gonzalez is a product of
that. And here was a man who came from an educated family
in Mexico and here he is today still holding forth. But
World War II with all of the sadness that it had around it,
it also contributed towards the betterment of a lot of
people, in fact, most of our Mexican ...
HG: Well, Kelly Field is a prime example. They found out
at Kelly because most of the men had gone off to war, they
found out they could put women in there, and they found out
that Hispanics unlike the prejudices of the time, could be
taught to repair propellers, to repair aircraft, and so
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1} 7
HG: forth. And the wage level for the Hispanics,
especially, came up ... all the wage levels in San Antonio
came up because of the federal payroll. But we're a success
story here in San Antonio of what has ... the progress that
has been made for different ethnic groups to like each
other. Now, it has to be taught, carefully taught at home,
and unfortunately many of the younger generation don't get
this benefit of this kind of teaching. But the fact is, if
you compare today with, say the 1930s, there is far less
prejudice against the ••. even the poor Mexicano than there
was then. There's still lot of prejudice against the blacks
even though legally they have been freed. Maybe in future
generations, I see it in my grandchildren ... they ••• I see it
in my children ... they don't think anything of being friends
with a black and what-not . And a black doesn't think
anything of being friends with them. But there's still a
lot of prejudice in all races. They are born with a certain
attitude. Now, I like to point to my mother. My mother was
born Elvira Pizzini and she married a Guerra. She was half
Italian and half Hispanic. My father was half Italian and
half Hispanic . They married and I am the product of that
marriage, I and my sister. My mother, before she got
married in 1917, was appointed to the school board, the
public school board. We had only one school board. She was
appointed, she was the first Hispanic. She was a young,
good-looking, unmarried woman. And she served with men,
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 8
HG: completely middle-class men, white ... not white ... Anglo
... Anglo men who were ... most of them were secret members of
the Klu Klux Klan.
MG: Yes .
SH: Wow.
HG: And yet she got them ... within the first year ... she got
them to put out for bids what they had bought for the school
system on the old boys' system.
MG: Well, one of the things is ... your mother .. . your father
who spoke some Italian and spoke some Spanish, put your
mother in Incarnate Word from the time she was a child ...
HG: My grandfather.
MG: ... and she was ... yes, your grandfather ... and she was
one of the first graduates of .•. when it was a ... junior
college, wasn't it?
HG: Yes.
MG: ... junior college. And she was one of the first
graduates .
HG: When it was way out in the country. They used to drive
her out there in a buggy.
SH: So it was five miles from downtown? Four?
HG: It was a long way .
SH: We've been talking about prejudice and some economics
. .. about politics ... when I came to town there was a small
group of people who basi cally ran San Antoni o. They chose
the city council, they chose the county commissioners, that
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1} 9
SH: has changed drastically. Could you tell us your view
of the changes and how they came about.
HG: When I was growing up in the 1920s, we had a city
machine. City Hall was controlled by the old city machine.
We had a mayor and four commissioners. And in those days if
you knew the right people, you could pick up the phone and
get the hole in your street fixed up, but you had to know
Paul Steffler, who was the street commissioners, you had to
know someone in power. That no longer obtains. You can
know the mayor and it's no guarantee you're going to get
your street fixed. But in those days, we had paper ballots
and they used to open up the ballot boxes and they could
tell how you had voted. So much so that my father in the
1930s, he was a successful businessman, his business was the
Henry A. Guerra Funeral Home which in the 1930 changed its
name to the Angelus Funeral Home, and it was a fairly
successful small business. He was president of the Lions
Club, the Downtown Lions Club, there's your ..• in other
words you can overcome prejudices •.. he was also active in
the Spanish speaking community. He was head of the Knights
of Columbus, in fact when he became the Grand Knight of the
Knights of Columbus he got the national ... the
international convention of the Knights of Columbus to San
Antonio for the first t i me. That was in 1936 - 37. But he
had to turn to a Masonic leader, a Mr. O.E. Latimer, who
later s erved in the Legislature, to help get the money to
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 10
HG: pay for the Catholic convention. This town has always
been a tolerant town in that sense. Now, oh, yes, we have
the Klu Klux Klan and we have prejudices of Catholics and
prejudices of Protestants, and what-not, but gradually we've
learned to ... so much so that . . • it was, I think, in the 1960s
or '70s, that one of the local synagogues took up bingo.
And you know where they got that from.
SH: Right.
MG: But Henry, •. .
HG: Now, I want to say ..• that my father ran for police
commissioner in 1930. And he did so only after the family
friend, Jake Rubiola, announced he was going to retire.
Then he changed his mind, that is, Mr. Rubiola changed his
mind, decided to run as the city candidate. I think they
persuaded him. So, the fire and police commissioner called
my father's brother, younger brother, in, who was a fireman,
and my father's father had been a fire captain before that,
and he called him in and he said, "You have a choice, you
either vote for your brother or you vote for our candidate.
And we'll know how you voted. And if you vote for your
brother, then find another job." Well, he came to my father
and told him about this, my father had to tell him, said,
"Well, I haven't got a job for you, you'd better vote for
the c ity hall candidate." (laughter) And he did.
SH: Well, do you think the San Antonio local government now
is more open and responsive to the community?
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
HG: Oh, yes.
MG: Oh, yes.
HG: Much, more so.
MG: I think it's great.
SH: Do you think that single member districts have
benefited the city?
MG: Oh, I think we should ... had great progress in that
area.
11
HG: I think we have too many . If you have 11 or 12 members
to a city council, you've got a big debating society, and
that's a trade-off, just like the legislature and the
congress does. And sometimes the trade is good and
sometimes it just slows things down. But you're not as
efficient as you were when a dictator ran things at city
hall.
SH: Well, dictators make trains run on time, but they .. .
HG: They make them run on time and they do things like .. .
win the first part of the war, but eventually they lose the
whole war.
MG: But the city had a mean atmosphere when Kilday was the
police chief ...
SH: owen Kilday ...
MG: ... and different ones . It was mean . They would ...
they would crack down on a group for ... for whatever reasons
they had.
HG: The pecan shellers. When Kilday was chief of
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
HG: police and don't blame Kilday, but it was the
atmosphere of the time ...
MG: But it was part of it.
12
HG: ... you used the police to break up a strike. So the
pecan shellers went on strike, now, that's an odd story.
They were being paid a very, very, not even a minimum wage,
they were being paid •. .
MG: There wasn't a minimum wage.
HG: ... cents for an hour. And they went on strike and with
the help of the police the pecan shellers were very rich,
were doing very well, then they got tired of the whole thing
and they fired everybody. There were no more pecan shelling
jobs. Number 1, that meant no working at home, which was
unsanitary, picking the pecans, no breathing in of the pecan
dust when you picked the pecans, cleaned them and took them
out of the shells, so therefore, without intending to the
owners by buying machines instead of workers, they helped
the health of the West Side, because people were dying all
over the place from tuberculosis of the lungs. This was the
tuberculosis capitol of Texas by the way.
SH: Um. And it was spread by ... close quarters.
MG: If you wanted to read about the full ugliness of the
city at that time, it is written up in the Southwest
Historical Review, that at that time the owners of the
companies, the pecan shelling companies, how they thought of
Mexicans •.. how they said well, you can give them a tortilla
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 13
MG: with some beans on it ... and those people are still here
today, they've got places named for them. But it was a fact
of life ... that ugliness ... it was mean and ...
HG: All over the country we have been slowly evolving to
where more and more of the non-nordic immigrants ... because
we're all immigrants ... the non-Nordic immigrants are getting
a more even break than they used to get back before World
War II, and more so before World War I. To my mind the
biggest argument for not worrying about the immigrants is
the fact that we have a high school here called Lanier High
School. You go to the campus of Lanier High School and you
see a monument there. The monument bears the names of at
least 40 former students of Lanier High School and students
of Lanier High School who went off to war and gave their
lives fighting for their country ... the United States of
America. They are all Hispanic names.
SH: Right. Tell me ... it seems to me another watershed in
recent San Antonio history ... was the election of Henry
Cisneros as mayor.
HG: Well, it was a watershed but yet historically it was
not correct to say he was the first modern mayor elected.
What do you think Bryan Callaghan was? Bryan Callaghan was
married to a Canary Islander.
MG: And he was half ....
HG: And he is ••• his mother was a Canary Islander. And his
father, when he came from Ireland, and became elected mayor,
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 14
HG: he was already married ... soon after arrival here he
married a Canary Islander.
SH: And what year was that?
HG: That was in the ... well, the first Bryan Callaghan must
have been in the 1840s or so, the second Bryan Callaghan was
more toward the 1880s - 1890s - 1900s.
MG: Because he was mayor for about 15 years, I think.
HG: Well, he ... not continuously ... he got beaten a couple of
times.
MG: He had only one break.
HG: But ... now he was the kind that would when he was
electioneering ... there wasn't any Alamo Heights then ... but
when he was electioneering in the English speaking parts of
town, he spoke perfect English, he'd been to school in
Europe ...
MG: He spoke French.
HG: But when he electioneered on the West Side he spoke
perfect Spanish.
MG: He was a highly educated man.
SH: Mary Ann, what are your views on the changing role of
women in San Antonio? You've always been active or
involved.
MG: Well, I was. A long time ago I belonged to the League
of Women Voters. Actually I wanted to join before I was old
enough and then I did join ... was a member for some time ...
and also the Conservation Society and the work they were
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 15
MG: doing. And I think it's been remarkable what has gone
on in San Antonio without any real dust-ups because the
women are very powerful here. But you don't see as much of
the confrontations that you hear about in other places. I
think they've been ... been very smart in the way they have
gone about doing things ... take COPS ... for a while some
people criticized them for being a bit aggressive. Well,
they had to be aggressive to break in. But look at them
today. I mean, they are ... they are articulate, they know
where they're going, they know what they want to do, but
they're not arrogant or aggressive and that's what I like
about them. I think that ..• we don't have too many women ...
leaders ... women who are leaders, who have that attitude that
alienates people. And I don't know what •••
SH: Well, let me interject ... that COPS is Communities
Organized for Public Service and it is primarily a female­driven
organization ... has been since ...
MG: Yes, yes.
HG: And it's a neighborhood .•.
SH: .. . it's origin ... and it's a neighborhood organization
MG: And look at the Conservation Society; look at the DRT -
I have to get a plug in here . . .
SH: Okay.
MG: ... and that is ..• that the river, the Alamo, and the
missions, they were all saved by women who had to conv ince
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 1) 16
MG: their husbands to back them up. In every case ... well,
in the case of the Conservation Society it didn't take much
convincing, they did have men who were interested in
conservation, not from a ... possibly a practical standpoint,
but they could see the necessity of saving beautiful old
buildings and the river, but it wasn't until .•. I would say
way after Walter McAllister was even mayor . . • because Walter
wasn't all sold on it, as you know he was an opponent ... so
they accomplished all of that while being opposed by a very
strong political force . They were ...
SH: Who?
MG: ... they met a concrete wall. And yet they accomplished
what they went after and I think they're the most admirable
people in the world. To me they are.
SH: Uh-huh.
MG: Because they did it with grace and most of the women we
have today ... we have judges and we have ...
HG: Educators ...
MG: ... educators, we have women in the oil industry .. .
SH: People who sit in the county government.
MG: ... and you don't get that feeling of a woman stomping
in and being the boss. I mean ...
SH: Yeah. No pushy broads.
MG: Exactly. They got what they went a f ter without losing
anything .
HG: This town had female leadership early on.
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
MG: Oh, yes.
17
HG: Adina De Zavala, Clara Driscoll, Mrs. H.P. Drought ...
MG: Oh, she . .. all of these ... who before . • • around World War
I ... they were leaders ••. Well, Mrs . Drought ...
HG : . . . Mrs. Hertzberg and what-not.
MG: We wouldn't have had the Witte Museum if it had been
for Mrs. Drought and ...
HG: Ellen Schultz .•.
MG: ... and Ellen Schultz. In every case if you'll look
into it, it's usually been a couple of women getting
together and saying ... we've got to do this. And whether
their husbands agreed with them or thought they were ...
their wives were smart ... it was a good business venture or
not ... I don't know. All I know is that most of them were
backed up by their husbands. And I think this is a very
interesting aspect of women in San Antonio because you have
a great mix.
HG: Now one of the changes I've seen i s the change in
economics. It used to be that the geography of San Antonio
worked against it. The legend that we have that the city
fathers and the city owners or businesses kept the Ford
Motor Company out •.. that's a legend. If the Ford Motor
Company really wanted to come here, they'd come in here.
But why would they come here? The raw materials are miles
away and you have to develop a force that's educated to do
that kind of work. At the time . . • now they use robots. But
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 18
HG: it was our location that worked against us. We were
too far from the markets, we were too far from the raw
materials and it was the freight differential that kept San
Antonio down. San Antonio has existed for a long time on
the federal payrolls. Then it got ... agriculture used to be
very important, and then oil and gas came in, and although
there's none .. .
MG: Ranching .. .
HG: ... around here, a lot of the people in the oil and gas
industry chose to make their headquarters here. And that's
how the Milan Building and others got built.
SH: And recently Southwestern Bell moved its corporate
headquarters here.
HG: Well, I think it was our ambiance that helped them to
make •..
MG: I was going to say ... one of the things about San
Antonio is its atmosphere and it does have a •.. an attitude
••. and I think one of the reasons is that we've never had
any real confrontations or ugliness among the various ethnic
groups or social groups. Now, we've got a little bit of a
rise lately, but that's a ... just a surface battle.
HG: Well, you can say what you want about Walter McAlister,
but when he l aid down the law and told the police, shoot to
kill, he was referring to the reported rumors of an invasion
from the north of Black Panthers. Anyway, nothing ever
happened. That was in 1969 right after the HemisFair. And
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
HG: we ...
MG: He was very good.
HG: ••. we've had incidents and we have problems today ...
drive-by shootings and so forth ...
MG: And we'll go on having them.
19
HG: But I do want to say this ... my wife, when I first met
her and when I was courting her and even after she got
married, she worked for Frost Brothers, which had their big
store downtown. Downtown Houston and Commerce streets used
to be the commercial center of San Antonio . .. and I saw all
of that in the 1920s ••• everybody went to the movies downtown
• •. and went to see Broadway shows that came into town
downtown .•• well, we lost all of that in the ..• from about the
1 60s ... late '60s •.. '70s ... even into the 180s ... we lost that
and gradually you saw a death of the retail business
downtown, because it was addressing the wrong thing. They
were trying to address customers who were driving out to the
malls, they lived near the malls, and they bought their furs
and their fine clothes and bought the cheap clothes and they
bought this and that and the other ...
MG: Well, it was an idea explored in de-centralization.
But that ... it should never have applied to San Antonio. I
don't think i t should have. It did for the big cities
maybe.
HG: Well, we did away with our streetcars.
SH: Um. I think you' ve listed at least part o f it and I've
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 20
SH: worked downtown for more than 30 years ... is that the
downtown merchants never took the trouble to find out who
came to town to work every day ... and marketed to them. I
never had any .. .
HG: That's all the people who work for the government.
They go downtown ... they have to go downtown ... work at city
hall, county courthouse .. .
MG: But don't you think .. .
SH: . ..•... have 1200 employees.
HG: Yeah.
MG: Don't you think it's coming back?
SH: It's coming back on the East and West ends, the middle
is still vacant.
HG: Yeah.
MG: Yes.
SH: Retail. But I think ...
HG: We're trying to change that by re-doing downtown and
providing . . . we have to get people living downtown and we
have to get not just rich people •.. we have to provide walk­ups
or apartments like New York and other big cities ...
MG: Well, like the Granada Hotel and .. .
HG: ... do for the ordinary person.
SH: Right. The affordable housing.
HG: Yeah.
SH: And then ... there's really no grocery store downtown, no
dry cleaners, but they will come back when the people come
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1}
SH: back. When people live there.
21
MG: It used to be ... I lived with my cousin for awhile . ..
when the Conservation Society bought the ... it's 711 Villita
... it's the house over there ... the first place they bought
... right next to the old O'Con place ... and at that time,
Sterlin, when we moved in we had ... right along Alamo ..• we
had a cleaning establishment, we had a Chinese grocery
store, we had everything we needed in one block, we could
just walk right down and get everything .. .
HG: But now you have the Hilton and the .. . .
SH:
MG: I'm talking about the 1940s.
SH: There are relatively few neighborhoods like that in ...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1, 45 Minutes
SIDE 2.
HG: .. • the overcoming of prejudice. We're always going to
have ... like the poor ... It says in the Bible ••. the poor
you'll always have with you ... I think the people are still
going to be prejudiced ••• you know .•• in the year 2500 .•. but
it's a different kind of prejudice. We've done away with
slavery, we done away with people regarding each other as
suspicious ... to a certai n extent ... but there's still a
suspicion of the latest arrival . And I got a great lesson
in that when I went to a meeting at the Italian Hall •..
we're very proud of our Italian colony ... and they had this
meeting in the Hall i n the 1960s, there was a nation-wide
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 22
HG: effort led by the Italians to change the immigration
laws because they discriminated against Southern Mediterrean
peoples. Everything favored the quotas, the laws, favored
the nordic peoples. So they sent down a state legislator
from New York and a monsignor and they were very good. And
they explained how they wanted you to write your congressman
and get this law passed. So, they had the whole Colony
there. And from the back of the hall a Moustache Pete got
up, and he was a real Moustache Pete. He had come to this
country in 1910 without a penny in his pocket, he worked
hard, he became a millionaire. He became a ... he really made
money. And he provided for his family and everything else,
and his moustache had turned white, but he still had quite
an accent. And he arose from from the back of the Hall and
he said, "Let me see if I understand the proposition." -he
had the accent, I'm trying get it - but he said, "You want
to change the immigration law of this country?" They said,
"Yes, that's what we intend to do, Sir." He said, "Hell,
no, we got too many Wop already." (laughter} So you find
that kind of prejudice among whatever race it is.
MG: Yes.
HG: The ones that got here first ••• they look down their
noses at the ones that just arrived. I don't care what it
is.
SH: Do you remember how Roosevelt - Franklin Roosevelt -
made enemies of the Daughters of the American Revolution?
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1}
HG: Yes.
MG: Oh, yes.
23
SH: He said, "Greetings, fellow immigrants." (laughter)
HG: Well, she was involved ... not in that incident ••• but in
what preceded it. Tell him about your being invited to join
the Daughters of the American Republic .•. Revolution.
MG: Yes. In Washington, D.C. I was up there at school and
I knew the history of the Marion Anderson event and it ... at
that time when you're talking about someone 18 or 19 years
old ... you really have a ... wave flags and you march and all
..• and I was right, I think I was right then, and I think
that one of the things that has happened is these
organizations have changed.
HG: Yes.
MG: It has brought about ... it's changed the tunnel vision
of so many ...
SH: By these organizations you mean ... ?
MG: The DAR for instance.
HG: Daughters of the American Revolution.
MG: They have changed . . . it's a great organization and they
do wonderful things, but I think it had to be brought home
to them ... they .•. many people don't know that they're
prejudiced, Sterlin. They don't ... they don't see themselves
as prej udiced people.
SH: You referred to the Marion Anderson incident. Most
people .. . more people might not be familiar with that, will
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
SH: you tell us about it?
24
MG: Well, in 1939 she was supposed to sing at Constitution
Hall.
HG: Contralto-soprano.
SH: Premier ...
HG: She was a black contralto . . .
MG: She was one of our great black singers . And her
concert was cancelled. Later on the DAR said that it was
cancelled because they had had a prior date, but at that
time Harold Ickes then offered the Lincoln Memorial for her
to sing in front of. And so that was a great, great event,
but we've had events like that . . . that at that time they
looked ugly but they did change things. And I think we've
had the same thing happen here in San Antonio. One thing
that happened with Henry and me a long time ago when we were
first married, we had some friends from New Jersey come down
.•. not New Jersey, but from Delaware ... and I remember we
were having dinner and this gentleman who was connected with
the very famous Du Pont family said, "Well, you all will
never have the problems that we have because you have had
integration going on since the beginning." And at that I
got ... I was angry with him for making such a statement ...
but he was right . Because from the beginning of the
founding of San Antonio there has been an integration ... all
you have to is go back to the early families and sure ... we
went through the bloodbath of the poor Mexicans coming in
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1} 25
MG: from various revolutions and the mix of Mexicans that
many people look down on them, but we had had an integration
long, long before that ... of Mexicans and blacks and ...
HG: Indians.
MG: • •. and Anglos and Indians . That actually was a part of
our history. And where ••. sure we had ... as I said long years
of ...
HG: In other words there was nothing new.
MG : It was nothing new.
HG : When Jim Bowie married the daughter of the Spanish •••
Mexican governor of Texas.
MG: Well, you wouldn't have had that in New York or Chicago
or whatever. Because we had the very small settlements and
HG: And it was a frontier settlement .
MG: ... and we had so many eligible ••. pardon?
HG : It was a frontier settlement.
MG: It was a frontier settlement.
HG: Now I ran into this kind of prejudice out of my own
background. For instance ... ! went to school here and I got
a BA in English and History from st. Mary's University and
I've continued reading and everything else, but I had ... the
first Spanish Consul appointed to Texas was appointed in
Houston and I read about it ... this was in 1960s or so ... and
I called a friend of mine who at that time headed the Canary
Island group ... one of the Canary Island groups in San
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 1) 26
HG: Antonio ... and said, "We've got to go to meet this
Spanish Consul." And we flew to Houston and we got him to
come to San Antonio which was not a commercial center but
was certainly a center of Espanidad and he fell in love with
the place. And then this counsul turned to us and said,
"Now I've done what you wanted, now I'm going to ask you to
do something for me because I can't do it." I said, "What
is that?" He said, "I want you to make the name of Bernardo
de Galvez known in San Antonio and maybe in Texas." And we
said, "Who's he?" We didn't know. Both Charlie Barrerra
and myself had gone to school here and we had never heard
the name. Did you ever hear of Galveston, Texas?
SH: Yes.
HG: It's named after Bernardo de Galvez. Since then books
have come out. They ..• the Granderos de Galvez were formed
... that's what Charlie Barrerra did for the consul. I
didn't want to wear a uniform so I didn't join the thing,
except I gave it some support. But their intent is to
correct our history books. Because you went to school and
I'm sure you learned plenty of history, did you ever hear of
how much Spain did to help us win the American Revolution?
Maybe lately, but when you were going to school, you didn't
hear a word. Our history books have to be corrected. Not
only that, you take .•. you read the average history book and
I confronted one time a local historian on this ..• and he'd
copied what he'd read in all the other history books ..• they
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1} 27
HG: say ... the Spanish missions were a failure. And I say
... no, sir, they were not. The Spanish missions
accomplished their purpose, which was to Christianize and
.•• wrong word ... civilize ... make Europeans out of the
Indians. Well, they did. The Coahuiltecan Indians came in
to the mission and although some of them died in epidemics
and although .•. most of them were Christianized, plenty of
them were baptized as Christians, and they disappeared into
the body politic, and you can't trace your ancestry back in
many cases.
MG: Well, the problem is that most history books were
written by Anglos and ••••
SH: Winners write the histories.
MG: Pardon?
SH: I said ... winners of wars write the histories.
MG: Yes, absolutely. So you're going to have a tunnel
vision. But one of the things that when we talk about
history and learning about our own town .•. Henry last night
attended this program, Los Compadres, who're doing such
wonderful things with the missions, 15 years ago we had a
tough time keeping alive these missions •.. when did we sign
the contract? ... the treaty ..•
HG: Now wait a minute ... let's make clear what we say "we"
..• we're talking about .. .
MG: Oh, the Conservation Society .•.
HG: .. . people that died before we were born.
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 28
MG: Yes, yes. But the point is ... that all of these people,
all of these people listed here now, they are proud of the
missions and ...
HG: They give money.
MG: ... they know what ... they know where they are and they
know what we should do and they revere them. And 15 years
ago I doubt that very many people on this list ...
SH: Could find their way to ...
MG: ... could find their way to ... well, very few people
could find their way to it.
SH: And it's still more difficult than it should be.
HG: Yes. We need a Mission Road.
SH: Yeah, well, there's work on that underway. Let's talk
about the culture of San Antonio in the last 25 to 30 years.
Culture being music, touring shows, the symphony, the
museums, libraries ••. what ... how would you, Mary Ann, how
would you evaluate ...
MG: I think this is our main failure ... of course our
symphony is still good ... but losing the opera ••. and also the
library ... now we're bringing that up and God willing they
won't cut the amount of money back much more, but I think
one of the things that people in San Antonio are learning
and catching on to and that is priorities ... what are our
priorities? For instance, in the Alamodome ... what were we
to have ... an Alamodome or a library? Well, that was when
Henry Cisneros woke to the fact, I think, that we had to
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 29
MG: have a library too. At that time .• . before that time
though, Sterlin, we could easily have ended up with just
putting in some new machines over on st. Mary's Street. But
because we had a few people, include Claude Stanush, who
used to work for your newspaper, fought for the library.
And against real opposition. There was anger in there. But
now we're getting the library and I do believe that with
bringing UTSA down to San ... down into the town •.. into the
city ..• all of these things are going to contribute towards a
... the need we have for better facilities in education, in
music, and in art ... I think we need a museum downtown. I
believe this firmly because if you came here with your
children, you have to get the car and go way out to the
McNay, you have to go out to the Witte, you have to go out
to Jones Avenue. That's fine, except we need something that
reflects this city.
SH: I think that's going to happen ... possibly ..• we'll have
a children's museum on Houston Street and Curtis Gunn bought
the building at Houston and Broadway.
MG: And it'll be one of the finest things we can do.
HG: Ah.
SH: Let's go back to the libraries. I'm going to violate
an interviewer's code, I guess, interject something on
Cisneros and the Alamodome and the libraries. He was in my
office, in effect, selling that concept of building the
Alamodome, he said we would not be a world-class city
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 30
SH: without a dome stadium. And I said, "Henry, you talk
about world-class cities and your city council has just cut
the library budget ... not once, but twice in the same year.
We're now per capita books the same as Muleshoe, Texas."
Now whether that had anything with changing his mind, I
don't know. But ...
MG: Well, you put a pin in the balloon because one of the
things ... and I don't want to talk too much about Henry
Cisneros ..• but he is a high-flyer and a visionary and we
needed someone who also was downtown with his feet on
Houston Street and Alamo Plaza and looking around and saying
... what kind of bus service do we have? and what's the
lighting system? and ...
HG: Our present mayor has been very good on that.
MG: Oh, he's good .
SH: Nelson Wolff.
MG: Oh, I think Nelson Wolff is ..•
HG: Nelson Wolff has been very good.
MG: ... he's superb.
HG : It's too bad that he can't be re-elected.
MG : This is one of the mistakes that I think we made in
voting ...
SH: That's on the term limitation.
MG: Uh-huh. Term limitation .
HG: Now, culturally ...
MG: It's too short.
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1} 31
HG: culturally, I think we have advanced in some sectors
and retreated in others . We're getting back the Broadway
shows, but we're not getting them through city money. We're
getting like we used to get them in the past. And that is
through private money. From people making off their shows.
The city ..• back in the '20s ••. 1 30s ••. '40s ... did something
very wonderful. They funded dance programs for children,
primarily. And those dance programs kept alive the flamenco
dance ..• we have better flamenco dancers than they have in
Spain. And they kept alive the Mexican dances . Hell, I
used to have to put on a costume and dance the damn Jarabe
Tapatio and what-not, and that's great for people who love
to dance. Now we have lost some of our leadership in the
dance programs largely through other people coming in for
the funding. But we've got to accommodate all of this. I
want to see some Belgian dances and French dances ••• I want
all of our authentic heritage .•. which is more than Hispanic
... black dances ... I want all that ...
MG: Well, Carver is great, the Carver Center.
HG: ... I want that. We have to develop more things like
the Happy J azz Band.
SH: Yeah .
MG: Well, one of the things I think ...
SH: Which was a private enterprise entirely.
HG: Yes.
SH: Jim Cullum has never accepted one cent of public money .
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 32
MG: Well, the Carver Center is one of our best showplaces.
SH: Yeah, and it's one of the best kept secrets too.
HG: Guadalupe ... Guadalupe Community Center.
MG: Guadalupe Community Center ... there's another one. But
I think with the young people and all the people attending
universities downtown ..• where you have people moving among
one another and mixing ••• they're going to see the light •••
that we have to have more downtown in the way of music and
museums and the library ... but it has to be first-class. We
can't be ... we are not a first-class city without it. That's
all there is to it.
HG: Well, we've been too long split into what the
newspapers themselves call the "affluent sector of the city"
and the "effluent sector." It all flowed down the stream.
Well, we've got to stop that. We've got to develop the
South Side, the East Side, the West Side, and quit building
over the aquifer.
MG: Well, I don't know how it happened. Maybe it's in
every city ..• that the people who serve on the boards and who
support the symphonies and the museum are the monied people
to a great extent, mostly, and it created a kind of aura
around it where others felt like that it wasn't for them.
And we have to have a way of educating people to say ...
look, this is your symphony, you can go for $2 or $3 or
whatever •.. that's another thing .•. you have to make it
available. One of the things I remember most about England
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 33
MG: is that • •• and I was i n this small town in southern
England •.• Sussex ... there was a convent school down there ...
and the great symphonies would come and we would have music
because it was right after the war and we'd have them in any
kind of an old building and I remember sitting on the floor
and listening to Sir Adrian Boult conduct . And we, I don't
think, have attracted the kind yet . . . have the demand for yet
. . • of great shows. I think we did with Mexico and we have
with Diego Rivera, that ' s one of the most important things
SH: You're talking about "Splendors?"
MG : Yes. But I think we need to do more of it . I think
it's been difficult . .. there's a possibility of getting a
Spanish Institute here. God willing we might snag it.
There ... we •re in competition with another city for a Spanish
Institute which will be on the order of the Mexican Cultural
Insti tute.
SH: Uh-huh .
MG: And all of these things add to the real spirit and soul
of the city.
SH: I think the symphony is beginning to reach out. It's
oo u-o o oooctooo o o oo
MG: They are .
SH: • . . music, it's getting out in the communi t y more, and
it's playing other than just the standard old Beethoven,
Brahms, etc. and I think it's trying to break away from them
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 34
SH: . .• it's just for little old ladies from Alamo Heights
MG: Yes. Well, and what's so odd about it is that •.• I
don't think they ever ••. the board members or the
contributors ... ever meant it to be that way. But they
created a circle around themselves that alienated other
people and I don't think they did it purposely, it happened,
so many people would not go to the symphony or ••• and also
sometimes what was played by the symphony, of course, I
think we have to have a lot more experimental music, and
local composers.
HG: One of the things that San Antonian Claude
[Stanush]wrote about this one time ... San Antonio needs to
develop its own talents and this is one way of fighting
juvenile crime. We need to take the kid that spray paints
graffiti on the wall and see if he doesn't have any talent.
HG: Let him paint something. We need to take ... one of
the best things that's going on right now is that a school
on the South Side, a former Catholic school, Blessed
Sacrament Academy, that has a program that takes rejects,
you know ... people who have been kicked out of public
school or private school ..• and they work with them to see
if they can't get them in. Well, they fail many times, but
they have ... I attended a graduation where they gave ...
handed out diplomas to a whole bunch of them. Give them
another chance. And we should develop handicrafts. Whether
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1}
it's leather working, whether it's carving, whether it's
monument making, what-ever, plates, we should develop a
Talavera Works around here ...
35
MG: Well, that's what the WPA did at La Villita. We had a
great center there .
HG: But you see everything is now ... you go and buy
everything at woolworth or J.C.Penney's and what-not. We've
got to get away from certain things. Shoe shines. Try to
get a shoe shine in this town. You have to buy one of those
things that you comb •.. that brushes your shoes . . .
MG: But to get back
HG: Newspapers. I can see that the bottom line ... if I were
administrator I'd would go for those, rather than mess with
a bunch of people delivering the paper. But twice it's
tried to chop my hand off and it's robbed me of many ...
SH: You're talking about the vending machines?
MG: Machines •.. the vending ... (laughter)
HG: Yeah. And then it's tried many times to ... well, it's
robbed me many times.
MG: There's something ... they are so impersonal.
HG: And there's nothing you can do e xcept kick it.
MG: Well, you always liked the newsman. You'd have one ...
I know when I was at Frost Brothers I always liked to buy
the p aper.
HG: Well, the guys on the corners that sold the papers ...
SH: Yeah, the vendors on the streets.
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
HG: Yeah, they made a living. Now they're on payrolls.
They're on welfare.
36
MG: To get back to the HemisFair though .•. because I don't
know if we talked about it earlier and that is the Institute
of Texan Cultures has been an education for so many of our
children from all over the state. For them to come and see
what their greatgrandparents did ... it gives them ••• and makes
them not only feel a part of the state, but it educates them
as to what their people did and the contributions that they
have made.
SH: Shows how many .•. how wide the cultures ...
MG: That's one of the most important things. This wide,
wide ... that marvelous circular film that they show ... that,
to me, was one of the greatest gifts that we had through
HemisFair.
HG: Well, HemisFair ... I'll tell you the story off-the­record
••.
MG: (laughter)
SH: I'm not going to turn off the tape, Henry, this is for­the-
record.
HG: There were a whole bunch of old houses and after a lot
of argument people ••. the Conservation Society ... O'Neill Ford
and others ... managed to save some of the old houses and they
were actually used as exhibit space and restuarants in
HemisFair 1 68.
SH: Uh-huh .
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 37
HG: Well, one of the old houses ... and they wanted to mark
all of these with historic plaques ... one of the houses was a
house where Sarah Eager was born or lived most of her life,
and it's still there ... and they already had ... signed up a
Spanish Government exhibit, they had signed up a Mexican
Government exhibit, they were in the process of trying to
get other Latin American countries to exhibit ... Italy
exhibited, France exhibited. So we couldn't do what was
done in the Texas history books that we studied ... which said
... quote ... that Sara Eager was the first white child born in
Texas. They knew all of that. This is one of our sons,
Ramon.
MG: Ramon. He teaches and goes to the University ...
HG: He likes to wear those black shirts .
MG: Go ahead.
HG: We knew ... they knew- the HemisFair hierarchy- they
knew that they couldn't afford to have a plaque that said
... that here was were the first white child in Texas was
born ... because they had all of these foreign exhibits coming
in. But they appointed a committee to see what they could
put on the p l aque. Well, the committee reported back that
she was not the first Anglo child . .. Anglo child born in
Texas. They ... but she was the first legitimate Anglo child
born in Texas. (laughter) They said ... well, forget the
whole thing. (laughter)
MG: Well, another story is . .. talking about the Mexicans
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
MG: here in San Antonio ... Tom Connally was the ...
HG: Governor.
MG: ... governor at that time and the Mexican exhibit ...
SH: John ... John Connally.
MG: Um? John Connally. What did I say? Tom Connally.
John.
HG: He was a senator.
MG: Yeah. Anyway, John Connally was the governor and he
saw some of the photographs •.•
HG: You gave that to the wrong son ... that was for Henry.
MG: I didn't give it to him.
HG: Oh.
38
MG: Anyway .. • the governor saw the photographs that were
taken. Among them were the typical Mexican scene .•• what
everybody thought of .•• the fellow with the big sombero and
the baggy pants and all ... and he called down and said,
"Change it and I want it brought up to date." They brought
in Black Star, and Black Star hired me to go around with the
photographer to take photographs of people like Dr. Urrutia
who was head of the surgery at Santa Rosa. We had pilots
out at Randolph Field. We had Albert Pena. We had all of
these people that were involved in politics, in medicine, in
education, and we shot all of these photographs. But the
first ... and I have no idea who did the first set of
photographs ... who was even hired to lay it out .•• or whatever
••. but Connally came in and he liked the second ... and that's
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
MG: how we got a better view of San Antonio. But that
shows you that whoever worked on the first draft of
photographs ... how they thought of Mexicans and ...
SH: Uh-huh. Peasants in the field.
MG: Yeah. Peasants in the field.
SH: or in Siesta Town.
39
MG: Yes. And if they'd go to Santa Rosa and they wanted
one of the best surgeons, they would have gotten a Mexican.
So that was in 1 68 ...
SH: So there was somebody in 1 68 who had not made it out of
the past.
MG: No. They were still seeing the Mexicans citizen as a
sombreroed yardman almost.
SH: Right.
MG: And what interested me was that John Connally was the
one that ... get them out of here, start all over. And that's
what we did.
HG: Well, I'll tell you a personal story. She and I knew a
young lady who was the daughter of a prominent developer.
He developed a big section of the city and he made a lot of
money. And we would go, because of the daughter, we'd go to
some of the parties that he threw, and I was standing in his
mansion, holding a glass of good Scotch, when he started in
on the Mexicans. And I finally said, 11Well, Mr. So and so,
you've got to remember one thing ... I 1 m a Mexican." And you
know what he said to me? He said, "Well, I don't mean your
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1)
HG: kind of Mexican."
SH: Oh, boy.
HG: I almost dropped the glass.
40
MG: And that's ..• 168 though ... is 30 ... almost 30 years ago
... so we in that period of time . . . ! would say from World War
II to 1968 to even the last five years .•. have been the best
for San Antonio ... for all ethnic groups and for women. I
really believe that San Antonio is a kind of city that can
be very proud of the way they've accomplished things.
Because we haven't had the kind of ugliness that has gone on
in other cities. But we don't have riots like they do in
Los Angeles.
HG: Well, you have flowers in our barrios.
MG: One of the things we have is space. You can go even to
the poorer section of the city and you'll see . .. they all
have little gardens and they all have front porches with
chairs on them. That's civilizing.
HG: Guadalulpe ...
SH: I'm going to ask Henry to give a little summing up, if
you'd like to, about the city and maybe the future ••.
HG: San Antonio is unique. I t has a mixture of many
cultures and it runs all through its history. We 1ve had
prejudice in this town. We still do. But I think we are
less prejudice than many other towns because we know more of
our h i story. As we get to know that history we learn to
appreciate the other guy. And our future I think, is bright
Henry and Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 1) 41
HG: because we are getting the light industries we need to
provide the payrolls. You can't be much of a good fellow if
you're worried about putting meat on the table. And we've
got to improve the economy of San Antonio and we've got to
improve the understanding of San Antonio. And most of all
we have got to improve the educational opportunities we
provide for all of our children.
SH: Thank you both. This has been a splendid hour and if
you all would like to we can do another some other time to
add to it.
MG: Yes. When you turn it off I want to say something.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2, ABOUT 45 MINUTES.
THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
INTERVIEW WITH: Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2)
DATE: 19 April 1994
PLACE:
INTERVIEWER:
Guerras• home,
san Antonio, Texas.
Sterlin Holmesly
SH: .... for a second visit with Henry and Mary Ann Noonan
Guerra at their home. And Mary Ann you want to talk about a
current controversy over the Alamo ...
MG: Yes.
SH: ••• and some of the things that really disturb you about
it?
MG: Well, because, I think, that where we were making
progress, slow progress, but I think it was steady progress,
that what started out as a newspaper program and concern
electing a mayor, but I think there were some ulterior
motives, I think there are people who want the DRT out of
the Alamo,
SH: That's Daughters of the Republic of Texas?
MG: Yes, Daughters of the Republic of Texas, of which I am
a member, but there were several things that were really
wrong at the beginning with that and that was when they
began getting personal, which was done by both newspaper
columnists and by the man who is supposed to run for mayor,
Dr. Thornton. And this is something that I regret and
resent because we've been through some very bad times ...
MG: let's say in the '40s and '50s, even before that •..
when we had civil rights uprisings, but there was humor in
them, there's been no humor at all in this. But I can
remember when we had those uprisings with (Mayor Walter]
McAllister and Albert Pena and things were bad but there
were times when you would laugh about it. When there could
be some humor in it, there's no humor in this at all and
it's become a political, civil rights move within the whole
shebang let's say. Because now there are all kinds of
interests ••• the Spanish Colonial, historians want the Alamo
to be recognized as a mission ... we did that, as a matter of
fact. In the Long Barracks, I did the research and the
writing for them 12 years ago. But they want more
recognition and this is understandable, I just told an
historian today, 11What you have to do is, you don't attack
people or charge them. You get what you'd like to have or
aim at having ... historically or physically at the Alamo or
whatever and then document what •.. how you back up your
historical beliefs. You don't start charging people with
being ..• racists or Anglo hungry or whatever. Of course
these people who came in the 1800s were land hungry, they
were plain hungry, and any ... most people who came here
before the revolution and after the revolution were people
seeking a better life and I don't care how else you put it. 11
Some of the historians and one of them who was on the phone
with me a long time today about 2 hours, he doesn't consider
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 2) 3
MG: the Alamo heroes as heroes, that there's too much myth
there. Well, I disagree. I think that as far as their
being men with great holy characters ... no, not
necessarily. I think a lot of men who went off to war in
World War I and World War II weren't holy men, but they
became heroes I think when it came to a showdown. Just like
these men who came here. And fought in the Alamo. Maybe
they were people with very checkered backgrounds and a lot
of them were. But I don't think you can accuse people of
being myths and legends or whatever, they died there, and it
was the beginning of Texas independence . And from Texas
independence we came into a state of the Union. And don't
tell me that most people don't like it because I think
they're very happy they're on this side of the border. And
this is with due res pect, I love Mexico and that's where I
would probably go myself if I ever changed addresses. But
you can•t ... you cannot accuse people of being racist or of
trying to distort history. I think there are many
historians ... all you have to do is read David Weber or
Robert Thornof f and these are men with real credentials and
they're not anti-Mexican or anti-Catholic or anti-Jew or
anti-anything. They are men who've read the documents and
done research.
SH: Well, one that puzzles me that never seems to be
mentioned ... the Alamo was a great victory for the Mexican
army.
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2)
MG: Well, it was. They won, didn't they.
SH: They won that battle, but they lost the war.
4
MG: But what was important of course what it made other
people realize ... and that was what was at stake. And there
were so many down around •. . and there were a great many
Irishmen ... but down around Patricio County and down around
Beeville and towards Corpus Christi ..• those men were angered
and a lot ••• most of the men at San Jacinto were not
newcomers they were farmers and ranchers. And you•re
talking about a couple of hundred men defeating ... what? .. •
how many thousand? ... another 5,000 men ... The timing was
perfect. But to accuse Houston of being all these ... what
was written up in ... what was it •.• USA Today or the New York
Times or whatever? ... and this young woman out at the
University of Texas who says that she is going to rewrite
Texas history ... Well, I think we should be inclusive in
our history, but to rewrite it you've got to have a lot of
new documentation, a lot of new records and I think any
historian, any researcher, would welcome any and all
material whether it is from Mexico or wherever it comes
from, but you don•t completely rewrite the history of Texas
... it•s not that all off. All you have to do is look it up
and see the documentation. Got books there and those are
not all anti-Mexican, anti-civil rights, anti-whatever,
they're not ..• they•re straight, good historians.
SH: Okay. Henry, you've done the 1113 Days of the Alamo11
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2} 5
SH: for WOAI for years, what are your views on the current
flap over the ... ?
HG: I wrote that script some years back by going through
various books on Alamo history, most of them written on this
side of the border. But I did consult a couple of Mexi can
historians as well as the one cited by Carlos Castaneda in
his great work, our Catholic Heritage in Texas, which came
out in 1936. I still consider that the basic tool of the
history of Texas, up to the Battle of the Alamo. Now
there•ve been new facts • . • have been brought out by further
researches, mostly by Franciscans who got into the
Franciscan files in Mexico which no one could touch up to
their time, and that was Father Habig and Father
Leutenegger, but there's been very little new material on
the Battle of the Alamo. And the thing that strikes me, as
a non-historian, I'm a history buff, is that despite all the
writings of all the historians, they contradict each other,
you can chose historical points of view. You can get a
story that tells you that Travis was a coward, that's a
Mexican parti c i pant in the battle who said that, and you can
get a Mexican army officer who also took part in the battle
who said that Travis was a great hero. Most of our
historians regard Travis as a great hero. I do too. He has
his flaws. For instance he was very mistaken about the
native Texans on . •• about 2 or 3 days before the fall of the
Alamo he wrote another letter ... March 3, 1836, and in that
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2} 6
HG: letter he criticizes the local Tejanos, he says, "Where
are they?" He says, "They're all gone and we ought to
regard them as traitors and we ought to regard them as
people who have to pay for the damage done by the Mexican
Army." Well, what he didn't know is the history of San
Antonio. In 1813 the Spanish Royalist Army came back and
retook the town after a rebel army made up of Mexican
revolutionaries, U.S. Army officers who resigned their
commission, this is 1813, the whole thing was plotted in the
office of the governor of Louisiana, Governor Wilkinson, and
the Mexican historians who charge that the whole episode of
trying to take Texas, whether from Spain or from Mexico,
that all this was really a CIA plot ... using modern terms.
But they can make quite a story. Thomas Jefferson offered
money for Texas . Andrew Jackson sent secret agents and he
had the people trying to get Texas away. Sam Houston is
believed to have been an agent of Andrew Jackson. The point
is that the u.s. finally did wrest Texas away from Spain.
Now there was a legitimate claim. When the Louisiana
Purchase it was made claimed by the Americans that that
should have included Texas up to the Nueces River, but that
never was agreed to and a war settled that in 1846, 1 47,
1 48 . The U.S. defeated Mexico and got all thi s other
territory ... Manifest Destiny . Well, all o f those are things
you can argue one way or another. But the Battle of the
Alamo happens to be the one battle that took place in our
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2} 7
HG: history that you have books - entire books - that raise
questions. How many Mexicans died in the battle? No one
can tell you. Various historians have various answers. How
many ... the one thing that we know is that there was a siege
for 13 days and on the 13th day the Mexican Army attacked
and defeated the Texian forces •.. every man was killed except
possibly one who talked his way out of it. If so we ought
to put up a statue to Brijido Guererro of Nuevo Laredo who
talked his way out of it. He said he was a prisoner all
along, for 13 days.
SH: I think it's also a factor too, that traditionally
victors write the history.
HG: That's true. And God knows what the version that the
ones who were defeated in the Punic Wars by the Romans ..•
whether the Carthaginians would have had a different
version. Most likely they would have . And had they been
accorded citizenship in Rome then they would have agitated
for changes in the way history is written.
SH: Right. Let's slide forward if we can ... about 100 years
HG: More than that.
SH: ... when you became a broadcaster in San Antonio .
HG: Well, I did not ... ! wasn't born until 1918 and I became
a broadcaster in 1939. By that time I knew very little
about radio except as a listener. And then by accident I
got into the radio business. But I've seen a lot of changes
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2)
HG: since 1939. When I first started ...
SH: Tell us about it.
8
HG: ... I was not allowed to touch any equipment. They had
engineers and they did all the .•• this was on the biggest
radio station in San Antonio ... in Texas .•. WOAI ... and was
like the rest of the ... what later became the Texas Quality
Network .• . WFAA in Dallas ..• KPRC in Houston ... they wouldn't
let a mere announcer or even a newscaster • • . they didn't
have anchormen ••• they had newscasters ..• they wouldn't allow
these radio voices to touch the equipment. That was
touchable only by licensed engineers who had a first class
license and were the only ones supposed to understand all
the mystery and mystique of the equipment. Well, nowadays
it changed completely. If you go into radio now you'd
better know how to handle everything ... including the thing
you're handling here.
SH: The tape.
HG: You'd better know how to hit the buttons right and the
reel ... put it on and all of that •.. so I'm sort of
handicapped in today's radio world. They ... before I retired
they more or less gave up on me and they just let me talk.
SH: You didn't have to punch the buttons or cue the
commercials or ...
HG: No.
SH: ..• or anything like that?
HG: Now when TV came along, the first TV, I was one of the
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2} 9
HG: first TV broadcasters, but I had nothing to do with it.
They rolled in the camera which they had bought, an RCA
camera, they rolled it into the studio where I was giving
the 10 o'clock news which was the big thing on radio, and
they just ••. for a whole year ... they did a simulcast. By the
way I only got paid for one performance.
SH: Oh. They telecast a radio broadcast when you started.
HG: They telecast a radio broadcast.
SH: What year was that?
HG: That was 1949. And it was 1950 before we even got a
second camera which allowed us to steal things from the
paper. Before we subscribed to the photo machine and put it
on cardboard with paste and let the other camera look at it.
That was one break. Then we started, because of
competition, another station started chasing the ambulances
and we finally got a film director and a film camera and
then from that it took off to film and now they use tape.
SH: Right. Video tape.
HG: Now I remember very well that we used to feel sorry for
the cameramen because they had to haul all of that heavy
equipment around to film the news for the TV. And we were
promised .. they were promised that the new tapes would
result in small Japanese cameras. Well now, the cameras
weigh more than they did then. But women ..• women .•.
camerawomen are carrying them.
SH: Right. When you first went on with WOAI was it the
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2}
SH: only TV station in town?
HG: Well, it was the first TV .. .
SH: First one.
10
HG: ... then KENS came on and KENS it had a different call
letter but the paper ... the Express ... ! think that was the
name of the paper .•. the Express back in those days was a
pioneer also. But it was a whole year before KONO came on
and they are the ones that first brought ambulance chasing
SH: I remember the Don•s ... Don's Ambulance Show. It was
the ...
HG: (laughter) That wasn't what they called it, they
called it The Big Red or something like that.
SH: Yeah, but that's what some of us called it.
HG: Yeah. Well it was mostly the rearend ... we used to kid
ourselves that we ought to keep them in the file and just
use the same film over and over again. Because it showed
the loading of the ambulance and the ambulance pulling away.
SH: And now there are ... how many local TV stations?
HG: Oh, a whole bunch.
SH: ... counting the low power and everything ... about 10?
HG: And then the Spanish language, there are 3 of those.
SH: Right.
HG: Two of those. And they do a beautiful job. They've
come a long way on TV and radio. Radio like WOAI ... radio
uses a lot of actualities. However, I have still the same
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 11
HG: complaint against a lot of the film and a lot of the
actualities ... film on TV . •. actualities on radio ... once
you've shot it you almost have to use it. Even if a bigger
story comes along for which you have no film or actualities.
SH: Right. Even thought that later story is much more
important than the one you have film on.
HG: Oh, yeah. I'm talking local news here because the days
when we did international news locally by just ripping the
wire, they're through because on the network you get radio
networks and you get TV networks and they cover the
international and .. .
SH: To get ... you can get Bosnia now .. .
HG: Yeah. They even cover Houston and Dallas for us.
SH: That's pretty far fetched. And then there are 40 some
odd cable channels a vailable ... do you all watch any TV?
MG: Very little.
HG: Well, I watch the news and I watch some of the sports.
And occasionally I watch Channel 9 because I like the
classical music.
MG: The MacNeil-Lehrer Report is probably the best. And
their programs are great.
SH: Jim Lehrer and I happen to be friends and he once told
me that the MacNeil-Lehrer Hour is the only news show that
dares to be dull. And give you enough information to
HG: Yeah. It gives you real information.
MG: You feel like you're getting real informati on .. .
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 12
HG: Most of the news shows on radio or TV nowdays in
whatever language they are sound bytes and you just don't
get enough information. But let me tell you what I think is
the real curse of the modern communications age. Grandpa
didn't have to worry about all of this. He didn't hear
about the revolt in Colombia or the shelling in Croatia or
in Bosnia •.. he didn't hear about that until weeks later when
he got it in the paper. And before that ••. his grandfather
didn't worry about it at all because it took years ..• I mean
months for the news to come across the ocean. And you
didn't learn about Napoleon's fall until long after he had
fallen. So you didn't worry about it.
SH: Then you think it's entirely possible that the United
States would not have gone to Somalia had it not been
pictures of the starving ... ?
HG: Absolutely, absolutely.
SH: ... or to a degree Bosnia with the slaughter?
HG: Yeah. And you see you don't really evaluate the thing.
You don't ••. all you see is the starving kids ... you don't see
the guy shooting at you . And it's the question ••• do you
want to go over there full-force? and draft everybody and
make them go. Well, I don't know that our nati onal interest
are at stake in Somalia or Bosnia, and while it would be
nice if we could wave a magic wand and solve a l l o f these
problems for everybody ... You know what? We wouldn't have
stood for any interference when we were fighting for our
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 13
HG: independence from Spain, when we were fighting for our
independence from Mexico, and in the east when we were
fighting for our independence from the United States. Do
you know that the American Independence movement had a lot
of opposition from the Tories? I'm sure you know ... you've
read about it. And I've read about that. And yet our
histories fail to tell us . . . they tell us all about
Rochambeau and Lafayette and Admiral DeGrasse and the
contribution that France made to the winning of the American
independence from Britain. But they don't tell you anything
about what Spain contributed. Which was as much or more
than what France contributed to the winning of our
independence. Without France and Britain, both of which
were not democracies, we could not have won the American war
for independence.
MG: Without France or Britain?
SH: France and Spain.
HG: I mean France or Spain.
SH: Right.
HG: France or Spain.
MG: I think one of the changes ..• you•re talking about
changes in the last couple of years ... and I looked at the
Conservation Society mainly because I got a phone call
yesterday that the birthday part of the Conservation Society
cost $30,000, that was the birthday party they had ... what
two weeks ago? And it really shook me up because I can
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 14
MG: remember when money was just not there to do what they
wanted to do. And now over these years, that organization
which was condemned by newspapers and television and all of
the media, today it is probably one of the most powerful
organizations in the city. And this is a change that is
remarkable because they started out as conservationists,
which they are, but at the same time I think they have taken
on something of the developer. Some of the character of
development. Which is all right if they develop in the
right .•.
SH: Well, don't they still own a couple of empty buildings
downtown?
MG: Oh, yes, that Robert E. Lee . . . and you just wonder why
SH: ... staacke Building ...
MG: In fact I wrote them a letter about that, I think we're
doing ... about the Aztec ... taking that on. We were
underwriting developers to see if it was viable .. . I said,
"What are we doing underwriting developers, regardless of
who they are?" ... that was when Hap was still living- Hap
Veltman. I said we don't have any business underwriting Hap
Veltman or Bernard (Lifschutz] who was a good friend and I
love him, but if they want to know what the possibilities of
any p i ece of property along the river is .•• they ought to pay
for it and not get the Conservation Society ... But this is
one of the things that when I was talking to this old
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 15
MG: Conservationist how the working of the Conservation
Society has changed. It is now really a capitalistic kind
of venture you might say. They are powerful and they have
money and I don't agree with everything they do, I'm still a
loyal member of it. That's one of the changes that's been
·dramatic, I think, in the character of the organization or
let's say ... the accomplishments or the aims of the
organization, I think we've drifted a little bit away. And
I don't even know if this is what you're interested in ...
SH: Exactly.
MG: ... but that's one of the things and then the other
thing, of course, is our becoming a one newspaper town,
which I think is disastrous. We always did take about 5
newspapers, but we miss the second ... well, the third
newspaper because we take La Prensa .•. and which is becoming
more interesting all the time. I think Tino Duran is doing
a very good job. But without a second newspaper you do not
have the kind of battling .•. thinking ... of what's going on in
the city.
HG: Yes, but one of the big changes is that people ... a lot
of people don't read the newspaper anymore.
MG: No.
HG: They get their news from the TV or from the radio and
some of them, I afraid, get it from gossip.
SH: That's the truth.
MG: But it's ...
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 2) 16
HG: Let's talk about . .•
MG: All right.
HG: ... what San Antonio .•. you were born in Hondo ...
MG: Yes.
HG: ... so you grew up in the country. And I born here in
San Antonio and I grew up in what was already a big town.
And I remember ••. my earliest memories were of the flood of
1921 and I barely remember it ... I was born in 1918 •.. and all
I remember about the flood of '21 was being carried out by
the fireman from my home on Johnson Street which was about 4
blocks from the river, but the river rose up there on the
south part of town, just south of downtown. What mostly I
remember is my years as a student at Lukin Military Academy
which was in Alamo Heights. Now here I was ... I had been
born on the South Side, I lived in a house on the South Side
and then the flood drove us out and by 1922 we lived on
Howard Street, the near North Side. So I grew up in a
strange environment, I had a mixed background. In other
words my father and mother both were native San Antonians
but his father had come from Roma, Texas, and had the named
Guerra and spoke both Spanish and English because he was a
fireman, he was a retired fireman. When he came up here he
joined the Fire Department and then he saved his money and
in 1910 opened the Guerra Agencia de Inhumanciones , which
is Spanish for The Agency ... The Burial Agency Guerra, it was
a funeral home, except they didn't call it that. Now, he
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2}
HG: married to a Northern Italian girl that he met here,
Judita De Gasperi .. •
MG: De Gasperi .
17
HG: De Gasperi was her maiden name and then she married,
first Guerra ... Ramon Guerra, and after he died in 1913, she
married ..•
MG: Seran.
HG: ..• who was the father of Chief Saran, who in the '20s
was the Fire Chief of San Antonio. My mother, her name was
Elvira Pizzini de Guerra and she was the daughter, the
eldest daughter, of an emigrant who came from Italy to
Mexico. Not to staten Island or to ... he didn't come through
New York, he carne through Mexico as a boy. The whole family
left Italia, which was northern Italy, to avoid service in
the Austrian Army because they lived in !tal ..•...... which
was a part of Austria at that time, in the Tyrol. And when
he came here he c a rne without money in his pocket and he came
working on the railroad, laying the ties for the railroad,
from Mexico to Texas. And he got here about the 18 •.. late
1880s, and he met a girl from Durango and at the age of 27
he married this 15 year old girl. The 15 year old girl was
Benigna Saldana Pizzini, my grandmother. Well, she all her
life, she spoke a broken English, she spoke Spanish very
well, and he spoke better Spanish than he spoke Italian.
And he only spoke a sort of broken English. But he could
make himself understood. English was the language of
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2} 18
HG: commerce, except for him the real language of commerce
was Spanish. So that's what he mastered. He had very
little or no schooling. My father went to the 8th grade,
then he had to go to work. Because his father was sick and
at a very young age my father became a funeral director. He
won his license as a funeral director and as an embalmer, he
was about like 16 or 17 when he had to take over the funeral
home. Now, that funeral home I am presently selling because
I'm not a funeral director, I'm not licensed as an embalmer
or funeral director and yet I was president of the Angelus
Funeral Home for many, many years . As president of the
funeral home I got bawled out every day by my mother who was
the widow of my father ..• he died in 1 62 and ... how you doing
on tape? ...
SH: We've got a few ...
MG: Let's go back to the market area where you grew up .. •
HG: Well ... now my grandfather [Frank Pizzini] got his first
job when he met another Italian on the Plaza in San Antonio.
And that was Paul Broggi, who was to become the father-in­law
of Jake Rubiola, Sr., who was later to become a county
commissioner and parks commissioner. He gave him a job and
he worked at Paul Broggi's store, this was in the 1880s, and
the store was right on the market ... well, what was then the
City Market .•. wa s the open plaza where the city began. The
Military Plaza . And his store was the home of one of the
Ruiz's .•• he had leased it ... but one of the Canary Islanders
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 19
HG: had built this home and then later became a store, and
I remember as a boy playing there and sitting on the sacks
with my friend Jake Jr, we were •.. like 8 or 9 year olds ••.
and we would sit on the sacks of beans and the sacks of corn
and what-not, that old-man Broggi had in his store. Later
on the ..• Mr. Broggi, died and they sold the store and that
building is now out at the Witte Museum. It is the first
schoolhouse of San Antonio. That's where ... before the Texas
Revolution there was a public schoolhouse there, under the
Spaniards, certainly under the Mexicans, I don't remember
exactly. But I had that experience. Now I grew up living
on the North Side, in a very nice house, it cost $10,000
back in those days, in the 1920s, and the son of a
successful funeral director who later became president of
the Lions Club of San Antonio, later became president of the
Fiesta San Jacinto Ass'n, later became Knight ... Grand Knight
of the Knights of Columbus and he spoke both Spanish and
English, but he spoke Spanish with a German and Polish
accent because he ...
END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 1, ABOUT 30 MINUTES
SIDE 2 .
HG: •.. of San Antonio near St. Michael's Church on Victoria
Street, where his Mother, a widow, lived and later married
the father of Chief Seran. Later on she moved to Thompson
Place and what-not, she's buried at San Fernando Nr. 2 where
my father and mother are buried. My father died in 1962, my
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 20
HG: mother died in 1985 at the age of 90. And she kept
active through most of her life. She took over the funeral
home after my father died, before that she had worked with
him and before that she had worked with her father, Frank
Pizzini, in his store. Frank Pizzini had a very successful
store, which he opened in 1891. It grew to be one of the
big stores of the town before we had chain stores. He used
to curse out the chain stores.
SH: Was it a general merchandise? Drygoods?
HG: Well, he had everything. He had groceries, and he had
entire carloads of chiles which he imported from Mexico.
They would be shipped from the Garfias Hacienda in San Luis
Potosi. Chile ancho and all kinds of chile which they
raised on their hacienda. The friendship between him and
the Gargias family continues to this day. We are ••. that was
my grandfather, I'm friends with his ... with the great­grandchildren
of the original Garfias. They are very
prominent in San Luis Potosi. But that store was so
successful that it sent all his children to school . Most of
the girls went to the Incarnate Word College, which was then
out in the country. He used to drive them out in his buggy.
He used to drive my mother out in the buggy and she was the
first one to graduate from what was then a junior college
and I still have her graduation certificate from the high
school and the College of Incarnate Word and it's very
quaint and old. Before she got married in 1917 she was
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 2) 21
HG: appointed to the school board, the public school board,
she was appointed because Col. Frank Chapa, Sr., was on the
staff of the Governor of Texas and he would deliver the
Mexican vote and so he was a very prominent ... he was a
successful druggist and quite a politician. And he was into
everything. Col. Chapa, who wasn't born here, he was a
Mexican-American, Texas-Mexican, and he spoke both
languages. Beautifully. He appointed her but later on she
ran for the public school and she was the first Hispanic . ..
now your newspapers reported otherwise much later •.. but she
was the first Hispanic to serve on the school board. Except
her name was Pizzini, an Italian name. But she was fluent
in Spanish and fluent in English. She spoke both languages
perfectly and read them and wrote them and everything else.
One of his daughters was even sent East to school . His sons
went to fine schools and never really amounted to much in
the grocery business . One of his sons, his eldest son,
wound up being a prize fight promoter. I remember that ...
seeing the prize fights at the old Market House which was
the building, the beautiful building that was built by the
famous architect . • . oh, ... anyway •.. he 1 s written up ... that•s
the Market House that was torn down by Maury Maverick in
1930 and it was in bad shape. But it had been built in the
1890s as a market house, a meeting place and a sports arena,
convention arena. And it served all functions well for that
day.
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 22
SH: What they now call a multi-purpose facility.
HG: Yes.
SH: Like the Alamadome.
HG: But it was rather small compared to today's big
Mercado . But I grew up living on the North Side, going to
school in Alamo Heights, coming down almost every day to be
with my father or my grandfather, my father had the funeral
business on Houston Street, on the other side of Milam
Square was my grandfather's store on Produce Row, so I grew
up knowing both worlds ...
SH: Uh-huh.
HG : • .. the Anglo world and the Spanish speaking world.
Knowing both worlds ..• the affluent world and the non­affluent
world. So I really got a very broad picture of
what San Antonio's life was like. And I remember the street
vendors calling their wares back before ... when the
automobile was first taking over Produce Row ... and finally
they took it over and I was ... I grew up at a time when the
produce men of Produce Row decided to move, right about
World War II or right after World War II, they decided to
move because they had outgrown the facility and they had to
get a place where they had railheads and could get boxloads
of produce and what-not. I've seen the city change.
SH: That's the current Farmers' Market.
HG: It used to be that if you owned a car and drove it you
were ... you know, somebody. Now thanks to the fact that we
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2} 23
HG: no longer insist on you owning the car, most people
don't own the car, the car company owns it, we have hundreds
of thousands of cars, we have congestion, we have
expressways. I've seen great changes in the streets of San
Antonio. San Antonio used to be a more centrally located
and urban place before the growth of the malls and the
suburban areas.
SH: Uh-huh. You're a history buff ... is it true that San
Antonio streets ... downtown streets ... were paved cow paths
that led to the river? I still get that impression from
time to time driving downtown.
HG : Well, the thing is that originally we were supposed to
have a grid system, all the Spanish settlements had a grid
system, and remember we were established by the Spaniards in
1718. Well, the grid system didn't work with the river.
The river makes many bends. Used to make more bends then.
We've straightened some of them up, but you couldn't have a
grid system .••
SH: Right .
HG : ... and doubtless some streets, some early streets, were
laid out by cows winding their way down to the river.
SH: Right.
MG: They had to wind to the river, actually •• •
SH: Yeah. The other story is the drunk old man wandering
home at night ...
HG: I think that's a myth.
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 24
MG: Well, one of the interesting things is that even in the
early city directories, they would have a business address
listed as •two blocks from the river' or 'three blocks from
the river.' It was a point of departure. And also I think
it controlled our street system.
HG: Well, when the first English speakers came, and some of
them came even before stephen F . Austin, Ben Milam was
English speaking and he came early on and served in the
Mexican Army .
MG: So did Bowie .
HG: Bowie ... others .•. some of them married into the Spanish
Land Grant Families. Now, we can ... you can take either side
.•• you can decide that the reason they married these girls
was because they were beautiful senoritas with black eyes
and black hair and white complexions and whatnot, or you can
take the skeptical historians viewpoint, which is that they
married them because each of these girls had a Suerte, a
piece of land going down to the river.
SH: Um.
HG: You pays your money, you takes your choice.
MG: One of the things that has taken place even in the last
15 years you might say, take the market area, the character
has changed completely. Because I don't know if Henry
brought that out, that at one time it was the center of the
produce business .•.
HG: After 1890 . When they built the HemisFair on what had
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 2) 25
HG: been the Mexican market which was open air .
MG: And it has remained so . And now they were very smart,
they turned it around and kept it alive by turning it into a
tourist business.
SH: Right.
MG: But that has taken place. And I remember when we were
going to build the •.• over the Farmers' Market ... and at that
time Urban Renewal had some in with its big machines and
started taking down buildings and all and the Board has
passed on certain buildings in the area and there was one
building which was to be the parking lot, the parking on the
top, of the Farmers' Market and they did not pass it through
the .. . what we call ... well, we weren't an art group ... we were
an advisory group ... they just passed it over. And I called
Charlie Kilpatrick, I said, "Charlie, do you realize that
they are doing this?" And he wrote a story on it. And it
made them come back to us and show us the plans. Which is
something that the newspaper did at that time. They were
very active in every-day affairs of business. What they are
doing now is something else, I'm not really ... I don't
approv e a great deal of what ... the directions the
newspaper's taking ... but I have to say one thing ... the best
page is the editorial page. The editorials are first class.
SH: Flattery will get you anywhere, Mary Ann.
MG: What?
SH: I said flattery will get you anywhere, Mary Ann.
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2)
HG: San Antonio ...
MG : It's true .
26
HG: San Antonio has lost the Spanish language newspaper, La
Prensa. We have a new version of La Prensa which has
Spanish and English, but it has yet to grow. But at one
time La Prensa was very important. It had a big
circulation. And it gained a lot of its importance by
running the writings of some very eminent writers from
Mexico. But we had a population that read all of that.
Nowadays we have an Hispanic population many of whom do not
read Spanish .
SH: or English.
HG: Or English .
MG: Well, there's a generation coming along now, they are
educated in Spanish and in English ...
HG: But they are still small.
MG: ... and they are articulate. It's small but many of our
historians ...
SH: I remember the original La Prensa was still functioning
when I came to town and who was the Beeville millionaire who
tried to save it and failed to?
MG: Oh, Dudley Daugherty.
HG: Dudley Daugherty.
SH: In the ' 60s .
MG: I remember when he ....
HG: Yeah, well, he couldn't save it. It was too late to
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2}
HG: save it because most of the readers of La Prensa my
father had buried in San Fernando.
SH: Um.
27
MG: I remember when Dudley Daughery bought it. And he'd
come up to town ... and he was with his first wife then ...
they'd come up from Beeville and they'd ask us to go out to
dinner with their new editor-publisher who'd come here from
Cuba, I believe. And we went out together to dinner and
then they took us over to La Prensa and when we got into the
old building that they were going to take over, the new man,
the editor-publisher, I asked him a couple of questions and
I realized that he didn't know anything about publishing and
editing. Because I had worked in a country newspaper where
they set the type in the back, and we had men back there
who'd been editors of small town newspapers but had kind of
taken to drink and whatever, and so they •.. we had first
class newsmen in the back ... we had 15 of them.
HG: What year was that?
MG: 1950. 1951.
HG: And you were how old when you were editor of the Hondo
...• . Herald?
MG: Twenty
HG: 26.
about 26. About 26.
SH: And Dudley Daugherty, as I recall, was early 60s? ...
HG:
MG: Well, what amazed me ...
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2)
SH: 60 ••• 4 or 5 • ••
28
MG: ... and we came home and I said, "Henry, I don't think
Dudley knows it but he's got somebody that doesn't know
anything about newspapers." Because if you've ever worked
in the back, which you had to do in those days, ...
SH: Right. I' ve done that.
MG: •. . you knew a lot, by that I mean, you didn't know as
much as the workmen, but you knew pretty much ... and I said,
"He doesn't know anything about publishing and Dudley's in
for trouble."
HG: Well, what she was .•.
MG: The man lasted ... not even a year .•.
HG: .. . when she was editor of the Hondo paper she learned
a lot about the papers. But she had one notorious moment
when she didn't catch the headline that they in the back
chuckled over •.• she had a headline that said, "Divine man
killed."
MG: In those .. .
HG: A man from Devine, Texas, had gotten killed in an
accident •..
MG: But the men in the back ... they let .•• they knew it ...
and they ... when I saw that and it hit me, "Divine man
killed." and I went back there •.. you so-and-sos ... and they
all jus t howled with glee because they knew what I was doing
that was so bad ...
SH: So it was spelled D-i instead of D-e vine?
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 29
MG: Yeah. D-i-v ... the whole thing was baloney. I was so
bad. But in those days if you were editor of a small town
newspaper, you had to do nearly all of the writing. Which
is probably still normal today, I don't know. But you did
the editorials, you did the front page, you did ...
SH: Small town papers are still killers. Particularly
small town dailies.
HG : And when she wasn't doing that she was working in the
advertising department of Frost Brothers and that's where I
met her. Where I really wooed her.
MG: Well, I had met you before that. I had met you when I
was in high school.
HG: Both of us have seen great changes in this city because
we have lived through the age where automobiles were rare
and now they are common-place and people get in their car to
go two blocks to the drug store and what-not. You don't get
the exercise you used to get, you don't have the downtown we
used to have. Now it's given over to tourists. And the
Paseo del Rio is one big improvement, but we've got to get
more people downtown, we've got to get more stores that
cater to them.
SH: People living downtown?
HG: Yeah.
MG: In talking about changes again, I keep wanting to go
back because of what Sterlin was asking about ... but La
Villita even you see ...
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 2}
SH: Right .
30
MG: •.. when it ... has changed ... I can remember •.• we moved
into 511 Villita, Elizabeth Graham and I, that was probably
in 1948 or '49 •• •
HG : That was her aunt . Elizabeth Graham was your aunt.
MG: ... right around that time. That was when the entire
block, that was before the Italian .. . your friend ... bought it
•.. oh, they have an automobile . . .
HG: Oh, before the Hilton Hotel was there.
MG: Yes, they had all the stores and cafes. We had a
Chinese ...
HG: Nick catalani•s uncle owned a piece of property right
in the square middle of where they were going later to put
the hotel, so he wound up in the hotel business.
MG: But across the street were the old buildings that ...
Paul Herder had a restaurant, Mi Casa ... La Casa ••. La Casita
... and before he took it over it was a ... it was a beautiful
house ... and it was a taxi stand but also I think it was a
place of contact for ladies of the night because several
times I 1d get knocking on the door and they'd call for Mabel
or Genevieve or somebody. And all of those buildings today,
of course that entire area now, is so beautiful and is part
of an industry which is very important to San Antonio . But
I do remember when we had artists who slowly moved back in
there •.. it went down and started coming back up. When Maury
had it and Hamilton McGruder was manager of La Villita when
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 31
MG: Maury first started the re-building of La Villita .• .
SH: That's Maury Maverick, Senior?
MG: Yes. Big Maury. And after awhile then it did start to
go down and then it started coming back. When the city
began taking more ... more of an interest in it and they did
re-building of some of the old places. And there were
people there, in that area, though, who contributed greatly
towards the re-birth of La Villita, and I think Paul Herder
was one of them. Because you're talking about somebody who
went into an area where .•. there were unusual people in that
area .•. I know because I lived there over a year . And he
started the restaurant, and then from there building was
taken over by another group and slowly all of the buildings
then were taken over and brought into a very important part
of the tourist industry.
HG: Well, I can remember when that area - La Villita - had
not yet had the assembly building, you know, the La Villita
SH: The Roundhouse .
HG: The Roundhouse ... had not been built there because it
still had power lines ... the power center ... the public
service had a big power center for the downtown area •.. and I
remember the night, it must have been about 1948, it was
after the war, when a possum got caught between two wires
and he knocked out all of the lights in San Antonio ... in the
downtown area. And it took them two days to find out it was
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 32
HG: a possum responsible for ... it fried that possum, let me
tell you.
SH: I would think so .
MG: I remember when they were talking about public housing
in San Antonio, and I was on a board with Walter McAllister
and couple of builders, and they were talking about public
housing, they were trying to keep it out of San Antonio, and
I said something to Walter - I was only about 21 years old -
and Walter McAllister said, "I'm going to have to explain
this to you." And I said, "You're going to have to do a lot
of explaining, because I don't think you can build public
housing that will pay you so that you can stay in the
busine ss . " So he said, 11 I want you to come to my office and
we'll have lunch." I said, All right", and I went over
there and he said, "Wait a minute, now." I went into his
office, that was when San Antonio Savings was on the river,
right on the corner where ...
HG: Where La Mansion is now.
MG: ... La Mansion is now. He had a building there and his
office was there . And he said, 11I want you to listen to
something on the radio." And he turned on the radio. And
they announced that Jack White would run for mayor. And
that was when they started more work in the area of the
river ... because it's very interesting if you go back into
documents and see who all was involved in the saving o f the
river and in the saving ... by that I mean men would come in
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 33
MG: after the Conservation Society stopped the pouring of
the concrete. But then when businessmen began to see what
it could mean to San Antonio and then Jack White ... and I
have to mention him because he's overlooked so many
tirnes •.• he was imaginative and he was a hotel man, he was
over at the Plaza Hotel and he was the first man to show
Hugrnan's drawings at a public showing and to the members of
this . .. a board was then formed and we .. .
HG: And it was the Chamber of Commerce that turned the
Paseo del Rio, which was a park that you couldn't go into at
night, that under the leadership of volunteers like David
Straus, ....
MG: Well, that was a later .. .
HG : . .. that later carne along and made a success, a business
success of the Paseo del Rio. Of course, that all started
with a gamble by A.F. Beyer. A.F. Beyer was the first guy
to put a commercial enterprise on the river. He started, in
the basement of his typewriter company upstairs, he started
a Mexican restaurant. We now know it as Casa Rio .
MG: Well, the .. .
HG: Everybody thought he was crazy.
MG: ... one of the things that we had ... because we're
talking about the River Parade ... we had a River Parade
before ... long before ..• and that was in the late '30s around
1938- '39 ... we had a River Parade. And there are
photographs of it, and that was when they had done some
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 34
MG: reconstruction work and re-building along the river •.•
long before . • . Maury came in then and got money from the WPA
SH: That's when they took the Hugman idea ..•
MG: Absolutely, yeah.
SH: ... the architectural ..• and used the Work Project
Administration and that's when O'Neill Ford came to town and
it's never been the same since . . .
MG: Well, what's so interesting, O'Neill would get .•. he
said they're always saying that I did the river and he said
I didn't have anything to do with the river, except with the
craftsmen over in La Villita .•. he was very much involved
with La Villita ... as a matter of fact he was fired from the
job by Maury, and I think he came back later on. He was
fired from the job of the re-building of La Villita because
Maury wanted to put in that building ...
HG: The Bolivar Hall. The Bolivar.
MG: The Bolivar. And O'Neill said it doesn't belong there,
there was no building there, doesn't belong there and Maury
said we have to have a meeting hall and we're going to have
it. So O'Neill was out and they put up Bolivar. These are
things ... I don't know whether people are interested in
knowing them or not .. • but it's . . . in a way it's good to know
... b ecause it teaches you something about the workings in
the back, and if you want to do something don't think you
can always do it up front. You'd better ge t i nvolved in the
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 2)
MG: ground floor.
SH: That's the sort of thing I'm looking for ... is the
people who are now ready to tell me what really happened.
MG: What really happened.
SH: And I got some of that from Tom Frost the other day.
MG: I'll bet you did.
35
SH: And I expect to get quite a bit more of it as this goes
along. And, you know, if you're talking for the researchers
of the future, you know, I expect people to just tell the
way it really was and not the way it appeared to be.
MG: Well, it's ... we have so many commissions today,
Sterlin, that are like icing on the cake, I mean, somebody's
got to get in there and bake a cake and ... and then the
commission comes in •.• Then you think, ah, look at what all
they did ..• but a lot went on beforehand. A lot went on
before Maury appeared on the scene, but he did get the money
that gave us the push to ... There were several steps along
the way that really made san Antonio River City and if i t
hadn't been done ••. well, God knows where we'd be.
SH: Let me ask your opinions on the extensions of the river
. •• there've been ...
HG: I think they've been good . They can overdo them. Like
I facetiously suggested to Mayor Cockrell when she was
mayor, she asked me, says, "What can we do to help the st.
Anthony Hotel and the Gunter Hotel?" I said, "That's easy,
just extend the river to them." But that would have been a
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2}
HG: mistake.
SH: Run the river down Houston and Travis Streets.
HG: The extensions so far, the one did for the HemisFair,
MG: Beautiful.
HG: •.. in 1 68, that actually improved the river. The
36
extension to the Riverside Mall, it doesn't hurt anything,
but if you overdo the extensions, you're going to lose the
main attraction.
SH: Uh-huh.
HG: And the main attraction is delicate. You cannot build
buildings that'll cast a shadow over that . We've had that
argument. You cannot allow anybody on the basis of
ownership or leasorship or whatever to design his own signs
. .. they have to conform to what ... David Straus was
responsible for this city ordinance with teeth in it that
established the Paseo del Rio Association ... and that
originally was a Chamber of Commerce project. Without those
teeth in that city ordinance an owner could put up any kind
of sign ... blinking sign •.. smoking sign ... whatever, and he
would ruin the business of the river. . ....•. experiencing
that on Broadway where they're putting up bigger and bigger
signs and it gets to where you can't read the signs. It is
self-defeating. And yet the guy who owns the property
thinks he knows. And he's got the money and he has the
ownership and that's nine-tenths of the •• •
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra {Tape 2}
MG: Well, the ...
SH: Have you all been in New England lately?
MG: Uh?
HG: Not lately.
MG: Do what?
SH: Been in New England lately?
MG: No.
SH: The commercial signs leading into those towns and
villages are no larger than city limit signs.
MG: They would protect.
SH: I mean ... they are visible, but they are discreet.
37
MG: Yeah. Actually, you can sometimes see them better if
they are not so big.
HG: I wouldn't mind those old signs ...
SH: Right .
MG: You don't see them when they're overwhelming.
HG: The barber signs you used to read as you went by ...
SH: For the Burma Shave?
HG: Burma Shave. Of course you can't read them now ... you
go too fast.
MG: Henry, can I get in one word and to me it's really one
of the most important things that the ... I don't think the
newspapers, either newspaper, the Light or the San Antonio
Express-News, have really come to the defense of and that is
our water. Because we have been letting people come in,
creeping in, over our water system. And I would say that
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2} 38
MG: within 50 years ... within 50 years we're going to be in
a very bad shape. And the city council ...
HG: Less than that.
MG: The city council has been letting the developers ...
their friends of theirs, I guess, I don't know, I'm not
accusing them of malfeasance •.. what I'm saying is, I don't
think that the people we have today really know why we're
here ... it's because of water. And if we don't have that
water, we're ... I don't know what we'll do. Because we have
I have some ranch land down around castroville .•. my
grandfather bought it in 1852 ... started spreading out. He
had 3 creeks on it. When I was a little girl, at age 6 and
7 and 8, we already were hauling water. We had 3 lively
creeks when my grandfather bought it in the 1850s. By the
1930s they were all gone.
SH: Had they dried up? Or been blocked?
MG: They dried up. They dried up. And we had highways on
one side, highway on another side. And here in San Antonio
it could be so ... not only San Antonio, but the entire area
over the Edwards, it should be protected. It ought to be
regulated. And that to me was as important a fight as
whatever the Express-News is involved in now . If they want
to really do something for the community, they will defend
the water site and not let theme parks and malls be built
over the water. The one great thing the state has done is
acquire that park. That will protect a certain amount of it
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 39
MG: and it's a great addition. But we have been letting
people do things ... whether through friendship or family
connection or whatever, I don't know. But it's wrong. And
if they don't wake up to it ... you see, we have new people
coming in that don't realize that this is drought country.
We have only the river. We have only the water. sure,
they're pumping it up. One crazy city manager said, "Well,
we don't really have to worry about the river, we can always
pump up the water." Well, what about when we run out of
water down below to pump it up. And that's what we're going
to do if we don't watch out. It happens.
SH: Well, the city is taking some very serious steps over
the recharge zone ... We had a meeting with them yesterday,
we had a story on it last week, we've editorialized against
any more development and particularly ... you're not aware of
the cumulative development effects on the run-offs and on
the possible polution of ... You may have missed that, but
we've several editorials . . .
MG: Yeah, I ...
SH: ... on that subject.
MG: I must admit I don't read your paper like I used to,
because I just was alienated over all of these angry fights
. . . angry people. And you can say, "Well, that doesn't do
any good to hide your head." Wel~, it doesn't do any good
to read it, because evidently ... when you get to be my age
you don't get in and fight anymore. And that's what you
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 40
MG: have to be willing to do. You have to be willing to
take on somebody and say, "Look, Mr. So and So, or General
So and So, you're in the wrong place, you shouldn't be
there." We used to do that. Wanda Ford would do it. She'd
go down, they'd chop her legs off, Paul Thompson chopped
away at O'Neill and Wanda and Mary Green, chopped them up in
bits, but they were willing to ... But we've gotten to where
we really can't fight that way any more, you're too tired.
SH: Well, there needs to be a new generation of fighters.
MG: Yeah.
SH: And I don't see as many of them as I would like to see.
MG: Well, we have some children, and they have another kind
of fight. We have a daughter who contributes towards ... she
works at Childrens' Shelter as a volunteer ..• I have a son
who teaches in a grammar school on the West Side, and
they're facing another kind of fight and that is trying to
take care of small children and help keep them from becoming
dropouts or drug addicts or whatever.
SH: Drive-by victims.
MG: Drive-by victims. And one of the things that my son
said when he walked into one of his classes ... He has 194
children that he teaches every day ... He said, ''I don't
want a dropout in this class." Well, I think that that's a
different kind of battle than what we had. We were fighting
to save our beautiful community ... the river and the missions
and the parks ... They have another kind of mission and that
Henry & Mary Ann Noonan Guerra (Tape 2) 41
MG: is to save our children. Because we're going to have
an entire generation that is void of education .. .
END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 2, ABOUT 45 MINUTES.