BY NORMAN ROZEFF

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the next installment in an ongoing series on San Benito’s Sam Robertson. Find previous parts at www.ValleyStar.com.

In 1930 Colonel Sam received Brazos Island, located at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and the Boca Chica toll bridge as payment for a debt. He devoted the remainder of his life to the development of his seaside resort, Del Mar.

The two 1933 hurricanes greatly damaged this Robertson project, one that had advanced more than the Ocean Beach Driveway. His Del Mar beach resort was on the south end of Brazos Island. Here he had constructed 31 modern cottages, a bath house, a restaurant, and a hotel building named the “Surfside.”

August 1931 saw a channel opened from Del Mar to the Laguna Madre. Some thoughts were to dredge a channel from Del Mar to Brownsville, but this never came to pass. By February 22,1922, however, a road from Brownsville to Del Mar had been completed. On 10/12/32 the telephone line that took the Rio Grande Valley Telephone Company 35 days to erect reached the Del Mar project.

When the resort reopened in April 1934 there were 26 new cottages advertised as having the latest amenities “including private shower and bath, and a telephone in every room.” These were constructed more sturdily than the previous ones and were bolted to a deeper foundation as well as having re-enforced walls and roofs. Years later some of the cottages were eventually moved to Harlingen where they were transformed into cabins for a motor court on South F Street. They are there to this day.

A new restaurant and dance hall were also built and the old bathhouse repaired.

While Maria, Sam and family friends, Mr. & Mrs. Neil Hanson and Mr. & Mrs. Henry Hicks rode out the first storm at the resort, Sam and Maria were fortunate that they decided to go inland when the Labor Day Storm of 1933 hit the area with wind gusts up to 125 miles per hour.

By April 7, 1934 the Robertsons reopened after repairs and the addition of an asphalt road and toll bridge from the Boca Chica Pass to the resort.

The storm did have one positive impact. The storm surges that drove waves across Brazos Island uncovered numerous Union Civil War artifacts, especially at the very north end where the Union Army had established a depot at Brazos Santiago. Col. Sam was to collect many artifacts from the sands turned up by the waves.

This piqued his interest in the Civil War, a war that had devastated his father’s life and that of his grandfather. He went on to collect stories and documents from old local residents. These included an 1867 map of the island. He donated this to Port Isabel’s Harbart Davenport, the local historian who was also a founding member of the Texas Historical Society. Davenport, in turn, presented it to Lota M. Spell of the Advisory Board of Texas Historians. Lota Mae Spell was the first director/curator of the Nettie Lee Latin American Collection.

The resort had opened with considerable fanfare with family friends and newspaper people attending the event. Another promotion in April 1933 ended in tragedy. During a skydiving exhibition, the parachute of William G. Swan failed to open and he fell to his death over open water. Continuing to lure guests to the resort the Robertsons, as Thompson relates, continued various promotions. One was

“October 1, 1934 (when) Sam and Maria promoted a fishing tournament for Red Fish, Trout, and Catan. Paul Usher won most trout for a day (28) winning $2.50, Librado Perez won largest red fish (19 ¼ lbs.) winning $5.00 prize money, and C.A. Pinkley won longest catan, winning ($1.00 ) prize money. August 25, 1937 (brought) a crowd of 3,250 visitors and on April 25,1938 (the resort) had 1,650 visitors. (On) May 13,1938 they again promoted ‘Cottages, Casino action, and Redfish competition at the Del Mar Beach Resort’.”

It was this same year that the Brownsville Herald featured an article on a happy Robertson family reunion.

The article announced “FOUR ROBERTSON BROTHERS REJOINED AFTER 42 YEARS. San Benito — The fourth of July saw the first reunion of Frank and Sam Robertson, prominent Valley men, and their two brothers since 1896, 42 years ago. W.W. and Robert E. Robertson of Missouri arrived in the valley Monday afternoon. The former is an engineer and Baptist minister residing in Caroline Mo. Robert Robertson is in the insurance business at Kansas City. The Missouri brothers visited Del Mar Beach Resort where Col. Sam Robertson is head of the states most popular beaches. The four brothers went into the construction work during their youth and all but Robert have continued in that endeavor to the present time. Col. Sam Robertson constructed several pioneer railroads in the Valley. His brothers Frank and W.W. were affiliated with him at that time. Frank is prominently recognized as the pioneer in Valley irrigation. The younger brother Robert assisted in the construction of a railway in Missouri, but for the past 24 years has been out of the construction business.” At the time a newspaper article, datelined San Benito, on the same subject noted that Col. Sam’s brother Frank had been superintendent of construction on the San Benito Drainage District, had been manager of the Cameron County Irrigation District #2 since 1930, had pushed for Valley water resources development for 22 years, was one of the founders of the Valley Baptist Hospital of Harlingen and for the last 13 years had been its president. In his own words Sam was to tell the story of his last two ventures. He wrote: “ I organized the Ocean Side Toll Road Company and acquired a strip of right of way 200 feet wide on the beach between high and low tide from the mouth of the Rio Grande to Aransas Pass. But our attorneys told us that our right of way on this island acquired from the State of Texas was no good as the state never owned it. Bill Callahan and myself bought out Pat Dunn about 50,000 acres on the island. In straightening out the title we got over 10,000 acres more which neither Dunn nor ourselves knew anything about. The King estate and Kenedy gave us right of way over their property on Brazos and Padre Islands, and of course when we got the Dunn property, the right of way for the toll road went with it.

We built the toll bridge we now own over Boca Chica Pass (1938), operated ferry service from Point Isabel to Padre Island and Brazos Island, built a through bridge across Corpus Christi Pass between Mustang Island and Padre Island, leased the junk railroad running from Aransas Pass to Harbor Island, built low flat cars using railroad push cars with flanged wheels. We ran the automobiles through troughs up to our little flat cars. Each flat car carried three autos. We used a Ford truck with flanged wheels for a locomotive. We also built a telephone line the length of the island.

We crossed many sand drifts on wire mesh reinforced with asphaltum. This we picked up on the beach, and lastly we built Don Patricio Causeway, a double track through bridge 16,500 feet long across Laguna Madre from the north tip of Padre Island to the main land near Flour Bluff, 17 miles east of Corpus Christi. Don Patricio Causeway was destroyed by the 1933 hurricane.

After about one year of operation of the toll road, causeway, ferries, etc. we found the drift sands, high tides, etc. made the whole enterprise a gold brick. Under the influence of the Florida boom, we unloaded it all on the Jones Brothers of Kansas City at a nice profit. The Jones Brothers were millionaires and sunk a fortune on the scheme. After the 1929 crash they gave me back their interest in Brazos Island for a $6,000 credit on one of their notes that I held. The insurance premium on the causeway these “birds” are talking about building will cost them over $60,000 annually. They are just talking through their hats –1938.”

As a side note, it was said that the labor involved in these projects were the dregs of humanity, derelicts and dopeheads. Colonel Sam sought to rescue these poor souls with gainful employment and hard work. He had a strong love for the underdog. This action was nothing new, for Sam “was respected for always being fair and for his readiness to help any man willing to work. Negroes, hobos and boys on their own for the first time worked alongside work toughened camp hands who had followed him from job to job”, this being earlier on the Robstown-Brownsville railroad construction.

That Robertson’s vision had merit is validated in the great activity that we see today on the island near Corpus and on South Padre Island. In addition, Congress established Padre Island National Seashore and President John F. Kennedy signed the bill into law on September 28, 1962.

If you ever had a lefty in your family, you know how it is to wonder which hand your own child will choose. The teacher knew what that was like as her husband was a lefty and her father was ambidextrous. Surely one of her two children would be a lefty.

Nope, neither child chose that hand. In Room 622, almost half of the students were left handed compared to the general population which is only 10 percent. More often than not, left handed children are not all that uncommon in the special education population.

Typically, it is a genetic factor but for whatever reason, special education children seem to have more lefties than their peers.

Left handed people have unique challenges as so much of our writing, cutting and gross motor activities are geared to those with right hands. Often in the past, left handed children were forced to use their right hands.

Today, we know that is not a good idea as it can cause other issues such as bad handwriting, stuttering, bed wetting, and even reading difficulties. Often, when a new student, like Dwayne comes into the classroom, figuring out which hand is dominant becomes an early challenge. Dwayne was a child that kept switching hands. Was he ambidextrous or just immature needing direction?

One of the first things the teacher does is look at what additional services a child in her classroom might need. All of the children in Room 622 need speech therapy as communication disorder is an integral part of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). It is not unusual for the children to have additional services like occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT) and even adapted physical education (APE).

Dwayne appeared to need OT along with speech services. His hand eye coordination was poor.

He had a high need for sensory intervention and the boy could not copy basic shapes needed to form letters. So, the teacher asked during a special ARD (Admission, Review and Dismissal) meeting for an evaluation to see if Dwayne needed Occupational Therapy (OT). The answer was absolutely yes.

Ms. Heidi Wild came into the room to see the child for his weekly OT session and noticed that the boy kept changing hands. She held the pencil in front of him to see which hand reached out first. Out came the left hand. That didn’t mean he was a lefty. It meant that the boy was going to work with his left hand that day. After a while, Dwayne did settle on his left hand. The trick was not to let him keep switching during an activity. Whatever one he chose first was the one he used during that time period.

The activities used to strengthen Dwayne’s fingers included putting clothes pins on number cards, stacking wooden people and snapping elephants in patterns. With the help of Ms. Wild, the teacher learned lots of ways to help children write better and to be able to do basic things like, buttoning pants and zipping clothing. She never realized that .harming the muscle running along the index finger can result in so many physical challenges to a person. Dominant hands, muscle control and occupational therapy go hand in hand to help a child function well in both the academic and home environments.

The needs of a student are not necessarily the same as those in a home environment. As a result, some of her students received occupational therapy both at school and at home. For the most part, her student’s goals and objectives were for basic hand writing skills. Over time, those children unable to develop the fine motor skills for writing moved on to electronic methods of portable tablets for the classroom. The technology had moved a long way from the computer technology available twenty years ago.

In the end, Dwayne was able to master basic writing skills. He wrote his letters with clarity in his sentences. He learned tricks like the phrase “circle touch tail and circle touch hook” for writing the letters “a” and “g”. Dwayne eventually needed less and less of services from Ms. Wild until one day, she became a consultant to help the boy transition to middle school. Dwayne had grown up and acquired the skill of writing.

Pamela Gross Downing, a special education teacher can be reached at [email protected].

“Develop that inner perseverance, that attitude that says, I can do this! No matter what the opposition says I will find a way. Remember: Can’t never could. No never will. Success comes in “cans.”

Colonel Buzz Aldrin, USAF, Retired Astronaut and National Hero…Man on the Moon

I am going to break away from my usual themes of this column to relate a most poignant story that I wrote a few years back, but has yet to be published.

The events of the story have stayed with me always, and I hope that it provides you all with the same lessons of endurance, hope, and faith on your life journey.

As an adventurous young man of just under 14 years, living in Allegany, Oregon, on the East Millicoma River, just east of Coos Bay, Oregon; and in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, I caught rainbow trout, steel-head trout and salmon. The wonderful thing about where I lived was that the river was only about one-hundred feet from our house and the fish were plentiful.

It wasn’t a matter of catching the fish; the only thing to be considered was how many I wanted to catch.

One thing I was to learn was that the salmon were pretty tired by the time they got to our area of the river, after all; they had survived an arduous journey from the Pacific Ocean, into the Coos Bay, the Coos River, and then up the East and West Millicoma Rivers into the many tributary creeks feeding into the river.

Salmon would jump the small rills in the shallow part of the river, and one could catch them by hand if one were fast enough.

I will never forget my adventure of finding the beginning of one of the many tributary creeks feeding into the Millicoma River, to discover where the Salmon spawned and died.

Starting out at day-break, it took me about half a day to hike to the spawning grounds. When I arrived, I saw salmon by the hundreds. They were shining in the sunlight like pieces of aluminum foil, with occasional tints of crimson red and pink signifying that they were at the end of their life-cycle. Some were still swimming, writhing slowly in the very shallow water, still moving forward even at deaths last calling with all of the strength their muscles could afford; their gills were still moving, in and out very slowly as they gasped their last breaths.

Their eggs shone brightly in the water like thousands of pinkish-red pearls. My Native-American “self” wanted to pick the teeth of some of the skeletons that had been left by visiting bears and other carnivorous animas to make a necklace; to gather some eggs, or pick up fish or two to take back home. I reached down to do so and some far off voice inside said not to do it; perhaps the Great Spirit or that Native-American collective consciousness passed down in time.

I quietly left this grave-yard without disturbance. I learned that day that nature seems cruel, unjust, and unforgiving sometimes.

The Salmon spend all of their energy and time to spawn and die in a seemingly horrible way. At the same time I felt a sense of awe that these great fish were challenged in a way unlike any other. In their instinctual obsession to return to the place of their birth they had to be scarred by the rocks, the flesh on their bodies cut, torn, and mangled; some continued to swim with fishing lures in their mouths which they had manage to break from the line of a hopeful fisherman.

They endured the torturous rapids, rills and falls and then laid or fertilized their eggs at the end of their journey. These fish ran the great race and were victorious. They had laid and fertilized their eggs, and in a short while the hatchlings, the fry, would be making their way down river into the Pacific Ocean to start the life-cycle over again. I felt happy that they had accomplished their goal, and walked away thinking I had stood among winners, and I basked in the warm delight of my journey.

Life is like the journey of the Salmon…may obstacles, scars, and general ups and downs. I was to remember this and similar adventures on various occasions in my life, such as my trying times in flight and war while in the Air Force, during my many infirmities’, during my continuous battle with Cancer; when the going got rough and I didn’t think I had the strength to go on I mustered my hope and faith that things would get better…the lessons learned from my many adventures in nature have remained with me to this day.

There is one instinct we, as Human Beings, share with the Salmon and all living things…the instinct for survival. Individuals bodies and minds may be scarred, torn, and mangled by ravishes of substance abuse, mental illness, or physical disabilities; yet we all have the abilities to press on…to recover and progress with meaningful and productive lives. As the old proverb states, “When the going is tough, the tough get going.” As my Air Force Comrade Buzz Aldrin has shown us: “No dream is too high.”

May you endure the ups and downs of your life journey with faith and hope as does the Salmon, and remain healthy my friends!

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — Monica Cisneros remembers very well working with her Aunt Monica Vela when she was growing up.

Cisneros, 31, recalls her aunt saying, “Let’s go to the beach to clean it up.”

And that’s what they did every year with her cous-ins.

Yesterday, as Vela was honored for her work to improve the environment, thousands of volunteers carried on her tradition by participating in the 30th Texas General Land Office Adopt-A-Beach cleanup, from South Padre Island to Aransas Pass.

Nearly 400 people armed with trash bags took to the Island’s beaches after Land Commissioner George P. Bush dedicated the Cameron County park cleanup site on the Island in honor of Vela, who served as the site’s coordinator for 23 years.

Vela, a resident of Port Isabel, died at home last August.

“What a great Texan,” Bush said about Vela as he walked the beach picking up trash. “It’s not only a loss for her family, but it’s a loss for the state.”

She dedicated her life to her community and volun-teered in several capaci-ties, Bush said.

“She put a lot of hard work into cleaning up the beach,” Cisneros said. “It feels great to be doing our part, and it brings back a lot of memories.”

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HARLINGEN — The race for Harlingen mayor isn’t the only rematch this election cycle.

The only contested race for Harlingen City Commission is in District 2. It features two adversaries who faced each other in 2013 — Commissioner Tudor Uhlhorn, who took 59 percent of the vote, and former commissioner Frank Puente Jr., who garnered 41 percent.

“I don’t have any problem with him,” Uhlhorn, 56, said of Puente last week. “I just think I offer a much different set of strengths and background than he does.”

“I think Tudor’s a good guy, a good businessman, but I want to give people a choice,” Puente said.

For Puente, 53, it’s a question of much being promised and little delivered.

“I just haven’t really seen any change,” Puente said. “Just more of the status quo.

“They just keep bringing up the same issues, like more jobs,” he added. “I’m a small business owner, and I know what more jobs means.”

Uhlhorn, who is seeking his second term in office, said serving as one of the city’s commissioners has changed his perspective on some of the issues Harlingen is facing.

His priority, what he is most interested in, is improving the city’s roads.

“I think we’re a little behind on some maintenance of roads,” Uhlhorn said.

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The next step in UTRGV’s process of con-ducting a football feasibility study is complete.

The university is announcing today its committee for the study. The committee consists of nine university members, nine community members and three special advisors.

The committee will be chaired by former University of Texas football coach Mack Brown, who will work with members to develop a recommendation for UTRGV athletic director Chris King to make to UTRGV president Guy Bailey.

King said Brown will be active in coming to the Rio Grande Valley and talking with various interest groups.

“This committee is broadly representative of our university community and our larger community,” Bailey told The Monitor . “We need both of those things. That’s key. The second thing I like is there are very savvy business people that can help us understand whether we can support football as a business enterprise. That’s important.”

The nine community members:

– Dr. Nolan Perez, M.D.: Gastroenterology consult-ant

– Tudor Ulhorn: President of Rio Grande Equipment Co.

– Alonzo Cantu: UTRGV Foundation Board member and CEO of Cantu Entertainment Group

– Dan Martinez: CEO of Dan Martinez & Associates LP

– David Oliveira: Attorney at Roerig, Oliveira & Fisher

– Val LaMantia Peisen: L & F Distributors

– Gene Powell: Former University of Texas system board of regent and CEO of Bitterblue and The Powell Companies

– Bob Vackar: CEO of Bert Ogden Auto Group

– Rose Vela: Attorney at Law

Special advisors:

– Oliver Luck: Executive vice president of the NCAA

– Mike Vollmar: Senior associate athletic director for football administration at the University of Tennessee

– Alan Marks: Assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs and athletics counsel for the University of Texas system

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While the war wages on against North Carolina’s HB2, which bans local protections for transgender individuals, the fight for LGBTQ rights has only recently become an active movement in the Rio Grande Valley.

Although embedded deep in a conservative state, the Valley is known for being a liberal area. However, the abundance of immigrants and poverty can create a disconnect from the plight of the LGBTQ community.

“What happens often with social justice movements is that they get sucked into this elite group of queer and trans people who are super academic, but that’s not where the power is,” said Dani Marrero Hi, a digital marketing specialist for LUPE and a digital content fellow for United We Dream, an organization for immigrant youth.

“The power is in the community, in the base where they lack access to equitable education and don’t have access to these things,” she said.

A Valley native, Marrero said she was surprised to learn of the different LGBTQ events when she attended a university in Boston.

“The Boston queer scene, as they call it, is very different from here,” she said. “In any big city, people are just more out.”

Marrero said she could not believe there were things such as LGBTQ conferences and knew those types of events were lacking in the Valley.

As a result, Aqui Estamos was born last May and held its first annual conference in August. The two-day event was attended by about 200 people and featured guest speakers, workshops and training sessions. Topics included transgender rights, health, mental health and entrepreneurship.

One of the volunteers of the event was Chase Anderson, a 19-year-old transgender man who said growing up here wasn’t easy.

In middle school, when he was still known as a woman, an administrator caught Anderson with another girl and outed Anderson to his family.

Anderson said he had been holding hands and being affectionate with a girl in a locker room when an administrator walked in and immediately called his mother.

“I was outed to my mom, and that went pretty badly because it was just out of nowhere,” he said. “It was just really difficult being outed by somebody else who wasn’t even a close part of my family or friends or anything like that.”

Anderson said it took about half a year for his mom to come to terms with his attraction to women, but his mother, Cynthia Catchings, said the problem was more that Anderson was seen.

“I think that the main issue was being caught, even if it was a boy, that was my anger,” she said. “My problem with that situation was that they were out there in public and also finding out at that point kind of getting an idea that he was seeing a girl; it was a shock.”

“Even though the signs were there, it’s not something that my parents were aware of or had any knowledge of,” Anderson said.

Catchings said the signs were present since Anderson was four and asked for Spider-Man toys and boys underwear.

“I think that was the beginning of it,” Catchings said. “That he was already identifying more like a boy than as a girl.”

Anderson said that as a child he idolized his dad as well as the famed web-slinger.

“I would dress like Spider-Man all the time,” he said. “I would never take that suit off.”

Although signs of his male identity were present from a young age, Anderson said he didn’t come out to his mother until he was 17.

“I think that about that time I was already like, ‘Ok, I know this is not another phase. I think that this is you finding yourself with a little bit more maturity,’ and knowing that was what he wanted,” Catchings said.

Catchings is a social worker, which helped her be open to the changes her son underwent over the years. However, she continued to struggle with fear.

“I was very afraid that somebody will hurt him,” she said. “That was my fear; you can do anything as long as he doesn’t get hurt, and that was my main concern.”

However, Anderson said he feels relatively safe in the Valley, especially compared to his time living in Laredo.

He said living there could be scary, especially with the discrimination that came when choosing which restroom to use.

“I don’t want to make anybody uncomfortable in the women’s, but I’m scared for my life in the men’s,” he said. “I’m not saying that it’s amazing over here, but Laredo was just a scary place.”

While there is currently no legislation in Texas that restricts the restroom use of transgender people, Anderson is aware that the conservative nature of the state means it could be a reality.

“I feel like it could be a pretty big possibility and that is a scary thing to think about,” he said.

The organizers of Aqui Estamos know that legislation similar to North Carolina’s bill could be on the horizon, so they took a proactive stance by organizing a rally.

“We’re sending a message to our state government saying, ‘We’re not going to tolerate this kind of stuff,’” Marrero said. “‘There’s already this group of people forming and don’t even think about it.’”

Through Aqui Estamos, Marrero and its 50 members hope to be able to address the intersection of those issues: help people within the LGBTQ community who also face issues prevalent in the Valley like problems of immigration or poverty.

“We are fighting for LGBTQ rights, but we are also taking into account that most people that live in this area are Mexican-American or some sort of immigrants,” she said.

“Queer or trans people or other people that have identities that are working against them, if you have some sort of privilege, you are able to get out and find somewhere that works for you,” she said. “But if you don’t, you’re kind of stuck here and those things are connected to poverty.”

Joaquin Carcaño, one of the lead plaintiffs in the suit against North Carolina’s HB2 law, said he realizes he is privileged to be able to talk about those issues and praised the organizers in the Valley who have made it easier for other people to have those conversations as well.

“Seeing what Aqui Estamos is doing, it’s making the LGBTQ community that much more visible, which then means it’s much easier to have those conversations with the important people in your life,” he said. “It gives you this sort of entryway to have those conversations.”

Carcaño also said it’s important to break down the misconception that the issues of LGBTQ are only important to people in certain areas.

“People who aren’t part of the LGBT community or the academic communities, when they hear about these conversations, they think these identities only exist in these areas, which is not true,” he said. “The identity didn’t come from being in these towns, people flock to these towns because they can have these conversations or be able to live more openly.”

For people who haven’t been able to live openly or have been kicked out or their homes for trying to do so, they can seek refuge at Pride Home, an organization that provides housing for LGBTQ youths.

Anderson and his mom volunteer at the home, which currently houses six individuals.

“I want to make sure that it feels like a home,” Anderson said. “Being that I didn’t get kicked out of my home, I want to make sure these people feel like they have a home.”

With more LGBTQ events and organizations springing up around the Valley, Marrero is optimistic about the evolution of the area.

“I think the Valley is in a very unique place right now as far as social justice and things changing,” she said. “I think we’re going to see a lot of change.”

McALLEN — Alondra Villarreal sat on a curb outside of the main entrance to Quinta Mazatlan World Birding Center with dried mud on her shoes, jeans and shirt.

The 17-year-old girl was one of the hundreds of volunteers who participated in the center’s first Earth Day in the Dirt volunteering day. Participants were allowed to do a variety of hands-in-soil projects, including mulching, weeding, planting and reforesting.

Villarreal said she pulled weeds and invasive plant species as well as planted flowers and trees.

“It was hard work,” she said. “There were some trees that were very heavy, but it helps us get closer to nature. It’s just so relaxing and calming to get away from the noise and people.”

The McAllen native had explored the center once before with her friends, though this time, she left with something more than a memory of nature.

“Walking around you get to see the beauty of it, but actually being able to plant and later on see what you did kind of makes it better,” Villarreal said. “I know I’m going to come back and look at the plants that I planted.”

To Jose Luis Zuniga, the volunteer coordinator, Villarreal’s awareness of the environment was ideal.

“As a community, we’ve lost interest in nature,” the McAllen native said. “We’re all too busy indoors with our own endeavors, and if we can expose the children, teenagers, adults and grandparents to the nature that we have here in the Valley, we’re more likely to promote and conserve what we have.”

Lisa Cofoid shares Zuniga’s vision. The 57-year-old woman said she especially likes to volunteer during events that allow her to help children and adults learn about nature.

“I especially like sharing about what rich, diverse plant life and wildlife we have and to encourage others to love it as much as I do,” the McAllen native said.

She believes if children become excited about nature, it will not only help them preserve it but encourage others to do the same.

“The kids go away and teach their parents as well,” she said. “Our environment is so precious, our nature is so important to support the wildlife because there is so little of it.”

April 23rd marked Quinta Mazatlan’s first reforestation event, Zuniga said. He said the center and communities alike have specific needs for plants and although some plants may be aesthetically pleasing, they might not always be the best option for the area they’re in.

“It’s not like we can just till a big plot of land and have people plant,” the 46-year-old Zuniga said. “Some areas require shady plants; other areas require plants that are bird friendly. We tended to our native scrub area.”

Zuniga emphasized that reforesting does not only benefit birds and animals.

“Without the Earth, nobody would survive,” he said. “How much more plain can that be? We need the Earth, the Earth doesn’t need us. It’s to our benefit to protect the Earth.”

For more information on Quinta Mazatlan, visit www.quintamazatlan.com.

Harlingen High golfer Hannah Greer knows what it takes to compete at the state level.

After all, she qualifed for the UIL state golf tournament as a junior last year.

So when she returns to Legacy Hills Golf Club in Georgetown on Monday to begin another run at a state title, she’ll know exactly what to expect.

With that in mind, the rest of the field had best watch out because Hannah is ready to close out her high school golf career in style.

Last season, Hannah shot a two-day total of 158 to finish the tournament 14-over-par 144, which was only 17 strokes back of the eventual winner.

“But now that I know what to expect, I think I can do better,” she said on Saturday morning, a few hours before she and her family were set to hit the road for Georgetown.

“I’m really excited about this year’s tournament. Of course, I’m a little nervous, but I know the course and I think that will help ease my nerves. I hope to do well.”

Full story at RGVSports.com