Hi, I'm Lydia.

Alegria White San Antonio's history, civic, cultural and artistic is a rich mix of people.

Native American, Spanish, Mexican, German, African American, Anglo.

Our city has always been diverse.

Now, when it comes to our history, you might be surprised at how many women have made significant contributions to our city.

Some of these women you may recognize.

Others may be new to you.

Welcome to the women who shaped San Antonio.

First, Adina de Zavala.

You probably know the street on the northwest side named after her family.

But Adina De Zavala was a true heroine of the Alamo.

Long barrack, literally blockading herself inside the barrack to keep it from being demolished.

The year is 1861.

Adina De Savala is born in Harris County to Augustine and Julia Days of Bala, a proud Texas family.

Dina's family has deep roots in Texas history.

She is the granddaughter of the first Vice President of the Republic of Texas.

So that spirit, to preserve that memory and the sacrifice that happened in 1836 is very important to her.

Around 1873, the family moves to a ranch near San Antonio.

After college, Adina begins teaching, but Texas history is on her mind.

She is part of a group of women who meet and discuss Texas and its heroes about the early turn of the century.

The Governor of Texas is calling together a group of individuals to talk about what needs to be preserved here on site.

Is the money that's going to be appropriated for the conservation and preservation going to be just for the Alamo church, or is there anything else structurally that remains that needs to be preserved?

And so a big argument opens up over what is more important to preserve the Alamo church.

The shrine to Texas Liberty, or the decrepit long barracks that's next door, had been a general store for a portion of time.

And all this, it's in ruin.

Once that facade is taken off.

But Adina steps up and says, this is an important structure.

It's the older of the two structures.

During the battle in 1836, a lot of men are killed inside that building.

And so it is just as important as the Alamo Church itself.

And it needs to be preserved.

Saving the long barrack becomes a passion for Adina.

Going up to Austin to testify during these hearings about the preservation of the site where the property lines end up.

What are the features of these buildings?

She is not afraid to speak her mind and to get things done.

Back in San Antonio.

Adina gets to work on saving the long barrack.

At first, it's going to be community activism, reaching out to the people that are in her work.

One of the organizations she's a part of, the Daughters of Republic of Texas.

And even at that, there's some infighting on what exactly needs to be done.

again, that's a little bit of a rivalry between the two buildings and the camps that support each side.

And what's going to happen as she goes to the extreme.

It's an extreme thing to lose that structure, and she's not going to let it happen.

And she locked herself inside a Lombard building to halt any kind of demolition to occur with the building itself.

Adina held her ground in the Long Barrack, which lasted three days.

It attracted spectators and newspaper coverage from around the country.

Adina finally emerged after her attorneys worked out an agreement to turn the structure over to the governor.

Time has proven that Adina Days of All was correct.

During an early 20th century restoration, workers uncovered foundational work that verified her belief that the Long Barrack was indeed part of the Alamo.

In 1836, Adina Zavala was a crucial part in how we preserve and remember the Alamo.

Today.

Next up is Hattie Briscoe.

Hattie Briscoe set big goals for herself and achieved them, including becoming the first black graduate of the Saint Mary School of Law and the first black female attorney in Bexar County.

We talked to, say, camp historian Krystal Mendez about this trailblazer.

The year was 1916.

Hattie Ruth Elam was born in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Her father was a blacksmith.

Her mother a seamstress who had briefly attended college and would inspire her daughter to do the same.

Her mother was also just a really advocate for education and didn't like to do all the usual like domestic chores, and wasn't into cooking, but was into music and loved to read and and really encouraged Hattie to pursue an education.

Had a knew what she wanted as a young woman, even when she found her husband.

She was very determined.

She told her friend, you see, like I older, I'm going to make him my boyfriend.

Hattie marries William Briscoe in 1940, and the two relocate to San Antonio, where they run a barber and beauty shop on Pine Street.

Hattie earns her degree in cosmetology and goes on to teach the trade at Wheatley High School.

But she wanted more.

Hattie Briscoe was, from a very young age, a very ambitious woman, and what I love about her story is that every goal that she set for herself, she achieved, she more than achieved.

She like, surpassed all her goals.

Her goal was to be the supervisor of the state's cosmetology department.

She needs a degree.

And so she goes back to school and gets this degree.

And so the people that she's working for the administration are a little bit concerned that now this woman has got so much education, so much experience and skills, she's coming for their jobs.

And that's not really what she was interested in.

She just wanted to teach.

She loses her job, they dismiss her.

They don't give any good reason for doing that.

And so the community rallies to try and get her job back.

Unfortunately, they just don't hire her back.

and she had a lot of support from the community to get her job back, but she just couldn't.

And so that drew the attention of some of her attorney friends who said, you did such a great job representing yourself.

You should just go to law school.

So that was the next goal.

Goal achieved, but not without pushback.

The dean thought she didn't belong there.

They didn't really want to admit her into the school.

Some of the professors thought, you know, she's not going to let let's just let her in.

But she did.

Tandy Briscoe is the first black graduate at the Saint Mary's School of Law.

She is not recognized for her achievements, and she graduates like the top of her class.

But because she is a black woman, she's not recognized in the program.

There's no mention of her graduation with her law degree and hand, Hattie looks for a job as an attorney, setting her sights high.

So she applies at the DA's office, and they don't want a black woman working there.

So she said, okay, I'm going to just start my own practice.

Then she opens her own practice on East Commerce Street, initially handles criminal cases, but eventually moves to civil cases and makes her mark there.

She was a very feared woman because she also dealt with a lot of divorce cases, and so she would like go to some of the clubs and and some of the men were like, hide from her is like the story because they were out with their, you know, people that they were cheating with and that once they saw Hattie, they just sort of cleared the room.

For 27 years, Hattie Briscoe is the only black female attorney in San Antonio.

She finds respect in her field, becoming a member of many professional organizations, including the Texas Criminal Bar Association, San Antonio Bar Association and the National Association of Defense Lawyers in Criminal Cases.

Hattie Briscoe dies in 2002.

I think Hattie Briscoe might want to be remembered for her community service because everything that she did was centered in community.

She was a teacher.

She worked in the beauty shops.

She taught other cosmetologists, and then she served her community as an attorney.

Some amazing women who shaped San Antonio.

Jessie Strauss was the quintessential planner, an organizer, and whose skills were the basis of her very successful life as a volunteer for many organizations, from the Junior League to the renovations of both the Majestic and Empire Theaters, and her work lives on today with the Las Casas Performing Arts Scholarship Program.

The year was 1931.

Jocelyn Levi was born in Pennsylvania to Malcolm and Jocelyn Bronson Levi.

Her father.

His family business was silk business, and he sold his share of the company right before the depression, and he wanted to be a rancher.

So he put the family in a car and they drove west.

The family ended up in San Antonio after someone suggested to her father that he meet Dan Oppenheimer, a banker.

He helped them find the first ranch that my grandfather bought, which was is out the old Blanco Road.

That's where my mother grew up.

It's now called Timber Wood Park.

It was a ranch life for Josie.

She loved the animals that populated the countryside.

She came into San Antonio for school.

A long ride in on Dusty Blanco Road.

Her father would put her in the back of the pickup truck every day.

And driver.

Saint Mary's Hall, down where the academy is now on French Street.

It wasn't too many years later when Josie would meet the man she would be married to for over 70 years.

Jo R Strauss Jr. Their parents were friends.

So both families were ranching families.

My mom's family was on Blanco and his family was on Fredricksburg Road, where the USAA is now.

So they knew each other because of the cattle business.

In her teens, they began dating.

He took her to a drive in movie with its friends.

I think he was 16, and he put her in the back in the truck with beer, and he didn't want to pay for her.

You hit her in the back and she opened the beer bottles and hence drove up to the to the boys.

That was their first date.

Married to Joe in 1952.

The couple had three children Lynn, Susan and Joe Richard.

Jose became involved in the community as she raised her family.

She had an office in our house.

She didn't work ever for pay.

She learned about all the different organizations, nonprofits in the city, and she got interested in doing volunteer work.

Politics was one of her interests.

She was very interested in making the state a two party state.

George H.W.

Bush was really the first when he ran for Congress, was her first big volunteer political job.

And then John Tower, known well in political circles as an organizer and fundraiser.

In 1988, Mayor Henry Cisneros and developer Tom Wright reached out to her to raise funds to restore the city's historic Majestic Theater.

They, took her down there and showed her the place, and, she said, of course we have to do this.

We have to do it for the city.

And my brother tells a funny story.

Whenever businessmen would see her coming, they would run the other way because she was a major pickpocket.

She called herself a.

She would organize lunches and dinners on stage before it was restored, and invite people down to have lunch, see the place and talk about what's going to happen.

Through her new arts foundation, Las Casas, the money was raised and the majestic was restored to its former glory.

The foundation did the same for the Empire Theater, restored in 1998.

Jossie Strauss volunteered and raised money for many organizations, including the Women's Leadership Council, which later became Women United.

She was on the board of the United Way, and she felt like everybody goes and asks businesses and men for money, but she thinks that women.

She thought women could also step up.

So she and she started The Women United.

They have a luncheon every year called The Power of the purse.

So women donate purses for a silent auction.

But the power of the purse means that women have funds and they can donate as well.

Hers was a lifetime of community stewardship and fundraising.

Jossie Strauss passed away in 2022, but today her Las Casas Foundation, now the Majestic Empire Foundation, continues to support the arts with its annual performing arts scholarship program featuring young talent from all over South Texas.

She never did anything unless she really believed in it, and she expressed that belief so strongly that I think that made a difference.

You've heard of Saint Philip's College, but have you heard of Art Tamisha Bowden?

She was an African American civil rights activist and educator who founded Saint Phillips.

Here is her remarkable story told by the current president of Saint Phillips.

Doctor Adina Williams Lostan.

The year is 1902, and San Antonio Bishop James Johnson is leading a search for a candidate to run the Saint Phillips Normal and Industrial School.

The bishop brought her here to take a parochial school, sewing for black girls coming out of slavery to create a grammar school.

She was very visionary and she decided that I can do better.

I can take it even further.

Artemisia divided the departments and a primary secondary and vocational which focused not only on teaching young women homemaking skills, but also reading, algebra, history and botany.

Saint Phillips moved to the East Side in 1917, becoming the first junior black college governed by a city board, financially supported by the Episcopal Church.

The school flourished until the Great Depression.

During the depression.

She lost the support of the church and so she was on her own.

The bishop found it actually a black school and a white school.

And during the depression, that decision was made.

We reallocate the funds.

We were doing with no money to maintain the school.

Artemisia did just what she had to.

She discontinue taking her salary.

She brought her family members to town to work at Saint Philip's College.

She even bartered in the neighborhood, raising chickens, pigs, hogs, all of those things.

She got her hands dirty.

When you think of an administrator, a person that we may think of an administrator, CEO sitting behind a desk.

No, no, no, she was in the field.

Saint Phillips was accredited in 1941 as a two year college.

Artemisia served as president of the San Antonio Metropolitan Council of Negro Women, and was named woman of the year by the National Council of Negro Women.

Her legacy lives on in San Antonio through ISD's Bolden Elementary School, Saint Philip's College, and a health center at Incarnate Word University.

She was just a driver, a motivating force for others.

But she made it happen.

That true grit and visionary drive led to the Episcopal Church, Canonizing Miss Beldon to sainthood in 2015.

All of the folks that she reported to the different bishops and the line ups.

She became a saint because of the work that she did and her accomplishments.

San Antonio can claim a number of cultural first.

And one of those is mariachi education in public schools.

Bell Ortiz was both a talent and musician and teacher, and that turned out to be a powerful combination.

The mariachi education program she created is now nationwide.

The year was 1933.

Isabel Bell Aguilar was born in San Antonio to father Lupe and Roy Aguilar.

Bell grew up in the heart of San Antonio, the city's west side, and by the age of four was a musical prodigy.

Her parents knew that she was gifted.

She would lower the oven door and pretend it was a piano and would start singing.

And her and her grandparents were there.

They would dance.

And so there was also joy in her upbringing and lots of music.

So I think that carried through.

Bell began taking music lessons and her talent grew from there around the age of 12.

She was already playing with orchestras and in little bands all over the city.

Bell graduated from Lanier High School and attended Our Lady of the Lake University, earning a bachelor's degree in performance and music education in 1953.

She married Daniel San Miguel junior.

The couple had five children Leticia, Daniel, the third, Annabelle, Roseanne, and Roland as she raised her family.

She also began working.

She became an educator and her early years started teaching at Berkeley Elementary and, you know, my mom, her first language was Spanish, and she started teaching in a time where Spanish was not allowed, but she was able to work around that because she taught the children, Spanish songs and French songs and German songs.

so she started this little group called Luz the Janitors at Berkeley Elementary.

In 1968, Bell returned to her alma mater, Lanier, and started the nation's first high school Ballet Folklorico program.

It was just the beginning of her incredible impact.

She became the choir teacher at Lanier High School.

And again, because she was exposed to song and dance from Mexico.

That was always her dream, and it ended up being her legacy.

Bell began gathering students in the band to create a mariachi group.

She worked with her future son in law, Pete Vanderpool, who was heading up the band program at Jefferson High School, and the very first high school mariachi program was created.

That you might not know that and it great.

San Antonio College began a mariachi program.

Bell's vision caught the eye of President Gerald Ford.

President Ford for the Bicentennial, asked San Antonio College Mariachi to play for them at the bicentennial.

So she got the mariachi together.

The younger brother and I went with her and her college students in vans all the way up to Washington to play for the bicentennial, all the way down to the the East Coast and back around to.

It was like a 5 to 6 week trip.

Today, mariachi education has gone far beyond San Antonio.

It has just been sort of a snowball effect roller coaster ride and has been just amazing.

It's all over the country now, and it started just because she wanted to make connections and bring that rich culture that she had, the rich culture that she had when she was growing up.

In 1982, Belle married Juan, or thieves, who was also involved in the mariachi music business, and together they created Mariachi Campanas, the America.

And it seemed the world opened up for them to make connections at the city at the federal level.

So she, was a dear friend of Congressman Gonzalez and was able, you know, he invited them to the white House and they have played for, I believe, almost every president.

and, they were also they make connections, with people that headed to Lincoln.

I guess endowment for the Arts and were able to connect with artists like Gloria Estefan and, Linda Ronstadt, besides music.

Bell served on many boards, including the Mexican American Unity Council, the Texas Diabetes Institute, and the Retired Teachers Council.

She just always stayed busy, and active.

Very active, in different areas.

Not just music, but I have a bell or these passed away in 2023, leaving a legacy of music, community and love.

Charlene McCombs took the role as the wife of a business icon and turned it into a lasting legacy of charitable work, supporting the arts, education and faith based community services.

She was the ultimate Texas charming hostess who loved everyone she met.

The year was 1928.

Charlene Hamblin is born in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Her life changed as a young woman when she went to register for classes at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi.

In line behind her was a young man named Red McCombs.

She was in line in front of him.

He was behind her and always said that he recognized her as a lovely lady, but especially that day was looking at her legs and he wanted to get to know her, even though last week of her life he recounted that story to her, and she got embarrassed even then and said, oh, don't talk about that.

Three years later, in 1950, they were married.

By 1958, the young couple had moved to San Antonio so Red could start his car business.

As the 1960s came around, Charlene and Red now had three daughters, and Charlene built her life around home and family.

Our mom was the mom of the 60s.

She took care of all of us.

She took care of the house.

But she also helped us understand the importance of what our father was doing.

We had a special family thing where after school, when we were really young, might even take a nap because we all had dinner together every night.

That was something that was very important to both of them, but I think my mom really orchestrated that.

Times were changing in the 60s.

America's youth were taking a very different path from their parents.

But Charlene kept that path straight for her girls.

She is the one who took us to see the Beatles in the early 60s.

She often would take us to do things that were part of the 60s, but were good parts and fun parts.

The McCombs name was becoming a San Antonio staple, with Reds car business, media acquisitions, sports teams, and ranching.

Charlene loved it all.

Ranching.

Who would have thought that she would enjoy every one of the Longhorns?

She would want to know about its lineage.

She enjoyed the car business.

She was the ultimate hostess and it didn't matter what the event was, she was glad to host it or she was delighted to go.

By the early 1970s, the McCombs owned the Spurs and Charlene was the team mother.

She developed a really great rapport with the basketball players and with the Spurs and certain ones in particular.

She had her boyfriends that she'd call them.

Charlene also loved her community and was a driving force behind the Charlene McCombs Empire Theater renovation through Jesse Strauss.

She had learned that the theater was in disrepair and, after visiting the theater and I went with mom to visit the Empire, it was a shambles.

And so she went home to my dad and said, we've got to save this little jewel box of a theater.

So dad agreed, and they did.

And she loved it so much.

And that really started her relationship also with Las Casas Foundation, which is now the majestic Empire Foundation.

Through the Las Casas Foundation, Charlene became involved in the scholarship program for performing arts students.

She met most of them competing in the Jose Awards for scholarships, and she thought that was so important.

Charlene and Red donated millions of dollars to make San Antonio and South Texas a better place.

The UT softball stadium is named after the couple, Southwestern University's residential center and M.D.

Anderson's Institute for the Early Detection and Treatment of Cancer bear her name, as does the Charlene McCombs Media Center here at Clarin.

But Charlene's greatest joy was her family.

She loved Red.

If you see any pictures of them together, it's fascinating because they're looking at each other in this special, loving way.

And it wasn't posing for the camera.

Those are just candid shots.

They just found a way to develop a life together that was truly special.

Charlene McCombs passed away in 2019 at the age of 91.

I think she'd want to be remembered as a loving wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother.

She was the center of the universe for our entire family, and that was her real joy.

It's been a pleasure to bring you the stories of the incredible women who shaped our city.

Each one brought their talent and gifts and left a legacy.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Lydia Alegria White.

Take care.