Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9203010043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS LENGTH: Medium
It would be nothing new. Virginians have been filling Texas for as long as there has been a Texas, and even before.
Geographically puny as the Old Dominion may be compared to the Lone Star State, Virginia has left an indelible brand on the flank of Texas.
There is, for example, a 10-day-long, tequila-swigging, salsa-sounding blowout of a George Washington's Birthday party every year in Laredo, Texas.
There, hard by the Mexican border, Virginian George Washington is celebrated with a 9-foot-tall bronze statue in front of the city hall and he is honored with a parade that would stretch from Laredo to Richmond and takes the better part of a day to complete.
Leading this year's parade was Robert Mosbacher, selected to the honorary Mr. South Texas post by parade organizers. Mosbacher, Texas oilman and U.S. secretary of commerce, is an alumnus of Washington and Lee University.
That night, at Laredo's jalapeno festival, Robert Hager of Roanoke tried to eat more hot peppers than 27 other competitors. He vomited instead, but the first woman out of the stands to congratulate him on his game effort wore a James Madison University sweatshirt. She was, she said, from Petersburg, Va.
Laredo is, of course, a city that would be in Mexico were it not for Sam Houston.
Sam, whose 199th birthday is Monday , was born in Rockbridge County, not far from Mosbacher's alma mater or from Natural Bridge, which George Washington once owned.
By 1836, Texans were revolting against Mexican control. There were 188 people holed up inside the walls of an old Spanish mission when Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna attacked. It took the 4,000 Mexican troops 13 days to kill all the rebels - including 13 Virginians.
That was the Alamo.
Houston and his 800 troops beat a hasty retreat across Texas, with Santa Anna's troops in hot pursuit.
Finally, at San Jacinto, Houston took his stand and wiped out the Mexicans.
Houston, the boy who grew up in Timber Ridge, Va., was elected president of the Republic of Texas. His opponent in the election?
Stephen Austin, who was born in Wythe County, Va.
Austin led 300 American families to Texas to found a colony. He called Texas "a wild, howling interminable solitude."
Austin was a peacemaker. He became the Texas Nation's secretary of state. The capital of Texas bears his name.
Odd that Virginia, where gentility and conformity have long been prized, has contributed so vastly to Texas, where individualism is a birthright.
We duck now into Dick's Last Resort, a popular San Antonio bar, for a beer to ponder this contradiction. Dick's is on the Paseo del Rio, the San Antonio river walk that sets the former cowtown apart from every other city in the country.
From Dick's we can look up to the steel bridge spanning the San Antonio River, carrying traffic on Navarro Street.
And there, in the heart of Texas, is a plaque on the bridge: "Va. Bridge & Iron Co. Roanoke, Va., 1922."
by CNB