SPD Firing Range

For several years the SPD paid to use a firing range for practice. However, this past year, on the old landfill on Stagecoach Road, a firing range was built for the police department. This is just the first phase of the $140,000 training facility begun by now-retired Police Chief Luis Collazo as a way to replace the facility the police practiced at for decades.

The facility is named for the the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation because the intial funding was obtained from the Birch Foundation.

At the opening ceremony on December 5, 2008, Mayor Betty Ann Matthis fired the first shot.

Seguin Watertower

This watertower is behind the library and as I came out, arms loaded with books, saw this figure at the very top putting the ladder in place.

I wish all of the watertowers were painted this bright white with the blue lettering; I think it is very pretty!

Traveling Troupe

Proverbs 30:29-31

There are three things that are stately in their stride, four that move with stately bearing: a lion, mighty among beasts, who retreats before nothing; a strutting rooster, a he-goat, and a king with his army around him.

Slumdog Millionaire

It seems as though there are few good movies these days. Or at least movies that appeal to me. However, I did enjoy Slumdog Millionaire which we saw recently in San Marcos.

Kim Voyner reviews the movie in Telluride Review about this movie and writes "There's sadness and tragedy within Slumdog Millionaire - starvation, genocide, child prostitution, and overwhelming depression - but there's humor, humanity and dignity as well."

Seguin Chamber of Commerce

The Seguin Area Chamber of Commerce moved into their new digs a few weeks ago and held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on January 27th.

The donors were honored that evening and guests noted the improvements in this new facility.

With this new structure, the Chamber can do things that just weren't possible in the previous location. The Visitors Center is located under the same roof.

Awards for Seguin Citizens Who Make A Difference

When we first moved to Seguin, I was rather surprised that the city had two Chambers of Commerce: the Seguin Chamber of Commerce and the Seguin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. However, after learning more about the city and how effective both Chambers are, it is not surprising at all.

The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce recently honored Seguin Citizens who have made a positive impact with their contributions to the city. It is well to be reminded now and again of the hard-working, willing, people who make our city a better place in which to live. These folks are unassuming (never promoting themselves) who work within the community in so many areas.

Businessman of the Year award went to Lolo Martinez; Businesswoman of the Year award went to Mary Louise Gonzales.

Humanitarian Award went to Barbara Behal; Patriot Award to J. P. Amador. The Community Service Award was given to Mary Louise Gonzales.

The Youth-Mentor Leadership Award was given to Mike Carrillo; Rosita Ornelas Award (for media) went to former Enterprise writer Michael Carey. The President's Award was given to Joe Polanco.

After the awards, the Casino was opened! You don't have to go to Las Vegas to have fun!

St. James Catholic Church

St. James Catholic Church is a beautiful structure and one can see the steeple from almost anywhere in town.

Table Artistes!

The tables at the FUMC Dinner-Talent Showcase were beautiful!!!

Starcke Park

Copied from Texas Escapes:

This glorious municipal park, operated by the City of Seguin, is beautiful and rich with the area's history. Built by the National Youth Administration in 1937 on the banks of the Guadalupe River, this large park has small rolling hills which are grassy and densely shaded by the most pecan trees you have ever seen. Other attractions include standard and miniature golf courses, playgrounds, picnic areas, volleyball, and basketball. The vegetation is lush with vines and caladiums along the riverbanks. Numerous picnic tables can be found right on the banks and throughout the park. Small motorized boats operate upstream.

A Seguin Fixture

Excerpt from The Muelders in New Berlin by Evelyn Muelder

The prominence of the Muelder family in the New Berlin area can be illustrated by newspaper accounts of the wedding of Irma Muelder to Edgar Weyel in September of 1917. The ceremony and reception were held in the Muelder home, with 200 guests in attendance. Piano, violin, and clarinet played the wedding march as the bride entered the room, wearing a diamond lavilier, a gift from the groom. Toasts were offered by local dignitaries, including Mr. L. Kuehler, Reverend Freuh, and Judge Williams. The Marion Brass Band played during the reception, and Edgar Zuehl drove the newlyweds to San Antonio in his new Buick for their honeymoon. After their honeymoon, the couple took up residence in the Muelder home. Irma helped her parents with the business while her husband Edgar commuted to Marion where he had a car dealership. Two children were born to them in the house, Marjorie and Rodger.

Funding Missions

More than six years ago, Mary Ulmer, a member of the Seguin First Methodist Church, had a dream and a passion for mission work.

She was instrumental in starting the first FUMC Dinner Talent Showcase. January 24, 2009 was the sixth annual event and was very successful.

Mary is one of those special individuals who makes a difference and makes things happen. She has moved from Seguin and is now making things happen in Houston!

"Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Our Lady of Angels

St. James Catholic Church - the Catholic Daughters of the Americas - Our Lady of Angels.

This is a beautiful building and will be used for various functions for St. James Church.

Appropriately, this lovely spiritual place is on the site of what was was a 'crack house.' One doesn't like to think that our city has such destructive places. However, now resides Our Lady of Angels.

Amen.

http://www.catholicdaughters.org

Five to Nine - A.M.

The Donut Palace on 118 North King Street is really hopping from 5:00 a.m. until 9:00 a.m. seven days a week!

Folks come here to talk about community and world events while drinking a cup of coffee and eating a doughnut. The place is always busy! The doughnuts are very very good and the service so professional and helpful.

This is one of those community places where it is just fun to be! I will always remember the second day after our home flooded in 1998 and we met at The Donut Palace at 5:00 a.m. with fellow 'evacuees' to drink a cup of coffee, eat a pastry, and commiserate with one another before heading to our homes in the Elmwood neighborhood to get started on the job of 'mucking' out our houses and seeing if anything was salvageable. [The first day of the flood we weren't allowed back into the neighborhood because of the danger and another round of flooding!]

Doing our part

Saturday mornings we take glass, cardboard, and aluminum cans to recycling bins on the Wal-Mart lot. During the week, our newspapers and magazines are dumped in bins located at our First United Methodist Church. The monies from this recycling benefit the Methodist Day School.

Any day of the week, plastic, etc. items can be taken to the recycling bins at the Guadalupe County Fairgrounds.

As for packing materials such as the bouncy and stick-to-everything 'peanuts,' I take these items as well as small boxes to the UPS & Grounds store on Kingsbury and they are re-used.

Why recycle??

Recycling—substituting scrap for virgin materials—not only conserves natural esources and reduces the amount of waste that must be burned or buried, it also reduces pollution and the demand for energy.

In an international study published last year by the Waste & Resources Action Programme, a British group, researchers compared more than 180 municipal waste management systems. Recycling proved better for the environment than burying or burning waste in 83 percent of the cases.

It makes sense to reuse products, of course, and to reduce consumption altogether, as well as to improve initial product design. But given the rising mounds of waste worldwide, it also makes sense to recycle.

http://www.recyclingcenters.org/Texas/Seguin_78155_recycling_centers.php

For Alice

This charming Doll House was built in 1910 by Louis Dietz for five-year-old Alice O'Brien.

Alice, born in 1905, was born in the New York Foundling Hospital and was one of the Orphan Train Children.

An estimated 1200 orphan train children from New York came to Texas in the years commencing in 1854 and ending about 1929.

Some of these children were orphans, some lived on the streets, and some were merely poor.

The police arrested vagrant children, some as young as five, and locked them up with adult criminals. In 1853, Charles Loring Brace, IV founded the Children's Aid Society in New York. to arrange the trips, raise the money, obtain the legal permissions needed for relocation. To recruit likely children, Brace and his staff of volunteers visited orphanages and reformatories and the homes of impoverished parents.

Three times a month agents of the Society assembled the children into groups ranging from six to one hundred and fifty. The groups were booked at a discount on regular passenger trains.

My son-in-law spoke of the Orphan Trains coming through Waterloo, Iowa and some families in that town would take in children - often because another hand was needed to work on the farm.

On May 31st, 1929, the Children's Aid Society sent three boys to Sulfur Springs, Texas. It was the last of the orphan trains.

Although some of the Orphan Train children did not have a happy life, little Alice O'Brien was a beloved daughter of the Dietz family.

http://www.seguinconservation.org/DollHouse.aspx

Seguin - December 28, 1924

Seguin Social Life - 1924

Week's Social Events Chronicled in Southwest Texas Towns

Seguin in the 1930s

Steinmeyer-Fey House

The Steinmeyer-Fey House was built in 1902, with additions in 1912, for cotton farmer William Steinmeyer and his family. The house stayed in the Steinmeyer-Fey family until 1971 when it went through a series of owners.

Crown Royale

Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God. - Unknown

Archaeological Find in Seguin

Seguin couple’s backyard yields rich discovery

By Roger Croteau
Seguin, Texas (AP)
10-08

One day this past June, Floyd McKee hauled a load of topsoil from near the bank of the Guadalupe River, on which his property sits, and dumped it on the grass in his yard. “It rained that night, and when I went out in the morning, the yard was covered with spear points,” he said. “I got more dirt and sifted it and found a dozen more.” Surprised, McKee contacted local archaeologists Bob Everett and Richard Kinz, both of whom soon declared that McKee’s property, near Starcke Park, was among the richest Paleo-Indian archaeological finds they had ever seen. During late September, they announced the discovery, some of which will be on display next month at the Seguin Heritage Museum for Archaeology Awareness Month.


So far, McKee has excavated a trench about 50 feet long, 10 feet wide and 7 feet deep and has found hundreds of spearheads, arrowheads, bones and stone tools. Archaeologists have dated the artifacts and said they could be as old as 11,000 years or as young as 200. The Texas Historical Commission said it plans to send a team to Seguin during October to check out the find.“To be here in the city limits, it’s unique,” McKee said. “But we don’t really know what we’ve got yet.”McKee’s wife, Jody McKee, said the couple suspect that their backyard was once an “important trading center.” “It was like a Wal-Mart for Paleo-Indians,” she said. such trading posts have been unearthed in Bastrop and San Marcos. Among the finds on the McKee property so far: rare Andice spear points; Guadalupe bi-face stone woodworking tools, used to build dugout canoes; arrowheads from Oklahoma and Colorado; and cleavers and seashells from the coast. Michelle Hammond, assistant director of the Seguin Heritage Museum, said the facility awaits the artifacts.“We’re lucky to have such a collection to display at the museum,” she said. The museum is also planning a sort of “artifacts road show” for Oct. 25 and 26, in which people can bring up to three artifacts for archaeologists to examine and identify, she said.

http://www.seguingazette.com/story.lasso?ewcd=f83524cbff5c5845

http://www.panhandlenation.com/history/prehistory/notes.htm

feel good . . .

To visit the Seguin Spa and Salon is definitely a Feel Good Time!

http://seguinspasalon.com/seguinspasalon1.0.swf

An addition is now located behind the Seguin Spa and Salon - The 78155 Athletic Center. Although I've not visited the Center, I understand that there is state of the art elliptical trainers, cross trainers, treadmills and much more.

Seguin offers so much. And Seguin gives so much. My husband and I keep marveling at the volunteerism (is that a word?) that is prevalent in Seguin. I think that is what keeps the wheels turning and what certainly attracted us to move here from Denver. I LOVE SEGUIN!

And after volunteering, working - doing whatever one does, there is a place available where we can relax. To feel good. To be fit. Ready - for the work (wherever we work or volunteer).

I repeat: I love Seguin!

Hospital Expansion

Friday, January 25, 2008 - 09:16 PM
By W. Scott Bailey

Guadalupe medical center to nearly double in size. As San Antonio continues to expand in unprecedented fashion, the spillover is increasingly affecting some of its closest neighbors in all directions. To the north and west, that spillover is changing the landscapes in places like Boerne and Helotes, and to the east it is Seguin, which is experiencing historic growth.

In an effort to keep up with that growth, the latter area's largest health care facility, the Guadalupe Regional Medical Center, is set to undergo what will be one of the most ambitious hospital expansions in the San Antonio area in years. Work has recently begun on the $100 million project, with a target completion date of 2010. That work will include an extensive rehabilitation and expansion of the hospital, which originally opened in 1965, nearly doubling the size of the campus to roughly 260,000 square feet of space - including 141,000 square feet of new space. Plans include the addition of a three-story inpatient hospital tower and a new multi-story outpatient facility. "The project will provide a first-rate facility for the seven-county region served by the medical center and allow the hospital to meet the area's anticipated future needs for health care services," says GRMC CEO Robert Haynes.

____________________________________________

Daybreak on River Street

The Restless Sunrise
by
Esther Lampert


A Streaming Golden Light
Enters In and

Under the Windowsill
A Restless Sleeper

Is Awakened to New Beginnings
To Catch a Sunrise

The Dreamer Arises as the
Light Bursts Forth

The Sunrise Lights Up the
Anticipation of a World

That Has Yet To Be Created.

Breaking the cycle of abuse - one child at a time

The Guadalupe County Children's Advocacy Center has been in operation only a few years and what a difference it has made. This is a safe place where law enforcement, child protective service case workers, medical personnel, and prosecutors can investigate child abuse allegations in a manner sensitive to the needs of young children. It has been sad to see these young children (some as young as eighteen months) come to the Center; however, we are so fortunate to have this facility in our midst. Volunteers can be a part of providing support for children and their families.

http://www.gccac.net/

As with most organizations such as this, there is never enough funds (although the GCCAC has dedicated staff and volunteers who go above and beyond to help these abused children).

Thursday, February 19, 2009 there will be a fundraiser honoring Darren Dunn at the Events Center. The Celebrity Toast for Kids! This is always a fun event for a very good cause. Last year's 'toasted' was Sheriff Arnold Zwicke and he will be this year's host, introducing KWED's Darren Dunn.

Outstanding Seguin Citizens

Each year the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise recognizes citizens in the community who give outstanding service to our city. This year there were four Seguinites who received Vision Awards (for selfless extraordinary service to the community) and one person who was named Citizen of the Year.

As I understand it, these awards were first given in the mid-1900s and two years ago the Mary Lee Roberts Citizen of the Year award was initiated. Last year Fanny Harkins was Citizen of the Year.

This year Irma Lewis was given this award. Among all of Irma Lewis's achievements and contributions (AND THEY ARE NUMEROUS!), there is a very recent one: she gathered a group of 'older' ladies (most of them over fifty years of age) to dance at the San Antonio Spurs games! As Kathy Nossamon stated: "No one can tell Irma 'no.'" This has been a lot of fun for these ladies and also fun for Seguin!

Check out the Sterling Silver (they dropped the 'dancers' title because as one of the ladies stated: "We can't dance!") Blog!

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/sterling-silver-dancers-blog/3237942813

The 2009 Vision Award recipients are Suzanne Sanders, Stanley Naumann, Ernest Leal, and John Gesick. There is not enough space on this blog to list these folks' achievements and dedication. Read your Sunday Gazette-Enterprise to get the news!

These selfless individuals make our community a better place and none of them promote themselves but always mention the work of others; they are modest, hard-working, extraordinary people - and Seguin is richer because of them and folks like them.

The best burgers in Texas - seriously

If you want a good burger, you can't do better than Kirby's Korner! AND you are bound to see at least one person you know for everyone frequents Kirby's. Good food and excellent service. Kirby's also gives back to the community in a great many ways.

http://kirbyskorner.com/home.htm

Seguin Welcomes Caterpillar

It's a Big Deal!

It is indeed a Big Deal for Seguin and the surrounding area. Yesterday the groundbreaking for the Caterpillar engine plant that will be in Seguin was held at the Events Center. There was a huge crowd in attendance to hear Mayor Betty Ann Matthis and guest speakers, Texas Governor Rick Perry, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, our own Representant Edmund Kuempel and others.

This is especially good news for Seguin during the financial downturn in the nation. Not only will there be about 1400 jobs available with the presence of Caterpillar, there is optimism about other businesses (existing and new) and opportunities for everyone. It is a big deal!

"I stand here humbled . . ."

In 2005, Congress appointed a task force to research the stories of slaves building the White House and/or the Capitol. The task force acknowledged it was not able to tell the full story. "No one will ever know how many slaves helped to build the United States Capitol Building — or the White House," says the 2005 task force report, entitled History of Slave Laborers in the Construction of the United States Capitol.

But the task force did find plenty of evidence of slave involvement in the capitol's construction. Perhaps the most compelling evidence were records of payments from the Commissioners for the District of Columbia — the three men appointed by George Washington to oversee the construction of the capitol and the rest of the city of Washington — to slave owners for the rental of slaves to work on the capitol. The records reflect 385 payments between 1795 and 1801 for "Negro hire," a euphemism for the yearly rental of slaves.

"A new era of responsibility..."

"For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies..." ~ Barack Obama, January 20, 2009