[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 114 (Tuesday, July 30, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H8799]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO HECTOR PEREZ GARCIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Brown] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Speaker, today I pay tribute to the life 
of Hector Perez Garcia. Dr. Garcia, a Texas physician who led the fight 
for equal treatment of Hispanics and who founded one of the Nation's 
most influential civil rights organizations, the American GI Forum in 
1948, passed away on Friday, July 26 at the age of 82 in Corpus 
Christi, TX.
  Dr. Garcia was born in the Mexican village of Llera, Tamaulipas, on 
Jan. 17, 1914, to a college professor and a school teacher. His family 
emigrated to Mercedes, in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, in 1918 to 
escape the Mexican Revolution. He was one of seven children, six of 
whom became doctors.
  He often told interviewers that he had decided to get an education 
soon after his family moved across the border where a high school 
teacher told him, ``No Mexican will ever make an `A' in my class.'' He 
graduated from the University of Texas and the University of Texas 
Medical School in Galveston in 1940. In 1942, he volunteered for Army 
duty and served in Europe as an infantry officer, a combat engineer, 
and a medical corps officer before being discharged as a major. He was 
awarded a Brzone Star with six battle stars. He met his wife, Wanda 
Fuscillo, in Europe during the war.
  Dr. Garcia founded the American G.I. Forum in 1948 to help Mexican-
American veterans of World War II gain access to services of the 
Veterans Administration and admission to V.A. hospitals. His 
organization first gained widespread attention in 1949, when it took up 
the cause of Army Pvt. Felix Longoria, a native of the small south 
Texas town of Three Rivers, whose remains were returned from Luzon, in 
the Philippines, for burial 4 years after World War II ended. Mr. 
Longoria's widow had been denied use of a hometown funeral chapel 
because the Longorias were Mexican-American.
  After several stories about Dr. Garcia's efforts were published, 
Lyndon B. Johnson, then a U.S. Senator, arranged for Mr. Longoria to be 
buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
  President John F. Kennedy asked Dr. Garcia to negotiate a defense 
treaty between the United States and the Federation of the West Indies. 
In September 1967, Johnson, then President, appointed Dr. Garcia a 
delegate to the United Nations with the rank of ambassador to focus on 
promoting better relations with Latin America and Spain. A year later, 
President Johnson made Dr. Garcia the first Mexican-American to serve 
on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 1984, President Ronald 
Reagan awarded Dr. Garcia the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1990, 
he received the Equestrian Order of Pope Gregory the Great from Pope 
John Paul II.
  Upon hearing about his death, President Clinton released a statement 
calling Dr. Garcia a national hero who ``fought for half a century for 
civil and educational rights of Mexican-Americans.''
  I ask my colleagues to join me in extending our condolences to the 
family of Hector Perez Garcia, his wife Wanda, and his three daughters, 
Wanda, Cecilia, and Susan. Dr. Garcia was a true American hero whose 
accomplishments are a testament to his humanitarian spirit.

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