Sending students on the adventure that is the Government-in-Action Youth Tour is an investment in the future of young rural Texans—it’s a notion that one Houston man took to heart. Thanks to his generosity, an additional teen from Medina Electric Cooperative gets to head to Washington, D.C., this month as part of Youth Tour.
A Special D’Hanis Travel Agent
After graduating from D’Hanis High School in the 1990s and attending college in San Antonio, Cody Santos landed a job as an accountant with United Airlines in Houston.
His heart, though, remains in Medina County, in part because he bought his grandparents’ place in Yancey in Medina Electric Cooperative’s service territory. Santos also believes his education in D’Hanis set him on his way to a successful career. So when he read the feature story The State With the Most [October 2017] about the Government-in-Action Youth Tour, he was inspired by the program and Medina EC’s involvement in sending students to Washington, D.C., each summer.
He contacted the co-op and offered to pay for Medina EC to send an additional student on the trip this summer. And so Medina is sending four students instead of three on Youth Tour, June 6–15 this year.
“I believe in giving back,” Santos says. “I’m a very big proponent of people traveling.”
The Final Frontier
The southern High Plains’ Cochran County in the 1930s bragged that it was “where the pavement ends and the West begins.” Indeed, Cochran was one of the last counties formed by the Legislature and the last to be settled, leading to its nickname, Texas’ Last Frontier. Today, the area celebrates that legacy with the annual Texas’ Last Frontier Heritage Celebration in Morton, June 22–24 this year. The festival started in 2004 as part of a commemoration for a historical marker that heralds the end of a misadventure that has become known as the Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877. Four African-American cavalry troops on patrol during a drought in West Texas succumbed during an 86-hour search for water. Dozens survived the ordeal.
Among the highlights of the Last Frontier Heritage Celebration, which attracts many members of Bailey County Electric Cooperative, are a brisket cook-off and car show.
Info: (806) 893-6808, facebook.com/texaslastfrontier
By the Numbers
45 states observe Juneteenth, which commemorates June 19, 1865, when Texans learned about the Emancipation Proclamation—more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued it. The five states that do not observe Juneteenth are Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Reinventing the Wheel
Note these milestone anniversaries this month, commemorating people and events that left quite a mark in American society:
175 years ago: Susan Elizabeth Blow, who opened the first successful public kindergarten in the United States—in St. Louis—was born June 7, 1843.
150 years ago: The patent for the typewriter, developed by Wisconsin inventor Christopher Latham Sholes, was granted June 23, 1868. It featured the QWERTY keyboard that’s still in use today.
125 years ago: Two creations debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 that continue to provide enjoyment: a new popcorn sensation that became known as Cracker Jack and the Ferris wheel.
Did You Know?
An anonymous developer filed a request with the Federal Aviation Administration last fall to perform a study to build the world’s largest Ferris wheel in San Antonio. The wheel would tower 900 feet high, making it the tallest structure in San Antonio.
