Almost 25 years in the making, a statue of Juan N. Seguin was unveiled on Saturday, October 28, in the square of the town named in his honor more than 160 years ago.

Erecting the statue of this remarkable Tejano hero has seen the town of Seguin confront some issues that troubled the man, Juan Seguin, and the community that bears his name.

The first known proposal for a statue to honor Juan Seguin was made by Sam Flores, before the city council, around 1970. My mother happened to be present at that meeting on other business, so she heard the city fathers quickly dismiss the suggestion. Later she approached Sam Flores, who lived in Seguin and taught school in San Antonio. She had the idea of putting up a State Historical Marker in front of the City Hall. They agreed that it would be a first step. My mother was then head of the County Historical Commission, and soon enough the marker was duly erected. And even so there were grumbles about the hundreds of dollars the city spent on the marker.

Then around 1974, some of the town's leading citizens were planning how the city would participate in the nation's Bicentennial celebration. Led by John Taylor, the longtime publisher of the local paper, the Gazette Enterprise, and Al Koebig, then mayor, a group undertook to repatriate Seguin's remains from a Mexican cemetery. Hewas reburied in the town named for him in a ceremony of July 4, 1976.

A few local historians argued that the town had probably been named for Erasmo Seguin, Juan's distinguished father. Certainly it could have been, because Erasmo had helped young Stephen F. Austin get approval from the Mexican government to bring in his Anglo settlers. However, the earliest history of the town, by A.J. Sowell, goes into detail about how it got its name. By his account, in February of 1839, the citizens voted for a proposal by John R. King (my great-great-grandfather's brother) to name the settlement for Juan Seguin. By that time Seguin was serving in the Senate of the Republic in Austin, and in a position to help the new community get a post office. So some say a political favor was the reason for the naming.

Yet, Juan Seguin had deeper roots in the area that townspeople at the time would have known about. He had courted his wife, Maria Gertrudis Flores de Abrego, at her family's rancho just south of the Guadalupe River from where the little town grew some years later. Indeed, old timers recall the Flores house standing on the edge of town into the early years of the 20th century.

Juan Seguin earned his statue the hard way, living in interesting times that for him, as for the more famous Texas heroes, reached a peak in the spring of 1836, during the fight for freedom and independence that was the Texas Revolution. Seguin lived from 1806 until 1890, but a few extraordinary months of his thirtieth year earned him a place in the Texas pantheon.

While serving as the alcalde (mayor) of Bexar, Seguin allied himself with the Anglo settlers brought into the territory by Stephen F. Austin and DeWitt Green, and risked his life with that commitment.

When Mexican forces under General Santa Anna occupied San Antonio in February of 1836, Seguin was leading a small company of Tejanos opposed to the Mexican tyrant. They took refuge in the old mission called the Alamo alongside Travis,Bowie, Crockett, and the others destined for immortality in just 13 days.

But Seguin did not die in the Alamo. Instead, he was chosen by a war council of the defenders to break through the siege lines and carry a final appeal for help.

Tragically, Fannin rejected the appeal from Travis and Seguin while he dithered at Goliad. Seguin then went to Gonzales to meet Sam Houston, where they soon learned of the fall of the Alamo, and of Santa Anna's terrible vow to drive the Anglo settlers from Texas.

Eight Tejanos -- Seguin's friends and followers -- were among the dead at the Alamo. But Seguin recruited more Tejano cowboys from the ranchos along the San Antonio River downstream from the mission city.

At Peach Creek, a few miles from Gonzales, Sam Houston began his retreat to the east, looking to raise an army from among the Anglo settlers along the Colorado and Brazos.

Houston put Juan Seguin in charge of the rear guard, and gave him the task of riding to isolated farmsteads dispersed north, south and east of Gonzales. Seguin and his band of Tejano cowboys set out to alert the pioneers to their deadly peril. For this great service to the cause, Seguin came to be called "the Paul Revere of Texas."

When the Anglo farmers were alerted to Santa Anna's advance, most of the men went off to join up with Sam Houston's growing force. Their womenfolk began the Runaway Scrape, taking their children, those dependent men unable to fight, their slaves and what few valuables they could, in a dash toward the safety of the U.S. border at the Sabine.The Runaway Scrape is the background for the opening scenes in the historical novel True Women, by my sister, Janice Woods Windle. Juan Seguin is a character in those scenes.

Seguin himself recalled many of the events of the period in his memoirs. His own family, along with several other Tejano families from Bexar that favored indepenndence for Texas, took part in the Runaway Scrape. (Seguin's memoirs and many of his important letters have been edited and annotated in the award-winning book, A Revolution Remembered, by Jesus Frank de la Teja, who teaches at Southwest Texas State University.)

But after two months of mud and flood, confusion and delay, the road ended where Buffalo Bayou meets the San Jacinto. Seguin and his cowboy cavalry menhad rejoined Houston's main force. They took part in the battle that saw Santa Anna surprised, defeated and captured.

It is often remarked that Juan Seguin was the only man to fight for Texas Independence at both the Alamo and San Jacinto. That is not quite right. In his writings, Seguin notes that his orderly, Antonio Cruz, was with him when he left the Alamo and at San Jacinto.

After the victory at San Jacinto, Seguin was ordered to take command of the Mexican garrison stranded at San Antonio. Republic of Texas President David G. Burnet made him a Colonel, the highest military rank of any Tejano to serve the Republic.

Later Seguin gave a proper military burial to the remains of the defenders of the Alamo.

Returning to politics, he was elected to the Senate of the Republic of Texas, the only Tejano to serve in the body, before being elected Mayor of San Antonio.

But Seguin's career was to veer into tragedy and humiliation. Americans were pouring into Texas, seeking land. A few of the opportunistic and corrupt type, later called Carpetbaggers, greedily eyed the extensive ranchlands of the Tejanos. In his memoirs, Seguin wrote that he was an obstacle to the execution of their vile designs.

But while fending off their criminal land grabs and making political enemies, Seguin borrowed money for a real estate deal that turned sour. (Aguablanca?) Trying to get out of that mess, he borrowed more to finance a venture taking goods to Mexico without paying customs. His merchandise was seized and he ended up in jail. Santa Anna gave Seguin the choice of rotting while his family starved or joining a new Mexican expedition across the Rio Grande.

Coerced and distraught, Seguin joined a Mexican force that was turned back at the Battle of Salado. Seguin did not do much, apparently, but he was recognized by Texans, including Captain Jack Hays, a Texas Ranger then living in the town of Seguin. They were quick to denounce him as a traitor.

After a few years passed, Seguin returned to Texas and was elected to some lesser offices. Finally he received a pension for his services to Texas. Meanwhile a son had become Mayor of Nuevo Laredo, where Juan Seguin died and was buried in 1890.

Fast-forward 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Sam Flores has been elected to the city council and has served many terms. Then on a business trip, he is driving along an East Texas highway. He sees something rising above the pine trees, and thinks at first it is a water tower. Coming closer he sees the towering statue of Sam Houston recently erected in Huntsville. Sam Flores recalled his earlier idea of a statue of Juan Seguin. He said to himself, "They can do this in Huntsville, we can do something similar for Juan Seguin, who has never been properly recognized for what he did."

Flores made a list of people who might make an effective committee and he approached them about his notion. They all agreed to serve; no one turned him down. In little more than two years, Sam Flores and his committee raised $150,000, commissioned a sculptor, agreed on a design for an equestrian statue and pedestal totaling 17 feet high.

The site for the statue is in the town's downtown (listed on the National Register of Historic Places). The square is filled with assorted historical markers, to trail riders from the cattle drives, a 19th-century governor, and more. This is the first marker for a Tejano's contribution to the local history. My mother, who served as the Historian for the Juan Seguin Statue Committee, says "Texas history has been told only from the Anglo point of view for too long."

She recalls leading a group of out-of-staters on a tour of the Alamo. They left the TLU campus with a Hispanic bus driver. Mother took the mike to give the history of the shrine they were to visit. She made a point of the many ethnic groups represented among the heroes of the Alamo: Some were German-born, others Scotch or Irish or English, and Southern-born Americans, of course, as well as the group of Tejanos led by Juan Seguin. The driver went inside with the tour group and saw the list of the defenders including the Tajanos who died there. The driver told my mother, "I never knew this. I'm going to bring my family to see these names."

Sam Flores remembers when not just Texas history was an Anglo preserve. A Marine in the Korean War, Flores had taken an unskilled civilian job when his father, a Baptist minister in San Marcos, told him he should return to college.

After earning his degree at Southwest Texas State, Flores applied for a teaching job in Seguin.

The only school where they would let him work was the one named for Juan Seguin, as it happened. It was the school for Hispanic children, of course, in that period when the local schools were still segregated by race and ethnic background. (New textbooks went to the white schools. After a few years they were sent to the Juan Seguin School. Later the well-used books went to the schools for blacks.)

Flores, who recently resigned from the City Council after some 32 years, is pleased to tell how the old attitudes have been changing. This time around, when he proposed a statue of Juan Seguin, checkbooks were opened all over town. The Lower Colorado River Authority put in $25,000. Motorola and Nogales Power put in $10,000 each. SMI (Structural Metals, Inc.) donated $5,000 in cash and all the steel used for the project, while both Tyson Foods and the Guadalupe Blanco River Authority put in $5,000 each.

Other donations in amounts of $25 and up, have made the Juan Seguin statue a reality at last, after all these years.