San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Council of Presidents ahead of its time in seeking diversity
Can you do some research and a column on the San Antonio Council of Presidents founded in 1931? There have been a number of distinguished members ... and honorary members over its 90 years. The only history I have found was based on an article in the San Antonio Light, Dec. 29, 1957, it said: “The San Antonio Council of Presidents carries a lot of weight. Its membership is composed of leaders, both men and women, of more than 100 organizations.” According to this article, the first 25 years of SACOP records were archived at the Witte Museum.
Some of the accomplishments listed in the article included sponsoring and raising funds for the first bookmobile for the San Antonio Public Library, responsibility for the first metal street signs erected in the city, influencing the passage of the first narcotics laws, purchasing cows for area orphanages, sponsoring student nurses and giving an award to clubs and organizations doing the most outstanding work for the year. I would like to find out more.
Our current 46 members represent 28 different organizations from the military, business, education, the arts, philanthropy and miscellaneous organizations. I am honored to be in the company of such an outstanding group of people — ordinary extraordinary citizens of our community dedicated to the common good.
According to catalog information
for the records kept by the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Special Collections Library, the San Antonio Council of Presidents, or SACOP, is “an organization of presidents from a variety of non-profit and civic organizations within the city of San Antonio who meet monthly to share information.” These papers cover 1985 to 2008, a fraction of SACOP’s long and useful life.
As for the records from 1931 to 1956, they don’t appear to be at the Witte Museum, where Chief Curator Amy Fulkerson searched donor records and could find none listed under the San Antonio Council of Presidents.
A search of press clippings showed that SACOP “held events at the museum in the late 1950s and early 1960s but does not appear to have used the museum as a regular meeting location as many other organizations of the period did.” Instead, it met at a variety of venues, including the
Menger and St. Anthony hotels, the Junior League’s Bright Shawl, San Antonio College and the Old San Francisco Steak House.
Founded in 1931 “to gather leaders of all clubs to make plans for the betterment of the community, learn of its needs, study its problems and participate in solving them,” as described in the
San Antonio Light, Dec. 29, 1957, this club of clubs held broad and lofty goals to match challenging times — the hard early years of the Great Depression before the New Deal.
It was unusual in that it was a coed group at a time when most were not.
Organizations focused on civic betterment or career networking were almost exclusively male (the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary), as were professional associations (bar associations, medical societies, real estate boards), while those dedicated to aesthetic ideals (arts and music, gardening, historic preservation) tended to skew female.
Most groups also tended to stay in their own narrow lanes — increasing tourism, improving the look of city streets, promoting high culture — while the council could go free-wheeling to explore any topic for which it could find a guest speaker.
Over the years, the assembled presidents considered off-season uses for Alamo Stadium (advancing proposals to make it pay with concerts and a rodeo), the importance of air travel (advocating for a stop on American Airlines service between Fort Worth and Monterrey, Mexico) and the need for mental health services (launching an educational tape program to be accessed by telephone, in partnership with the San Antonio Public Library). The council also supported a sewer bond issue, donations to the Red Cross blood bank and the construction by
City Public Service of a “convention hall adjacent to La Villita.”
Besides educating themselves on local issues, members of the council also turned their attention to outreach.
Research by former SACOP President Charlotte Travis shows that members created a speakers bureau to share expert knowledge. In the mid-1950s, it started an awards program to reward member and other organizations for “worthy projects of civic trade, business, cultural or philanthropic nature,” as noted in the San Antonio Express, June 2, 1954.
By 1956, the program had become an awards show, broadcast over KENS Radio. As the Outstanding Organization Awards grew, they were divided into first two, then three categories for groups of varying sizes, with additional awards for individuals. “As more and more clubs or organizations came about, the whole award project got out of hand,” said Travis, with more than 20 receiving awards some years. The tradition was discontinued in 1997, and the council now gives a single cash award to a nonprofit at the end of each year.
Besides its president-members, SACOP also has named some other prominent San Antonians as honorary members, among them City Councilwoman Helen Dutmer, artist/educator Amy Freeman Lee, Mayor Walter W. McAllister, beautification activist O.P. Schnabel and Our Lady of the Lake University President Sister Elizabeth Anne Sueltenfuss.
More than eight decades after helping to fund that first bookmobile, the council’s relationship with the San Antonio Public Library continues, as donations are made in the name of each monthly speaker.
In 90 years of service, Travis reckons, the council has installed 66 presidents (including four women in the first three decades and many more since), recognized 75 Outstanding Organizations, given a monetary gift to 24 nonprofits and heard about 720 presentations about the city of San Antonio.
With numbers like this, the San Antonio Council of Presidents looks good to celebrate its 100th anniversary 10 years from now.