As elder losses rise, young leaders need help

In a relatively short period of time, San Antonio has sustained a succession of profound losses.

For me, the passing of former Mayor Lila Cockrell set off an acute awareness about the departures of a great generation over the last year.

That included civil rights leader Andy Sarabia, civic leader Dr. Alfonso Chiscano, gay rights activist Gene Elder, jazz musician Jim Cullum and Vernon “Spot” Barnett, who helped define a musical category called the West Side Sound.

Then on Saturday we lost Emilio Nicolas, a giant of Spanishlanguage television whose work was as internationally known as it was San Antoniocentric. He helped build a national network that first used satellite to distribute programming. CNN and Fox followed.

“Our generation’s task is heavy: to emulate and build upon their examples of excellence,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in reflection.

All their careers hit their height long ago, but they nonetheless left holes in the city’s psyche — forcing us to ponder if we’re doing enough to prepare new generations of San Antonians to envision big ideas, execute them, sustain failures and rebuild.

It should make us question if we’re making way for new leaders, sharing the podium enough and letting go of the baton when we should.

Those who study such fundamental shifts are both hopeful and worried — not of those in positions of power now, they’re frankly already too old.

They’re worried about younger generations — millennials, the oldest of whom are 38, according to the Pew Research Center, some of whom were 5 when 9/11 happened; and Generation Z, born starting 1997. The oldest among them is 22.

Together, they’re the most diverse and most educated people in U.S. history. They’re also highly egalitarian, embracing equality in all its forms. There’s hope in all of that.

The wise Charles Cotrell, a St. Mary’s University professor and president emeritus, teaches members of Generation Z. He worries, too. While such San Antonians are at the earliest points of their journeys, he hopes local chambers of commerce and other leadership groups in town are preparing to assist them.

Because they’re nowhere near ready.

Before I tiptoe on any more land mines, James H. Bray, chair of the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Department of Psychology, says such worries are universal and have been written about for hundreds of years.

Older generations don’t see members of younger groups as prepared as they were to take over. “Yet the next generation does it, sometimes better, sometimes not,” he said.

Like Bray, Cotrell worries about Generation Z’s work ethic and commitment to voting. They can support a candidate that piques their interest but may not see voting as a civic duty. He recalls they weren’t excited about the historic nature of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

I wonder if they see the presidential candidacy of Julián Castro as historic as it is.

What Cotrell does see are technologydriven nonjoiners who don’t have a good footing in history. They don’t abide institutions, from organized religion to political parties. But he says they’re “more adept to operate in a world that’s chaotic and fluid.”

That will help.

He’s most hopeful about the young women at St. Mary’s, especially Latinas, some of them firstgeneration college students, headstrong and driven.

Given how much they’ve had to overcome, “Latinas understand,” Cotrell said. They’re more willing to be informed and inspired by the stories of prior generations.

Bray sees the same in firstgeneration college students.

“They’re experiencing higher education for the first time in their families. They’ll get jobs their families couldn’t get. It’s completely changing not only them but their kids and grandkids,” he said.

As motivation, Cotrell tells his students they’re sitting in the same classrooms as did Willie Velásquez, the San Antonio voting rights leader who inspired millions of Mexican Americans to register to vote for the first time and for whom Texas observes a day of recognition in May.

They don’t know about him, but when they do, “that gets to them,” Cotrell said, “many of them.” Velásquez and others were just like you, he tells them. “They had the same fears and struggles. But their world is gone, and it’s your turn now.”

Too many of them are gone, too, and as we grieve them — and what they lived through historically — let’s hope new Lilas and Emilios are in those classrooms, getting ready to take their places.