Actor Tony Plana believed the battle for Mexican-American civil rights started with Cesar Chavez.

"When you're in your 60s, you don't think you're going to find another hero," Plano said. "I realized how wrong and ignorant I was."

Plana will be the keynote speaker at the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Foundation annual birthday celebration luncheon on Jan. 17, 2017. The celebration raises money for scholarships and tuition assistance through Garcia's foundation which is led by his daughter, Cecilia Garcia Akers.

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CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – An important milestone in the year-long project to improve access to the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Papers has been achieved with the release of an online exhibit that provides an overview of the life and accomplishments of the Corpus Christi physician and champion of Mexican American civil rights. The exhibit, which went live Thursday, Dec. 1, can be accessed at http://tamuccgarcia.omeka.net/.

In partnership with History Associates Inc., the historical research company selected to assist with processing the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Papers housed in the Special Collections of the Mary and Jeff Bell Library, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi is leading the project that will organize and selectively digitize Garcia’s papers. The website will allow historians across the nation, students doing research papers and the general public to see and more easily find documents that are among the most valuable resources on the Mexican American experience during the last half of the 20th century.

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A year-long digitization project to improve access to the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Papers went live Thursday.

The papers provide an overview of the life and accomplishments of the Corpus Christi physician and champion of Mexican American civil rights. The exhibit can be accessed here.

Garcia donated his collection of papers and memorabilia to Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in 1990. They have been housed at the Mary and Jeff Bell Library since. The digitization project, which cost about $600,000, was announced in March. University officials have said the project would have taken about 20 years if it were done in-house. It took about a year to digitize the static images, newspaper clippings and letters, among other components.

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Every generation, it seems, a person enters our lives and impacts society in a grand manner. Dr. Héctor P. García, the great Mexican American civil rights leader, was such a person. His life and times have been welldocumented in books and film.

In “The Inspiring Life of Texan Héctor P. García” we have a truly compressive resource detailing Garcia’s life on the front lines of the civil rights struggle, his work as a medical doctor and his role as a family man.

His daughter – Cecilia García Akers – has written an unparalleled gem about her “papa” revealing intimate family memories.

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Hector P. Garcia MD Endowed Presidential Scholarship: The scholarship was founded in memory of Dr. Hector P. Garcia by the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Foundation. Dr. Garcia, a 1940 UTMB alumnus ,was a pioneering figure in the effort to secure civil rights for Mexican Americans. He was well known as the Founder of the American GI Forum as for his appointment to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Dr. Garcia was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984, the only UTMB graduate to receive this designation. Dr. Garcia maintained an active private medical practice in Corpus Christi, with a commitment to the less fortunate, dispensing free medical care of patients. Candidates for the scholarship are asked to write a 1500 word essay, describing the life accomplishments of Dr. Garcia, that were relevant to their own pursuit of medicine, cultural competency skills, and leadership service in cross-cultural activities. Special preference is given to students from the Rio Grande Valley and Corpus Christi.