b'Guadalupe Westside neighborhood, the Mungua Building, is now the George and Elivia Cisneros Learning Library, and is where former Mayor Cisneros welcomed your humble editor for a one-on-one discussion on the topic of city leadership.Henry B. Gonzalez, Tom C. Frost and Red McCombs got behind the 1968 Worlds Fair as a confluence of cultures, said Cisneros. It was a 2+2=5 dynamic that gave great confidence to San Antonio amid an otherwise terrible year for the country. It was a bright spot.The most tumultuous year since the Civil War, and not seen since, 1968 marked the full-fledged combustion of the American political system and its greatest test of the constitutional fabric that holds it all together. It was also the year that Henry Cisne-ros graduated from Texas A&M University as a Corps Cadet, band commander, and student leader. By 1976, he had earned masters degrees from A&M and Harvard, did doctoral studies at MIT, and earned a doctorate in Public Administration from George Washington University. He was teaching full-time at UTSA when his students urged him to run for City Council, in 1975.For San Antonio, the six-month Worlds Faircoined HemisFairwas the citys biggest opportunity to emerge as a major destination, and no expense was spared in developing a mostly-blighted, 96-acre site in southeast downtown San Antonio into much more than one-time event facilities. At a cost of $156 million ($1.4 billion to-day), new infrastructure was constructed that brought new life to downtown and that has now lasted more than a half-century.The physical legacy of improvements that came with HemisFair led to the conven-tion center and arena, which allowed San Antonio to attract the Spurs. The Tower of the Americas had become a national symbol. The UT Institute of Texan Cultures was opened, said Cisneros.On City Council, Cisneros calmly confident demeanor and intelligent delivery of big concepts, and big goals for San Antonio, was unifying with all constituenciesfrom old money Anglos and business leaders, to working class Latinos on the west andTop: San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros in 1981 and; Promoting the Alamodome project; Above/Left: south sides, and most everyone in between. Pope John Paul II in San Antonio, the longest stop on his 1987 U.S. tour; Above/Right: University of General Robert McDermott, who was superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Acade- Texas Medical Branch in San Antonio; Below: UTSA NCAA college football game at the Alamodome; my, emerged as a local leader after he became president of USAA, Cisneros recalled.Bottom/Left: Sea World Texas; Bottom/Right: Rivercenter Mall and 1,000-room Marriott hotel.He made the case that San Antonio business leaders were not attracting major indus-try because they were against unions, and that a seething cauldron of hostility was building among the citys working class Hispanics. On City Council I worked with General McDermott on economic and employment development. He became my hero for the era, said Cisneros.It was in 1976, the second year of Cisneros first term on council, that the City adopt-ed a new system of geographical Council districts, discarding the at-large electoral system that greatly benefited well-funded, mostly wealthy, white candidates over His-panics. More than half of San Antonios population felt left out of the Citys power structure, and they were. Said Cisneros, For the first time, issues like lack of repre-sentation for Latinos were being resolved.I was 33-years-old when I ran for mayor on a reputation of holding City government accountable to grow the economy and provide jobs and opportunity, not social wel-fare, explained Cisneros. More than a decade after HemisFair boosted San Antonios international profile, new Mayor Henry Cisneros was inspired to lead his city to a dynamic status as one of the countrys leading metropolises.Cisneros understood that San Antonios greatest asset was the hardest-working la-bor force in the United States, the two strongest influences of which were its large current and former military population and its cultural connection to Mexico, home to the worlds most productive workers. When he was elected in 1981, Henry Cis-neros became not only the youngest mayor of a major American citySan Antonio was then the 10th largestbut the first Hispanic mayor of a major city, and the first Mexican-American to serve as mayor of San Antonio since Juan Seguin, back in the 42THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE TheCoastalBend.com'