South Padre’s new fire chief likes what he sees.

Bernie Baskett was born in Oklahoma, but he’s spent most of his life in Texas.

“My dad retired from the Air Force while I was still in elementary school,” he said. “So I did all my high school in Burleson, Texas.” He was class president all four years, he said. His favorite subject was history.

He enrolled at Southwest Texas State College in San Marcus and was studying computer science when a friend talked him into going to Arlington to take the test to be a firefighter.

“My friend didn’t pass the test, but I did,” Baskett said. “I found out how much the job paid, and I spent the next 22 years with the Arlington Fire Department.”

A friend introduced him to a young cosmetologist named Michelle Russell. “She was born in Oklahoma, too—Ada.” The couple has two daughters.

His next stop was Hillsboro, Texas, a fire chief was needed. He was head of the Hillsboro Fire Department for about six years, he said.

Then a firefighter friend told him about the job opening in South Padre Island. “Michelle and I had agreed we weren’t going to move again,” he said, “but [City Manager] Dewey [Cashwell] talked us into coming down to look around.”

The tour impressed the whole family. “Michelle and the girls had a change of attitude after they saw the place and got to know the Cashwells,” Baskett said.

When he agreed to take the job his girls were practically jumping up and down in their eagerness. “I told them, no, they had to finish out the school year in Hillsboro, and then we would bring them down.”

Meantime his Piper Cherokee takes him back to Hillsboro now and then to visit family.

He loves to fish in his spare time, he said, and is looking forward to his first deep-sea expedition.

Water man: LMWD manager familiar with desalination issues

Gavino Sotelo was no stranger to the Rio Grande Valley when he took on the job as general manager of the Laguna Madre Water District.

“I came to Harlingen in 1981, then went to Dallas in 1989,” he said. His education was in management and finances, and he worked mostly as a city manager in suburban and country towns.

He came back to the Valley and worked with Juan Magellanes as a financial advisor to some of the latter’s clients—which happened to include Cameron County Fresh Water District Number One, now the Laguna Madre Water District.

Hole in one

Mary Flores has been working with youth programs and Boys and Girls Clubs for a little more than 32 years, she said.

In fact she retired after working with the Edinburg Boys and Girls Club for 30 years.
Then she heard about the Laguna Madre Boys and Girls Club and came aboard as a consultant. “That didn’t last long,” she said. She is now Chief Professional Officer for the Laguna Madre club.

Born in the panhandle of Texas, her family came to Edinburg while she was still very small, she said. “I was raised in Edinburg, so I feel like a [Rio Grande] Valley girl,” she said. The Valley is home to me.”

Flores is single. “I’ve taken my career very seriously, at the expense, sometimes, of family and personal life,” she said.

Par for the Course

Mary Cairns moved down to Laguna Vista from Poteet, Texas to help her husband, Bruce, build the new 9-hole executive golf course at the South Padre Island Golf Club.

“That was 2-1/2 years ago,” she said, “and we decided to stay.” The couple began installing irrigation systems for private homes. Then Mary Cairns decided to open the Costa Bella Day Spa, next door to Bay-B-Boomers. How did she get from irrigation systems and golf courses to a spa?

“My daughter opened a salon in Colorado,” she said. “Just about the time she got all this nice equipment installed she was diagnosed with cancer and had to close her new business down.”

Acting Poet

Steven Zuniga was the lead-off poetry reader at the Port Isabel Lighthouse Readings and Music program Saturday morning, April 26.

The event, hosted by the Laguna Madre Writers Forum, was part of a Rio Grande Valley-wide poetry and music program presented simultaneously in Port Isabel and other towns throughout the Valley.

Zuniga read the poem “Sick” by Shel Silverstein.

Ground Breaking Success

Bill Norris enjoys a reputation as one of the leading water engineers in the State of Texas. His expertise in desalination is sought by water districts and municipalities as far away as Oklahoma.

“We’re celebrating 20 years of business success this afternoon (Friday, April 25),” he said. “But you know what? I’d walk away from that kind of success and never look back if it would bring back my son.”

The third of his four boys, Brian, died in his sleep one night last October. “Brian would have been 20 now,” he said.

Here to heal

Dr. Ricardo Abraham, a Brownsville internal medicine specialist, works out of the Island Clinic every Thursday.

Abraham, a member of Medical Associates of Brownsville, said that South Padre Island is one of his favorite places to visit and work.

Seven years ago he left his native Argentina and moved to Puerto Rico to perform his residency for internal medicine work. Upon completion of that program, two years ago, he came to the Rio Grande Valley.

Legends live on

Mary Ann Tous apparently never encountered a task too large to undertake.
The energetic niece of South Padre Island’s beloved Turtle Lady, Ila Loetscher, Tous is in the process of organizing all the artifacts and papers into some semblance of order.

The plan is to make Loetscher’s old home, the original sea turtle display on the Island, into a museum. At the same time, Tous is working on Chapter 17 of a 24-chapter book about her aunt called, simply, “Ila.”

But it was another recent success that put her into the spotlight. She was chairman of the committee that planned and executed the town’s 35th anniversary celebration.

Setting the bar High

Lance Mullins was no stranger to South Padre Island when he crossed the causeway after living some 14 years in Arizona.

He had graduated from the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, and had been a frequent visitor to the Island as a boy. But the boy had moved on to Texas Tech for his college education, and from there to Arizona.

This time, coming across the Laguna Madre, he saw the Island through the eyes of a man experienced in the ways of the world, and he saw possibilities he had completely overlooked as a boy.

Modern Port Isabel

Mayor Pat Marchan of Port Isabel was all of twelve years old when he saw a moving van pull into the White Sands Motel and Marina in Port Isabel.

His curiosity led him to wheel his bike in behind the van and meet the newcomer, Bill Suhr, who had just bought the property.

Like most boys his age, Marchan was always on the lookout for something he might do to earn a little pocket money. But unlike most boys, Marchan had nerve enough to ask.
Now he asked Suhr for work, and next day he found himself mowing weeds and grass that were higher than his head.