School gets tuition assistance for displaced families

Honoring the life of renowned Mexican-American civil rights leader Dr. Hector P. Garcia, Incarnate Word Academy celebrated a memorial Mass on Sept. 20 in the Incarnate Word Academy Chapel.

With all of his daughters being graduates of the school and after many years of serving as the personal physician to the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, IWA continues to have a close personal relationship with the family of Dr. Garcia.

Present during the Mass was Cecilia Garcia-Akers, President and Chairman of the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Foundation. During the end of Mass, Garcia-Akers gifted a $2,000 check on behalf of the memorial foundation to help facilitate tuition costs for displaced families attending IWA.

“Those families needed a new home, and this is their new home” she said. “This is what [my father] would want. He would want us helping them.”

Garcia-Akers recently authored the biographical novel “The Inspiring Life of Texan Hector P. Garcia”in 2017. Garcia-Akers’ book, which chronicles the life of her father’s journey to America, discusses his struggles being a Latino in the U.S. Army, the difficulty he had obtaining his medical license, as well as his devotion toward bringing better health care and education to veterans and students for over 50 years.

“All of my sisters and myself are graduates of Incarnate Word Academy,” Garcia-Akers said. “We had a very good foundation here for our education.”

In May of 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed Senate Bill 495 establishing a State Recognition Day to be observed on the third Wednesday of each September in honor of Dr. Garcia.