The KSAT Explains team first began telling the stories of the people behind several San Antonio namesakes in August of 2023.
We knew many more names were worth covering, so this is round two.
The Stinson Family
Stinson Airport on the city’s South Side is the second-oldest continuously operated airport in the United States.
It was named after the Stinson family, most notably sisters Katherine and Marjorie.
Katherine was a stunt pilot who fell in love with flying after taking a hot air balloon ride at a state fair as a child, but nobody wanted to train her in the early 1900s because she was female and small in stature.
She finally found a willing instructor in Chicago named Max Lillie.
“And from all accounts, she was a natural,” Rod Roberts, a docent at the Texas Air Museum said. “Within four flights, she soloed.”
That talent made her money as a stunt pilot performing in air shows nationwide.
“She was the fourth licensed female pilot in the United States. She was the first female pilot certified to fly the U.S. mail,” Ken Paynter, also a docent at the Texas Air Museum said. “She was remarkable.”
Katherine’s younger sister, Marjorie, learned to fly, too, and the sisters opened a flight school.
“They’re not from San Antonio. They were from Arkansas, and they moved several times in their youth,” Roberts said. “But Max Lillie, after his training in Chicago, convinced [Katherine] to come to San Antonio to start a flying school.”
Why San Antonio?
“Well, in later years, Katherine Stinson said San Antonio had the best flying weather in the world,” Roberts said.
The sisters’ flight school started at Fort Sam Houston but later moved to the southside where Stinson Airport is today.
The girl’s mother ran the business while Marjorie did the teaching, Katherine continued to perform and recruit, and their brother Eddie was the mechanic.
Then came World War One.
“The Canadians were in it from the very beginning because they were part of [the] British Commonwealth,” Paynter said. “They knew they [were] going to have to come further south in North America to train pilots in large numbers.”
San Antonio offered excellent flying weather and an excellent teacher.
“By the time the war ended in 1918, Marjorie had been credited with having trained no fewer than 85 of the combat fighter pilots who flew for the RCAF, and she trained them all here at Stinson Field,” Paynter said.
When the U.S. entered the war, Marjorie and Katherine applied twice to fly as military pilots in Europe.
They were denied both times, but Katherine went anyway.
“She couldn’t fly, but she drove an ambulance bringing wounded soldiers back from the front lines back to the hospitals,” Roberts said.
Katherine Stinson contracted the Spanish Flu and later Tuberculosis but lived into her 80s in New Mexico.
Marjorie Stinson later went to work for the Department of Aviation in the U.S. Navy.
Dorie Miller
Dorie Miller Elementary within the San Antonio Independent School District, at 2802 Martin Luther King Dr., bears the name of an unexpected war hero.
Dorie, or Doris, Miller was not from San Antonio.
“Dorie Miller was a seaman who came from Waco, Texas, that just happened to be at the right place on the right day or some would say the wrong place on the right day,” Deborah Omowale Jarmon, CEO of the San Antonio African American Archive and Museum said.
Miller was a navy cook aboard the USS West Virginia on December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
“He came up from the dining facilities and manned a machine gun and shot down numerous Japanese fighter planes,” Omowale Jarmon said.
Miller had not been trained how to use such a weapon.
At that time, black sailors did not get the same training as white sailors.
“You have an individual whose work and dedication to this country [are] second to none,” Dr. Gregory Hudspeth, president of the San Antonio chapter of the NAACP said. “He put his life on the line to protect this country.”
Miller survived the Pearl Harbor attack but died two years later when his aircraft carrier was torpedoed in the Pacific Ocean.
One of the places here bearing his name, Dorie Miller Elementary, is closing down as part of the SAISD right-sizing plan.
“We just need to be very careful that we’re not erasing black history again,” Hudspeth said.
George Brackenridge
Originally from Indiana, the Brackenridge family moved to Texas seeking their fortune.
George Brackenridge found his own by selling cotton — or perhaps smuggling it, depending on who you ask — during the Civil War.
“During the Civil War, the Union Army blockaded the Texas Gulf Coast. So in order to trade cotton, you shipped cotton out through Mexico,” local historian Maria Watson Pfeiffer said. “Matamoros was the place that that trade happened.”
Brackenridge’s three brothers were Confederate soldiers, but he supported the Union.
“So he had to leave Texas during the war,” David P. Green, author of Place Names of San Antonio said. “And he went down to New Orleans and worked for the Union.”
After the war, Brackenridge established the San Antonio National Bank and the First National Bank in Austin.
He also owned the first water supply company in the city, and the original pumphouse still stands in the park that bears Brackenridge’s name.
Brackenridge High School and Brackenridge Golf Course, adjacent to the park, are also named for him.
After making his fortune, George Brackenridge became known as a local philanthropist.
“A lot of the different initiatives he supported were in education, education opportunities for women and for African Americans,” Dolph Briscoe IV, a history professor at Texas A&M University-San Antonio said.
Brackenridge was also a supporter of prohibition in the 1920s and early 1930s.
When he donated hundreds of acres of his land to the city to create a park, he did so on the condition that no alcohol would be allowed in the park.
Which brings us to our next namesake.
Emma Koehler
Emma Koehler, for whom Hotel Emma is named, is the woman credited for leading the only Texas brewery to survive prohibition: The Pearl Brewing Company.
Otto Koehler, her husband, founded the company as the San Antonio Brewing Association.
After the company changed names and her husband died, Emma ran it.
But what led up to his sudden death was scandalous.
“Emma was in an accident, and she needed a nurse,” Watson Pfeiffer said. “He hired a nurse named Emmie, and Emmie had a friend named Emma. And this became a complicated situation for Otto.”
History remembers them as the Three Emma’s.
Otto began an affair with Emmi and purchased a home for Emmi and her friend Emma, who was also a nurse.
One day in 1914, Otto went to visit and Emma, Emmi’s friend, fatally shot Otto.
Emmi admitted her guilt and then fled to Europe. She returned years later and stood trial but was found not guilty and married one of the jurors.
Meanwhile, Emma Koehler took over the Pearl Brewing Company, and when prohibition began, she made it work.
“They were doing everything from fixing cars to making soda water to ice to, you name it, just to keep the doors open,” said Kit Goldsbury, Chairman of Silver Ventures, which owns The Pearl today.
“She fired no one,” he added, saying that story served as inspiration for Hotel Emma staff during the pandemic.
In the year after Otto’s death, Emma Koehler donated 15 acres to the city for Koehler Park, which sits across the San Antonio River from Brackenridge Park.
Most people consider Koehler Park part of Brackenridge Park today. It’s the portion of the park that borders the San Antonio Zoo and Kiddie Park.
Emma had stipulations of her own and opposite those of Brackenridge: alcoholic beverages could be served there.
Today, if an event includes alcohol, it must be held at Koehler Pavilion.
Frank Tejeda
Frank Tejeda was a war hero raised on the south side of San Antonio who was known for his public service and time in politics.
“He literally was a man of the people,” Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio and friend of Tejeda said. “[He] came out of the neighborhood; [he] was a hero.”
Tejeda dropped out of Harlandale High School at 17 years old.
“In his early years, he felt like he was, you know, perhaps a little wayward, and he’d gotten in trouble,” Briscoe said.
Things changed when Tejeda joined the Marine Corps.
“You didn’t have to be around him for very long to realize you were around a real man with tough ambitions,” Cisneros said.
Tejeda was wounded in combat in the Vietnam War. He received the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and, after his death, the Silver Star.
Despite dropping out of high school, Tejeda earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s University, a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and a master’s degree from both Yale and Harvard.
“No Mexican-American had won [a] state representative race in the southeast part of the city,” Cisneros said.
But Tejeda did.
He served in the Texas House and Texas Senate, where he was known never to back down.
“He would get beat through this avenue, so he’d take it this way,” Cisneros said. “Beat through this avenue. Take it another way.”
Tejeda was elected to U.S. Congress in 1993.
He fought to keep Brooks and Kelly Air Force Bases in San Antonio during the 1990s.
“The number one quality was complete and total loyalty,” Cisneros said.
During his second term in Congress, Tejeda was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died from the disease at 51 years old.
“It’s just a tragedy that a brain tumor took him away from us because I think there’s almost no limit to what he could have become,” Cisneros said.
Today, several places in San Antonio and South Texas bear his name:
- Frank M. Tejeda Academy
- Frank M. Tejeda Texas State Veterans Home in Floresville
- Frank Tejeda Outpatient Clinic – VA
- Frank Tejeda Park
- Frank Tejeda Post Office
- Tejeda Middle School
