Madonna Neighborhood Center celebrates 70-year ‘West Side Story’

The center’s executive director Norma Funari, Bishop Oscar Cantú and board secretary, Sister Agnes Mary Klar, CDP, were part of the Madonna Neighborhood Center’s 70th anniversary gala. Carol Baass Sowa | Today's Catholic

By Carol Baass Sowa
Today's Catholic

SAN ANTONIO • The Madonna Neighborhood Center’s gala at the Bright Shawl on Nov. 12 was a night to celebrate a “West Side Story” of 70 successful years and honor six special people who helped make them possible.

Honored with awards were: Rosie Castro, coordinator of the Center for Academic Transitions at Palo Alto College; María Antonietta Berriozábal, community activist; Dr. Ricardo Romo, President of the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA); and, posthumously: Sister Mary Immaculate Gentemann, CDP, founder, former executive director and board member of the Madonna Neighborhood Center; Msgr. George H. Stuebben, USAF Lt. Col. and former board member; and James J. Falbo Sr., general contractor and former board member.
Television personality Martha Tijerina, serving as mistress of ceremonies, welcomed attendees to the celebration commemorating 70 years of the Madonna Center serving West Side families in need, with the invocation being given by Bishop Oscar Cantú.

Recognized as special guests were the center’s board of directors: President Leticia Luna, Vice President Valerie Gonzalez, Treasurer Diamantina Guajardo, Secretary Sister Agnes Mary Klar, CDP, Sister Bernadette Bezner, CDP, Paul Biever, Sister Marcella Frazier, CDP, Gene Gonzalez, Ted Montelongo, Marshall Pipkin, Luz María Prieto and Marisa Martinez.

The history of Madonna Center was chronicled in a short video presentation, produced by Catholic Television of San Antonio, which told of the center’s founding in 1939 by Sister Mary Immaculate Gentemann, CDP, a graduate of Our Lady of the Lake College who went on to receive her doctorate at the New York School of Social Service and returned to found both the center and Our Lady of the Lake’s Worden School of Social Service.

Originally called The Girls Club of San Antonio, the center was first financed by the sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence, who provided job training in the fields of sewing, cooking and nutrition to underserved young women on the West Side, an area overrun with poverty, high crime rate and sometimes deplorable living conditions.

The center evolved into a social welfare center focusing on families and went on to open extension units and secure an old dairy barn on Castroville Road as a permanent facility. In the 60s, they addressed such issues as juvenile delinquency, gang wars, school truancy, marijuana peddling and high infant mortality, helping many youths to take the right path in life and offering day care so parents could return to school.

Today, a 20-member staff oversees a large variety of programs designed to empower people and promote family self-sufficiency. Though it is no longer run by the sisters, they are still involved, serving on its board and volunteering their time and talents where needed. Adapting to the changing needs of the community they serve, the center’s future plans include construction of a $2.3 million multi-purpose facility on three acres across the street from their present location.

Norma Funari, executive director of Madonna Neighborhood Center, paid special tribute to the three deceased honorees, noting that Sister Immaculate, the center’s founder, returned in the ’80s to serve on the board for five years, until she became ill. “She always used to say to me,” said Funari, “‘Norma, I pray to the Lord that he give me just 20 more years,’ and I think he granted that to her because Sister passed away in April at the age of 101.”

Funari lauded Msgr. George Stuebben as being an “unpaid staff member,” as well as a board member. “His head was full of ideas,” she said, “wonderful ideas.” And she praised the work of James J. Falbo Sr., general contractor who served on the board for 35 years and was named an honorary member in 1985. He constructed their social services building using “the most beautiful Italian tile that he could find,” she recalled. “His legacy is in the construction of his buildings.”

Keynote speaker, Mayor Julián Castro, whose mother was one of the night’s honorees, and whose brother, State Representative Joaquin Castro was present that night, noted that all six receiving awards served — and continue to serve — as role models to those growing up on the West Side, as well as to all of San Antonio and others whose paths they crossed. He expressed special thanks to the Congregation of Divine Providence for their continuing work in the community. “You have touched countless lives in your work,” he said, “and lives that are making a difference within our community still.”

Castro, who grew up on the West Side, remarked on the many changes that have taken place since the center’s founding — the settling in of immigrants fleeing the Mexican Revolution; the World War II era which saw some go off to war in the military while others struggled at home to support families; and the time when these soldiers returned home, filled with bright dreams that were often stunted by the scourge of discrimination.

The late ’60s and early ’70s, he said, saw political activism emerge on the West Side that enhanced the community and assured “that the promise of America became just a bit more real.” Later decades brought the new challenges of disillusionment, teenage pregnancies and gang activity, but also, Castro noted, the promise of a new generation who could acquire an education.

“The Madonna Center,” he said, “has really seen it all and ensured that the honorees that we recognize tonight were not alone.” Paying tribute to his mother, Rosie Castro, and María Antonietta Berriozábal, he noted his admiration of them and how he still asks himself how they would act when he is confronted with issues. The youngest mayor of a major American city, and only San Antonio’s third Hispanic one, he added that the first thing he hung on the wall in his mayoral office was a campaign poster from 1971, when his mother ran as a City Council candidate with the Committee for Barrio Betterment.

“Part of the beauty of the work that the Madonna Center has done, “ he said, “is it’s unlocked the wonderful potential and ability of our young people, of our families and of those who work hard every day to make this city the beautiful city that it is.

“For every child that learns to read on time,” he added, “for every single mother that balances work with family, who works her way through college to a degree, and for every grandparent that has the wonderful experience of attending a high school or college graduation and looking into the face of their grandchild as they come off the stage after they’ve gotten their diploma or their degree, I want to thank the Madonna Center for strengthening our families and ensuring that the American dream that so many of our families on the West Side have had, over generations, have become and will become an American reality.”