![]() He embarked on another stage of his career at age 27 as the first paid anti-poverty worker at the East First Neighborhood Center. Volunteering at age 17, Treviño trained as a paratrooper in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. “But now I got to see others who were much worse off.” “My family had always had a modest income,” he told a reporter. Vincent de Paul Society, a Catholic service group, the true extent of the poverty around him became clear. He later recalled that when he volunteered for the St. Treviño grew up doing odd jobs: moving furniture, working at a laundry, making deliveries for Miller Blueprint. “He was someone who cared about his community and encouraged the next generation to be equally, if not more involved so that we could help others.” He was an ideal,” said businessman and civic leader Lonnie Limón. “John was more than just a cousin to all of us. I certainly didn’t want to let him down.”Ī Catholic altar boy born and raised in Austin, Treviño is related to the sprawling Limón family, which counts - through direct lineage or marriage - as many as 3,500 members traced back to a couple who arrived in Central Texas near the beginning of the past century. ![]() He was a champion, not a man of ego, but of ‘orgullo,’ of pride. A longtime chamber board member, Treviño welcomed Madrid to town three years ago. “He meant so much to so many people,” said Mark Madrid, outgoing president and CEO of the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Treviño later served on the Capital Metro board of directors from 1997 to 2009 as a part of a reform slate that responded to scandals at the agency in the mid-1990s. When former anti-war activist Jeff Friedman was elected mayor in 1975, they formed what was called the “hippie City Council,” the first time that progressives seized the levers of power in Austin. It upended the traditional Austin power structure, once reserved almost exclusively for a circle of Anglo businessmen. They joined a coalition that included African-Americans, labor activists and newly enfranchised youth voters. Gonzalo Barrientos were marked by journalists as the “Young Turks” or the “Brown Machine.” In the early 1970s, Moya, Treviño, García and future state Sen. “You can be booted out, or you can be carried out.” Followers were disappointed when he didn’t run for another term in 1988. ![]() He was selected as mayor pro tem in 1978 and served for three months as acting mayor in 1983 after Carole Keeton resigned. “It was such a joy when he was first elected,” his niece, Hermelinda Zamarippa, said. We will always be indebted to him.”Īfter recently deceased Richard Moya’s breakthrough election to the Travis County Commissioners Court in 1970, John Treviño ran for City Council in 1973 but lost. “I will always remember Johnny as the public servant who inspired so many of us to do our best to improve the lives of the people in our great city. “He was absolutely masterful at getting ‘todo el jugo’ (all the juice) out of each one of the city’s programs and other initiatives,” former Austin Mayor Gus García said. John Treviño Jr., Austin’s first Mexican-American City Council member and a longtime force in the community, died at home around noon Tuesday after a short illness. ![]()
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