Hector P. Garcia - Early Life

Early Life

A descendant from Spanish land grantees, Dr. García was born in the city of Llera, Tamaulipas, México, to José García García and Faustina Peréz García, both schoolteachers. His family fled the violence of the Mexican Revolution in 1917, legally immigrating to Mercedes, Texas. His father's professional credentials were unrecognized in this new country, so he went into the dry goods business. His parents instilled a love and respect for education in all of their ten children, and expected them all to become medical doctors. Indeed, Hector and five of his siblings, José Antonio García, Clotilde Pérez García, Cuitláhuac Pérez García, Xicotencátl Pérez García, and Dalia García-Malison did become physicians.

In 1929, he joined the Citizens Military Training Corps, a peacetime branch of the United States Army. He graduated from a segregated high school in 1932, and in the same year earned a commission from the CMTC with a rank equivalent to a second lieutenant in the U.S. infantry. He began attending Edinburg Junior College, to and from which he had to hitchhike thirty miles daily. His father had to cash in his life insurance policy to finance young Hector's education. In 1932, García entered the University of Texas at Austin, graduating with a degree in zoology. He was one of the top ten of his class. He went on to study at the University of Texas at Galveston, earning his doctorate in medicine in 1940. He accomplished his residency at St. Joseph's Hospital at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.