Sorrow's Silver Lining

Shrine Potentate Changed Other Lives and His Life Changed Too

by Ron Aaron Eisenberg

No parent should have to bury their child. Let alone two children.

“I don’t know how you ever get over it,” says Richard A. “Rick” Reyes II, the newly installed Potentate (Chief Executive) for the Alzafar Shriners in San Antonio. He lost a child in 1978, just hours after birth. And years later, in 2007, his 23-year-old daughter, Angie, died in an auto accident.

“The pain is unbearable. I’ll let you know if I ever get over it,” he says. And it’s clear getting over it is not in the cards yet. But at age 58, he’s not ready to give up.

Rick turned the pain into a lifelong commitment to help children and families.

For Reyes, the door to the future has been politics, public service and charitable work through the Shriners, first in Laredo and then in San Antonio.

After serving with the Navy in Vietnam, he moved to Laredo where an appointment to the cable commission gave him a taste of a different kind of service. It also taught him a lot about people.

“I remember an older woman who kept coming to our meetings complaining about her cable service. Week after week she told us nothing was being done to fix the problem. And the problem was her Novellas were covered with ‘snow’ on her TV set. I became outraged that nothing was being done to fix her problem. Her entire life was her afternoon Novellas.”

Rick was in the electronics business at the time. He figured if the cable company couldn’t help her, he could. “I asked her how much she paid for her service. I figured someone with little income should be getting better service from the cable company.

She said, ‘Oh, I don’t pay for it.’

“What do you mean you don’t pay for it,” Reyes asked.

“My son went up on the roof and hooked me up for free.”

“That was my introduction to politics,” Reyes laughs. “You don’t know who you are serving unless you ask all of the questions.”

When asked what he did about her pirated cable, Reyes said, “We just went on to the next agenda item.” What he didn’t say is the other thing he learned that day—you have to know when and with whom to pick your fights.

From the cable commission, Reyes moved on to become Webb County administrator and later an elected county commissioner.

“I fell in love with the idea of using the strength of government to help people,” he says.

He expanded the county’s public defender program to assist indigent defendants who simply could not afford to hire an attorney.

Reyes became a Shriner in 1978, the same year his newborn son had died. He was one of the first Hispanic Shriners. He’d found a home.

In1981, Rick sponsored a child for treatment at a Shrine Hospital. “The young boy was so badly crippled he could only crawl on his stomach like a snake,” Reyes recalls.

“After treatment at the Shrine Hospitals in Houston and Galveston, the boy was able to stand and walk and even compete in sports. That’s all it took. It changed my life.”

He was hooked on helping kids, Reyes says. “But every Shriner has a similar story. It’s why I am a Shriner for life. My most significant accomplishment is helping that young man walk.”

Reyes has sponsored a number of children since who’ve been helped by Shrine Hospitals. “It’s what we do,” he says. And as Potentate of the Alzafar Shriners he is committed to helping as many children as possible.

He doesn’t dwell on it, but when he got involved in Shriners he was one of very few Hispanic Shriners. Today there are more. And while he’s the first Hispanic Potentate he quickly adds there are three Hispanics on the board of directors. “The glass ceiling is gone,” he notes.

Reyes, who says he really hasn’t worked much since his daughter died, is still willing to embrace the future. When asked what he’d like to do his answer is swift and sincere.

“Make a difference. I want to make a difference. I am too young to retire for good.”

Luckily, his wife, Janet, shares his enthusiasm for service and is active with the ladies of the Shrine. “She is the love of my life,” Rick says. “We’ve known each other since high school. We just married the wrong people first. Now we’re together forever.”

His term as Potentate lasts just a year. Would he like to be the first Hispanic Imperial Potentate, head of Shriners International?

That would be a political challenge, he says. But he doesn’t say no. And Rick Reyes has rarely run from a political fight.