2014 San Antonian of the Year:Phil Collins

tinman · Dec 23, 2014

Sorry Popovich and Tim Duncan, you lose.

The cliche in San Antonio for the last hundred years has been that this is the country's biggest small town. Despite our position as the largest city in America's rapidly changing borderlands, and despite our place looking southward towards the part of the world which very much represents our future as a nation, San Antonians are inherently insular. In our tangled streets and neighborhoods, between the cheers for the Spurs and the worry about our endemic problems of chronic poverty, ill health, and low expectations, sometimes it takes a jolt for us to remember that modern history began here, and we are the keepers of a magnificent legacy of courage, freedom, and human dignity. It is for breaking through our daily trials and reminding us of the unique role we play in the world, musician Phil Collins is the San Antonian of the Year.

Like many British Baby Boomers, Collins first learned about America by watching the Hollywood tale of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier on the Wonderful World of Disney in the 1950s. (David Bowie, real name David Jones, took his stage name from Jim Bowie, when he didn't want to be confused with Davy Jones of the Monkees.) It's not surprising that Crockett's story made such an impression on a young man growing up in a Europe which had lost its promise in the desolation and poverty left behind by World War Two. He saw in his story a place where honor and courage mattered, a people for whom ideals mattered, and a culture where one person, or one small group of people, could make a difference. Hooked on Texas history from 5,000 miles away, Collins used his earnings as one of the world's most successful musicians of the 1980s and 1990s, not to buy Ferarris, in his words, but to buy tangible pieces of that unique moment in the human experience. Over the years he acquired letters, receipts, weapons, Crockett's musket ball pouch and one of his .40 caliber flintlock rifles. Finally, this Englishman amassed the largest collection of Alamo memorabilia in private hands, a collection he donated this year, in two truckloads, to the Alamo.

The city's tourism slogan is 'Deep in the Heart,' which is where Phil Collins' connection with San Antonio lies. A native of England who now lives in Switzerland, Collins is emotionally a San Antonian, as proven by his respect for our history. It is that mythic and monumental past which makes every resident of this city a carrier of sacred memory, and it is Phil Collins who, from another continent, reminds of how crucial that unique legacy is, and why, in a world increasingly darkened by the shadow of forces which would strip us of that legacy, it is us who must stand firm and remember. The Phil Collins Collection, which someday will be a centerpiece of an Alamo Plaza stripped of its tawdriness and restored to the rugged glory of the seat of that sacred memory, will help transmit the legacy which will overcome those shadows. What Phil Collins has given us in 2014 is nothing less than a full realization of how important San Antonio is to the ideal of freedom. The ideal that every human being has value. That the struggle that happened here in 1836 has real meaning today, and will continue to have real meaning for as long as Phil Collins' priceless artifacts are a part of our community.

Read more: http://www.woai.com/articles/1200-w...-antonian-of-the-year-13060622/#ixzz3MhtIa1FM
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2014 San Antonian of the Year:Phil Collins

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2014 San Antonian of the Year:Phil Collins

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