Bill Summers was the longtime director of the Rio Grande Valley Partnership, a region-wide Chamber of Commerce. his efforts turned what used to be a sleepy chain of economically depressed cities along US 83 and the Texas Mexico border into a thriving commercial area with numerous international bridges to Mexico, which also benefited from an explosion of cross-border tourism and shopping.
This monument is located right where you step off the end of the international bridge pedestrian walkway into Nuevo Progreso from the United States. It is impossible to miss, and reads as follows:
"In memoriam
BILL SUMMERS
Presidente de la
Camara de Commercio del Valle de Texas
El mas Tamalipeco de los Americanos
1st de Septiembre 1938 – 10th de Noviembre 2009”
Mr. Summers was a big deal in this entire region, as evidenced by this story in the San Antonio Express News: (
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"Highway to Mexico renamed for Chamber head
Bill Summers is honored for years of work promoting Valley development
By Lynn Brezosky Published 6:12 pm, Wednesday, September 9, 2009
WESLACO - For Rio Grande Valley PartnershipPresident Bill Summers, it's been about handshakes. Embraces. Strategic trills of mariachi music that can make the stiffest of Austin, or D.C. bureaucrats and site-scoping business-types "get" the Rio Grande Valley.
Summers, a 71-year-old with old-school Texas charm, could have gone into politics. He could have launched his own company. Instead, he became head of a region-wide Chamber of Commerce, and one of the most important names on the Texas-Mexico border.
As dignitary after dignitary said at the ceremony renaming Texas 1015 the Bills Summers International Boulevard Wednesday, it's only fitting he'd get a highway to Mexico named after him.
"We should rename the whole Valley," state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-San Benito, said. "It should be 'Bill Summers Land of Prosperity.'"
What people don't know, Summers said, is that he'd like to manage a Valley-wide Chamber of Commerce while still in high school.
"It's exciting. When I was growing up down here, I didn't know what the Valley could turn into. All I saw was old Business 83, with three lanes."
Sadly, the ceremony comes only a few weeks after Summers announced a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
"I'm going to whip it too," he said. "I'm going to go to M.D. Anderson and get a task force going."
His 22-year stint at the Partnership didn't happen right away. Summers served in the Army, then spent time selling ads for television and radio and working for a bank.
By 1987, when he took the reigns at what was then the Rio Grande Valley Chamber of Commerce, the group had already worked to bring the Valley its own grain elevator, its first and second South Padre Island causeways, a regional phone book, and a four-year college designation for what's now the University of Texas-Pan American.
During his tenure, the Valley has taken off.
He anticipated the era of the North American Free Trade Agreement, establishing the region's first Chamber of Commerce office in Mexico.
The partnership fought hard to keep the U.S. Consulate in Matamoros, Mexico, from closure, which proved a godsend when thousands of northern Mexicans scrambled post-Sept. 11 to get their "laser visas."
He was quoted nationally when security measures threatened to strain the region's social and economic ties with Mexico. What was almost a three-day limit for Mexicans crossing the border with short-term visas was lengthened to 30 days. It meant 27 more days to spend money in the Valley, he quipped.
"That's all because some people in Washington didn't know beans about the relationship we have with Mexico," he said. "Those high-faluting bureaucrats think that we're not dealing with real people. ... But we are. And we need them bad. We need them just as bad as they need us."
He founded the now national Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse when a frivolous lawsuit threatened to close the Santa Rosa sugar mill, with what at the time meant 693 jobs.
The group helped win state caps against jury awards in medical malpractice lawsuits. Doctors who fled a region known as a "judicial hellhole" due to enormous jury awards have been returning.
Summers' biggest fight has been getting the Valley to regionalize.
Each city has its Chamber of Commerce, some a separate Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and cities tend to compete for the next morsel of economic development, the next shopping center, call center, or birding center site.
Summers prefers presenting outside investors with a view of the Valley as one region with 1.2 million people, linked now by a six-lane expressway.
His office has hosted then-Gov. George Bush, U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, former U.S. Rep. Eligio "Kika" de la Garza, and three Mexican governors. He's met with two Mexican presidents, as well as former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
And every two years, there's been the legislative tour, when lawmakers from around the state board a big bus to get a first-hand tour of the Valley and northern Mexico.
When they're not in the Valley, he's likely to be on a visit there.
"In the Legislature, we see him all the time, every session," said state Rep. Aaron Pena, D-Edinburg, "If there's one thing we know, it's that he's going to be selling the Valley.""