Former McAllen mayor Othal Brand dies at age 90 - The Monitor

Former McAllen mayor Othal Brand dies at age 90 - The Monitor

McALLEN — Othal Brand, the iconic mayor credited with laying the foundation for much of the city’s boon today, died here Saturday. He was 90.

Brand died of congestive heart failure at 1:05 a.m. at Rio Grande Regional Hospital.

“He was the patriarch of our family,” his daughter Lynn Ferrell said. “He was much loved and respected.”

Brand was a polarizing figure in the city and could be a study in contradictions at times. His admirers saw him as a strong and determined leader. A deeply religious man, Brand was also an active member of Calvary Baptist Church in McAllen and an ardent supporter of education.

But his deep convictions could also get the better of him. Even his closest friends and political allies noted that he had his flaws, chief among them his brash governing style. The 6-foot-2, broad-shouldered Brand once infamously brandished a gun at farm laborers and union organizers who were attacking workers at one of his company-owned farms in the 1970s.

Several friends and family came through Brand’s McAllen home throughout the day Saturday to pay their respects.

Later that night, almost 100 people attended an annual fund-raising dinner at Valley Christian Heritage School in Alamo, where officials dedicated the school in honor of Brand and his wife, Kay.

Brand was a long-time supporter of the school and donated more than $100,000 since it opened its new facility in 2006.

“We ought to know what kind of man he was,” Valley Christian Superintendent Mary Rydl said. “He hasn’t missed (one of our annual dinners) yet. He passed today, but he’s here with us in spirit.”

Brand’s journey from a child of the Great Depression to agribusiness magnate and, finally, to political powerbroker was a long one.

Born the second of six children in rural Grayson, Ga., in 1919, Brand quit school at 16 to help support his family during the Great Depression.

His father had lost an arm in a farming accident and later suffered a stroke that left him unable to work.

So Brand sold strawberries door to door before joining his three brothers to form Atlanta-based Brand Brothers Produce in the late 1930s. The company bought fruits and vegetables from all over the South, and, eventually, in Latin America, as well.

Brand enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. He spent four years in the military, eventually marrying Kay, whom he met while both were stationed at a Marine base in Virginia.

He returned to business in Atlanta and made increasingly frequent trips to South Texas to buy onions. Liking the Rio Grande Valley so much, he and Kay moved to McAllen with their two children in 1954.



MAYOR

Brand Brothers Produce grew into Griffin & Brand Inc., the world’s largest producer of onions and one of the largest vegetable growers.

But Brand had other ambitions.

In the early ‘60s, he ran for the McAllen school board. He won and served as a board trustee for nine years. He then ran for the McAllen City Commission and won a seat in 1973.

After serving one term as a city commissioner, Brand set his sights on the mayor’s seat. He won his first race and went on to serve five terms — 20 years — before narrowly losing to McAllen lawyer and then-city commissioner Leo Montalvo in 1997. Montalvo became McAllen’s first Hispanic mayor.

Until the race he lost to Montalvo, Brand had lost just one local election and faced only one serious challenge for the mayor’s office, in 1981.

As mayor, Brand was known for his opinionated governing style and for bristling at criticism. He detested and avoided bureaucratic red tape, putting an emphasis on results rather than process.

In a 1997 article, Brand described himself as a “conservative visionary” whose foresight and planning were a major factor in McAllen’s transformation from a small agricultural community to a business boomtown.

Some of the hallmarks of his two decades as mayor included establishing what was then South Texas Community College and the McAllen Boys & Girls Club.

He also created the McAllen Economic Development Corp. in 1989 and hired priest and local activist Mike Allen as director. Allen went on to expand the maquiladora industry and bring thousands of jobs to McAllen and the rest of the Rio Grande Valley.

“He was a living legend,” said former McAllen City Manager Mike Blum, who served with him on the city’s Public Utility Board and personally delivered the U.S. presidential permit with him for the Anzalduas International Bridge in 1992. “He did so many things for so many people over his time. His service really goes way beyond City Hall into a lot of different arenas that a lot of people don’t really know about.”

Brand won a reputation for his focus on numbers and details and for diligently studying any issue he encountered in office.

But during the early 1990s, he often clashed with members of the City Commission, who complained he stacked committees with his political allies and sometimes acted without the commission’s consent on major issues such as brokering a $3.1 million warehouse construction deal in backroom negotiations.

He tended to respond to such criticism by noting he got things done while others bickered over minor details. He said the key to an effective city leader is being able to see the big picture and to plan for the future.

Brand’s fiery outspokenness mired him in public controversy in 1995, when he used his mayoral authority to stop a truck driver speeding down 10th Street.

Police tapes of Brand’s phone call to the dispatcher recorded Brand pressing the trucker on his citizenship status and asking him where he was born. He berated the trucker with a slew of expletives. Brand also asked police to check the authenticity of the man’s green card.

Brand also garnered criticism for his heavy-handed tactics in 1993, when he threatened to jail a man, who would later become a city commissioner, for speaking out at a city meeting.

Shortly before the 1997 election, Brand admitted to earning $36,000 for helping to broker a land deal between the city and a third party.

The 1997 race mostly proved to be a referendum on Brand’s leadership style and governing approach rather than on any one issue. Montalvo ran on a platform promising a more inclusive city government.

Voters elected Montalvo to office by a slim margin of just 144 votes. Brand, true to his reputation for stubbornness, challenged the results, but to no avail.



POWER PLAYER

Brand did not fade from the public scene after his loss, however.

He quickly injected himself into a 2002 debate over the location of the city’s new convention center, arguing that the proposed site in downtown McAllen had insufficient space and access and was out of step with the city’s westward growth. Brand and another former McAllen mayor, Jack Whetsel, lobbied hard against the chosen location in favor of the facility’s current site along South Ware Road.

Brand also continued to run Griffin & Brand.

He surprised many residents when, at age 85, he ran for mayor again in 2005. Brand finished third in a five-way race, losing out to Montalvo’s preferred successor, current Mayor Richard Cortez, who went on to win a runoff election.

Brand campaigned on a platform of improving infrastructure such as streets and drainage to accommodate growth, providing more job training options, keeping taxes low enough to attract businesses and bringing more transparency to city government.

“Today I believe that myself and the City Commission are the disciples of a philosophy started a long time ago: that McAllen is friendly to business and took care of family and family values,” Cortez said.

But a few months after the May 2005 election, Brand was implicated in a votes-for-money scheme.

Video of a sting involving the Texas Rangers showed a 22-year-old McAllen man offering Brand’s son and campaign manager, Othal Jr., 400 votes for his father in exchange for $4,000. Brand’s son acknowledged paying the man but said he did it to highlight the potential for fraud in the absentee voting process.

A grand jury indicted Othal Jr. in 2005, but Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra dropped the felony charges immediately after Guerra won re-election in a tight race.

Brand remained vigorous and in apparent good health until he was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2007. Doctors removed the growths and Brand said he was continuing to work seven hours a day at Griffin & Brand, despite his illness.

A year later, he had an emergency hip replacement after he stubbed his toe and fell.

Brand was taken to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., last week and was rushed into the emergency room for treatment of pre-congestive heart failure.

The family decided to fly Brand home from the Mayo Clinic on Wednesday after his condition worsened. After returning to McAllen, they admitted him to Rio Grande Regional Hospital, where he died peacefully early Saturday, Othal Jr. said.

Brand’s daughter Lynn Ferrell spoke about her father Saturday afternoon at the modest, one-story brick home he built more than 50 years ago. She recalled once trying to get her parents to move to San Antonio when she was living there. Her father wouldn’t budge.

“He said, ‘I’ve spent my entire adult life here building schools, churches and a damn fine city, and I will live here my entire life and I will be buried here,’” she said. “He was semi-conscious in his last hours, and he said, ‘It’s good to be home.’”