The first time Lamar Jones saw his bottles of gourmet barbecue sauce lined up on the shelves of an H-E-B store he felt like a musician hearing one of his songs on the radio for the first time. “It was surreal to see it,” Jones recalled of that 2016 memory. “To see something I started making in my kitchen and then developing it to a brand being sold at H-E-B,…
A mid-summer day in 2022 started out like any other for Cris Moreno and was supposed to conclude with a joyful night out with his mother and an uncle and aunt visiting from California. It was during that outing when another vehicle slammed into Moreno’s GMC truck. He was badly injured and rushed to DHR Health hospital in Edinburg. Moreno is a mechanic who has owned and operated an auto…
Kathy Lueders hears the question often in her capacity as general manager of Starbase’s operations at Boca Chica Beach. “When are we going to Mars?” Lueders said to an audience recently in Harlingen on the Texas State College campus. “I don’t know exactly when but I do know that one day out of the Rio Grande Valley there will be a Starship going to Mars.” Lueders’ talk was titled “Space…
Jeanette Greider’s arrival as the South Padre Island Chamber of Commerce‘s new president came after a serendipitous turn of events in the spring of 2023. Greider’s lengthy career in media sales and management had recently come to an end when she decided to participate in a customer service seminar given by the SPI Convention & Visitors Bureau. Greider wanted to network with others generally connected to her field of sales,…
Isaac Smith felt more than the loss of business and the diminishment of revenues after a 2022 New Year’s Day fire burned his family’s 120,000-square-foot Matt’s Building Material store to the ground. “I still miss the old store,” Smith said recently, sitting in the new office of a shiny new 45,000-square-foot building where the original building sat for decades in Pharr. “I grew up in that store. It’s like losing…
The 900-foot-high KGBT tower just south of La Feria does more than just transmit television signals. The long-standing tower is held upright by high-tensioned guy wires and is visible for several miles in a wide radius around La Feria. At about 200 feet up, the KGBT tower houses a row of tile-looking squares that are providing what executives of VTX1 Companies call “the next generation of fixed wireless” Internet service.…
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has appointed McAllen City Manager Roel “Roy” Rodriguez to the Texas Municipal Retirement System Board of Trustees for a term to expire on Feb. 1, 2029. The board oversees the Texas Municipal Retirement System, which is responsible for providing a secure retirement benefit plan for eligible employees of more than 800 Texas cities. Rodriguez is a former gubernatorial appointee to the Texas Municipal Retirement System Board…
This summer, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is offering a special incentive to incoming graduate students, aimed at jumpstarting their academic journey toward an advanced degree. The new Summer 2024 Grad Incentive will grant up to $2,000 toward the education of new students entering any academic program within the UTRGV Graduate College. This award, provided through grants or scholarships, is available on a first-come, first-serve basis until funds are exhausted. To…
The Texas labor market maintained its momentum in March to reach a 36th consecutive month of positive annual growth and once again set new record-high levels for jobs, Texans employed and the civilian labor force. Texas’ seasonally adjusted total nonfarm job count increased to 14,115,700 after 19,100 jobs were added over the month in March, reflecting growth in 45 of the last 47 months. Texas also led the nation with…
Murdoch’s Ranch and Home Supply held a grand opening at its first site in the Rio Grande Valley in early April. Nearly 2,000 miles from its flagship store in Bozeman, Mont., this Murdoch’s is at the corner of Expressway 83 and Bryan Road in Mission, a location next to a Burlington store in a new retail development area. “It’s a perfect retail outlet that fits well with the city of…