In attending a memorial service for a friend, it is at first easy to think only about her and her family.  Soon enough, though, we lose ourselves in memories.  The nostalgia that comes from recalling our relationship to and time with her moves our minds to ruminate on other aspects of our lives.  And those of us no longer young also ponder the immediate future of our own well-being.

Yet something mutes the toll that weighty death take on us – the warm feeling of reconnecting with friends who are friends precisely because they turn out when you need them.  And, it turns out, they need you, too.  There is, in fact, strength in numbers, and the packed cathedral in San Antonio provided comfort for those of us for whom the sudden loss of Choco Meza to a rampant cancer was shocking, its physical finality too real.

Gazing around the church and crowd, I saw many of us who have lived and experienced the modern emergence of the Hispanic/Latino population into an important demographic reality.  And so the Rosary and the Mass we celebrated for her constituted a confluence of both history and future for those of us not yet finished.  That our contemporary died at 64 and that we might be slower in gait does not preclude us from knowing that Choco would not want us to be finished with the enduring business at hand – the social, political, economic and cultural progress and development of the Hispanic/Latino community.

The agenda is full.  It is constant.  And it is perennial – like the cathedral of San Fernando itself.

Having been forced to stand for the Rosary and having to deal with an aching back, I stole outside and walked around the iconic church.  In its illuminated state, I marveled again at its magnificent restoration, led by Father David García, a high school classmate, and a host of others in our beloved San Antonio.  And I take enormous but totally unmerited pride when I walk the one-block street named Treviño on the building’s northern side.  In my mind, the presence of the family name weds me to the cathedral’s old and historic stones that stretch back to before the nation’s founding.  I did not get that feeling walking around Independence Hall in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention in July.

And like the cathedral, Choco exists among the personal icons I choose for my life.  No one who met her, as I did oh so many years ago, could forget her wide eyes that would have been wild had they not shone with a goodness that offered immediate acceptance.  Her eyes literally exploded with commitment to the Hispanic/Latino community.  And so she is an iconic reference point for me not only of our history but for the future.

Julián and Joaquín Castro, in emotional remembrances at the end of the mariachi-garlanded service, personified part of that future and, surely, the history of the labors of Choco’s life.  But it was Henry Cisneros who sounded the clarion for us to do nothing less than to extend and continue her work if not her life itself.

Henry called on immediate family first and then cousins and then colleagues and then co-workers and then women whom Choco had helped empower and then the rest of us — and then all us together — to make our presence known as a testament to her.  In groups we stood when called and we echoed what Mexicans proclaim when they at a rally, at a meeting, at an event want to make their presence known and felt.  They stand and shout:

¡Presente!

We are here!  We belong!  We are with you!

The echo ricocheted off the thick walls of the old church with a force so powerful and willful that to my ear became resolve.

The work continues.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

So the documentary PBS aired last week on Willie Velásquez perhaps accomplished more than its producers wanted:  It focused on a man who blended what so many Hispanic/Latino leaders today, frankly, lack:  A true sense of vision embodied in direct engagement and personal commitment to the growth of the social and political standing of Hispanic/Latinos.   Many talk a good game.  Few throw the ball downfield like Willie in his days.

For today’s young Hispanic/Latinos, Willie’s too-early death is a cautionary tale of the unforeseen sleights that history can throw our way.  What, in other words, would Texas, and therefore the country, look like had Willie lived?  The film – Willie Velásquez: Your Vote is Your Voice, a production of Galán Inc. and Latino Public Broadcasting – recounts his leadership of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project.  It did not freely speculate what he might have done had he not died in 1988 at the age of 44.  44!

The fact is we lost a strong and unrelenting voice that otherwise would have resonated louder year after year with a passion we desperately needed – and miss today.

With perhaps a better-financed organization as each year passed, he might have done more than we have to marshal the power of the Hispanic/Latino population that had begun to grow in leaps and bounds.  More important, he in all likelihood would have developed – and articulated – a sense of mission and purpose that, truth be told, we are lacking as a community and in too many of our leaders.  In too many ways, we are voiceless with our votes.

I was a young, inexperienced reporter in 1978 when I traveled up from Corpus Christi to San Antonio to profile Willie for my newspaper.  I was barely 26.  I walked into the office of his voter registration project on North St. Mary’s Street near the river.

There I met a man who could see the future and who wanted to help drive the mostly Mexican-American population of Texas and the country into that new future as rapidly as possible – one fueled by a demographic revolution that will not reach its apex in my lifetime but presents a new challenge for us:  What we do with the years ahead?

But I – nor any Hispanic/Latino of note whom I have met in my years in journalism and government – possessed his energy and commitment.  He grew personally and supported the progressive cause that includes the advancement and equal protection of all minorities and women and gays and lesbians.  More so, he would have fostered the ideals and principles and values to guide a minority when it becomes a majority.  He would have reached for something new, and he would not have repeated the atrocities visited upon us in the past.

I remember his eyes growing wider as we spoke.  “In the end, it is all about the numbers.”  I can hear his voice today.  And while all of our lives march inexorably to some end or another, the end that Willie was referring to is what we now are witness to: That Hispanic/Latinos have achieved the numbers to develop a new direction with a new sense of self and confidence to move into the days ahead.

“We are good in some counties, and we are making a difference, but we are not there yet,” he said to me.  Willie was referring to the handful of counties throughout the nation in which the Mexican-American predominated back then.  “But we will get there.”

Indeed we have – with the numbers at least.  But without his frenetic and near-maniacal manner that tossed around a million ideas in his mind, we have not gotten to where we should be.  We are more muddle than made.

Now comes the sad news that one of Willie’s closest associates, Choco Meza – as committed as he to the cause of Hispanic/Latinos and of women – died at the very moment that the country is on the verge of electing a woman to the Presidency.  Another veteran of those early days at Willie’s office, Grace García, a personal friend of Hillary Clinton, would have been in the thick of the presidential campaign.  But she, too, died too young in a car accident almost two years ago.

Women do have the numbers, and the victories for them as for Hispanic/Latinos have come slowly at times.

But they come.

We will get there.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.