The Where I Live series aims to showcase our diverse city and region by spotlighting its many vibrant neighborhoods. Each week a local resident invites us over and lets us in on what makes their neighborhood special. Have we been to your neighborhood yet? Get in touch to share your story. If your story is selected and published, you will receive a $250 stipend.
When people hear “the East Side of San Antonio,” many think of gangs, poverty and violence.
But I think of two people.
I think of my mother, Gladys Brooks, and my father, Sam Brooks.
As a young boy growing up on the East Side, I certainly experienced hardship, but when I close my eyes today, I don’t remember fear first. I remember love.
Some of my earliest memories are of my mother’s voice calling me in for dinner after I’d spent all day playing outside. No matter how sweaty or dirty I was, she always had a warm meal waiting for us.
My mother also had very clear rules, and there was never any room for negotiation.
“Boy! You will not join a gang. You will not steal. You will not talk like the other kids … or I’ll kill ya!”
I’d look up and say, “Mama, I won’t … I’m only six!”
Whether she meant it or not, I wasn’t about to find out.
My mother was one of the strongest women I’ve ever known. She was intelligent enough to attend college, but chose instead to become a maid so her sisters could pursue their education. She quietly sacrificed her own dreams so others could fulfill theirs. Looking back, I realize she was teaching me long before I ever stepped into a classroom.
She was married to my father, Sam Brooks, a truck driver with only a sixth-grade education. He wasn’t a wealthy man, but he was rich in love.
He called me his “caboose” because I was the youngest after my older half-brothers. He loved taking me wherever he went, proudly introducing me to his friends. At the end of a long workday, he would come home, kiss my mother, settle into his favorite recliner and pull me onto his lap, tickling me until I couldn’t breathe from laughing. After he fell asleep, I’d quietly collect the loose change that had slipped from his pockets.
Those are some of the richest memories of my childhood.
In a part of the city where broken homes and violence were common, my parents gave me something priceless — a home where I felt safe, loved and believed in.
Outside our front door, life could be difficult. I experienced bullying, abuse and challenges that came with growing up in a neighborhood many people overlooked.
Inside our home, however, character mattered. Kindness mattered. Respect mattered.
On Sunday evenings, I’d watch “The Wonderful World of Disney,” escaping into stories of hope before Monday came around again. Without realizing it, my parents were building the foundation that would carry me through the rest of my life.
My father passed away when I was 11. My mother died when I was 18.
Losing them so young could have left me bitter, but instead I carried their lessons wherever I went.
I remember driving my little $500 car to H-E-B and helping elderly ladies load their groceries before following them home to make sure they arrived safely. They would smile, hug me and often say, “I’ll be praying for you, son.”
That wasn’t something I learned from a textbook.
That’s what my parents taught me.
Not long after my mother passed away, I left the Eastside YMCA one afternoon and drove to St. Philip’s College. I wasn’t enrolled there and honestly didn’t know why I had gone.
Then I saw her — the woman that would become the love of my life
Together we left the neighborhood where I grew up and built a different future. We escaped poverty, got off welfare, raised five incredible children, built a successful business and shared 30 wonderful years of marriage before illness took her from me in 2020.
Through every joy and every heartbreak, I discovered something my neighborhood had taught me long before I understood it: When your life is built on love, faith and character, circumstances may change, but your foundation remains.
Many people remember the East Side only for its struggles.
I remember something different.
I remember neighbors who looked after one another, parents who worked hard despite having very little, and a community that found reasons to smile in the middle of hardship.
Most of all, I remember a mother who refused to let her son become another statistic and a father who showed me what unconditional love looked like every single day.
People often ask me where I learned resilience.
They expect me to mention a book, a mentor or a leadership seminar.
Instead, I tell them it began on the East Side of San Antonio, in a modest home where my mother taught me character, my father showed me unconditional love and together they gave me a foundation that no tragedy could ever take away.
Today, I have the privilege of sharing messages of hope, resilience and faith with schools, businesses and organizations. Every time I speak, a part of that little boy from the East Side goes with me.
No matter where life has taken me, home is still the place that first taught me what love looks like.
The East Side didn’t break me. It built me.
