Harry McNair Doubles Down on Street Naming Trainwreck

By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

The McNair Family is a prominent, powerful, influential, and important family that has roots in Brownsville that go back over a century. Just ask Harry McNair. He'll tell you.

The McNair Family owns 34 lots on the street formerly known as East Fronton Street. Just ask Harry McNair. He'll tell you.

He'll also tell you you're ridiculous for thinking McNair Family Drive should be re-renamed East Fronton Street. 

Like Thanos wielding the Infinity Gauntlet, McNair snapped his fingers and the city government cowered under his awesome might, tabling a motion to rescind the naming of East Fronton. He rules from his McNair Family Drive with an iron fist, bending the city commission and making them acquiesce to his every desire. 

McNair is quoted in Nubia Reyna's article in The Brownsville Herald as asking, "Fronton means noting...you're Hispanic, what does Fronton mean to you?" The air must have been thick with a palpable arrogance. I am going to have to email Reyna and ask her what it must have felt like to be in the presence of such greatness. I am going to ask her just how privileged she must have felt to sit in the presence of McNair. I wonder if she sat in awe, and I wonder if she had to genuflect and kiss Pope Harry the First's ring in order to sit for the audience. 

It never ceases to amaze me just how arrogant and dismissive local politicians are. It never ceases to amaze me just how these politicians hold the citizens of Brownsville in contempt. How little he must think of all the peons he, and his family, had to step over in order to achieve the greatness of owning 34 lots on McNair Family Drive. I wonder how many of those Hispanics working for the McNairs broke their backs in their warehouses so they could afford those lots on Fronton. 

I'll state the obvious. It doesn't matter what Fronton means to anybody. It matters what the name represents. The definition of the word is irrelevant. What that word means to the people who have grown up in the shadows of the railyard and those McNair warehouses is what matters. 

McNair is also quoted in the article saying, "I don't want this to be about me..." I wonder who he was trying to convince, the Herald reporter or himself? This is absolutely about himself. This is the proverbial dog marking his territory (as if owning a considerable amount of the property on the thoroughfare isn't enough). This is McNair not wanting to see his surname taken off anything. This is a vanity exercise, plain and simple.

McNair does not like for anybody to get in his way. It amazes me because as a former city commissioner, he should be aware of how something like this can negatively affect his public image and people's perception about his, and his family's, legacy.

It really is a pity he is too proud to realize that instead of helping promote his family's legacy and their importance in the story of Brownsville's history, he's turning the McNair Family name into a name synonymous with greed, pettiness, selfishness, and unbelievably childish behavior. This will go down as a black mark on the family name.

If they re-rename the street back to Fronton Street, I certainly hope McNair gets to keep the street signs as a constant reminder of just how selfishly he acted and how that'll be how the citizens of Brownsville will remember him. 

Such a high price to pay for vanity.