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FEATURE

politician, Dr. Minter was at one-time Chairman of the UT Board was strong support to have them be adjacent to the Robert B. Green
of Regents and also a trustee of the TMA. He founded the Minter Hospital downtown, closer to the indigent population that the hos-
Clinic in 1922 and was Chairman of the San Antonio Medical Foun- pital would primarily serve. Others were convinced that a much
dation in its early years. larger area was needed than could be accommodated downtown, and
four investors who owned large tracts of land where the Medical Cen-
Tom Slick Drive ter now resides (one of whom was Edgar von Scheele) donated 200
A true Renaissance man, acres in northwest San Antonio for the center.

Tom Slick was a millionaire L.E. Fite Drive
oilman, philanthropist, This very short “street” that connects Floyd Curl and Ewing
rancher, author, art collec-
tor, adventurer, and inven- Halsell between St. Luke’s Baptist and Methodist Plaza was named
tor. He is most widely for a man who, along with Sid Katz and Melrose Holmgreen, ac-
known as the Founder of the quired an additional 400 acres for the Medical Center. Fite refused
Southwest Research Insti- to have anything named for him during his lifetime, so the Board
tute and the Southwest had to wait until after his death to name this street.
Foundation for Biomedical
Research and was also an Melrose Holmgreen Drive. President of Alamo Iron Works, a firm
original member of the started as a small blacksmith shop by his Prussian immigrant ancestor
Medical Center Foundation in 1878, Holmgreen was one of seven trustees of the original Medical
Board. He died in a private Foundation. The Alamodome now stands on the site of the expanded
plane crash at age 46 when plans for the Medical Center were still Alamo Iron Works plant. Holmgreen also helped establish the San
mainly on the drawing board. Antonio River Authority and United Way of San Antonio.

Sid Katz Drive Ewing Halsell Drive
It may seem some- Halsell himself was never

what ironic that one of directly involved with the
the major fundraisers Medical Center Board, but his
for the Methodist Hos- charitable foundation con-
pital (and Chairman of tributed substantial amounts
the Medical Founda- of money through the efforts
tion’s land acquisition of its board chairman, Gilbert
committee) was born of Denman. Halsell’s money
Jewish immigrant par- came from ranching – his fa-
ents. There was no syn- ther owned the 7,500 square
agogue in the small mile XIT ranch in the Pan-
town of Clinton, Ken- handle and he himself owned
tucky where he grew up, the 90,000 acre Farias Ranch
so the family attended in Maverick County.
the local Methodist church, which likely explains his affinity for
that denomination. All of these “mini” biogra-
phies and nearly 1,000 more
Von Scheele Drive can be found in Place Names
In the late 1950s and early 60s, a bitter fight raged about where of San Antonio (3rd Ed) by
David P. Green, MD, Maver-
the medical school and new county hospital should be built. There ick Publishing Company, San
Antonio 2011.

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