Letty Leija speaks at ribbon-cutting ceremony for Edinburg's Arts, Culture and Events Center

In our early days of travels to Mexico George Gause and I spent several 20 de Noviembres in Mexico City and other places commemorating the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910.On November 20, 2024, I was all smiles at the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for the Arts, Culture and Event Center (ACE) in Edinburg. For my longtime library and arts colleague Letty Leija it was the culmination of a long time dream. It was the public celebration of the hard work by her and her colleagues.Letty credits that dream beginning about 2009. During that year Letty, Evana Vleck and I used to sit around and strategize about what we could do in the Arts if we only had money, because we certainly had the programming ideas! At that time Evana was working at Edinburg Chamber of Commerce focusing half her time on Marketing and the other half on Events. She had already done some fabulous events on at IMAS, including a monumental one day Book Festival. I had been working since 2006 with my ArtsRGV centralized events calendar which attempted to list events in Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr, and Willacy Counties. And Letty and I had worked since the mid 1990s on library events. And we all had been involved with Dr. Dahlia Guerra as she founded FESTIBA.At the ribbon cutting Letty credited Evana Vleck and myself and as being members of her original Dream Team. Editor's Note: The above commentary was penned by retired UT-Pan American librarian Virginia Haynie Gause to commemorate the opening of the Arts, Culture and Events (ACE) Center in Edinburg. It first appeared on Haynie Gause's social media pages. Go the Rio Grande Guardian website to read the full commentary. Editor's Note: Here is an audio recording of City of Edinburg librarian Letty Leija at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Arts, Culture and Events (ACE) Center:Go to www.riograndeguardian.com to read the latest border news stories and watch the latest news videos.