Downtown San Angelo Summer '25 - Magazine - Page 29
A Shepherd in
High Heels:
Well Wishes/Intro
Articel
Brenda Gunter led
San Angelo with
head for business, a servant heart,
and an admirable sense of fashion
Written by Amber Alexander
Of all the awards Brenda Gunter has won as a community leader, the one that she is most proud of is Mayor of the
City of San Angelo. “It’s been the most important role. When you become mayor, you feel like you’re responsible for
100,000 people. Every decision you make impacts somebody’s life. And so it was a great honor being elected and an
incredible honor being re-elected. That’s what I’m most proud of, being able to serve the citizens of San Angelo,
Texas.”
Brenda Gunter has shepherded the city of San Angelo through some difficult times during her two-term tenure as San
Angelo’s first woman mayor. A global pandemic, a catastrophic freeze and failure of the Texas power grid, and a
period of such heightened racial tension that calls to “Defund the Police!” rang out across the nation–these events, and
the repercussions we are still navigating, all took place within a year, an annus horribilis, indeed.
And yet, from that fateful March 2020 when Covid-19 began to move exponentially, fatally, unpredictably throughout
the country; to that May, when George Floyd’s death at the hands of police entrusted “to protect and to serve” set off
nationwide protests and illuminated the need, yet again, to take an honest inventory of how the law, written in black
and white, is actually applied to people, black and white (and brown, and other); and then to that February of 2021
when, despite timely weather warnings, an unprecedented winter storm paralyzed the state of Texas for four days,
with 246 people dying as a direct result of the storm but as many as 702 killed due to the extenuating–and most critics
contend, avoidable– failure of ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ah, yes, you’ve noted the
“reliability;” our Mayor did, too), Brenda Gunter faced this onslaught of unparalleled trials with courage, passion and
honesty. Working with local leaders such as ASU President Ronnie Hawkins and the local chapter of the NAACP,
Brenda addressed race relations in San Angelo, welcoming a forum of honest experience and discussion. Brenda says
that this proactive response actually brought our community together, and that San Angelo is fortunate in that we have
never had to defend our police department in regards to race relations. “‘Defunding the police’ is terminology we
would never use here,” Brenda said.
