Ahhhh, FIESTA in San Antonio, TX -- there's nothing like it!  Live here for a few years, and you can't help but get caught up in the fun and the history of FIESTA.

I'm a member of The Woman's Club of San Antonio -- which is a Charter Member of the San Antonio FIESTA Commission.  Our Club hosts several FIESTA Events every year.  Back in October of 2008, a committee was named to design our Annual FIESTA Pins & Medals.  I was fortunate enough to be chosen to be on the committee and was chairman of the committee.  We had a short meeting and decided to use a sculpture created by a former member of our club, Waldine Tauch.  We placed the sculpture in front of a floral arrangement of white roses (our Club flower) and took pictures at different angles.  I then, emailed the pictures to a graphic artist who created the initial design from the photos and emailed it back to me.  After several meetings and changes, we had our final design which I presented to the Woman's Club Board of Directors for approval before placing the order. 

We started with this. . .

Here's the 2009 FIESTA Pin/Medal for The Woman's Club of San Antonio. . .

Waldine was born in Schulenburg, Texas on January 28, 1892, her father was a photographer.  The family moved to a ranch in Menard County and their home was a stop for the stage hack, or rental carriage.  Her uncle supplied fresh horses and her mother cooked breakfast for the travelers.  Waldine's carvings were displayed on a shelf around the dining room.  Two travelers were so impressed with her work they influenced the family to move to Brady so the budding sculptor could have an artistic education.  Mrs. F. W. Henderson, who had induced the family to move, wrote Pompeo Coppini about taking a new student.  He declined.  "No!  Girls are not good pupils.  They work one or two years, then quit.  They get married.  I lose all my labor."  Mrs. Henderson persisted and eventually sent him a piece of Tauch's work-small enough to be easily mailed, yet intricate enough to be impressive.  When Coppini received the box, opened it, pulled out the padding, and found still another box full of padding, he thought at first that a trick had been played upon him.  But when he finally reached the tiny piece--depicting Little Red Riding Hood with her basket and the wolf-he accepted her immediately.  Coppini invited her to live in the spacious home he and his wife had in San Antonio.  Waldine came to town on June 10, 1910, just a few weeks before she graduated from high school.  She feared that a postponement might change Coppini's mind.  She made a promise to her mentor that she would give up marriage and family so she could give her complete devotion to her creative work-a promise she never broke.  Waldine never regretted her promise, one that brought her to recognition as an artist of national stature.

The Coppinis moved to New York in 1922 and Tauch joined them there the next year. She created a statue of the four LeSueur Smith children in Pelham Manor.  The late Mrs. Eli Hertzberg traveled from San Antonio to New York to pose for a bust by Tauch. The piece is located in the Tuesday Musical Club building.

Twelve years later, the Coppinis and Tauch moved back to San Antonio because of the Texas Centennial and the great amount of work they received from it.

She became an internationally known sculptor of life-size statues such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur at Howard Payne U., Moses Austin in San Antonio's City Hall Square, the Texas Ranger of Today-now in downtown Dallas.  Waldine lived to be 94; she was a Club member until her stroke in October 1985.  Her biography is found in From Chalk to Bronze by Alice Hutson in 1978.