It used to be the Congress Avenue bridge over Town Lake. But Austin has some new heroes these days, and today the City of Austin formally renamed the bridge after the late, great Ann Richards. It's a nice tribute to Richards, who died on September 13 of last year, evoking her famous March to the Capitol when she led several thousand people across the bridge and up Congress Avenue to her inauguration as Governor of Texas in 1991. Her ascendancy heralded a New Texas, although George Bush stalled out its momentum and Rick Perry has gone after it hammer and tong. Her greatest accomplishment may have been the diversity of her appointments to state boards and commissions, and the fact that even charter members of the Good Ol' Boys Club like Bush and Perry feel compelled to remind the people of Texas how diverse they've been in their appointments.
Her great legacy, however, will be a new generation of Texas leaders, some of whom are just starting out at the new Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders. If they can bottle Ann Richards and pour her into those kids, look out, world!
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