A sculpture commemorating George Whitfield Jr., the city of San Antonio\u2019s first records manager, was unveiled recently at the Municipal Archives and Records Center that was named in his honor in 2002.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whitfield\u2019s signature is engraved in the upright metal sculpture, which stands outside in the building\u2019s walkway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1982,\u00a0Whitfield transformed a box-and-file storage system into a centralized computer system that allowed residents and clerks to bring up a document within seconds from thousands of files.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The center, at 719 S. Santa Rosa, retains vital records San Antonio residents, along with official historical documents. In a 2011 Express-News article,\u00a0Whitfield said whenever he passes the building he looks over and calls it the son he never had.<\/p>\n
The former records manager said he was there at the right time with the right people.<\/p>\n
Whitfield, who was born and raised on the East\u00a0Side, had earned a computer management certificate when he applied for a position with the city.\u00a0The hiring manager said he was overqualified.<\/p>\n
To get his foot in the door, Whitfield started as an elevator operator, before moving to a night custodian shift. \u00a0Later, he began working in a tiny office on Dolorosa Street, using an apple cart to sit on as he converted\u00a0documents to microfilm. Sitting among dusty boxes stacked to the rafters is where he envisioned an innovative record keeping system.<\/p>\n
City clerk Debbie\u00a0Racca-Sittre said the sculpture that pays tribute to Whitfield\u00a0was the vision of local arts collective Bridge Projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed fitting that Mr. George\u00a0Whitfield Jr.\u2019s name should be the one to welcome visitors to this important place,\u201d Racca-Sittre said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sculpture commemorating George Whitfield Jr., the city of San Antonio\u2019s first records manager, was unveiled recently at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-447726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}