Leonides Gonzalez Cigarroa, M.D. Elementary School is a 95,000-square-foot facility that includes 37 core classrooms, an art classroom, a science classroom, a performing hall including practice rooms and instrument storage, an instructional technology classroom, and a media center. Located in the Webb Chapel/Walnut Hill area of northwest Dallas, the school was opened to students for the 2006-2007 school year.
Biography of Leonides Gonzalez Cigarroa
The school is named for Leonides Gonzalez Cigarroa, a physician and civic leader whose ultimate goal was to provide more educational opportunities to area youth. Cigarroa was born in Mexico in 1922, although his family moved to San Antonio, Texas, when he was just an infant. Cigarroa's father was a physician and his mother a pharmacist, and by the age of 10, Cigarroa knew he also wanted to practice medicine. When he was 15, the family moved to Laredo, and it was there that Cigarroa spent his free time observing surgeries at Mercy Hospital.
In 1947, Cigarroa fulfilled his long-held ambition when he graduated from Loyola University School of Medicine in Chicago and began his residency at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He soon returned to Laredo, however, where he began a long and distinguished career, including serving as chief of surgery at Mercy Hospital. He also was devoted to education and child welfare and was surgical advisor for the vocational rehabilitation division of the Texas Education Agency and chairman of the Health Task Force of the Texas Urban Development Commission.
Cigarroa's outstanding abilities were recognized through appointments by two American presidents: President Lyndon B. Johnson, who named him to the National Commission on Health Facilities, and President Richard M. Nixon, who selected him for service on the Health Manpower Development Program Advisory Board. He also was recognized at home in Laredo, where he was named "Man of the Year" in 1967 and a high school was named after him.
Biography of Leonides Gonzalez Cigarroa