Opening a Door of Opportunity

Major Gift Starts a New Scholarship at UIW

A West Texas Doctor Honors Her Mother

by Brian Wallace

Elvia Canales Burns, M.D.(r), her mother, Brigida Lopez Canales(l), and her daughter, Sonya.

Dr. Elvira Canales Burns, M.D., BSN '76, often stays after hours in her busy Family Practice in Midland, especially when patients who can only speak Spanish drive for hours across the West Texas plains to see her.

“In my life as a doctor, I find great satisfaction in helping people overcome their pain, both physical and emotional,” says Dr. Burns on a recent busy afternoon in her office.

“I am deeply honored by the amount of trust people place in me.”

At the time, preparing to be a doctor seemed like an insurmountable challenge, but looking back on it now, Dr. Burns feels a great sense of achievement in accomplishing her goal.

“I am so proud of my daughter,” says her mother, Brigida Lopez Canales, who lives in San Antonio where Elvira was raised. “When she graduated from high school, she received two scholarship offers and she chose the University of the Incarnate Word because it was near home.”

“When she was a little girl,” she says of her second youngest of seven daughters and one son, “I never dreamed she would be a doctor some day.”

“Elvira really surprised me,” she says, with a big smile on her face.

In fact, the story of Elvira's life is full of surprises.

Her humble family home, on an acre of undeveloped land on San Antonio's rural north side, was just what her father, Daniel Canales, wanted when he left the Army after World War II. With his new civilian job as a driver at Randolph Air Force Base, he liked the area just to the west of San Antonio's airport. It reminded him of where he grew up near Gonzales, Texas, where he completed his formal education, which stopped at grade nine.

It was an unusual place to raise a future medical doctor. But there were two things about that home that made it perfect for Elvira.

The first was the family that lived there. Daniel and Brigida Canales believed that there were three things that all of their children should have: a strong love for God, a superior work ethic, and intensive study habits. Daniel was famous for carefully inspecting the report cards of all of his children, and he would even work with them in part-time jobs on weekends so they could learn the value of earning money. The whole family was also well known in their local parish.

The second thing about the Canales' home that really helped Elvira was its exact location - just inside the far north boundary of one of the leading school districts in San Antonio. While her house was a far cry from the exclusive Alamo Heights neighborhoods that have given rise to many of San Antonio's medical doctors, Elvira did get to sit in the same classrooms and take the same courses. And she quickly proved that she could hold her own in that arena of scholastic achievement.

Her success as a student at Alamo Heights led to her scholarship in Nursing at the University of the Incarnate Word and eventually, acceptance into the Baylor School of Medicine in Houston.

As a medical doctor, Elvira relishes the challenges of her practice. But she finds even greater rewards in the roles she plays in her personal life. She is herself, a doctor's wife. Her husband, Terry, is a pathologist and serves on the staff of one of Midland's hospitals. Together they are parents, who have raised their two children, Thomas, who is in college in California, and Sonya who has just graduated from Trinity High School in Midland.

And Elvira is still very much a daughter. For Mother's Day this year, she decided it was time to surprise her own mother once again. So, in her mother's name, she made a very generous gift to begin the Brigida Lopez Canales Scholarship for Nursing and Education at the University of the Incarnate Word. When fully funded, this scholarship will provide many students with the opportunity to study Nursing and Education at the University of the Incarnate Word for many years to come. And her mother, who contributed so much to Elvira's challenging and successful life, will be permanently honored and remembered here, where her daughter went to college.

The circle has been completed. Elvira and her family have gone from university scholarship recipients to being the provider of a major scholarship for others.