Journalist Robert Meckel was born in Mission, Texas, son of a first-generation Mexican Texan mother and a father of German ancestry. Meckel discovered his interest in writing and journalism during high school, and went on to study first at Pan American College in Edinburg, Texas, and then to The University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a journalism degree. Meckel’s early career included photojournalism assignments and coverage of the civil rights movement in South Texas. After working at the Corsicana Daily Sun in the early 1970s, he joined the Houston Post, where he worked until the newspaper’s shut down in 1995. That same year he joined the University of Texas at Austin Office of Public Affairs, later known as University Communications. Source: “Robert Meckel Papers Contribute rich Trove of Mexican American-themed journalism to Benson”, Benson Latin American Collection (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/benson/announcements/robert-meckel-papers-contribute-rich-trove-mexican-american-themed-journalism), accessed October 22, 2015.