Commentary: Selena still with us, even after death

Thursday, March 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

SELENA, YOU HAVE been gone for nearly a year.

And the days without you -- los dias sin ti -- stretch on.

Sunday marks the first anniversary of your death, when you were shot in the back by your manager, Yolanda Saldivar, at a Corpus Christi, Texas, motel.

I am like so many other Americans with faces so corny and white that I feel strange and out of place in a Latin music shop.

But there I was Tuesday night at Casa Latina Records at Bonanza and Eastern.

But my anxiety didn't last.

The music was soft, friendly and inviting.

Brightly colored papier-mache pinatas in the shape of imaginary animals were suspended overhead. Posters of artists lined the walls.

There was crossover sensation Jon Secada, who seemed in the portrait to be deep in thought, as if he were thinking about a lost love.

There was Thamara, a Latin sensation with a huge smile, great legs and a colorful bustier that would catch any man's attention from across the parking lot.

Frederico Villa was shown seated on a white stallion, his back as straight as an oak chair, and on his head a very wide sombrero.

And Luis Miguel wore a moody expression.

But there was only one star.

Selena still reigns at Casa Latina, as she does at Latin music stores throughout the nation.

There are so many posters, so many videos about her life, so many remembrances.

On the wall above a stack of her cassettes and compact discs is a wooden clock with her portrait on the face.

The inscription is appropriate: "Siempre Amor."

Many Americans who had never heard of Tejano music before Selena's death have been asking disc jockeys to play her songs.

Because it's more than the voice and the look.

"She was just getting started, and she was killed," said Ervey Alaniz, a sixth-grader at Cashman Middle School. "It's about what she would have become."

Perhaps this is the most important message Selena had for America.

It's what we can accomplish, what we can become, if we give it a try.

Selena, you lived to be only 23, but you got through to a lot of people. More than 6,000 young women showed up at casting calls to play you in the movie about your life. You got through to them.

Perhaps the friendly, melodic sound of your voice flowing from so many dashboard speakers on roads from Los Angeles to Boston already has done some good.

A co-worker, Jon Tricarico, tells me that his wife, Rhoda, is in a wheelchair recovering from surgery, and many people stop to open doors for her.

A source, Kathy Sadovich, tells me that on Monday she spent three hours walking with her 73-year-old mother at Floyd Lamb State Park.

"I like my mother. She's a grand lady, and I've learned a lot from her," Sadovich said.

Siempre amor con tu, Selena.

Forever in love with you.