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David Fitzsimmons

January 13, 2014 by

Note: I wrote this little tribute to Fitz in the fall of 2011. Recently when my website went fubar, it was dropped from the database by a company that cost me lots of misery and money, HostGator. In any event, this piece is as I wrote it. There is an album of Fitz photos that you will find here.

David Fitzsimmons has raised millions for Tucson’s charities for a quarter century. He has not given money, but his time and talent. He has been the provocative and entertaining master of ceremonies at thousands of charity-raising event, from chicken dinners to overflowing   auditoriums Fitz is there — thick black drawing pen in hand, big pad of paper and easel at his side and a joke at the ready.

Unless he is already booked, he will not say no. Fitz will stand and amuse. For free. Any time as long as the cause is noble, the audience tomato-free and there are a few big names in attendance that can besmirch, belittle, beguile and charm.

He has been the evening’s entertainment since he returned to Tucson in 1986 and began his career as the editorial cartoonist for The Arizona Daily Star. He was born in Merced, but was but a few months when his parents brought him. He went to Rincon High School and then to the University of Arizona where he majored in several subjects, but mostly he was cartoonist for the Wildcat. He graduated and found a job as an artist for the Oklahoman of Oklahoma City.

He migrated east, finding gainful employment as an artist with the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, which was then piloted by a mutual friend, William G. Connolly.  Bill was previously with The New York Times. Eventually, he returned to the Gray Lady as an editor and co-wrote the paper’s style manual.

After his stint with that paper, Fitz landed his first full-time cartoonist job with the Daily Press of Newport News, Va. His boss at that paper was the late Tony Snow who went on to become press spokesman for George W. Bush. He died of colon cancer in 2008 at the age of 53.

I interviewed Fitz and his daughter sometime in 1985 in the coffee shop of the Sheraton Hotel in Reston, Virginia. She was active, climbing steps. He said he was anxious to get back to Tucson.

Since then, Fitz has been a part of what critics still call the “Red Star,” his cartoons poking fun at, praising, satirizing and annoying. That is the chief reason, I believe, he has never been selected as Tucson’s man of the year. When I was at the Star, we waged a serious campaign to make it so. Alas, we were not successful.

But Fitz nonetheless charges onward, pen in hand, masterfully conducting the ceremony and raising the money — battling breast cancer (he is a cancer survivor), promoting books or paying tribute to long-time heroes such as Big Jim Griffith. He has given many times over his fair share to the community.

 

Filed Under: People, Tucson History Tagged With: , ,

Fate of the Big Horn Sheep; and a reply from Bunny Fontana

December 25, 2013 by

desertbighornMore than 25 years ago I attended a celebration, the promotional grand opening of a spectacular land development, La Reserve. It was developed by Bill Estes Jr. and his company. It was an end-of-day affair, and I drove from Park and Irvington on the far southside to a new building, a headquarters, on the backside of Pusch Ridge. It felt like driving to Phoenix.

It was about this time year, just before Christmas. It was bone-chilling cold. The road wound around the new Sheraton Hotel and then up the ridge. I was surprised. The road ran a long way up the mountain, and I wondered how Hillside Ordinance would permit development this far up. This was a little bit of county legislation passed in reaction to the purchase of a hilltop in the Tucson Mountains by Garry Brav, a contractor. Brav didn’t just buy a hillside. He bought a mountain at the end of Trail’s End Road, which is a tributary of Camino Del Oeste on the westside. Brav proposed to build a home on the top of the mountain. A great protest ensued. The ordinance passed. But Brav was there first. You can see that Brav has built a compound at the top of one of the peaks. The road switches back up the mountain. It is a very steep rise.

Trail’s End is one of those gated communities. But you can see through binoculars that there are two big houses at the top of the mountain. And of course you can see the road and the great and needless scar up the mountain. Environmentalists in those days were somehow more vocal, prone to raising hell over the slightest blip in the desert. They had sway if for no other reason than they hollered.

In any event, this place reminded me of the Hillside Ordinance. For good reason. The road rose sharply, and it was then I understood why some environmentalists had hollered about the threat to the already dwindling herd of Big Horn Sheep in the Catalinas. They contended that Estes’ La Reserve development would spell the end of the Big Horn in the Catalinas.

If you are not from around these parts, the Santa Catalina Mountains lie north of Tucson, as pretty a bunch of sky islands as you’ll ever see. They rise majestic from the desert floor at about 2500 feet above sea level to somewhere around 9,000 feet. As my grandmother said about giving birth to eight-pound twins, that’s quite a chore. It still amazes me that it takes but about three quarters of an hour to get from saguaro cactus to tall pines and purple lupine. It’s something desert rats like me take for granted, but still makes my jaw drop just the way it did when as a kid I saw my first redwood.

The Catalinas accommodated, deer, Big Horn, bears, mountain lions and the like. In good years, there was ample water.
As the temperature dropped, the guests at this grand gathering were treated to cheese and wine. And then Bill Estes Jr. stood to speak.
Estes was in his time an enormous influence in this town. At one point, I am very sorry to say, I thought he was a villain developer, out to wreck the desert. This in the 1980s was a popular view. And quite wrong as a short story will illustrate.

Estes & Co in this time owned another development the northwest side. A Star reporter got a tip that this development threatened to ruin the habitat of hawks that had taken residence and even foster families. There was a nest or a bunch of nests, my memory is a little imprecise. The reporter wrote a story that foretold the likely destruction of the birds. It was a one-sided account, told only from the point of view of outraged environmentalists. The reporter said he tried to obtain a response from the developer, but was told no one was available. The reporter and his editor concluded the developer was simply avoiding commenting on an embarrassing environmental problem. Thus a one-sided tale appeared in the Star in a Page One Sunday article. On the following Monday, I received call from a manager at the Estes organization requesting a meeting. A couple days later at that meeting, Bill Estes’ managers noted that they not only knew of the hawks’ nests, but checked on them daily. In fact, they knew the birds well and liked them, were concerned about them, had consulted experts. Moreover, they had a plan to take care of them. I ordered another reporter to redo the story.

I do not remember what Estes said. Just that he held up one of those ceremonial checks. It was made out to the University of Arizona for $100,000 and meant for research into the preservation of Big Horn Sheep. Then it began to snow. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It fell heavy and soft. A big snow in the desert happens but once or twice in half a lifetime, and I saw this one from very high up. It was spectacular. The Big Horn Sheep disappeared six or so years later. The prevailing assumption has been that the sheep were the victim of development, human encroachment. It was an easy and simple explanation, too simple really, the sort of thing that’s actually supposition but taken as gospel.

That’s the reason I welcome the experiment by the Arizona Fish and Game Department to introduce 31 Big Horn Sheep in the Catalinas. It is a worthy experiment because it should resolve the question of sheep survivability.

Four sheep have been killed so far by mountain lions. This has provoked sharp criticism. Arizona Fish and Game officials have killed two lions. The critics contend this a great tragedy. They may be right. Then again, if the sheep learn to survive, the Catalinas will be richer habitat. We are able to keep track of the sheep because they are equipped with GPS collars and thus we know where they are. And evidently, so do the mountain lions.

___________________________________________

A reply by Bunny Fontana:

Dear Steve,
I certainly don’t profess to know anything about desert bighorns other than to enjoy the beauty of seeing them in the wild (which I have, out in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge). But I have a couple of friends who know a lot about them, including one who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the subject but who is now retired and living in the northern reaches of Alberta, Canada.

If I understood them correctly in numerous conversations with them, desert bighorns are semi-migratory, which is to say that seasonally they come down out of the rocks and steep mountainsides to graze on annual grasses and other forage in the intermontane valleys before, as is often the case, moving onto one of the adjacent mountain ranges. In other words, they are basin-and-range creatures, not simply (mountain) range animals. Norman Simmons, the guy with the Ph.D. dissertation, used a paintball gun and different colors of indelible paint to shoot populations of sheep in separate ranges on the Cabeza Prieta. This was in the pre radio-collaring days, so it was a somewhat crude way of being able to tell on sight which sheep had been where. It wasn’t long before Mexicans a long way south of the border began reporting sightings of bighorns wtih different colored splotches on them.

What all this suggests is that in order to maintain a stable population, desert bighorns need more than just mountains. They need the valleys, too. Moreover, unlike javelinas, coyotes, raccoons, and bobcats, which seem not to mind suburban (and even urban) surroundings all that much, desert bighorns are notoriously skittish around Homo sapiens. This would further suggest that it is the overall development next to and up into the Catalinas that is the problem and not that of any single housing or commercial devleopment. Places like Oro Valley and Saddlebrooke figure into the equation as well.

Arizona State Fish & Game relies solely on sales of hunting and fishing licenses, including the very expensive permits to hunt desert bighorns, for its income. There are plenty of desert bighorns thriving in places like the Kofa Mountains; the species is not endangered. But no one lives in the Kofa Mountains nor are the Marines and Air Force folks bombing hell out of it. So why not plant desert bighorns in the Catalinas should there be even the slimmest chance a potentially lucrative source of G&F income might be generated? And God knows there are plenty of mountain lions, animals that sometimes need to be “harvested” at a cost to G&F. Those big kitties are great until they start to eat your livestock or gobble up your pets.

Someone whom I would trust as knowledgeable told me the other day there is a huge number of mountain lions in the Catalinas, some of them now routinely showing up in places like Sabino Canyon and in the yards of people living in the foothills. This person actually cited a figure, but other than being surprised by how high it was, I don’t recall the exact number.
It would be nice to have desert bighorns within view again. Just as it would be nice once more to see Sonoran pronghorns at Oracle Junction as Hazel and I did when we arrived in Tucson in 1955. But except for temporary injections like the one currently being administered, I suspect those days are gone forever.
B. \ /
0
_( )_

Filed Under: Opinion, Places, Tucson History Tagged With: , , , , ,

The George Mehl Story

October 22, 2013 by

cropped-DSC_0032.jpg

Along about the mid 1980s, a local developer decided to build a world-class resort in the foothills. That resort became La Paloma, but the developers George Mehl and his brother David, ran into some stout opposition. For one thing, the Mehls proposed to build a Jack Nichlaus 27-hole golf course with lots of grass and ponds, pretty as you please and needing a ton of water.

In those days, Tucson was a serious tree-hugging community. The outrage swelled not only over the amount of water to be spilled for this play land of the rich, but for all the beautiful flora that would be destroyed as well. But then some very smart people suggested Mehl could irrigate his golf course with reclaimed water. He need only build a pipeline from the city’s resources to the La Paloma site. Mehl quickly agreed and paid for it. There wasn’t much argument.

The Mehls also agreed to hire an outfit to map and preserve all the flora on the development site (not in the golf course area). After the development was in place, the flora was put back.

The La Paloma course was the first private course to use reclaimed water. Today about half the courses in the county use reclaimed water.

George Mehl did the right thing for his community. And the community reciprocated, sort of. The county changed the name of the Foothills Park off River Road just east of the Tucson Jewish Community Center to the George Mehl Family park. It was to honor Mehl and the four other members of his family. All five died in 1991 when the private plane he was piloting crashed near Cortez, Colorado. Mehl was 41. I don’t have an age for his wife, Deborah. His daughters were Natalie, 12, Laura, 8 and Jenna,3.

While the park is named for the George Mehl family, there’s no plaque or other explanation saying who he was,what he did or how he died. Sooner or later, I’m sure, that will change. He did far more than build a beautiful resort.

Filed Under: People, Tucson History Tagged With: , ,

A Great Grande Tragedy

September 28, 2013 by

DSCF0614When I first started as a reporter at the Arizona Daily Star, I had not quite acquired a taste for the red. I had been a green chile fan. I still am. But nothing rivals a good bowl of red chile, and the place I first encountered Nirvana in the form of chile colorado was in 1971at the Grande Tortilla Factory, 914 N. Grande. My city editor, Bill Waters, showed me the way.

The GTF was but a five minute drive from the paper, which was on Stone Avenue, downtown where it belonged then and belongs today. The red chile burro was absolute perfection, wrapped in  the perfectly formed flour tortilla. The beef was as tender as a Hoagy Carmichael ballad. The gravy of meat juices and chile was a combination beyond what I thought humanly possible.

Of course, the GTF was not just about red chile. It was about all things comida Mexicana. There was a long line at lunch time. In late summer, the factory was busy grinding masa for tamales.  On the weekends, customers cued up with big pots in hand, waiting to be filled with menudo.

I have heard the carne seca was a legend unto itself. It was, alas, my misfortune to never discover it. I could never order beyond red.

The GTF is closed now, the windows shuttered. Every time I pass by, I wish the same wish — that it be 1947 and Frank Pesqueira is about to open for the first time.

But he does not. It’s still closed, a tragedy far greater than even Shakespeare could imagine.

Filed Under: Places, Tucson History Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Bob Cauthorn, 1922-2013

September 19, 2013 by

If this town ever builds a monument to its conservationists, the memory of Bob Cauthorn should be thus enshrined.

Bob died this week after a long illness. He was 91.

As a member of the Tucson City Council, he led the monumental effort to impose conservation by sharply increasing water rates. This was done through the city water utility, today known as Tucson Water. The increases weren’t just sharp. They were shocking. Otherwise rational people became screaming, foam-at-the-mouth banshees when they saw their water bills. I have described what happened during this time in the city’s history elsewhere on this site.

While Bob was not recalled in an acrimonious recall election, it was because he found a very good job in Florida. He resigned from the council. His empty seat was filled in the recall election. The water war cost four incumbent council members their political careers. When faced with the necessity for conservation, the council successors retained the water-rate increases. Tucson became a national leader in water conservation.

Bob also was a key figure during another city crisis — the public safety strike. Tucson’s policemen left the city unprotected for a time.

After he retired, Bob returned to Tucson a widower. He struck up a friendship with the incomparable community activist and champion of worthy causes Joan Kaye, and they were married.

Politicians come and go without accomplishing much. They get caught up in minutiae. Few can claim a single major accomplishment during their service. Bob Cauthorn will always be among those few.

 

 

Filed Under: Opinion, People, Tucson History

Linda Ronstadt

August 26, 2013 by

cropped-Screen-Shot-2013-08-26-at-3.42.40-PM.jpgLinda Ronstadt is not a regular pop diva.

You might have thought so when you heard “Different Drum” in the 1960s. Back then Ronstadt was the lead singer of the Stone Ponys. She had a good string of hits after that. I can still hear, “you’re no good, you’re no good” in my mind’s ear and my favorite, “It’s So Easy,” written by the immortal Charles Harden Holley (cq).

But she was not content with just pop and rock and roll. She ventured as few pop singers would. She sang Gilbert and Sullivan, old fashion American standards with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra and stood on stage to do duets with the magnificent Lola Beltran at the Tucson Mariachi Conference (1986). Few, if any, pop singers have demonstrated such range. She not only recorded Mexican standards based on her father’s favorites, but also albums with Dolly Parton and Emmy Lou Harris with amazing harmonies.

She is 67, not ancient by today’s standards. So it was a sad and melancholy moment to read that she has Parkinson’s and will not sing again.

She is Tucson born and bred, homegrown with a long family history to boot. It was fun over the years to watch her career develop because her roots are here. That made it doubly sad.

Filed Under: Opinion, People, Tucson History Tagged With: , , ,

Jeff Smith, in memoriam

August 9, 2013 by

Jeff Smith ranks among the most talented writers you could find in Tucson’s  newspaper history. Some stories about his work are the stuff of legend.

It is said that Frank Johnson, the Star’s managing editor, stopped the presses and ordered many copies destroyed when he read a review by Smith, who test-drove cars and wrote a Saturday column. Smith said one car — a very fine one, evidently — was “auto-erotic,” a phrase that unpleased Johnson.

There is another story about a particularly attractive woman who was summoned to give evidence in a trial. Smith, the story goes, wrote that so-and-so testified in court “wearing a hound’s-tooth skirt three teeth long.”

The report that Smith, 67, died this week at his home just outside Patagonia reminded me that I had heard from him last year about a piece that appears elsewhere in the amalgam of flotsam rippling across this site. It was regarding a heavily researched piece on Abe Chanin, a long-time Tucson newspaperman for the Arizona Daily Star. Smith and I worked for Chanin in the 1970s on the Star’s editorial page. Chanin was our friend, and a great teacher.

I did not thank Smith for the comment. I regret that. Here is what he wrote:

__________________________

jeff smith says:

November 28, 2012 at 2:31 pm

as a friend and employee of abe’s at the star editorial page in the founding day’s of the ‘red star’ i can only thank you for this stroll down memory lane. a job well done. i think the best that can be said of a print journalist is that day-to-day, week-by-week he left his town a better place to be. sounds common, is common, but what could be better? i never knew a more thoroughly moral man than abe chanin. i loved working for him, with him, loved him then, loved him still.

_________________________

Abe Chanin will be 91 this year. He lives in Albuquerque.

Filed Under: People, Tucson History, Writers Tagged With: , , ,

Ron Asta, the productive one-term politician

July 27, 2013 by

Ron Asta had one of the shortest political careers in Tucson history.

He was elected as a Democrat to the Pima County board of supervisors in 1972. Four years later, voters gave him the boot, or, better said, homebuilders financed a big campaign against him — enough money to kick his butt from Tuesday to December. And back. Asta came along when growth sizzled in Tucson. He campaigned on the oddly logical notion that such rapid growth ought to be managed or controlled. This was, naturally, anathema to homebuilders, developers and other related denizens of the real estate trade.

Asta last November

Asta, November, 2012

Despite his short political life, Asta left a legacy. He did two things to make Pima County better than it might have been. He was responsible in large part for creating Catalina State Park. And, second, he was the key element in saving the Empire Ranch from being sliced and diced into small lots and sold like hot cakes. That is what happened to Rio Rico more than 40 years ago.

Asta gets no credit. That’s because he’s remembered for trying to shoplift a steak from a grocery store. That cloud hovered over him for 20 years. Two years ago (in 2011) he announced as a Republican primary candidate for mayor. His campaign lasted two days. The press tore him apart, recalling the steak incident and a tragic auto accident in which a woman was killed. Asta was at fault in the accident.

Asta said he decided to run because there was a great lack of leadership in the city. That has been true since George Miller left office. In fact, I would love to hear what any Tucson mayor since the 1970s besides Miller and the honorable James N. Corbett has accomplished. Anything. We have nothing but zeros, nada behind such names as Lew Murphy, Tom Volgy and Bob Walkup.  It likely will remain the case until the city charter is changed to create a strong mayor governmental structure. The city manager runs the city.  The city charter is a creature of the 1920s and ill-suited to metropolitan governance in 2013.

Asta managed to eliminate destruction of the Empire Ranch by demonstrating the development had inadequate water supplies. The owners had proposed city of many thousands. He accomplished that while was on the staff of the Pima County Planning Department, second to its director Alex Garcia.

Then Asta ran for the Pima County Board of Supervisors in ’72. He won. It was an election like no other, before or since. The Arizona Legislature, that majestic institution today devoted primarily to the well being of Maricopa County and political pedantry, decided the state’s two urban counties, Pima and Maricopa, should have greater representation. To that end, it passed legislation that two additional districts be added in each urban county, thus increasing the number of supervisors from three to five.

Only one incumbent supervisor sought reelection. Asta was one of four new faces, but by far the most controversial. He was known as a leader of the New Democrats, a small group of politicians who argued for controls on growth. When a developer, John Ratliff, proposed to carve up much of the western slope of the Catalinas, Asta led the movement to preserve it as a state park. It was thus preserved.

But Asta attracted enormous opposition. Defeat in 1976 was the price for his activism. It’s sad that he is remembered only for getting caught trying to shoplift a porterhouse.

Filed Under: People, Tucson History Tagged With: ,

Lunch with Ernesto Portillo at La Costa Brava, 3541 S. 12th Avenue

December 13, 2012 by


La Costa Brava has the best cabrilla, the best fish soup and shrimp ranchero I have had in this town. I am not sure how long ago I discovered it. Actually, I did not actually discover it. I was led there by my long time friend and compadre Ernesto Portillo Sr. who was for several decades the towering voice of Tucson’s Spanish radio. His story is also the story of Tucson radio from the mid-1950s.

Neto is a Chihuahuense, born in Parral. When he was a youth, his family moved to Juarez. His[slickr-flickr set=”Neto” delay=”2″] brother-in-law, who Ernesto says was one of the old-time broadcasters

]in Juarez, asked him if he might like to learn about radio. He got his training outside a radio control room, using a salt shaker instead of a microphone.

Neto qualified for his broadcaster license in 1951 at the ripeold age of 17 after taking examinations in Mexico City. He was given a provisional license only because he was underage. His official papers were issue when he turned 18.

Ernesto worked in Juarez radio for three years, figuring — correctly as it turned out — that he would either go to Mexico City or the United States to further his career. Spanish-language radio started in Tucson in 1953 with the advent of KEVT. Months later, in 1954, Neto got a call and an offer to come to Tucson. He was 20, working in radio and in father’s store in Juarez. He took the job. He stayed at KEVT until 1960 when he took a job selling life insurance. That lasted only three and a half years.

Two of his fellow radio colleagues at KEVT, Oscar Stevens and Carlos McCormick, applied for a license to operate the second Spanish-language station in Tucson, which eventually was granted. They asked Neto to be sales manager.

KXEW began broadcasting in November of 1963. After six months, they asked Neto to manage the station. After a time, the station’s management asked Ernesto to help establish a FM Spanish-language station. Years later, a group of investors, including Neto, Tucson attorney Lowell Rothchild — father of the present mayor — and Swede Johnson, a University of Arizona vice president, acquired the stations. Harry Belafonte was the principal seller.

In 1978, the group sold the FM station. It survives today as KRQ with obviously a different format. The group then sold the AM station KCEW two years later.

After three and a half decades in Tucson radio, Ernesto still was not finished. Neto joined the well-known restaurateur Diego Valenzuela of Gordo’s Mexican Restaurant, whose TV commercials were ubiquitous — “If you really like chimichangas, if you REALLY REALLY like chimichangas — to form another investor group. This one included Macario Saldate, a retired UA professor and currently a member of the Arizona Legislature, and Raul Grijalva, formerly a Pima County supervisor and now a U.S. congressman. This was the start of KQTL, which began broadcasting in October 1985.

This group sold KQTL in 2000 to a company with a chain of stations.

The radio business, like most media enterprises, has changed. Sharp decreases in  advertising revenue has led to consolidation of radio companies. “Two or three companies own about 98 percent of the stations,” said Neto. “It’s a different world. Local ownership, group ownership representing your community is a thing of the past.. It’s big business now.”

The Costa Brava is not a big business. It remains a sort of sideline for the wholesale seafood business, which was founded by Levi Rodriquez. He was a shrewd businessman, developing relationships with fishermen up and down the Baja Peninsula and the Sonora and Sinaloa coasts. At one time, he had a couple of store-fronts. Levi died a few years ago. His sons run the operation today.

Gloria Hugues, Levi’s daughter-in-law, has managed the restaurant for decades. She is the hero of the kitchen.

The restaurant stands out in at least one other respect — its décor. It includes some amazing Seri carvings, nautical paintings and prints, lots of parrots, nets, an enormous pocket-watch clock and tillers. At one end is a huge stuffed marlin caught by Nick Paulos of the now extinct Paulos Restaurant and a marvelous, hand-carved bow sprit at the front of a divider.

I invited the well-known auto dealer Jim Click to join me for camarones rancheros. Levi and Gloria went all out and brought out an enormous skillet. The shrimp was by far more than we could eat. Click, who will be known as one of the most generous men this town has ever known, picked up the pan and served all the other patrons in the restaurant.

It’s that kind of place.

 

Filed Under: People, Tucson History Tagged With: , , , , , ,

William R. Mathews, the Star’s curmudgeon editor and gifted editorial writer

November 22, 2012 by

Mathews plaque

The Arizona Daily Star today (Nov. 22) ran an editorial (read it here) that first was published on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23) 1961. The newspaper did not say who the writer was, but I think I recognize the direct clarity of style and thought as being that of William R. Mathews.

Mathews was a professional curmudgeon, otherwise engaged as editor and publisher of The Arizona Daily Star from 1930 until his death in 1969. It was said one could not get elected dog catcher without Mathews’ approval.

It might have been true. He played politics full time, locally, statewide and on a national basis. He seemed to have a direct pipeline to the State Department. He predicted the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor two weeks before it happened. He was aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo harbor when the Japanese surrendered.

He was a gifted writer as the editorial shows. It surprises me that he was so good. He also was incredibly productive; his editorials appeared everyday even when he traveled so extensively. I imagine he never dreamed he would write editorials for a living.

Mathews fought in the Great War, and was a hero, capturing Germans and winning the Croix de Guerre. He was the business manager of a Santa Barbara newspaper when fate beckoned, and he accepted a position at the Star for 2 percent ownership. In return for the small interest in the paper, Mathews was to watch over the paper’s business affairs, a sort of ballast to Ralph Ellinwood who was editor by virtue of the fact his father bought the paper for him. His father, E. E. Ellinwood, was an attorney for Phelps Dodge.

Medical School entrance

Ralph Ellinwood was by all accounts a good editor. He was a graduate of Columbia’s School of Journalism and had worked for the Sacramento Union. He, too, had fought in World War I and spent time in a German prison camp. Ellinwood died young in 1930 after only a few years in charge of the Star. Ownership fell to Ellinwood’s widow, Clare, and Mathews. He ran the editorial operations. Mrs. Ellinwood played a part in management.

There’s very little to commemorate Mathews’ contribution to the city. There’s a small plaque with his bust in relief outside the entrance to the UA School of Medicine. He was the driving force behind the UA medical school, having campaigned personally and in print to bring it here.

Mathews carried out Ralph Ellinwood’s desire to establish the liberal tone to the Star’s editorials. Thus he is among the first to blame for the Star’s alleged reputation as The Red Star.

Filed Under: Newspapers, Tucson History Tagged With: , , , , ,