Today is May 28th, 2010. And I'm Chuck back as the technical support staff.
Today is uh John mcintosh on camera Dave Shay Linda Vanoy, who is the
video history project chair. And today we're talking to Rudy Campbell.
My name is Rudy Campbell. And uh I'm a former member of the Tippe City
Council and a former mayor of Tempe and served 16 years on the Arizona
border regions. So Rudy uh tell us where you're born and uh about your
parents and siblings.
Well, I was born a long time ago in 1923 in Tishomingo, Oklahoma and
Tishomingo. I tell everyone it's about 35 miles south of Wanui if you're
looking for it. But uh but uh I was born there just about 12 years after
Oklahoma became a state before that, it was Indian territory because the
federal government had set aside all of this land. And we're moving the
five civilized tribes out of the southeastern part of the United States
into the Indian territory. It was called and uh my, my side of the that
was Chickasaw Indians who were moved out of the uh uh Mississippi along
the northern parts of the Gulf States and into Kentucky and Tennessee. And
they moved the Chickasaws in 1840 into this area and uh settled them in a
, in a place that they named Pingo cause that was the capital of their
nation before they came to Oklahoma. So they, they moved their capital to
Oklahoma and became uh a nation there. It's interesting, I found in
reading that I discovered something I've never seen before, but I got a
book out of the University of Oklahoma Press and they moved 4500
Chickasaws out of the South and they brought with them 1000 black slaves.
I had no idea. I've never read that in any book, but they brought slaves
with them because they were somewhat civilized and they had slaves also.
So they brought them with them. Uh My mother and father were both born in
Indian territory and my mother's side of the family has the Chickasaw
Indian blood that I claim a little bit of. Uh I don't remember anything
about my first five years. But when I was five, I started school and on my
memory, I go back to, I remember the school that I went to and little
country school and where we lived. And I've been back there to visit that
place through the years. And uh my father worked for the Magnolia Oil
Company and they were drillers. They were all over Southern Oklahoma. They
had the leases on all the land, they were drilling for oil and uh they
transferred him to a little town close to Oklahoma City named Saint Louis.
So we moved from the Fox area, what we called it when I was about the
second grade into Saint Louis. And we were only there about six months and
they was transferred down to another place called uh Sandy and he was a
pumper. Now pumper when they have a lot of oil wells out pumping oil, they
have to have someone tending those all the time. Unlike the Gulf states
that we're ff uh w worried about right now, but he would make the rounds.
So about 12 oil wells that were pumping oil, make sure they were
functioning, right. They had little gas engines driving the pumps and long
belt 20 ft long turning the pump to bring the oil to the surface. And he
would go around sometimes at night, sometimes at day and, and check the
oil and see how the wells were pumping. So we were in that place until
1932 and then the government declared uh uh uh they called it proration of
drilling and oil production. We were headed into the real depression.
Prices were down. So they were shutting down the oil fields. And so my dad
lost his job. I was in the third grade and he became, he found a farm down
in South central Oklahoma owned by a lady in uh Oklahoma City and he made
arrangements for us to go there and farm. Now, he's a sharecropper. You've
heard of sharecropper? She owned the land and we farmed it on shares and
she was to get a, a share of what we did, what we made on the farm. And I
can guarantee you, I don't think that she got very much out of it. The
three years we were there in the spring of 32 to 35 because the rain was
50% of what the normal rain was for those three years. And we were dry
land, farmers and you can't do much on, on rainfall, which is 50% off. So
in 1935 a lot of the people were getting ready to leave and uh if you've
read the grapes of Wrath, they could have filmed us as we left Oklahoma in
1935. Right now, at the end of May, there were four old cars and a big
truck with all of our stuff on it. And we were a bunch of gypsies headed
west. We knew where we were going because we had heard there was a lot of
work around Mesa Arizona farm work. So we headed out, went down through
Southeast Southwester, Oklahoma angled across Texas clear to El Paso and
then went up to Deming New Mexico and then cut across through the globe
and came down into the Phoenix area. We were on the road four days and
nights and we had camped alongside the road when it was about to get dark
and we can make the camp like a bunch of gypsies. Next day, we're on the
road again and half the time we spent fixing flats and running out of gas.
And there was, uh, an exciting trip for a 12 year old boy. I was just
loving it. I had a beanie flipper and I was shooting all the birds and
rabbits along the road and I was enjoying it as we came down out of the
mountains. I'll never forget this. We, my dad was driving a 1928 model. A
Ford that someone had loaned him. We didn't have a car. Someone said, if
you'll drive this car out there, you can have the transportation and I'm
gonna sell it when you, when we get to Arizona. So he was driving someone
else's car and we were coming down the mountain toward Patchy Junction in
the afternoon or end of May. I think it's about 100 and five. And my
mother never said a swear word in her life. But she looked at my dad and
my dad was named the pole in, but they called him Pole. She said, Pole,
you're driving us straight into hell. And that's what we thought we were
coming into. We drove into Mesa and a lot of Okies had driven down the
south side of town, some big cottonwood trees on the canal bank and we
drove into that and there's probably 75 to 100 people around those
cottonwoods. And we were another part of the clan. There's an irrigation
ditch running. And I was in that dish before my dad turned the engine off.
We've been four days on the road without a bath and it was hot and dirty
and I was in it closes and all. And it was the greatest thrill I had in
the whole trip. So we, my mother always fixed our meals and campfires. We
never ate in a motel or ate in a restaurant or stayed in a motel in all of
our tra travels. This is our first one. I'll tell you a little bit about
the rest. But, uh, the next day, all of us, my mother, my father, my
sister, just two years older than me and I grabbed the northeast northwest
corner of, uh, Baseline Road and Gilbert Road chopping cotton. Now,
chopping cotton is taking a hole and going down the road and thinning out
the cotton to 18 inches apart and cutting all the weeds in the grass as
you go. I know it was 105 degrees and we were paid eight cents a roll and
we could all chop six in the morning and six in the afternoon. So we
chopped 12 rows of cotton. Each one of us at eight cents is 96 cents a
piece that each of us made for that day's work. We went to the old Basher
store in downtown Mesa and we couldn't carry out all the groceries that,
that $4 bought. Uh, and I, I researched this through some newspaper, old
newspapers, coffee was 15 cents a pound. You could buy a £10 sack of
potatoes for 25 cents and a slice of a big, uh, uh, loaf of bread uns was
eight cents. So, you see, it's relative. We bought a lot of groceries for
, for $4. And that's where we started our life in Arizona. We became
migrant farm workers and we worked through June and July. We chopped
cotton. We uh got into the melons, they had the cantaloupe and the
honeydew later on in the summer, there was a, a plum orchard that we
helped strip. We worked until about the middle of August and everything
was done at that in that area that we could do. So my dad had heard of a
place up in Colorado on the Arkansas River where they had uh Libby's
Canning Factory and they raised uh uh onions and green beans and apples
and the people came to pick them. So we headed about the middle of August.
We headed for Colorado and uh and uh but this time he had bought a little
old uh uh one seat Chevrolet coup with a uh rumble seat. So we got into
that with everything we own, which is a couple of rugs and, you know, in
traveling in those days, we didn't have ice boxes, we didn't have water
jugs at all. We didn't have anything like that. We didn't have bedrolls,
we didn't have cots, but we camped out alongside the road and took us four
days in the old car to get to Colorado. And in the middle of August went
right up the Rio Grande Valley all the way from Deming New Mexico up
through to uh uh up to top out at Rat Hole and into a little town called
Manson Nola near Rocky Ford. The next day, we were out in the fields
picking green beans and tomatoes. But it was a blessing. It was 4500 ft
elevation. The temperature was about 80 degrees instead of 100 and five.
And we thought we'd gone almost to heaven. But we worked that until uh
about the first of October and then they had a frost and that was the end
of our crops. So we were on the road again and this time, incidentally, uh
I had not started school yet until we got to Colorado. But in September, I
started school there in the seventh grade. And my dear mother, my father
and mother had only been through the sixth grade, but my mother would say
, you know, Rudy, I saw a schoolhouse right down the street there, go down
there and get yourself in. She wouldn't take me. But she told me to go get
myself in. So I started in the seventh grade in Manola, Colorado. We were
only there about a month and a half and everything was done. So my dad and
mother said, let's go back to Oklahoma and visit the relatives before we
go back to Arizona. So we headed for Oklahoma, got down to the old folks
place and we stayed there about three or four weeks and I was in school, I
never, I never missed in school with all this running around that we did.
My mother would say, well, I saw the school down there. So go get yourself
in. So we did that. And then about in the middle of November, we headed
back to Arizona, we landed back in Mesa and I went and started to school
in Mesa. So that was my third year, third school in the first year in the
seventh grade. And we did that until I graduated from high school. I won't
take you through all of these. But we did that year after year after year
until I was 18 years old and out of high school. But I've uh looking back
and I've told my kids and grandkids this, I felt that I was in a crucible
, being tempered for my life ahead because I was learning some things with
those experiences that no one else could possibly learn. We learned to
survive. I tell you one story that I, I didn't know what was happening at
the time. And looking back, it was a real lesson when we got to Manola
Colorado pulled off the side of the road and under some cottonwood trees.
My dad told my mother said, well, get lunch together and I'm gonna walk
downtown to see if I can find something. I went with him, went into the
first building, there was a garage. Two guys are working on an old car.
This is 1935.
And he told him, he said, hey, you guys, he said I can take that car apart
and put it back together. A pair of pliers. Do you need any help? You know
, you wanna take a few days off, I can work for you. And they said, well,
no, we don't have anything here right now. So we went to the next building
and the next building was a little store with a butcher shop in the corner
of it. He walked in, there was a be hanging up there. And my dad said, you
know, I can take one of those beans down and cut it up into every thing
that you want to cut up and package it and put it in the deep freeze just
like you're doing it. Could you need anybody right now? You want to take
some days off? And he said, no, we're, we're ok. The next one went into
and believe it or not, it was a barbershop and he walked in and said, hey
, he said I can cut hair as long as there's hair on the head. Do you need
any help? Because he had on the farm, the people, the guys would come to
our house every Sunday afternoon, my dad had some clippers and scissors
and he'd cut their hair so he could cut hair. No, no, they didn't need any
help. Well, the next one was a service station and he asked the same thing
, he said, no, we don't have anything. He said, however, we're getting
ready to put in a gas grill here and we're gonna serve hamburgers and hot
dogs to people come to the service station. He said, can you do that? He
said, sure I can do that. So he got a job cooking hamburgers and hot dogs.
Now, that's perseverance. That's having confidence in yourself that you
can find something and you can look them in the eye and tell them I can do
that and take, get a job. And I've used that with a lot of my kids and
young people. I've talked to that don't think there's any opportunity out
there for them. You can make your opportunity. Well, anyway, we, I won't
tell you all the story, but we have a lot of tough things along the way
and, and we travel all the time. That's long secure this trip. And we
never stayed in a motel or never ate a, a meal in a restaurant. We'd pull
over the side of the road and my mother get stuff out and make a meal and
we go on, we had a lot of, of pork and beans and bologna. I can guarantee
because we had no ice Ts. We couldn't carry meat and anything that would
spoil. But we made the rounds and finally back in Mesa, I got into high
school and I was so uncomfortable because I didn't have the right clothes
to wear. And I was a misfit every way you look at it. And, uh I was very
unhappy, but my dear mother wanted me to go to school and so I was doing
it to please her. And so I finally got through my freshman year and that
year going to three schools was like before. And my sophomore year ago, we
just went to Colorado and came right back to, uh to Mesa. Well, my dad was
, uh, he could sing any song that was ever written and he knew most of
them and he'd sing to us and he was always having fun with him and I
inherited his voice. I guess you'd call it. I was singing in the boys glee
club as a sophomore. Mr William Wheatley promoted me to a cappella choir,
which is the very top of the singing group in school. Incidentally, Mesa
High school was 96.9% Mormon. I guarantee you. And I was not a Mormon, but
I got along with him fine, but he put me in a cappella choir and I, I
really flourished because I could sing and I finally did something that
the other kids liked. And then my junior year I made the varsity
basketball. And so I got into sports and music and now I was glad to go to
school and it helped me with my grades too because I had an interest in my
grades also. So I got through those very, very tough years and some sad
things. But again, it's a lesson. Um, I had leads in and operators and I
sang at commencement and I sang with everything. Incidentally, you
remember rusty bars who used to be in the legislature. His mother was
Natel King and she was in, she was in my class and she had the most
perfect singing voice of any teenager I've ever heard in my life. And it
was my privilege to sing some duets with her commencement and that sort of
thing. So anyway, the music and athletics got me through. But I, here's
the sad part, but it's another lesson
I had leads in the operators. I graduated from a grade school in Mesa. I
graduated from high school in Mesa. I played basketball in Mesa. And
neither of my parents ever once came to see me because my mother's best
dress was, uh pla or just a gingham dress that she had made herself.
That's her best dress. And she did not feel that she could go to any of
these functions where all the L DS people were well dressed, knew how to
handle themselves and the crowds and all of that, they could not do that.
And so I promised myself, I will never ever press my mother to come to
any of these if she doesn't want to. And so they never came and I never,
never embarrassed her. The only thing I remember about it is the next
morning, always before I left for school, my mom would come around and say
, how did things go last night. And so I would tell her of course, but
they never came to see any of that. And I think the lesson is you can get
along without having everything perfect. You know, you have to live with
it and go on with your life and don't be held back because something's not
going like you'd like for it to be. Well, get out of that. My senior year
, I was in Manola Colorado. That's where I always started from all of
these. We always were there in late summers where I started. Well, I dated
a girl there named Greta Kent the first of our, my senior year in 1940 she
was a junior and we dated for about three weeks and then we were gone. We
had our old mattresses on the car and we were headed back this time, went
straight back to Mesa. And uh so Greta and I wrote, wrote to each other.
We, we, we did our love making through letters. I wrote to her probably
twice a week and she did me next year I graduated in high school and I
didn't go back on the road with my parents and I'll tell about that. So,
Greta and I did our courting by mail and it was almost two years when she
graduated. Then I went back up for her graduation. And within probably 24
hours of arriving there, we were engaged. Now, she had had her single old
boyfriend back and I dated girls in Mesa, but we were truly meant for each
other and we did it through the mail. And so I've told my kids and
grandkids that we had a, a short courtship, but, uh, everything worked out
fine.
We, um, tell us more about your, your life in Arizona. There was a
transition period, of course. And, and my marriage did that too. Uh, we
were living on the south side of Mason, an old house and no plumbing
inside, no water at all, inside, no bathroom porch. We had a bathroom or
toilet in the alley. We bathed in a wash tub in the kitchen and the whole
family lived like that. We had never lived in a house that had a heater in
it or a bathtub. But then when, well, uh, back up, then after grand, I got
married of course, we moved into a house. But before we were married, um
my senior year in high school, I said I am not going to be a fruit tramp
all my life. My dad was a field worker. My granddad was a field worker and
I said I'm not gonna do that. And so in the summer after I graduated a
couple of guys and I went to San Diego, we got jobs over there. I worked
for Beacons van and storage. Oh, in high school, I promised myself I'm not
going to be a farm labor. I'm going to get into the business world. So I
worked for a Beacons van storage. And I came back to Mesa and went to work
for Firestone stores, selling tires down main street in downtown Mesa. And
I happened to be a pretty good salesman. So I did, well, now I was, I was
getting ready to go into the Navy because World War Two had just broken
out. And so I was a single man. So I was headed for the Navy right away.
And so my wife and I Greta and I decided not to get married. We would um
wait until I came home because there was a lot of young widows around town
at the time. So she was going to stay there until I left for the Navy.
Well, in December of 1942 my dad and mother went to uh younger sister,
went into Phoenix to do some shopping, came back and threw Tempe and, uh,
stopped at a lettuce packing shed right down on the railroad, right south
of Main street on rural and, and the railroad lettuce shed went up on the
shed to inquire about work and the mind said it on Friday. He said I come
back money, I'll put you to work. He drove right out in front of the train
and it, uh, killed my father and mother and 14 year old sister. So that
changed my situation from a single oh, and left me and me at home with a
little five year old brother. And so now I had a dependent. So I changed
my draft status. And uh so Greg and I decided to go ahead and get married
because I wasn't leaving for the Navy right away. So we got married and
now I had two dependents. So it was about a year and a half later before
my number came up. And I went into the Navy. I told you about the accident
that took my parents and uh all my okie relatives came out here, all my
uncles and aunts and cousins for the funeral and all, and they went, all
went back home and every family wanted to take my little brother. He was
the cutest little thing you've ever seen big brown eyes and everyone loved
him and, and uh I wouldn't let him take it because he was, he was gonna go
back and be raised just like I was on a farm. I told Lady K when they gave
me an honorary phd here in 2000, I said, Lady just think when I was nine
year, just before we left Oklahoma, I was 12 years old while I was walking
behind the team. Harrowing corn. I was barefooted. Now, you're giving me a
phd. My folks went home and I kept my little brother and, uh, he was in
the first grade and I was sitting there at the house with him one night
and Greta had come down here, she was living here. She had a room across
town and I was sitting there with him, help him with his studies and uh, a
knock on the door and went to the door and there stood a guy with two big
cigar boxes under his arm and, uh, he said I got something here for you.
And so I opened the door and he stepped in and set him on the table. He
said, I work for Peterson Brothers service station up on the corner of
Maine and Robeson and Mesa. He said we hung some buckets out on there on
the pumps to help the Campbell family.
And I opened it and he left. I thanked him and he left and open those up.
And there's enough money I was going the next day up to the mortuary to
sign a note. I had no money. There was no insurance, no nothing. I found
$60 in the house. My dear mother had a big old family picture up on the
wall and, uh, took it down on behind. It was an, an envelope she had glued
to the back of it and there was 3 $20 bills. That was her grocery money
that she had to squirrel away. So I had $60 for three burials. And, uh,
this, this was enough money to pay off the debt. Now, I, I didn't realize
I wasn't smart enough to realize the importance of that until I got grown
and got out into the real world. And I, I give that part credit for all
these things I have done. Look what that community did for me who didn't
even know me or know my family. They didn't know us. We didn't have
anything going in Mesa Arizona. They did it because we needed help. So
that has had a lot of great effect on my community service. And I went
through boot camp and they sent me to a school in New York City to be a
dispersing storekeeper. And they sent me to the Great Lakes in Chicago to
be uh a uh a storekeeper. Storekeeper is a bookkeeper in the Navy and sent
me to Terminal Island to separate them from the service because the war
was ending down. And so I, I served out my time uh in the United States in
the Navy. And then
I come back from the, from the Navy. I went to work for the City Hall. I
was assistant to the city manager, not assistant city man, assistant to
which is a gopher was all, it was drugstore in Mesa where they serve
sandwiches. And I was there, I was having a sandwich by the manager of the
Valley National Bank there. But he asked me what I was doing and told him
I was working for the city and he said, we're hiring some new men at the
bank. We're growing, we'd like to have some people. Would you like to go?
And I said, well, I've never had any experience of banking. He said, well
, go and talk to Leroy Kellis. He's a personnel director. So I did and he
convinced me to come to work for him and I was making 100 and $65 a month
at the city. And I, and I said, well, what would my salary be here? He
said, well, we match that. And I said, well, what's the point? I said, uh
, why would I want to change jobs? Just, uh, he said, we have more
opportunity for you now, that had a bug with me. That, that I understood.
So I went to work for him. He told me to come back the next Monday. He
said, whoops, what? That's, it's November 11th. So that's a holiday. So we
, you can't come back till Tuesday. So I told everyone, my banking career
started with the holiday very first one. So I became a banker. I was five
years of National Bank in Mesa. And then there was, I was uh uh booted
upstairs to be assistant manager of the Valley Bank. And Chandler.
Incidentally, we were the only bank in town, the only one in Mesa and
Chandler was the only bank I was there two years. And during that time,
some people had started a new bank in Mesa called the first State Bank.
And they wanted to open a branch in Tempe. And so they came and hired me
away from the Vila bank in China to come to Tempe to be there to open the
second bank in Tempe in 1954. And it's still there where the brickyard is.
There's still a bank there. It's been 14 kinds of banks since then. But
and then I stayed there for five years. And then they booed me upstairs to
be by, we became Bank of Douglas. We merged into the Bank of Douglas in 55.
And then they kicked me upstairs as vice president and in charge of uh
business development. So I was out calling on people uh companies
primarily to get their banking business and my salary wasn't going up very
well. Banking salaries weren't very good in those days. So, and almost
everyone that I was giving advice to on their finances were making three
times as much money as I was. And I said, this doesn't make sense. And so
I talked over with my wife and I resigned from the bank and went out to
look for something else and ended up in the financial planning and
insurance business where I was for the next 40 years. And it was the best
move I ever made. I was a little bit late in getting into it, but it was
fine, but you didn't cut all your ties with the banking industry. No, just
uh four years later after we had uh I had left the bank. So a group of
people said, look, why don't we form a bank in Tempe? And I said, let's do
it. And so they end up chairman of the board and I, I end up in chairman
of so many things, but I don't know why I picked the most of it was over
my head when I went into it. But anyway, I was chairman of the board and
we created the Soar Bank in Tempe on Broadway and Mill. It opened in 1964.
And we're doing very, very well. And four years later, we had an
opportunity to merge the Guaranty Bank in Phoenix, our bank in Tempe first
security in Mesa and the Arizona or I think it's Arizona Bank in Hela be
or no, somewhere down south. We merged four banks together in and uh I
want to say uh 64 68 68 and created the United Bank of Arizona in 68 with
merging four banks. And we ran that bank for 20 years from 68 to 88. And
then Citibank came along and bought us and we got all our money up. We did
very, very well in that sale. They kept me on the board of Citibank and
they, they sold to Norwest Bank and they kept me on the board then they
merged into Wells Fargo, which it is now. And I was on that board for
several years, but basically I was be on bank boards. So throughout those
years, working when you started soar Bank, wasn't that the one that Lee
Thompson, the Dean of Engineering, Lee Thompson was the Dean of the
College of Engineering. And Mer uh Mervin,
uh another professor at A SU was on our board. We had two people from a SU
on our board. I can't remember his name but just local businessmen. And we
did very well. And uh so I, and I've stayed pretty close to the banking
industry, emotion alive. And you stayed in Tempe then and lived in Tempe
sort of every, all the time after that. Yes, I'm still in Tempe in the
same house, in fact that we built back in those days. Um Now my
involvement with a SU um
Well, first tell you a little, little strange story. I was there to
supervise the construction of our building in the early 54. And I was in
the Rotary club and Gilbert Katy used to be at the A su sitting by me at
rotary one day. It was like in January of 54 and the bank, it wasn't even
open yet. And he said, uh, and I had made an announcement, I said, I wanna
invite all of you to our open house when we open our bank here next month.
So, uh, after I did that, well, uh Gilbert Katy said, hey, Reid said we
have some artwork up at the uh on the campus that we'll loan you for your
open house if you'd like to have it. I said, sure, that'd be great. Well,
do you remember Lon Macar, the western artist? Well, we had an, a one
brewery in Phoenix beer and uh Lon mcgarvey had done some great western
paintings for them to use for advertising. And they were four by three
oils and they would condense those down to a little plaque about like that
and which every bar in Arizona had on their bar hanging there. It was a
western scene and one was uh the best one was a cowboy in the sky and it
was a blue sky with a cow, a horse, white horse lying down and a cowboy
laying there half asleep on the cowboy's hip. And there was a p pretty
girl up there in another cloud. But on the, on the horse's hip was a
little brand a one because of that. They couldn't hang it in, at, at the
university. They wouldn't let anything with liquor on it so he couldn't
hang them. He said you can, you can borrow them and hang them in your bank
until I said that's great. And one was a ca uh, black bart. He's sitting
there in a barber chair with a pistol right here and had a full beard and
he had come in for a shave and the bartender was standing there, I mean,
the barber standing there didn't know whether to cut his shave off or
shave his hair or not. One was a big fat girl twirling rope and the other
was four cowboys singing out in front of a corral and those were the most
popular, uh, paintings that Longard had done. Well, we hung them in the
bank and I just kept them there. I just didn't, never did say anything
more. Gilbert tell you about them. Probably six months later, ran into him
and said, really? Don't you think you ought to return those to the
university? I said, yeah, well, later years and I've done this several
times now. They can hang them and they are hanging. But I go and inspect
them every once in a while to make sure that someone hasn't taken them to
Timbuktu. I think they're all in the College of Business now. And the, and
the most of them in the, uh, dean's office in that area and the girls in
there, I go and tell them the story of them. I said, now I'm gonna be back
and you better be sure that that's still hanging there. Anyway, that was
my first day issue. The second was, of course, the name change thing was
taking place. This is in the early fifties or mid FF and, uh, Jimmy Creman
asked me to serve on the committee and I think Don Dots was involved with
it, Don dot Who later became the head of the alumni association. But uh
all they wanted me to do, I was in rotary and they wanted me to speak to
as many rotary clubs as I could and getting the vote out and all that. And
they, uh Jim Cries said we want you to go in the southern part of the
States because that's where we got to get the votes to get this uh
university. So they sent me to uh Casa Grande and Coolidge and uh Hela
Bend and Yuma. And I spoke to those uh rotary clubs, every rotary club
member in those was a farmer and everyone of them had gone to the U of a
College of Agrico and I was in the lines, then I can guarantee you, you
can tell them to vote for a su to come to university. Here was the most
asked question of everyone. They were courteous to me. But uh every single
one of them said the, the uh is it true that you want to be a university
so you can have another law school? And I answered it very honestly and I
, it was absolutely honest. I, I said, and all the things I've heard
discussed about being a university, I have never heard a law school
mention. And I had not because that, that just, that was their fear. They
didn't want another law school. They absolutely did not want another law
school to compete with them. So I told him, I have not heard that and that
was actually true. Well, we got it done and the vote came in the vote. I
looked it up here not too long ago in Pima County. It was 3 to 13 to 1
against it and pi a 2 to 1 for it statewide. So the state made us a
university finally and, and then uh Doctor Gammon died about that time as
you know, and so Homer Derm came in and uh he became, he inherited a brand
new university. All that went with it. Recall you telling me a story about
when you were at the bank there in Tempe and Greedy Gamma J you to be down
with Frank Lloyd Wright. Would you r that? Well, it's a little different
than that. I was on the city council and I was like to the city council in
56. The mayor of Tempe was a drug downtown. Tempe, Hugh Laird.
Incidentally, I was on that council and everyone on that, but me was old
enough to be my father. They were all old timers in Tempe and didn't want
to do anything unusual. They had a rule that they wouldn't let a builder
come into town that would build more than three houses at one time. They
didn't want a subdivision. But anyway, he lad called me and he said, uh
Frank Lloyd Wright is supposed to be on site today and uh I'm supposed to
be there with him and I can't go, can you go for us? As on the city
council, I said, sure. So I just walked down three blocks there to the
site and Brady Gammons was there and uh Gilbert Katy and we were waiting
for Frank Lloyd Wright and finally drove up in a big, I think he had a big
two seated touring car with no pop on it. But he got out and he had a flat
Mexican hat and he had a cane and a cape line. And uh we were in suits. I
think it was in the fall or maybe the winter of the year. It wasn't hot,
it wasn't cold. But anyway, he came out to look at the site and there was
a jungle out there at that time. It was uh they had all their rakes and uh
tractors and all the lawn equipment out there in, in the curve where the
curve is. It was just a storage place. All it was funny thing he had this
cane and the dust was about that deep and all of us had on black shoes and
suits and, uh, Wright was kept peck peck pecking on the ground with his
cane. And I got to looking down and Katie saw it too that he was flipping
dirt all over Dr Gam's shoes and the cuffs of his pants was just coated
with dust, but he didn't know it. He had like a setter would look a do you
know, set. He would do like this and look over here and, and I look over
there, I don't know what he's looking at. Then he had to do like this.
He'd look over there. He was trying to envision what way he should, she
should point the, the audit, but it wasn't long. It was probably 20 or 30
minutes, but he was getting an idea of how to set the auditorium where it
was to be set. So that was my experience with the Great Frank Lloyd Wright
Dwight Patterson, uh, sponsored me in the, in the MA LA Club in 1950 when
I was at the bank. And then when I was transferred to Chandler, I was in
the rotary club there. In fact, I was president elect of it when I left to
go to Tempe. Then I spent the rest of my rotary years in Tempe how many
years? Well, 50 altogether, I was enrolled from 50 to 2000 and I, I
resigned and, and uh I said it's time for the young people to take over.
So let me tell you another little experience I had that will be a lead to
uh how I got to be on the Board of Regents on the council. In 56 to 60
we had a visitor by the name of Jack Williams, who was the mayor of
Phoenix at the time. And he came before the council with the city manager
of Phoenix. And I don't remember who he was, but they were applying to the
uh Aviation Authority, whoever that is in Washington for to extend their
runways further east cause big planes were coming in, more planes were
coming in. They need to make their airport longer and they wanted this,
they, it was a requirement that they get the cities around to approve it.
Well, they made their presentation and uh all the old fellows just sat
there and I said, you know, I think this is a good idea because we had
just zoned all of the property west of the railroad, clear down to
Southern as commercial and industrial, all the vacant land, there were
some houses over there, but we want to uh get commercial and industrial
plants into town for all these reasons. And I said that airport's gonna be
a great asset to a company that will will, uh, ends up on the west side of
Tempe, the airport right there in Phoenix. Pay for it. I said, I think we
ought to help them. Well, a motion was made to help them to endorse it or
whatever we had to do. And I was the only one that voted for that and all
the rest of the council turned it down. Well, Homer Durham, uh, Homer was
a very sociable guy, Very easy guy to deal with. I found him that way.
He's a Mormon guy and of course, a lot of L DS people in Mesa, in Arizona
and the legislature, he did well with the legislature. He could speak well
and I thought he was a pure academic. I'm not sure if I read him right on
that, but here he had a brand new university. All he could expect was
growth of all the colleges and adding colleges to make it a true
university. And uh that was his charge. And, and as far as I know, I think
he did a pretty good job at it. One more thing with the city. And I told
you they had a uh policy is all it was, it wasn't a ordinance or anything.
It's a policy not to let a, a home developer come in and see that was
back when you'd elect the council and they would choose a mayor. So all
you need was three votes, your mayor. So I went to the mayor he learned
and I said to, I said, I don't, I don't think that's a very good policy.
All these other towns are starting to grow and, and we can't do that. And
I think that the people want to come to a university community, they ought
to have a subdivision or something out there where they can buy homes. And
he looked at me and he said, how many votes do you have on the council? So
, what he's talking about? I said, well, I don't know, I haven't talked to
anybody. You're the first one I've talked to. He said, well, I've got
three votes. And so if you have more than that, we can bring it out. I
said, well, I don't have three votes. So that was the end of that. But it
took us a few funerals before we got to the point we could get out of the
little hometown. Well, Homo Derm, I believe it was Homo Derm that hire
hired Dan Divine and had ned W as a basketball coach and they were great,
great ones. Our athletic department started to grow and of course, Frank
Kush came along to enhance all that had Bobby Winkles along the way real
early. So athletically and of course, people down south, they call us a
jock university because of that. But uh they wanted to the athletics to go
along with uh academics. And so Homo Durham kind of started that
we had a, we had a freeholders election the year before and uh we uh
elected 16 people to draft a city charter and I was one of those. So we
spent an entire year drafting the city charter as you know, it, today, it
hasn't changed a whole lot and it called for a public election of the
mayor instead of electing a council, letting them choose the mayor. And so
I was persuaded to run for the mayor in 1966.
So we had a primary, there was four of us running, uh, Elmer Bradley and a
realtor and I can't remember his name. Yeah, I know. I'm getting old
because I can't remember people's names. That's the only thing I can't
remember anyway, there's four of us and I was the top vote getter in the
primary and Elmer Bradley is right behind me. So we had a run off. We too
and I beat him just by a few votes. So I became the first publicly elected
mayor in 1966.
And then we had a, in the fall of that first year, we had an employee
strike of all of our trash collection people. The unions from New York had
come out and had gotten to talk to all of our people and convince them
that if they had joined the union that they could get them salary
increases and shorter hours and bigger wages of everything. You know, like
the unions promised them and, uh, so we started fighting that and the, uh
, all employees walked off the job and we had a very difficult time. We
had to hire a private company to come in from, from like waste management
to pick up the garbage and do all the things that had to be done. This
went on for about a month and, and I was spending a lot of time, mostly
Hispanic people, I'd go to their houses and have 15 people around here and
had a little bit more hair than that than I have now. And they'd stand up
over my head occasionally because they were mean and, and unhappy and I
kept telling them you have some legitimate grievances and I promise you if
you will come back to work, we will sit down and resolve those and you
will have a voice in your grievances. We will appoint a grievance
committee that will hear everything that you want to tell them about your
situation. And the other thing is I want you to know this, if you join the
union, you're going to have to authorize the city to take your union dues
out of your paycheck and we will send it back to New York for you. And
then if you have a problem out here, don't come to me, contact your union
boss in New York. His name was Vitelli. Straight out of Italy. They were,
all of these union people came out here. Could hardly speak English. They
all spoke Italian. But anyway, we finally, with those kinds of thoughts,
they finally decided to come back. And here's something interesting that I
, I learned along the way all the time. Uh, they finally said I will come
back if I can have my same truck back. I said you got it. But that was
their pride. You see the, the, these guys in picking up trash and all that.
they have a truck that's, that's their horse and I, I failed to even
since that, but they wanted their, I said you've got it anyway. We got
them back to work and it was a tough time. But, uh, part of that problem
was caused by our city manager whom I had inherited. He was a retired
marine captain and he ran the city like he was a marine captain and
without much feeling. And, uh, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't
going to work and I was his last holdout. He needed 44 counseling to get
rid of him out of seven. And I was a holdout and there was three of my
friends on there, Hayden, Hayden. Um, uh, the widow of our former city
manager, Dorothy Nelson
and Doctor Flynn. Uh Frank J, Richard Rick Dick Flynn those three and they
, they were siding with me. They were sticking with me. But finally, one
day in a low private meeting, I said, you know, it might be time for the
city manager to go and they said, amen. So, so I had to go tell the city
manager that we'd rather like to have him go look for a job elsewhere and
, and we got rid of him. And then when we did that, the mayor of Pho of
Scottsdale was Bud TIMS and all of us mayors, we, we talk to each other a
lot and he called me and he said, Rudy, now you don't have a city manager.
We have a guy over here that we will loan to you. He's ahead of our, he's
a, he's an engineer, head of our, what would he be head of? I don't know.
Anyway, he, he would, he could run your city for you until you get a city
manager. He may be a candidate if you hire and find if you don't, we'll
take him right back. So he sent me Ken mcdonald and he ran the city
greatly all the time. I was there. And uh and then, well, they hired him
as a permanent job and he stayed there about 20 years. And that was the
best thing. The best thing I did in my entire mayor years get Ken mcdonald
to be our city manager because he was a good one. Well, while you were on
the Kempe council and mayor of Kempe, uh there was this growing elephant
in the room called a su Could you describe the city university
interactions in those days. Well, I would say they were friendly and, uh,
and, uh, and Cooper, I don't think there's any schism going on or anything
like that. We were having to abandon streets and alleys all over the place
as the university was growing over, like Katie Mall was from college and
they wanted to take over the whole thing and so on both sides of it. And
we looked at the plans and that makes sense. We don't need to drive our
cars down and I was driving my car right down there to go to the bank
every day. But, um, I don't think we had any real tough things to deal
with. Uh, except for the finances of it. My church had a problem with it
later on and I, we finally got that result here a few years ago. But when
on a public body abandons a right away, the law says it goes to the
budding property owners 5050 if they have banned the high street or
highway, that probably goes back to the adjoining property owners, that's
where it came from. Well, they, we abandoned 23 pieces of alleys and
streets and on the campus and every one of them went back to a su except
where my church was a Methodist church there on, on the university forest
, the alley and forest should have gone half to the church and half to a
su the alley, half to the church and half to issue. Well, the city had
drafted everything in there to u nobody knew it at the time and years and
years later, we need to expand our church and they got surveyors out and I
said, hey, you don't have any room to expand you, you don't at all is a
church. I was a university and the street is the university. So the church
came to me with all this background and said, really, you gotta help us
with this. I went to the attorneys of both of the UN University. I was off
councils for everything. Then all that on the board of reasons and uh got
their legal heads together and they looked at and looked at it and it was
done by ordinance 1970. I think it was. And they called an inordinate
taking. I said, well, just do an inordinate reverse. Can't you do an
inordinate? No, we can't do that. I couldn't get anywhere with the, the
attorneys. They just said that we don't know how you can fix it. It's
public land, public property. If the university gives it up, they have to
have a public sale and you may not buy it. And I can just see half a
forest, a newspaper store, buying a little strip. That'd be just right for
a newspaper stand. They had outbid the church. So we gave up. Well, seven
or eight years later, the church came back and said, Rudy, we've got to
get this resolved. And so I went back, they had two different attorneys at
this time. I thought, well, I got some new blood to work with but they,
they just couldn't do it third time. This is only about four years ago.
Now. We are. Certainly, we've got to get this resolved. You open the door
of one of our buildings and the doors on university property. It's hanging
right out over university property. So anyway, I wrote a letter to a guy
named Ha Hugh Hallman, a letter to him there, Hugh Hallman and I wrote one
to the president of the university. I said we have a problem that will
absolutely need your help and no one else's. Could you meet me at the
church next Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock, Michael Crow. Yeah,
Michael Crow. I was the guy incidentally, I was on the search committee
when we hired Michael. I was off the regions, but they had called me back
to be on the search committee, which I enjoy doing. Anyway, they came to
our church and I had it all. I had a table this big and I spread out
here's where it was in 70 here's uh 79 and here's 82 and just briefly told
them what the thing was. And in 15 minutes my process he had, yeah, Tim
o'brien. Jim Kim. And he says, Jim take care of this and Jim can do that.
He's a real go to guy, he's a, as an attorney. He's an attorney, you know.
And so they took it and they even massaged it and they did all kinds of
things and the city gave the university some property and when they were
putting the law of the road along the, the lake, there's all kinds of
swapping going on there, all kinds of swapping and between the city and
the university. And Michael says, why don't you kind of undo one of those
and do it this way. And that's what they did. They, they didn't put up for
public auction like you typically have to do. So. They made some swaps. We
swapped them the right way down there to a bridge and they swapped us.
This is all done by paperwork and we filed it and we got our property done.
So, uh, anyway, we never had that kind of problems you asked about our
relationship with the university. But I think the town down thing was ok.
Now, let me tell you another thing though that I, I felt real strong for
the university when I was mayor. It was necessary for us to build a new
city hall, a new library and a new police station. And the, and the cry
was to move everything out south. Let's move it all out south. And every
night downtown Tempe at that time and the, the doors were all full of
drunks. Downtown Tempe was really a shambles and I said, if we move out of
here, we'll never recapture downtown Tempe. I said that we cannot abandon
this. So I talked those three, same three council that I missed a while
ago into uh moving the library outside, which made sense where the people
are and then the city hall should be where it is now. And, and right
across the street was a safeway store that they had emptied or vacated.
And we took that over and made a police station out of it. And then they
built the City Hall after I had left. But we, we anchored it down there to
anchor the city where it is. And I, I still think that was the best uh
decision to make because we needed to be a, a partner with the university
and everything is going on down there. And the university is our godsend.
As far as economics are concerned, we had the statistics that showed that
every time there's a recession, we had a lot of those through the years,
enrollment a su time and that was kids downtown Tempe. So when had a
recession, we had more customers of that kind coming downtown Tempe. And
so, and that's still the case. And so, uh I said a su is uh is a bread
basket for us economically and let's work with them and, and for them. And
I think generally that that has happened pretty well. There's always been
some conflicts but not much.
Tell us about how you got appointed to the Puerto Ricans. Ok. I told you
back here. Well, I have to tell you another one first, but it kind of
leads into it. And after I left the mayor's office in 68 that fall, I was
at a wedding reception in Mesa for Stan Turley's son who was marrying
Wilfred Freestone's daughter, Wilfred Freestone and I had gone to high
school together. Stan was president of the Senate, I believe at the time.
Anyway, I grew up with all these people. And so I was at the wedding
reception, Stan Turley came over to me and said, hey, really said, I just
thought of something. He says, I'm gonna nominate you to the governor to
be on the Highway Commission. I said, well, I've never been in that
position before, but it, it's kind of like we're in the city in it,
something like that. Anyway. He, uh, he did and I, and I forgot all about
it. Frankly. I told my wife about it. I said, I don't know when it's gonna
happen. But anyway, a few days later, the governor called me and this time
it's Governor Williams, the same one that appeared before the city council
on the airport and he said, Stur has nominated you and I'm preparing to
appoint you to the Highway Commission. He said, I owe you one. And I said
, I'd forgotten about the other incident. I said, what do you mean you owe
me one? He said, don't you remember when I came for you? And you were the
only one that voted for extending the ha the, the airport? I said, well,
yeah, I do remember that. So, you know, he appointed me to the uh highway
commission where I served for five years and that was a fantastic job. Uh
uh community service wise, multimillion dollar worth of budgets. And it
was by district and my district was me County and Yuma County and I had
65% of the budget under me. And all the other kinds were split up much,
much less than this. And John Dregs was the mayor of Phoenix. And John
took me to Washington three different times to go before the
Appropriations Committee at the uh highway Department. I guess it was
trying to get money back into Arizona for the freeway system. We had the I
40 under construction from Flagstaff to Holbrook and I dug the first
shovel to start the Superstition freeway in early 1969. So we had that
going, which was a state highway, not a freeway. And that got us less
federal dollars than a freeway gets because it's a state highway, you get
less for those. And new freeways anyway, we went to Washington many times
begging for money and we were pointing out that Texas was getting an
overabundance of their gasoline tax back to them because they had a guy as
president of the United States down there and we couldn't get our gasoline
, federal gas tax that we had sent to Washington. We couldn't get it back
in proportions that we need. So we had to fight for that all the time, all
the time. And then at the end of that term,
chairman of the board one Saturday morning, I was out in the front yard up
on a ladder trimming a tree. And my wife came out with the telephone and
said, the governor's on the phone. And she said, I told him you were up in
a tree. So when I got down to the governor said, get thee down Zus.
And uh then the next thing he said, and I had no idea if this was coming.
He said, where did you go to school? And I've always been a little
sensitive. I told you about my school and I was sensitive and I, so I say
back east, I went to Mesa High which is east of Tempe and that usually
fies unsatisfied him. He said, uh he said, well, the reason I asked that
he said, I, I'm considering appointing you to the Board of Regents. I want
to make sure that you did not go to the U VA. I said, well, I did not go
to the U VA. He said, ok, he said, uh I said, now governor, I don't want
you to be embarrassed by appointing a person like me that never attended
the university don't have a degree of any kind. He said, Rudy, I don't
have a degree. Goldwater doesn't have a degree and we're doing pretty well.
I said a long game if you are. So he appointed me to the border of
regions. He said, now you're on the Highway Commission, you gotta
officially resign. So write me a letter, resigning from the Highway
Commission and then I'll appoint you and he did that. And then I had to go
before the Senate Education Committee and satisfied them that I was
capable. And then I had to appear before the full Senate and I was only
there with uh Ralph Bilby of Arizona public service. Keith Turner was
still ceo anyway, um That's what I did. I resigned from the High
Commission just a few months early and became on, on the border regions
for you were known as the A SU region as I recall. Here's a listing of the
people I serve with my first term from 74 to 83 21 regions. Governor
Williams, Governor Castro governor ballot and they were, they were members
of voting members of board of Regents ex officio but voting. And uh well
in Shasa superintendent, public school, uh public instruction, Carolyn
Warner. My second time was 20 regents and five Symington and Jane Hall and
Diane Bishop and Lisa Graham were the superintendents, but of the first
group of eight of us, five of them were U of a grads and all. But two of
them lived in Tucson, Sid Woods, lived in Yuma but he was a quarterback in
the U of U of A in the thirties. Ralph Bilby lived in Flagstaff but he's
new president of public service and he was born where the U of A's
football.
You talk about deep roots, but five out of the eight were absolutely U of
a people. The second time around it wasn't much different. In, in 92
uh Esther King, Art Chappell. These are Tucson people, art chapels and
turn in Phoenix. John uh Andy Hurwitz was he a U A grad? He may have been
, he, he lived in Phoenix, of course, uh I kind of left him out is I don't
think Andy was John Munger who's now running for governor. He was down
there and Don Pitt two attorneys in, in Tucson, both of whom got their
degrees at the U of A and uh Doug Wall who was uh nau grad and uh he
looked after nau and Eddie Basher and Eddie was the most. He went to
Stanford. So he, he wasn't slightly slanted either way but still five out
of that group way back in the nineties were you of a people? But I will
say they were more conciliatory, more helpful and more accommodating than
his first batch. These were old diehards over here. I mean, and I, I went
on and I said I'm not going to be parochial. I don't think that's the
right way to serve in public service. I'm going to look at everything and
get the issues, uh, hear everything that's going on and then vote. What I
think is the best way to do it. Well, uh, the budget hearings is where I
saw the parochialism more than anywhere else. The presidents would come
before us for a budget hearing and would sit there all morning long
listening to one presentation
and asking questions and making recommendations and all that. And uh when
the A SU was before the president was before us, they asked him to explain
this to explain that. Could you cut down this? Why do you have to have
that? You, you don't need that. That went on all morning long when the U
of A president came before us, they never questioned anything. Not one
thing and one outstanding example, I don't know what year it was, it was
my first term. But uh we had, I don't know who has some people. I don't
know how it happened. But anyway, we approved the budgets and during the
presentation, the A SU press, he said over here on page 78 down the third
paragraph, you approved $2 million for this. And he said we really need
another 250,000 because we got about some new equipment and we didn't have
that figured into what we asked for earlier. So I'm sure wish you could
have gone down. This is a multimillion dollar budget and they're actually
another quarter of a million and we approved it the next day in the
legislature there was a, there was a Tucson legislator and they got the
budget. They had the, but I don't know if it's next day, he had the budget
there and he found out that we had raised 250,000 for one item. He said, I
, I make a motion that we raise the u of a total budget by 250,000 to
equal what they gave to a su it passed and voted and make another 250,000.
Didn't he have a pro project for it? Now, you talk about parochialism
and after your first term as board of Recons, you, there were several
years in between 10 years, exactly 10 years. I went off in 82 and then in
92
I don't know who went before five. Symington. I had uh uh the way this,
the reasons are appointed, a su alumni will get a list of 1012 people.
They'd like to recommend the Sun Angel Foundation will get 10 or 12
people. They'd like to the uh alumni, they'll have a list. So the
government will end up with probably 100 names from all these different
people. And he has to pitch from that end. I, I've forgotten who, who took
that to him and who told me about this friend of mine, a radio announcer,
a suol Bo bo Bo is the governor looked at him and I guess he's good at
looking at things fast and, and I was on three lists
and, uh, so I made it easy for him. Well, he'd make, he'd make three
different groups happy by taking one off of their thing. So I had it, I,
uh, it was, uh loaded for me and I didn't think about it, but uh I had
some problems with Do Sington. Uh when Jack Williams appointed me, um he
said, uh, once you come over to talk to me sometime, I'll tell you what
it's about. And boy, that was fine with me. And two days later, I was in
his office and he spent a full hour with me just outlying things that he
wanted me to look at and see. I've been on the mayor and, and, and on the
Highway Commission. So I was very familiar with protocol and all those
things. So he was very helpful. And then throughout my first three year,
two years, at least I spent a lot of time with Jack Williams because he
had his ear to the ground on everything. And I wanted him to help me and
he did. But when Simon to appoint me, I would call him, I'd say, you know
, I'd like to come in and talk to governor and, and get his ideas on what
he wants me to do and how he looks at things and what slant to put on him
and all that. Finally, they gave me a date to see it. It was a month away.
He can see you on a month away and for 30 minutes. So the day before the
meeting secretary called and, uh, said, uh, the government is really busy.
So could you cut your meeting down with him for 15 minutes? So I went in
and I had to wait a long time to get to 15 minutes and he took three phone
calls in that 15 minutes and he had a girl come in the back door and tell
him something. I didn't talk to the governor five minutes. Uh, none
whatsoever. And so I never made another problem with him. So I don't know
what he want me to do. I want his philosophy at least. And what are your
major aims? What do you want us to do as regents? Which way do you want us
to take the universities on, uh, on the board of Regents in the second
term? Sure. Tell us about all the issues involved. The East Valley
Partnership, which, uh, Chuck has been when I was a, I was a founding vice
president of East Valley partnership. We formed this organization down
East because we realized that the East Valley was bigger than Tucson. If
we'd get together in our political activities, we had some power. So we
got all the ex mayors to be on the board and reformed it. And I don't know
if you ever try to remember or not. I was not, I was, and, uh, we had a
big meeting out in Mesa at luncheon when we invited everybody. You might
have been with that one. And, uh, the governor is the speaker. And so at
the end of the speech, he opened up for questions and Milt Lee, you know,
Milt Lee and Mason, he's a democrat, but uh, he support a lot of, he's
very conservative and he, he just support a lot of things. He was a good
guy and he stood and I, I was, I was on the regions now and I was keeping
my hands to hold me from standing up and during the question period
because he had said some things that I disagreed with. But Milt, we stood
up and said governor, he said we here in the East Valley who are friends
of a su we were really concerned about the mix of the border regions and
uh, we just wish that you would address that. So that's all he said I was
there. Pardon? I was there. Oh, and uh, the governor said, well, Milt, he
said, I, I have looked at it and he said, I just, uh, generally, I think
it's in pretty good balance and I just didn't think there's any reason to
disturb it. And I sat there and, and I couldn't sit on my hands any longer.
So finally I stood up and I said, we're concerned about the mix because
there seems to be more people from the U of A than we ever get from a su.
And he said, well, who are those people? And I named them all that were
down there. I said there's uh Esther Capen and, and I, I did, I said, now
these are all good friends of mine and I like them very much. But we're
talking here about people and I said there's Esther Capen Tucson, Art
Chala attorney in Tucson, uh, John Munger, who now run for, uh, for
governor from Tucson Don Pitt, one of the biggest attorneys in the state
in Tucson. There's a 12345,
there was five of the eight just like the first year I was on the board
from Tucson. And, um, I said, uh, that's why. And he was writing, oh, he
was writing their names down. I was, I was giving him these names. I just
read to you and he was writing down. So he made sure he had them. Well, um
,
I guess it was the next morning I see next day. Yeah, it was the next day.
Who was his sidekick? I know he called me and he said, uh, Mr Callan, he
said, I'm so, and so calling for the governor and, uh, he would like for
you to step down from the border regions.
And I said, well, you tell the governor to call me because he appointed me.
You didn't. So if the governor wants to have me step down, I said, you
have him call me. He said, well, he's asked me to do that. I said, well, I
said, I'm not talking to you because I don't, I don't owe you anything.
And then he got real mad and huffing with me. And, uh, I told him, I said
, you know, you didn't appoint me. And I told him what happened the day
before. He said I was there. And I said, well, didn't I make sense with
the names I gave you? And he said, well, yeah, somewhat. But he said the
governor didn't like you to do that publicly. I said, well, I've done it
privately if I'd ever get to see him, but I never get to see him. I said,
I'll tell you what and he was getting really angry. I said, I'll tell you
what you and the go, you can go with the governor to the nearest lake and
jump in it because I'm not resigning. And I said, you know, as well as I,
the only way he can get rid of me, he can only get rid of me for a call.
And I would invite him to try to get rid of me for a cause. Uh, well, I
hung up and that was the end of that. And I served out my term and he
didn't.
But one of those conclusions was that a SU was to get out of production
agriculture. And we had an experimental farm at the time and you were very
instrumental in changing that into an A SU research part. You sort of tell
your view of those transactions. OK. From the section just north of where
the park is, was a farm owned by Henne. He Hennis was a farmer and their,
their daughter Dotty who was a little younger than me. She was running it.
She, they didn't have any kids, boys. And so she had a farm, a full
section farmland and I was talking and she had started to develop it as a
building and apartments and houses and upscale everything. And she was, I
was talking to her one day and I don't know if this is original with her
or not. It was original with me. She's the first one that said, really,
why don't you help them build a research park there just south of us on
that land. We old farm. And I thought about that. I said, I think that's a
great idea. So I went to the Russ Nelson, I went to Russ Nelson. I think
he'd been kicked around somewhere else. I, I think I wasn't the only one
or maybe not the first one, but he had heard about that. Someone was
recommended well, to take a look at and that's all he knew and, but he
agreed that we ought to take a look at it. And so I got involved with it
and, uh ended up as chairman of a search committee, you might say, and we
got deeper and deeper into it and it looked more and more like it could be
a great asset to a su and we had to have some enabling legislation. We had
to set it up. We just wanted to be landlords. And uh that's what they end
up where we, they, we formed a corporation and we leased these 40 acres
320 from the university for a dollar a year for 99 years. So we are, we
are running the land now and then Doug Todd, our legislator from Tempe, he
got the tax aspect of it through the lab. And then we formed not for
profit organization and we, we were the operators of the research part. We
sold bonds. As I remember we sold, sold about, I think $13 million worth
of bonds through the city of Tempe Bonding Authority. I mean, it's through
them for the bonds. They, they're ultimately the guarantor on them, but of
course, they've never had to pay anything. And that's for the
infrastructure. And we got in, uh we got into the real serious trouble
with Bruce Bat. He was very much of an environmentalist and he had a lady
working for him who was twice as tough as he was. And our architects first
rendering of his idea of a plan to start with had uh two lakes. And uh I
think there were about 35 acres of lakes in this park. And uh I looked at
that and uh I said, you know, that's the way too much. We, we can't lease
that lake. We can't, that's not a money maker parks. That's too much water
to waste to just have it there. I, so we sent them back to the drawing
board and they cut the lakes down to 17 acres just about in half. And so
that's, that's what we ended up with. But this lady in the Governer's
office, she didn't like that at all. And um they had figured out how much
grass we could plant. They wanted all desert and we said, no, wait a
minute. Now we're gonna get big corporations out there and people are
gonna be flying in here to go to the corporation and all that. We want to
be a desert. We want maybe an oasis of slight oasis in the desert, right?
And uh, but so she calculated how much grass we could have. Well, if
you've seen the lake, you know, I mean park, you know, we have the lakes
going like this like this and there are the walkways all around it and
then the building sites and all that. And our, our architect figured that
with what she allotted us, you could have a 2 ft wide strip of grass
around the roads, that's all you'd have. And the rest of it is desert. And
we said that just won't work, it just won't work. So we, we battled over
that for a full year. And finally, I think she dave in or got transferred
or something. They, they finally approved what we were doing and we had
good relationship with Salt River project cause I was going to be the
source of our water and on the land was two wells and uh we agreed that we
would cap those wells and not, not take any, any uh underground water out
of the ground. Let the, let the solar project furnish us all the water
that we needed surface and everything, the lakes and everything and that
was acceptable to everyone and especially Salt River project. They didn't
want us with private wells out there lowering the water table. So they, we
resolved that we hired a young fellow, uh Red Jones. He had had some
experience in development like this and we hired him as our chief
operating officer. I guess you'd call it. And he was pretty good and he
was a good marketer. He went to uh research Park plant of uh and uh you
know, plants all over the country. Solly Sollenberger was one of the
people on the board with me and he and I went with him several places and
looked at we looked at plants or, uh, parks that have been successful and
we looked at some that had failed. We wanna know what caused this. There
was one in Texas that had failed and I think one in Utah that they just
didn't have things going on around it. There's nothing around it to feed
the people. If you try to get a client to come in there, they go out and
look around. Well, why should I come out here place like this? So, but
those that had done, well, we got a lot of information from them and, and
kind of copied what they had done. What we do is we lease the land out
there and we, and we have a floating square footage value that's based on
what's going on in the, in the whole state and in the valley with property
like that. And if it's uh eight cents a foot and you want to buy, you want
to rent 1000 ft and we'll calculate what your rent is going to be for 99
years. We, we tried to get them all. So I say, uh to, uh go for a long
term, a lot of them went for 50 years and some of them went for a few of
them went for 99 years and prepaid at a discounted amount. So that was
great for us. We got a big bundle of cash up front that we had to guard
very carefully. But, um, and then the, uh, the rate uh fluctuates, I think
it's down to about six cents a square foot right now. Something like that.
And we've had it up as high as 10 cents a square foot. So we had to let
the market drive that. But we became landlords and we were very fortunate
to get, uh, Motorola had a lot of investment out there. They built silver
buildings, they build a beautiful building for uh teaching facil alcoholic.
They bring in their top people all over the United States to schooling
them in various things within their operation that went on very well until
uh they've changed uh uh operators. And uh some of the inherited people
moved to Texas as you probably know, they moved all the Motorola just
about out of here. But fortunate for us, the uh Edward Jones company came
in and bought all of the Motorola buildings. I think it not all of the,
the new building I play display and he's the chairman of the board
incidentally so he can keep me straight with it. But uh Edward Jones was a
godsend to us because they came in and they've been great partners in it
and uh paying their way. Then one of the buildings that uh was abandoned
of uh Motorola, we the flat panel development building. A su took it over
and there you tell them what they're developing. It's a flexible display
panel, big contract with the army $50 million. You see a quarterback
reading something on his, on his arm, what the coach put on there, you
know, the next play will be this. Well, soldiers can wear that on their
arm too. What the commanding officer saying back at the base, there's some
guys right over the hill in front of there, go over and get them. That's
all I know about flat, flat panel. And how long did you serve on the board
of the regions or not? That the board of the research part? Well, I been
there from the beginning, I'm still on it. I think we started in uh 81. 81.
You started the process close to 30 years. I agree. And uh he served as
vice president of that board for most of those years and a lot of those
years. Well, it's just a work of love. I, I look at it that way and,
but during your second term on the board of regions, the issues, I recall
that like you to comment on uh closure Williams Air Force Base,
possibility of a su having a new campus. Therefore, the U of a regions,
one of the new campus for U of A. If a su got one, could you talk about
some of the interactions relative to those discussions? You bet. Um
Well, of course, we were trying to separate the military from the civilian
use out there and I was on the committee. Chuck was on a separate
committee but I was on one who made up of ex mayors and leaders in the
communities. And uh we were trying to decide what recommendations to make
for the use of it, of it and the military. In fact, we were dealing with
the military, not the US government, of course, it was through them, but
we had to deal with them and, and see what they would permit us to do how
we would use this property. And so we had all kinds of applications and 12
or three of the outstanding ones. One is the, uh, I think I missed this
earlier. Uh, the homeless people, people that look after the homeless all
over the valley. They wanted to take all the houses. What are over 700
houses, 607 611 original house, 611 houses where the military live. Well,
the homeless wanted to take all those houses, 600 of them and put a, put
these homeless people in these houses for a place for them to live. And I
asked them when they were presented. I said, well, then what are you gonna
do with them? They don't have any food. They don't have a job. Are you
gonna run out there every day with a truckload of food? Uh, I said, that
doesn't make sense. I said it's a very poor use of what I said here that
and I feel sorry for the homeless people, but that wouldn't work. That was
the position I took. And the board did generally. And another one was the
Feds wanted to put a federal penitentiary right where his office is not
just about. And, uh, we talked him out of that. We, because we had already
had the community college buildings there that, that was still on the
process. Ok. We were trying to put a Gilbert Community College extension
out there as well as an issue. And I said, we don't want a federal prison
right in the middle of educational facilities. And they were so they
finally back down from that. And I think those are the two biggest. And
with the golf course, of course, we had to leave it to the Indians because
that golf course was built on Indian lands. I was even part of that when I
was at the bank in China. In the fifties, the rotary club took on the
project of building a golf course, a nine hole golf course in
Williamsville for the military. We started raising money. Of course, I
being a banker, I was a chair treasurer of the group. And but then I
didn't stay long because I came to Tempe. And so I left that behind, but
they went ahead and raised the money and built a golf course out there and
, and gave it to the Williams Air Force Base and, but it's on Indian land.
So, in this transaction, now the Indians came into it and, uh, had a lot
to say and they finally agreed,
uh, I believe, to stay like they were with, if we promise never to build a
building on that land because it's a burial, a lot of burial grounds there
for them. They actually bought the land from the federal government for
$3.1 million. The course. Oh, the, oh, ok. Well, that happened then while
they were raising the money, I thought the Indians were still, I mean, it
was on their land originally. Ok. But anyway, the Gulf War is still there
and it's, uh, I played a few times pretty nice but there was a lot of
interaction on the border regions relative to expansion of that U in U of
A. Right? Because they had to get something every time a if you did.
Absolutely. That happened throughout all of my experience. But they, they
wanted one too and they came up with a plan.
They have a, they had a big park down there that I was a major tenant, a
big company, big corporation, IBMIBM. Yeah, IBM. Out east of Tucson, you
know, they have, they have big acreages out there, just lots of land and
IBM was the main tenant. And, um, so they came up with the idea of taking
some of that land out there for uh East branch campus of the U of A and
they got it through the border regions. And, uh, I don't think it lasted
hardly any time because of what they were doing. They, they put the class
, I think they put handicapped kids out there. It seemed like, I think
they were putting handicapped and it's 10 miles out of town and that's the
worst. You need it right downtown where the people can get their
handicapped kids down downtown to the school anyway. They put the wrong
thing out there and they had the wrong curriculum. I think everything went
wrong and it didn't last very long. I think it lasted a year or two or
three and they had to bring it back onto the main campus, but they had to
have a research park. So they ended up and this was the, was the most
interesting thing and Don Pitt engineered this and I gave him credit for
being a very, very smart lawyer.
They sold the university sold $96 million worth of bonds to buy the part
they did that. And then, and IBM bought the bonds that they are attended
in the park, but they bought the bonds. Now this was done for tax purposes.
And they also, so they own the bonds, but they're a tenant now of the
University of Arizona and they were paying rent to the University of
Arizona. So they figured it out that the every time a bond
matured,
let me take this and get this straight
Well, I, I can't get it straight. I couldn't get it straight then. But,
but what they were doing is then as the, all I know is that when the, when
the rent came due to the university from IBM, they would pay their, their
regular rent and they would use that to retire the bonds
cause the university owned the bonds and they were getting money rent from
the UN, the park out there. And so is a way that IBM bought it from a,
from a tax advantage reason and Don Pitt worked that out and it worked,
they sold the bonds and, and the last time I talked, I was on that board
for years, I just resigned from it two years ago. I said there's no need
of me being on the board down in Tucson and driving all the way back and
forth and I can't stand what's going on. So, but anyway, they did that and
, and, but now they're in serious trouble. Um IBM had some empty buildings
and uh, well, no, they had some people in the buildings with 10 years left
on their lease but, but the landlord which is IBM wasn't maintaining the
building. So when the buildings were about ready to become empty, the
roofs were all gone. They hadn't kept the roofs up and I was still on the
board. That was just three years ago and the roofs were gone. It's gonna
take $6 million to repair, the roofs of these buildings that IBM had kept
and leased out and didn't keep up. So, and the, the contract with all of
this when a building becomes vacant, it reverts to the search bar. So we
were gonna get these buildings back with a $6 million repair on a roof.
And we, we got, I bet there's 15 lawyers still working on that. They got
lawyers all over IBM. Moved to Texas, I think, or somewhere. Yeah. Well,
they closed down a lot of the, well, we were dealing with an office out of
Texas and they had about four or five Texas lawyers and we had five or six
up here and when I left they hadn't resolved anything. I don't know what
happened, but Don Pitt engineered that thing and it was clever but, uh, if
there's a crack in it could come up and that's what came up. So, but
anyway, they had to have a research part because we had one that was the
whole thing and, but they didn't have anything like we put ours together
and it's bigger than ours, but it's, it hasn't been very successful.
Um, let's talk more generally about perspectives over all these years of
your interactions with the university over 5060 years. Now, uh, you saw a
lot of a su presidents come and go and you hired a lot of them as the
Board of Regents responsibility. Uh, could you sort of go through those
reflective uh president started with uh Zam or so and, and, and just say,
what's your perspective of their contribution to the university and the
development of university? Well, of course, I wasn't officially there with
Durham but uh I did watch what he was doing and I think academically, of
course, he was in the position where it was growing exponentially. And um
I think he started more things because of that And, uh, I think he had
good rapport with the legislature. He spoke, well, of course, the war
start speaking when they're five years old, he's good. But, uh, and I
think he was respected in the community. He was Rotarian and he's a, he's
a, he's a very friendly guy. He played the piano so he'd always get the
rotary early and he'd be over there playing the piano while we were coming
in and he'd play for our songs. He's just a regular guy. And, uh, so I
like him, although I had no real direct dealings with him when I came on,
it was Schwa. And, uh, he had two things going. What was the, the guy's
deal that went on for years and years and years. He left his class and
went to Tucson for the march in a parade.
Starsky affair, uh, was really tough on swa and then the, the Kush affair
was the ending blow for Schwa. You know, the Kush affair was the thing
where, and I was at that game, believe it or not. I think we were playing
Washington or somebody and our punter was doing a terrible job and Greg
and I were sitting on the end in the end zone right behind the goalpost.
That's as good as you can get when you're out of town. And the punter
missed about three punts. And I told Greg, I said, you know, I'm gonna go
down and volunteer to punt. I think I can punch, go. Well, that was the
night that they claimed that Kush hit the boy, he came off the team and
Kush hit him in the stomach, I think. Anyway, the, the fight was on and um
, uh, I was with Swara on campus. We had, uh, there's a sorority that had
a luncheon in uh old Maine or not old Maine, but in the activity that we
were student student building. Anyway, both of John and I spoke to the
girls and we were walking back across the mall. I was going to my car to
leave and he's going to his office. And he said, uh, do you have a minute
to step in my office? I said, sure. So we went upstairs the old office,
whichever president has had for 100 years and he shut the door and he had
never shut the door behind him when we were gonna talk. We just didn't
need to. I said, oh, what, what's this? Well, this was,
I think it's Wednesday or third Wednesday or so. And we had a big game
coming up that week and the cushing was on, it was in the papers. And uh
he said I just want you to know that I'm going to fire Frank right after
the game Saturday night and he thought it'd be a secret, you know, and
he'd keep it secret until after the game. And the first thing I said, I
said, John, don't you think you could wait till the season is over?
Because there's all kinds of hearings and everything going on to see what
really happened. And if anything happened, I said, I, I don't think I
would, I would advise against that, but you're the president, you can do
what you ought to. Well, it got into the newspapers and then the fight was
on and, uh, uh, that night we won the game and the kids carried Kush off
on their shoulders. So, you know, where the division was? It was the
athletic people against the university. And, uh, this went on for a long
time and it was pretty sad because this kid had been in trouble before in
high school and his family had been in trouble with schools where this boy
had been, everything was wrong with that family. And so it, it came down
on us and so we just written it out, maybe that that wouldn't have
happened, but it was the end of Kush. So he had to, he just let him go and
it uh was a very difficult situation for the supporters now and, and Russ
Nelson didn't understand the support the athletics gave and I didn't want
this to be an athletic university or jock college as you call it. But, uh
, we went to the rose bowl and, uh, I guess it's when I was president, the
lady is 787
and Russ Nelson would sit with him and his wife, my wife sat there with
the, with the people and of course we won that Rose bowl and, uh, well,
the crowd went wild and coming back on the plane. I said, now John, I know
you don't like Russ Russ, you, I know you don't like athletics, but the
people were at that game and go to our stadium are the same ones that give
big bucks to the College of Law and the college of everything else. It's
the same people, the same donors also like athletics. And so you have to
mix them and I don't mean to let athletes overbear, but that's what it's
about and this Rose bowl is gonna help you. And sure enough the next year
, they got the biggest increase in contributions from everybody they've
ever had because of an a, a successful athletic program, whether you like
it or not. It's a fact. But, um, he wasn't high Russ, um,
uh, was helpful on the, oh, along about that time too. We were looking for
a site for a branch campus in the west side. And Esther Ken and I were
formed from the uh on the committee.
I hope I have my ears. Right. And uh Diane, I'm no, uh Karoly Warner was
appointed with us to look for a site for a west side campus. And so we did
, we went all on the west side, up and down and all around And we, we
ended up with the site that they chose was our recommendation. We think
it's size, the size is right. The location is right. And, and all of that.
And so we made that recommendation and it turned out and of course, it
had to be funded and all that. Now, Russ is very cautious about that
because, you know, if you're gonna take money off the campus, you know, we
, that's, we're gonna lose it on the campus. If we gotta take $10 million
to start some buildings out there, that's 10 million that I need right
here. And I can understand that. But, um, he, he did, he did go along with
it and it did happen. And, you know, I went to all the early graduations
out there at the campus and you talk about gratification for sweating
through something like that to make it a reality. I got paid 10 times.
There were six and seven people in the audience for every graduate. That's
the way the people were supporting that institution out there. It's mostly
family but 66 times or seven times as many people came as there were
students. So that's support and the need was there, obviously. So, uh, so
it took, it took money off of the main campus, but it gave kids a chance
to go to school. They probably wouldn't have had one. And we stayed on the
campus about the same time you were very active with the, uh Sun Angels
and the foundation of Sun Angels and the creation of the golf course. I
don't worry, you're not. Yes. Right at the end of my term, which was 80 to
just before that Keith Turley who I went to high school with,
uh, Harry Sw ra uh Rosensweig. Harry Rosensweig and Dan Martin were on the
Sun Angel board and they kept after me, they want me to come on the board.
And, uh, this is like in 81 I said, I'm on the board of Regents and I
don't think it's appropriate for a reason to be on a booster group for one
of the universities. Although down south, I guarantee you all these people
,
I tell you another story about Sid Woods later. But anyway, I said, I just
don't think appropriate. And I said, I, I just, I can't do it with a clear
conscience. So in 82 I went off the board and I immediately went on to the
, to the sun board and uh we did a lot of things. They were on their way
up with doing a lot of good things and what we did, the Suns have bought
20,000 tickets on the west side. Prime tickets paid regular price for them.
We paid whatever the going rate was. Then we would jack them up a third
or f or two thirds, maybe double in the 50 yard line. And we sold those
tickets and that extra money. Uh, we, we made it and, uh, then we would
give it back to the university in some way, we would fund things for them.
And the reason we did that and I finally got this, there was a guy in the
athletic department that, that wanted the Sun Angel Foundation to be
inside the athletic department. And I said, you don't understand how it
functions. And let me tell you, I'll give you an example.
We buy these tickets and pay the record price and then we jack them up and
we sell them and I have a list of my customers and at the beginning of the
year they send out these notices and people send their money in and if
they don't send their money in, then they say, hey, Rudy, there's 10 of
your people that haven't paid yet. So I get on the phone and call them.
Well, we had a bank of phones over there and I was in there when I went in
to make my calls and Dan Martin was there. You know, his brother was mayor
of Phoenix and Martin Martin built the airport and, uh, part of us of the
north end zone. So they're big contractors. He's big contractor, big money
people. And he was on the phone with his clients, with his customers and
there was another builder, I'm sure. And old Dan raised his voice and what
the hell do you mean you're not gonna buy your tickets this year? And he
was talking to him like that. And finally, he said, now, Joe, I know that
you go to Las Vegas 12 times a year. I know that you go up there, take a
bunch of people with you once you skip one month and buy these tickets.
And he said, ok, ok, I'll buy, now I told this guy in the athletic
department, now you can't do that. You cannot talk to people out there.
You're an employee of the university and you can't hard nose them by
going for, to go to Las Vegas or not. He'll kick you clear out of the room
if you talk to him like Dan Martin can cause he's just nobody of his. And
that's the way it works. We can get those tickets paid and you can't, well
, they finally moved, athlete, moved into athletic department and, and it
struck me because that's just exactly what I said. I gave up my two seats
about three years ago. I've had them in that stadium since it was built
and my wife got to where she just couldn't go to the game. She's crippled
up with skiing accidents. I wish she couldn't go to the game. So, three
years in a row, she never went to a game. I didn't go to some of them
because we were up here, of course. So I gave them up. I had those tickets
all that year. I never got a single call from anyone in the athletic
department. Say, hey, Mr Camelot, you're going to renew your tickets. And
that, that proved my point again. Now, if I'd been an athletic or, I mean
, in the sun was over here, I'd have gotten a call for some guy said, what
the hell is the matter? Camel? Anyway, I was asking about your involvement
with the golf course. That, that was my next thing. Uh, we decided that we
wanted to build a golf course for su and, uh I think I was cheering when
it started over the Sun Angels when it started in mid eighties. And, uh,
so we, we created a committee, a golf committee and appointed Solly
Sollenberger as the chairman and Solly was a golfer and his son was a
former state champion and he's good and a good man, a good business man.
Just a great guy. I always, so we formed a golfing committee and started
putting it together and started getting all the land down there and Rusty
Lyon was one of our big helpers and, and Steve or Keith Turley in Arizona
Public Service. They, they own big chunks of land in the river and most of
this was dumping grounds. And, uh, there were sand beds for, for industry
and we got just about all of that donated, uh, for the golf course, except
11 piece that was owned by Peter Hewitt. Peter Hewitt out of Nebraska, the
biggest, biggest contractor in the world, I guess it was. And they had a
piece of land and they were gonna give it to us at a bargain, but not much.
And it's interesting to know I was on the United Bank Board for many, many
years with a guy named with Peter Kitt Junior, who was an attorney and F
in Tucson. And he was the one dealing for the land for the A su golf
course and we had to pay him for it
and all, all the trails lead by. But, uh, we did get it at a bargain, but
we got, I think it's 80 acres we got from them. I had to pay something for
it, but the rest of it was donated and anyone that donated 250,000 or more
, we put a great big cement ball on the tee box and put their name on it
like bashes or Arizona public servants or whoever gave us their names on
there forever and ever cause they gave us the land to create the golf
course. And we opened it to play in uh 90. We just had our uh 20th
anniversary and it's been a great thing for our golf team and many other
things. And we, we've uh, made some money for the golf for the A L A
department. And all of our surplus goes to A L A department. We operated
as a private business and I just got a report just this morning for last
month and we're struggling now because golfing is down and, and everything
is down as you well know, but we're, we're cutting back on our personnel
and we're, we're trying to survive just like everybody else is, but
there's some other suggested uses of that land and, uh, I suspect that it
will be taken some time for other things, expansion of the campus. I think
it will cause it, it makes sense and, uh, I don't like it, but, uh, it
does make sense when we start up, I'll pick up, um, with your involvement
in Sun Angels and the golf, uh course. But to bring up your involvement
with athletics and the creation of the Fiesta Bowl and the Diablos and all
that. Is that ok? Ok. Um, because that was a, I mean, as she was going
through the transition of being nationally recognized and we had to sort
of buy our way in that. I can give a story about how why the diab started
and how we merged into being the official host for the festival. Ok, Rego.
Not,
well, besides your involvement with the, um, uh, starting, uh, the golf
course and the sun to the sun, Angel, so Angel Foundation and so forth,
you were quite involved with when a su was trying to emerge into the
national spotlight and athletics and had difficulty getting into bowl
games and it was decided somewhere that, well, we should just have our own
bowl and support it. Uh Could you talk about your involvement with that?
Well, at that time, I was on the uh Sun Angel board and uh the people
there had the same ideas. We would like to help a SU come from a border
conference school into the big time and we were willing to raise money to
, to help them do that. In fact, some of the surplus money that we were
making on the tickets we committed to doing that. So when the Fiesta Bowl
was formed and I've forgotten the old gentleman's name. I'm sure he's
deceased now. I lived in Paradise Valley and he funded uh several of us
going around the country to talk about two people about uh another vote.
And out of that came uh the creation of the festival and we got started. I
think I can't remember the dates. I think it's in the seventies. Well, the
Diablos were started in 1968
and we were organized at first because an expansion team was coming to
town, a baseball team, the Seattle Pilots, they had been formed up in
Seattle and they were coming to town the next spring which be 69 to play
baseball or practice or spring training. And so the, the apps were formed
and, uh, Don Lee was the chairman of the group and put it together. He and
I are the only two uh original members that are still active in the club,
but we were formed so we could park cars and take tickets and sell
programs and sell advertising in the program. We did everything to help
the team and to raise some money for the city. A guy of the name of Eb
Smith had a lease on the stadium out there and, uh, I don't know how he
got that or why he got it, but the stadium was pretty poor shape and
really couldn't see very many people. It wasn't comfortable. So we had a
long way to go. Well, the Seattle Pilots came, they only lasted one year
and it was an expansion team and just didn't make a guess. And it turned
in into the
Seattle Seahawks. Maybe. I ca I can't remember who came. Marlins. Marlins
, I believe it was the Marlins. But anyway, we got started for base to be
a spring training baseball supporter like the Ho HO C and Mesa. And, um,
and we struggled in the first year we got teams that weren't very well
known were very lucrative. And then when they started talking about the
Fiesta Bowl, we uh took upon ourselves to get involved and help in every
way that we could. And we made some trips with them and talking to people
. I didn't make many of the trips, but I was involved with them. And uh so
that when they finally settled on the festival, then it took us two or
three bowl games before we offered to be the official host for the
festival. And what that meant is when the two teams were chosen, we would
fly a group of diablos back to their university and have uh welcoming
parties, you might say, and goodwill gestures. And uh basically, we taught
them all how to drink margaritas. But uh we introduced them to that and,
and social activities and when they came in and they all always brought a
lot of their people stayed in the local hotels and we'd have a bar in
there that had plenty of margaritas. So we uh did our share of uh of
propaganda. You might say that way, but it turned out to be a very good
active activity for us. And when they came to town, of course, we had
parties of all kinds. And so we help the tourist industry, I'm sure by
helping um enlarge the interest in the, in the festival activities. And we
talked earlier about uh your impression of a lot of the presidents of A SU
and how they contributed to the development of a SU. Uh right before you
went back on the border regions, as I recall, uh Lady Co was hired. And so
, um during most of that time, I'm glad he was there. You were on the
border regions. Could you talk about your impressions and his
contributions to uh A U? Well, uh generally, I thought that every
president that I observed was an improvement over the other and what they
were doing, the platform had been built for them here. So they took
another level and some of them were able to take it two and three levels.
And I think your current president has done that. I think he's taken up
several levels. Every one of them was an improvement because they were new
and had different ideas of how to enlarge the educational activity for the
university and the things to do to do that. And uh their relationship with
the legislature, of course, is extremely important. And I'll have to give
Lady Ker a on that because he was very capable of appearing before the
legislative bodies and expressing our need and tell them why we need it
and so forth. So Lady was, he probably took it up a couple of steps very
easily. Uh As you know, he's an excellent speaker, he can speak as long as
you want to without notes. And that's a talent as can our current
president, he can do the same thing. But every one of them I think, added
to the stature and the growth of the university in one way or another and
each one of them inherited something that was in work in progress as you
well know that that couldn't be otherwise. And there would be a stopping
place and some would take a, more of an interest in something that was
going on. And I can't describe, I, I'm not aware of, of where that might
have happened, whether it was a Su West or a Su East maybe. But there's
probably, uh, some new presidents didn't have the same interest in
everything that has been going on, but I couldn't really identify any of
that. But overall, I think we've been well led through the years
and in a more general way, there are a lot of people that contributed to
the development of a su both inside university and outside the university
are there or anyone or a small group of people that you think had the
greatest impact on, uh, the development of the su over the years. Well, I
know what you say is true and, and probably one of the largest
measurements that you could give is the financial help because uh they can
talk all they want to. But when it comes down to funding um, in large
program or new program or facilities or all that, it takes money and so
they are big donors, obviously are the ones that have helped in that
respect, more than anyone else. They put their money where their mouth was.
There's a very wealthy family in North Scottsdale who came out of the
Midwest as a hardware store owner and he and his sons, now his sons has
been great, great contributors to, especially his wife, her burger, her
burger, her burger. Yes. The herb burgers. That's an example of people
that have given and given and given and supported the university. And
there are others probably as big or, or near like them that are given
sometimes almost anonymously because they don't want the publicity at all.
But without those. And that's the reason I told Russ Nelson that uh
there's a lot of people that, that wanna give you a lot of money that's
still also winning football team. And I still think that is true.
Well, of all your interactions with a su your personal interactions with a
su over all these years, is there, what are the things that you sort of
feel the greatest satisfaction about participating in or helping that
really help the university?
A as we've talked, uh through this interview, you've talked about a lot of
personal lessons learned from your experience that have been guidelines or
inspirations uh for you. Uh would you, would you have advice you would
like to give to others albeit um students or university people or just
general community involvement, people, you've been a major contributor to
uh all kinds of community uh service kinds of things. Well, the, the
current discussion that's going on with, with cost and, and we're talking
about tuition and expanding the university and all that. And I totally
agree with what the current president has said. We are a public
institution and we cannot close our doors to any of our, to the public
that wants to come to this institution. There's no way that we can close
our doors to the next batch that wants to get in. And so to do that, we
have to have support financially and, and every other kind of support. So
I agree with that. Although I wish we weren't the biggest university in
the country. It has some of its drawbacks. It has some asset value also,
but uh funding it and of course, in delivering quality education is more
difficult in times like this and in the numbers that we have now they're
talking about another university being started. But uh I don't think I
would be in favor of that. I don't think funding of it, public funding of
it would be a valid consideration at this time and maybe down the road
could be but not now.
Well, I guess I would look back at people that I had a high respect for
and of their talent and their contribution and their advice. Um One of
those would be Dwight Patterson. Uh, Dwight, you know where his wife was a
Dobson and, uh, seeing what they have done for education and other things
, for instance, they gave all the land where Mesa Community College is
free. They gave all the land where Samaritan Health Services are in the
east side. Now. It's, uh, what's the other name for it? It's that banner
Health. They gave the land for that. In fact, I was at the staking of that
uh hospital, but it was built. And um politically,
I wish we had some more people like the Burton bars and the Stan Turley
and people like that who have vision and understand what we have to do to
reach and accomplish that vision instead of petty politics. I frankly
think that right now we're the poorest led that we have been in state
government since we became a state. And I hate to see that this is sort of
my adopted state and I hate to see that happen to us and I'm not sure
what's gonna happen in the future. There's so many balls in the air and I
don't know where they're gonna come down will be pluses or minuses. But
people like Dwight uh was a, was a good mentor for me. In fact, he uh he
sponsored me into rotary and he sponsored me on the Ser and Health Board.
That's another thing that I served on with a great deal of satisfaction
in 1982. I guess it was, they were asking me to come on the s on board and
they had their CEO there was under fire and, uh, I didn't like what he was
doing at all. Can stand more.
Is that his name? I don't remember. I don't remember, but he was in
trouble. Part of the board. He was, he, he had bought a jet, paid for a
jet and he was taking part of his board members abroad to Europe and
contacting big money people. And they were planning on selling the
Samaritan Hospital for I think, 600 million and then creating a, a
charitable institution out of that. And he would run it and they hadn't
run that by the majority of the board and all. And they were under a fight
like that and they want me to come on board. I said I want, I want nothing
to do with it. Iii I can't get into that sort of thing. I'm not keep well.
They did let him go and they hired the second man to run the university.
I mean, the hospital. And so I went on the board in, I think it went on in
83.
And the first thing you knew I was chairman about three years later. And
the reason for that is um the board was still very divided over this guy.
There was about 5050. Uh the board still want to bring him back and 50
didn't want want him better. And so they elected me as chairman because I
wasn't on either side. I was uh Anderson Bystander. So I ended up as
chairman for two years and uh it was a great experience. I had a good CEO
uh I wish I could remember names, but he was an excellent one and uh did
very well, but he left to go. He was named the Outstanding Hospital
Executive in America. And I went with him back east where he received his
award. And at that meeting was a bunch of nuns who was running a hospital
in California. And they liked what they saw in him and bingo, they hired
him away from us and he left and went to California and my term was about
up on the board anyway, about after a couple of years. So I went off of
that. But I uh from that CEO I learned a great deal and another one was um
Walter Benson.
Uh Walter Mason came to Arizona in 1933 the same year, I think that uh uh
of the president of A S UK. And I think those two men during those years
made the biggest contribution to the growth of Arizona of anybody. Walter
Benson banking and, and president uh Brady Damage of what he did with a su
through those years. And uh so I looked at them and I read most of Walter
Bm's books that he wrote about the tough years over the Depression and
what they had to do when I went to the Valley Bank in Chandler. In that
5253 I had some teachers as my clients and I was talking to one of them
one day and they said, I will never leave the Valley National Bank. I said
, no, why do you say that? He said, well, during the height of the
depression, uh they paid us in script money. You might say the teachers
just got uh warrants. I think we got, couldn't cash it, nobody cash it.
But it's a warrant. They could draft on it. When, when we got the money
back said Walter Benson cashed every one of those. He told the banks, you
take those warrants in and give the people the money. He's the only bank
that did that. So they said we'll never leave here. So a banker that will
do that sort of thing in bad times for the people like that is, is a great
guy. Now, I worked for his son when I was at the bank of Douglas. His son
was over there as president of the Bank of Douglas and he was a different
sort of person entirely. He was a good guy, a good banker but not the warm
person that Walter M was. So I look at people and not necessarily I was
close to them, but they were inspirations to me that were leaders of our
state that did have got a lot of good things. Well, Rudy, you're currently
about 87 and, um, you certainly retired from your insurance business, but
most people would not look at you as retired. Can you just mention some of
the activities that you're still involved in?
Well, I kind of scribbled some down here. I'm still on the research bar
board as you know, and I'm on the Carson golf course board. I was a
charter member of that and, um, I'm still a Sun Angels. I was chairman of
them for two years and after that, they make you an honorary member. So
I'm still an honorary member, but I don't have any duties to perform for
the Sun Angels
and the Sun Angel Endowment. Uh, I just went off that board last year, but
we took some of the money. We, we created endowment out of some of the, uh
, regular board members. And, uh, we raised money for the purpose of which
was to pay the fifth year, uh, cost or athletic student who had used up
his eligibility but hadn't graduated and we would give them one more
year's tuition. And we started doing that in the, in the mid eighties. And
so we set aside a lot of our money, several million dollars to do that.
And, um, we turned over to the A L A department and they then would fund
the, uh, the students for one more year with things tight, like they are
right now. We got this, this fund up to $12 million. And it was just about
right for the earnings on it to fund the, the scholarships that we were
funding. And so we were very comfortable now. We don't have to go out and
beg for more money. We, we think we can grow this and do this well, with
the hard times that have come along here the last few years, they were
having to reach out and get every solid penny that they can possibly get.
So they came to us and wanted us to move that into the athletic department
like they did the suns and we fought it and we fought it and we finally
won. But then they came back to us and, uh, said they wanted to borrow to
borrow the money, a refrigerated balloon so the boys could practice in
coolness and we were opposed to that. We said we want this for
scholarships, not for enhancing the football players. And I talked to them
about it. I said, you know, we beat Oregon and Washington because they
come down here in September and they can't play in the heat so we can beat
them. Now, you're gonna have our boys walk out of a refrigerated balloon
and go out into the heat. They're gonna be just like the guys from
Washington. I said, doesn't make sense. Well, we finally ended up of
loaning them ha loaning them half the money and, uh, I don't think it'll
ever be a penny of what we paid. We loan them $6 million to go into their
programs. And, uh, we're not sure now if we're gonna have enough without
dipping into the purpose of this for, to fund the scholarships that we
want, we have an investor. We have AAA qualified licensed investor and of
course, they want to move it into the, the foundation too, a foundation
but they, they charge a pretty hefty fee to do that. But I see the day
when the, the president will terminate us and just say guys, we don't need
you anymore. God, of course, things change. And I just have to admit that
you can't do it like you used to do it whether you want to or not when I
became a city council, when I was pretty green and I promised myself now
there's two sides of every issue and I'm going to listen to ever sign and
then I'm gonna make a come to a conclusion and every item I vote on. I'm
going to say, is this in the best interest of this city or this university
? Is it? Well, show you how naive I was there aren't, we were seven people
in the council. There weren't two sides, there were seven sides. Everybody
has a different idea of like Congress, you go to Congress, you can't even
sort out the sides. But there, there's one kind of on the extreme this way
and kind of that way. So you can kind of sort it out. But I promise to
listen to every argument on that issue. And then as we vote just before I
vote I say, is this in the best interest? Yes or no, of this institution,
I've had to work hard to do that because with my education, unlike these
lawyers that know what's going on before it happens, I'm not that way. And
I've, I've read my agendas like that. I've gone down and read every single
line on them and sometime I go back and study them some more to get myself
up to speed so I can make a, a sensible contribution to the discussion.
Well, you know, I look at it this way too. I, I've done all of these
things, but I think I'm just about even with what I've gotten, I'm just uh
very happy to be a part of the A su family, so to speak. Thank you very
much. And I'd like to thank you on behalf of the university for all of
your contributions over all these years to, to the betterment and
development of, of the whole university as well as the whole university
system in Arizona.