101 year old survivor of the Bataan Death March

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. That's the kind of thing more newspapers should do.

When I first lived in Tucson in the early 1960s, the paper we got (and I honestly forget which one of the two it was) did a similar kind of weekly column profiling a person or business or something that had been in the city for a long time. After a year or so, if you were a regular reader, you had a strong sense of the city, where it had come from, where it might be headed.

In the early 1980s I lived in Phoenix and subscribed to the local newspaper. There was nothing remotely like that. The city existed in a vacuum.

When my husband and I first moved there we registered to vote. There was a mayoral election coming up, but we chose not to cast votes because we felt we had not been there long enough to know the issues and to cast an informed vote. It was a very important election, because no matter which candidate won, it was going to mean a fundamental shift in the power structure that had been running the city since 1948.

A side note. We learned very quickly that to the vast majority of people who'd moved to Phoenix that the one and only thing that mattered to them was that they not have to shovel snow off their cars in winter. And while I've done that, and know it's not fun, and better not to have to do, it is simply not the only thing that contributes to quality of life. But most people in Phoenix thought it was the one and only one thing that matter.

Anyway. on election night my husband was out of town, and when we chatted that evening I told him, "Oh, by the way, Terry Goddard won the election." He said, "Great. I'll tell the guys (meaning his co-workers who were there with him) tomorrow." What's somewhat important here is that one had lived in Phoenix about 11 years, the other about 7 years, and as far as they were concerned, not having to shovel snow off their cars in winter was the only thing that mattered. When he met up with them the next morning and said, "Hey, Terry Goddard won the election." They said, "Huh? Terry who? What election?" They were totally oblivious to the election because if they didn't have to shovel snow off their cars in winter, what else mattered?

What else, indeed.

Oh, and for what it's worth, in my four years in Phoenix, 1983-1987, I never once met anyone whose roots in the state were deeper than mine, considering I'd first lived there in 1962, graduated high school there, and still had family there.