My Early Phoenix Years

I was born in California, just months after my parents had moved there with three-year-old Melinda.  When Dad graduated from the University of Missouri in 1949, he took an engineering job in California working for a company called North American Aviation, and later renamed Rocketdyne.  We lived first in Canoga Park but then my parents bought a small two-bedroom house in nearby Van Nuys for $7,900, using a GI loan. 

Me with my big sister, Melinda in California

They had only one car, which Dad drove to work.  Apparently they did not have telephones in these small new tract homes, as my mother wrote this in my baby book: “Elizabeth Kay fell off the bed this morning and it almost blacked her out.  It frightened me to death.  I ran over to Irene’s [the next-door neighbor] with her and left her there while I ran to the corner to call Dr. Foster.  He came out and examined her, but she was all right.”  

I have very few memories of our years in California, but Melinda does.  She remembers having to ride the public bus to her dance lessons.  She says she was terrified to go alone, so she took me along for support and protection, even though I was only three or four.  Melinda remembers that Mom gave her a dime for the trip.  She claims that she had to spend half of the money to buy me a nickel ice cream cone as the price for my company.   I suspect I would have gone regardless of the bribe.  Mother wrote in my baby book that I was always very sociable and willing to go with anyone who was going “bye-bye.” 

The strongest California memory I have is of a trip to Sequoia National Park where we stayed in a cabin.  We went to a campfire ranger talk.  Returning to our cabin we found a crowd of people gathered outside.  They told my parents that there was a bear inside.  We were both terrified and excited.  Dad was just angry.  He went in, against advice, and shooed the bear out.  It had pried open our ice chest cooler and was eating the bacon.  The bear also left teeth marks in our oranges.

My brother David was born three years after me, and soon after we moved to Phoenix in the summer of 1954, Michael arrived.  Dad had decided to change jobs.  (He later said that he wanted to do gas turbine work and that required working for a company called AiResearch.)  I have a vague memory of flying to Phoenix, most likely on a propeller plane, and a clearer memory of being air sick.  We flew into Sky Harbor Airport which had been open for just a couple of years.   That original building (later dubbed Terminal One) has since been torn down. 

We lived in a motel with a swimming pool for several months while the house we would move into was being built.  Another family with young children was also staying there:  the Franks.  While their husbands went to work, Mom and Lorraine Frank spent hours by the pool watching their children and talking.  After we had moved into our respective houses, the families got together occasionally.  The Frank’s house had a pool.  Ours did not, so it was always a treat to visit them and swim all afternoon.

John Frank would later be a prominent lawyer and legal scholar in Phoenix, and his wife Lorraine was well-known for her volunteer work and philanthropy.  When John died in 2002, my mother and I went to his funeral, which was held in a large lecture hall at Arizona State University and was attended by many dignitaries including then-governor Janet Napolitano.  A year or so later, I reconnected with Lorraine and her daughter Gretchen at an Arizona List Democratic women’s event, and we talked about our early days together in Phoenix.  Lorraine remembered that neither she nor my mother knew anyone in town, and they were thrilled to find at least one new friend with young children.  Lorraine was a charming, gracious, and unpretentious woman. 

In looking for information on the Frank family, I learned that she was the founding director of the Arizona Humanities Council, served on the Democratic National Committee, and was appointed to the Arizona Board of Regents by Governor Napolitano in 2003.  An Arizona Republic editorial said that she was “so gracious and generous, you could visit her for Friday night dinner and stay the weekend.”[1]  That is exactly how I remember Lorraine from my childhood and how I found her fifty years later.

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When we moved to Phoenix, it was a much smaller town than it is now.  In the mid-1950s the population was around 107,000.  (The population of neighboring Scottsdale was 10,000.)  Goldwater’s Department Store in downtown Phoenix was the major shopping destination.  It would be more than a decade before the first indoor shopping mall was built. 

Palm trees lined Central Avenue and other streets in the area.  There were Japanese Gardens along Baseline Road with fields of beautiful purple and pink flowers.  Irrigation canals provided water to keep grass green year round.  Yards had built-up banks to allow for flooding.  A sign-up sheet was posted on the corner at the end of our street, and residents signed up for an irrigation time about every ten days.  At the appointed time, one of our parents would turn the round valve in our yard which allowed the water to pour in.  We couldn’t play in the yard until it all soaked in, which usually took two days.

Me, Melinda, and David enjoying the Japanese Gardens

Our new house on East Whitton Avenue was in what is now known as the Arcadia District that straddles the Phoenix/Scottsdale border.  The houses on our street had been built on a bulldozed orange grove.  Our house sat at the end of the cul de sac next to what remained of the grove.  We learned early to always shake out our shoes and clothes to avoid being stung by the scorpions that had been disturbed when the grove was cleared for houses.  This habit has persisted over many years and many homes.  I still turn my shoes over and give them a good shake before putting them on.

Our house was brick, painted yellow.  It was cooled with central air conditioning, a recent invention that helped to fuel the area’s 1950s housing boom.  Other modern conveniences included a house telephone (with a shared “party line”) and another new marvel—a television.

We had three bedrooms but only one bathroom.  Two of the bedrooms were on the back of the house and those windows faced Camelback Mountain in the near distance.  Camelback is identifiable by its distinctive shape:  the camel’s head is at the west end; the profile dips then rises to form the camel’s hump. 

There were lots of kids of all ages living on our block, and we played together for endless hours on the street, climbed the trees in the grove, or hunted for catfish after the irrigation water had receded from the yards.  Since there were no girls my age on the block, my best friends were two boys:  Jim Soderberg and Gary Klein.  Sometimes we let my little brother David join our games, and very occasionally, Melinda would let me play with her and her friends. 

Over the years we lived there, the neighborhood exploded with young children, and I loved playing with the little ones.  After I moved back to Arizona in 2001, Mother and I drove though the old neighborhood to see what had changed.  Surprisingly little, I thought; although the remains of the orange grove had been replaced by additional housing.  As we drove by one house, Mom said, “That’s were so-and-so lived” (I no longer recall the name.)  “You were their favorite babysitter.”

“Mom,” I exclaimed, “I was only eight when we left Phoenix.  People let an eight-year-old babysit?”

“Oh, they knew I was always home, and you were so good at entertaining the kids.  In fact, you babysat for” and she pointed to several other houses and named their former residents.

Soon after we moved into our new home, my parents told me to decide what I wanted to be called when school started.  They had named me Elizabeth Kay and had been calling me Libby Kay.  "Elizabeth" probably has more derivative nicknames than any other—Beth, Bess, Betty, Betsy, Liz and Libby—to name a few.  A popular baby doll at the time was the Betsy Wetsy; she drank real water from a small baby bottle and then peed it out into her diapers.  My parents feared that I might be called Betsy and teased.  After some deliberation, I chose to go by the name of Kay.  This is what I was called until I completed graduate school and chose to start using my first name, Elizabeth, instead.  My family and friends from my school years still call me Kay; I have learned to deal with my dual identify, but it does cause confusion for others. 

First Easter in our new house, 1955 
Me, Melinda, David, and Mom holding baby Michael.

 

That first year in Phoenix, Melinda and I started the school year in temporary quarters.  I was in kindergarten.  I recall going to school in a church for a few months before our brand-new school, Tavan Elementary in Scottsdale, opened.  It was the first of several new schools built by the Scottsdale school district to address the exploding need caused by the post-World War II baby boom.  According to a Historical Society document, the “Scottsdale School Board made two key decisions: Students should be able to walk to a neighborhood elementary school and schools should have names honoring Native American traditions.”[2]  Nine elementary schools and one high school opened over a five-year period; Tavan was the first of these. 

The historical record also indicates that in 1955 we all received the Salk vaccine against polio and that we participated in Civil Defense drills.  I don’t recall my first polio vaccine, but I do remember the “duck and cover” exercises during which we would crawl under our desks and assume a fetal position with our arms crossed over our heads.  I’m not sure how that would have protected us if we were hit by an atomic bomb, but we did what we were told to do.  We also practiced emergency evacuation drills, filing out of our classrooms and boarding buses.  These drills produced a fair amount of anxiety in us about the potential end of the world, but for the most part, I remember those years as being fun and magical.

 On Sundays we went to Sunday School and then church at the First Southern Baptist Church on Camelback Road.  Mom sang in the choir.  This is the church where I was baptized at the age of eight.  Baptists do not baptize babies but perform the ritual when the person is of an age “to recognize Christ as Savior.”  Most children are older when they make this commitment, but I guess I was precocious in this as well as in babysitting.  (I hasten to add that this precociousness did not extend to academics.  My kindergarten record is blemished by a "needs improvement" in coloring.  My memory is that I found it to be such a boring activity that I simply scribbled the coloring pages just to be done with them.  But perhaps this presaged a fine motor problem, as my second grade teacher wrote that "Kay is sometimes is a little slow with written work, but she is striving to overcome this difficulty.")  

Sometimes we would go out for lunch after church.  My favorite meal was fried shrimp.  My parents allowed me to order it even though it often made me sick, and, on the drive home, Dad would have to pull the car over so I could throw-up on the side of the road.  I especially loved going to a restaurant called the Green Gables.  I happened upon the building recently (it is now an office building) and had a strong visual memory of a knight on horseback riding out to meet our car. The restaurant was built like a castle and there were often King Arthurian characters on hand to entertain the diners.

More often we would visit less expensive dining-out options.  The “fast food restaurant” concept was just emerging in the mid-1950s.  We occasionally went to Bob’s Big Boy—located at Central and Thomas—or to Dog N Suds or McDonalds.  The first McDonalds to use the Golden Arches was located at 4050 N. Central Avenue in Phoenix.  It opened in 1953, just before we arrived in town.  Melinda had won five dollars’ worth of Dog N Suds drink coupons in a contest; these drive-ins advertised the “World’s Creamiest Root Beer.”  Drinks were only a nickel, but Dad said that the restaurant also expected you to buy food, so Melinda reports that she didn’t get to use very many of her coupons. 

On weekends our family took hikes on the nearby Camelback Mountain, Squaw Peak (now called Piestewa Peak), or South Mountain, or we had a picnic lunch in the desert or drove somewhere like Oak Creek Canyon or Payson or Jerome.  Mom and Dad had each purchased five acres of desert north of Phoenix.  We would go to “our land” or somewhere a bit closer for our picnics.  We kids would gather rocks and sticks and build “towns” in the washes, creating detailed stories about the inhabitants of those towns.  We also played cowboys and Indians.

Enjoying Oak Creek Canyon with neighbors Gary and Kay Kline (on ends). 
Me, David, and Melinda in between them.

In summer there were extended camping trips.  I remember feeding a deer that wandered into our campsite at the Grand Canyon, riding the narrow-gauge railroad between Silverton and Durango, Colorado, and encountering a sheep herder in his trailer while we were hiking in Arizona’s White Mountains.  Most of these trips were taken with families of men who worked with Dad, usually the Boormans and the Phillips.

My family had a large green canvas tent that the six of us slept in.  We had heavy flannel-lined sleeping bags and air mattresses.  The men were responsible for gathering wood and building the camp fires, and the women cooked meals on Coleman stoves and did dishes in wash basins filled with water heated in a bucket on the campfire. We roasted marshmallows stuck on small branches that the men had cut from trees and whittled to points with their pocket knives.  And we always hiked, even with the little kids.  The adults often played cards while we kids invented our own games.

 Throughout our childhoods, Mom made most of our clothes.  We usually had a new outfit for the first day of school and another one for Easter.  Often Mom made Melinda and me matching dresses and the boys matching shirts and shorts.  She also regularly gave Melinda and me permanents transforming our normally straight hair into curls.  Our Easter outfits were completed with a hat and white gloves.

Easter, 1958:  Michael, me, Melinda, and David

Our youngest sister, Peggy Jo, arrived in the spring of 1958.  I remember that a few months before her birth, Mom came into the bedroom Melinda and I shared and said, “Girls I have something to tell you.  I’m going to have a baby.  I know that I’m too old but hope you won’t be too embarrassed.”  She was only 32 at the time. 

Melinda was a Camp Fire girl and I was a Bluebird during our Phoenix years, and Mom was troop leader or assistant for one or the other of us most years.  Peggy’s birth provided an opportunity for the girls in Melinda’s troop to learn something about baby care.  I remember them taking turns giving her baths in the kitchen sink.

Not long after Peggy’s birth, Dad came home from work one night and announced that we were moving again—to Missouri this time.  We had lived in Phoenix for not quite four years.  I suppose that I was a little sad to leave my friends but more excited at the prospect of a new adventure. 

My parents and youngest siblings returned to Arizona in the mid-1970s, but I wouldn’t come “home” until 2001, by which time Phoenix had morphed from a sleepy desert outpost into the tenth largest metropolitan area in the country with close to five million inhabitants.

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[1] “Lorraine Weiss Frank.”  Biography published on the webpage:  Women’s Plaza of Honor, The University of Arizona.  https://plaza.sbs.arizona.edu/533

         [2] “Scottsdale-area schools rich with history.”  Scottsdale Historical Society webpage.  Posted July 31, 2016. https://scottsdalehistory.org/news/5059034#:~:text=First%20to%20open%20was%20Tavan,to%20combat%20the%20polio%20epidemic.