JM: So that’s good for people in real estate.
DF: Yeah! It’s a booming area, even with the downturn in the real estate markets right now in the economy, we’re still booming in this area. Lots going on
JM: Was David Porter on that original?
DF: He was on the second time I was on. We were on the Council together then.
JM: Okay, he said his thing was the City Park.
DF: Yeah, I helped him with that, but he was the leader there.
JM: Was he? It’s like each one of you had a thing.
DF: Well, when we took office as a 5-man City Council, later it changed to 7, but 5 at that time, we had a Commissioner form of government. And that means that each one of us on the Council took one department of the city operation. One was Roads, one was Utilities, one was Parks, and Zones, and I was Administration. As Mayor, I had City Hall and the Administration. And that was your area of responsibility. The problem with that was that 9 times out of 10, the man that got assigned like the roads had never seen a grader, the man that did the waterworks had never turned on a valve. None of us knew what we were doing!
JM: And if you happened to get the controversial one, you for sure were going to get axed the next time.
DF: But none of us knew what we were doing. It was a very poor form of city administration. So, while we were in the second time between ’72 and ’76, we did two things that were noteworthy. One is we went to a City-Manager form of government. And that was very helpful. Even though we could not afford to hire good men in the beginning it started us on the right path.
And the second thing is we codified our laws, instead of just adding one ordinance stacked on top of the other - Ordinance 69 and the next law that was passed was Ordinance 70. You could never find what you were looking for, and so on. We had several hundred ordinances and nobody knew what was in them.
It took about two years to get all of that codified and, you know what we mean by that? It’s like making a code. You have paragraphs and books and sentences and lines, etc. It’s all in a code. So if you’re in a code for the waterworks, you can go to that department and find out the latest ones. And if you change it, it is changed in this code so the latest laws are always there and available to you.
We got the Arizona League of Cities and Towns. I was on the Board of Directors for it. I got them to spend the time and energy necessary, because none of us were smart enough to do it, to take a copy of our ordinances and put them in a codified system for us. Over a period of years we have improved it, updated it, corrected it, until now we have a pretty good system.
JM: So that it’s tweaked for Show Low.
DF: Yep, uh hum.
Prior to the time that we went on the Council in ’72, we did not have budgets. They just spent whatever money came in wherever they wanted.
JM: Oh, my gosh!
DF: More or less! They might have claimed they had a budget but nobody looked at it. But anyway, the first budget we developed in ’72, if I remember correctly, our budget for the year was like $265,000. Now just a few days ago I got that bulletin from the City that they send out with the utility bills. I don’t know if you saw that or not. It’s worth reading. It’s a good one. They did a good job on it. I believe their budget is $37 million now.
JM: Oh! All these things we can’t live without!
DF: Yeah. And it took us from ’53 to ’73 to go from zero to $265,000! This has been an amazing period of time for us.
JM: That’s kind of exciting for you to be right at the grassroots of it.
DF: There are still a few people that not only recognize us, but believe that we did a good job in that period of time, that Show Low has benefited from it over the years.
Another thing we did when we went on the Council in ’72. All the surplus funds that the City had were kept in checking accounts. They never put them in a savings account or you never got any interest or invested them in any way.
JM: You just hadn’t spent it yet!
DF: Yeah! So we started putting that money at interest and investments wherever we could on safe stuff. And I would say that from ’73 up until now, that has been; I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that it meant millions of dollars to the City.
JM: I’ll bet! Now, when you were making these decisions, was this the Council that was able to decide these things, or did you have to throw these up for votes?
DF: Oh, no, the Council. We could get things done.
JM: Yes! And so the first miracle was when it incorporated, right?
DF: Yes, that really was! It would have been so easy if that had been a “no” vote. This day and time State law would not let a community, and I believe it’s under 5,000 in population, incorporate. You have to be above that to incorporate. That law did not exist back when we came along, so we had 760 and we incorporated!
JM: It would have taken forever!
DF: Yeah, it would have taken.
JM: We still wouldn’t be!
DF: Well, no, we’ve got. . .
JM: Because of what you’ve done we have people coming and settling here.
DF: Well, yes, true.
JM: They probably still would have been driving though and not stopping.
DF: Interesting times!
JM: Yes, now I see also, uh, this is something that Hal Butler mentioned that he was proud of was when you built that Goldwater Hospital.
DF: Yes!
JM: Yes, because McNary was the only hospital around here.
DF: Yes, it was company owned.
JM: It was company owned, but still people went up there.
DF: Oh yeah, we went there.
JM: You had to! When was Goldwater Hospital? That was in . . .
DF: I would say the late ‘60s or 1970, somewhere along there.
JM: So about the time that McNary was phasing out.
DF: Yes, and maybe that was known at the time that McNary had a limited future. We come down here and built the hospital.
JM: And how did you build it, money-wise?
DF: I think we floated bonds.
JM: Okay
DF: It didn’t take a lot of money because we didn’t have all the rules that they have today. We built it where the college is now. The main building was the hospital.
It was only there a couple of years until Medicare came on the scene and all the rules and regulations. Now we didn’t have to abandon Goldwater Hospital and build another, but as long as we kept a hospital that didn’t measure up to the rules and regulations they would not pay us any Medicare money, and we were still required by law to treat anybody that came along. So, essentially they had us. So, that’s when we started the hospital out here. It would have been in the late 60s, ’69, something like that.
And when this hospital closed about the time that one went on line in 1970, this hospital closed and we turned it over to Northland Pioneer College. The hospital was a political entity in its own right, but they had to divest themselves of all their property to another non-profit entity, so they gave it to the City. So the City acquired, not the land . . .
JM: the buildings?
DF: Yeah, the buildings, the improvements. The land was Forest Service.
JM: Forest Service! Okay.
DF: Yes, it was later that it became, was exchanged and became privately owned. But it was Forest Service land. So that’s how the College got their start here. That was during my term as Mayor that we negotiated that and got them started here with a branch. That was another good move. A lot was happening in those days.
JM: You just reminded me how much the Forest came in, because the City Park was Forest Service.
DF: It was Forest Service, yes.
JM: What about the Mormon Church that’s out there? That probably wasn’t there then.
DF: No, it wasn’t there. That was much later. I don’t know when that, probably in the 1980s that was built. My back fence here, from my house? From there until Lakeside was Forest land.
JM: Really!
DF: Yeah, there was nothing.
JM: Oh, that’s so hard to imagine! All that Sierra Pines and all those, all that!
DF: None of that existed. And for 15 years, I’ll say, after we moved here, maybe 15 more or less, that was Forest Service. My kids played for a quarter of a mile back in this area back here and it was all, uh. And then the City came in and they began to exchange land. And they got this plot to put in the water tanks and they later drilled wells. When that began they put through Whipple Street from Highway 60 over to Central. It was a dirt road at first, but the right-of-way was already there, and gradually it has built up.
JM: You were Mayor twice then?
DF: I was four years, yeah. Two 2-year terms
JM: Two 2-year, oh, I see, okay. Does that give you enough time to do anything? Two years?
DF: You did what you could. We did an awful lot because there was so much that needed to be done at that time. Lots of change took place.
JM: Did you stay on the Council in between times?
DF: No
JM: You were saying you were, the Council was elected and then the Council designated the mayor?
DF: That’s right. By tradition the Council appointed the person who received the largest number of votes as the next Mayor. But, the Council did it.
JM: The Council did it.
DF: Yeah, and only in recent years they’ve begun to elect a mayor. You vote for the mayor.
JM: But the Manager is the one who really runs the . . .
DF: He runs the City.
JM: The City, and the Council hires that person?
DF: Yes, and he answers to the Council for what he does. But the Council is, I won’t say restricted, but they have to keep hands off so the man has authority and is able to accomplish something.
JM: So what does the mayor do now?
DF: Well, he leads the Council. He’s the figurehead that meets with everybody, and he, I would say more or less is in charge of City Hall. The City Manager does handle that too, but he does have some responsibilities.
JM: Political heat, does he take the political heat, the Mayor?
DF: Yes, he does. He is the one up front that gets blamed for everything.
JM: that everybody shoots at
DF: Yeah, and that reminds me. I’ll mention something to you. In ’56, when I went off the Council, I elected not to run anymore and so I went off the Council. In ’72, I ran again and was elected and became Mayor for four years. And at the end of the four years in ’76, I actually ran again.
But this is my side of the story. I received - me and one other guy received the lowest number of votes to elect us. We actually got elected. But he and I tied the votes. And we actually staged a card game in reminiscence of the early days? And he won it and I was off the Council and he was on.
JM: Oh, my gosh! So you were off the Council all together.
DF: Yes, I went off the Council and it was good. After a while I realized I should never have even run again.
What had happened over four years of time and so much change took place. People don’t like change. They are very resistant to change. I would say that we were meeting twice a month and at every meeting we made one or more decisions that alienated somebody. Not always the same people, but somebody was unhappy with what we had done, somebody in the population. Whether it was taking the cows off the streets or doing something else. They were unhappy, that segment of people that was affected by it was unhappy.
And so, after four years of doing that, there wasn’t anybody in town that I hadn’t alienated at some time or other, and being the mayor I was the front-run, the figurehead. Now, the Council did it, all of us, but I was the one that bore the blunt of it. There wasn’t anybody that wasn’t mad at me about something.
JM: Well there were some major decisions that had to be made because it was the beginning. I mean you were really having to clean house.
DF: More so than you realize, and I won’t go into that because it gets into personalities.
One day I went to work and we had been having some problems with the Chief of Police. I won’t even name him, even though he’s dead now. And so, I gave him his notice. That was within my prerogative. I gave him his notice that he was through and we were going to get another chief of police. These were all sorts of different problems.
JM: This was the first time that it had ever been done, so.
DF: Yeah, and so I had an airplane then. I flew. I went out and got in my airplane.
First, I called the Arizona Highway Department in Phoenix and I said, “I just fired the Chief of Police. We don’t have anyone to run our police department. Can you furnish some help for us until we can get someone?” And he said, “Yes, you go to Flagstaff and talk with So-and-so.”
So I got in my plane and flew to Flagstaff, and I think I spent the night there. Anyway, we got it worked out, and that was on a Friday, probably, and the following Monday they sent a Lieutenant from the Flagstaff area over here. And he became our interim police chief maybe a matter of months until we actually were able to hire a new chief.
And so there was a lot of housecleaning going on in other areas too. And man! It made people mad. Arlie Maxwell got up at one of the meetings. I think this is safe to say because it was public. He got up at one of the meetings and he said, “You can’t fire our Chief of Police! We elected you and we can recall you!” (Laughs) I told him, “You would do me a big favor if you would!” I was sure getting a lot of heat then. He was alright. We got along pretty good.
JM: That must have been tough, shaking it up, shaking it up. You did retire at that point, didn’t you?
DF: I retired in ’78.
JM: In ’78, so two years later?
DF: Uh hum
JM: When you say you retired, you retired from everything, right?
DF: I did. I quit everything. But I still had the insurance and real estate office.
JM: Okay
DF: So I sold them.
JM: Oh, you sold them? Okay
DF: Yeah, I sold them. Actually, I was just tired of dealing with people. I’d been doing it for nearly 30 years and what I wanted was to get rid of people. (Laughs) And so I sold all my business activities. I sold all the real estate I had. I had some real estate downtown. I sold it and took all of them on monthly payments, on terms. I didn’t really need the money then, I just didn’t want to mess with them. So they paid out over a period of about 20 years. I’ve been retired now next May will be 31 years.
JM: That’s the way to go!
DF: Probably more so that anyone I know, I have enjoyed retirement. I have never ceased to be busy, never ceased to have something to do. Of course, in the last year or two we have had problems that have affected us. Maxine had her knees replaced and back when I was 81, I had open-heart surgery. That took a year to get over that. So we’ve had some problems lately, but up until that time, we thoroughly enjoyed retirement.
JM: You went back to something that we kind of missed over, is when you disobeyed your mother? Back in McNary?
DF: Oh! And bought a motorcycle? Yes! Actually, I did. My mother and father were both a little peculiar in that they would never let me have a bicycle. They were too dangerous. They wouldn’t let me have a bicycle.
And so, after I went to work in the mill at McNary, I began to save a few dollars. I had a few dollars on hand, probably less than $100, but that was a lot of money given the times that we were in.
And after we had been in McNary a couple of years, in 1939, my mother and dad and sister and brother got in the car in the summertime and they drove to Louisiana to visit relatives. I was working so I couldn’t go. While they were gone, I went to “Snotty” Brothers Garage. Their name was S O D D Y.
JM: Oh! Oh! Soddy!
DF: “Snotty Brothers” in McNary. He had taken in this old motorcycle. It was a 1929 Harley Davidson.
JM: Ten years old
DF: And he wanted $150 for it, so I bought it. I gave him I think maybe $50 down and like $5 or $10 a month to pay it out.
I’m a little guy, I’ve never grown any. I was little then, in those days too, except a lot stronger. But the motorcycle was one of those early models. They had such huge wheels, and with my short legs, every time I stopped I couldn’t reach the ground and we fell. So, by the time the following spring came around my folks were so upset with me with falling on that motorcycle all the time that they told me it I would sell that one, they would agree for me to buy a new Harley Davidson with 16” wheels on it where I could reach the ground. And this is the truth! So I sold it, and in 1940 I bought a brand new Harley Davidson, $404!
JM: Oh, my gosh!
DF: And they’re $25,000 now!
JM: Oh! Wouldn’t you love to have it?
DF: Oh yes. I wrecked it in Los Angeles. I drove it to Los Angeles.
JM: When you went to school?
DF: I had it out there and I wrecked it on San Fernando Road. And it was in December about two weeks after Pearl Harbor.
JM: Were you injured?
DF: I was skinned from end to end, but no serious injuries, but very painful.
JM: Didn’t have helmets and things like that then.
DF: No, no I was bareheaded, had on a pair of coveralls, going to school. What had happened, I was familiar with running on this road. I drove it all the time.
This was right after War had started, and coming up the other side. (There were about three lanes on each side of the road.) Coming up the other side was the first military convoy I had ever seen, with the big cannons and stuff you know, towing them behind the trucks? Well, I was gaping at that. One car ahead of me came to a red light and he stopped, and I never looked around. I just hit him, bam! And I went over the car and hit in the road and just spun and slid and I was just skinned up. It hurt so bad!
When I got through there in school, I told you already, I went into the War. So, by the time I got back and was raising a family I couldn’t afford that foolishness. So, it wasn’t until 1980 that I started riding motorcycles.
JM: Started being foolish again!
DF: Actually, that happened. In 1980 I sold the airplane. I retired in ’78 and I came to the conclusion that I could sell the airplane and stay retired or I could go back to work to support the airplane. They were so expensive. So we sold the airplane and I stayed retired.
About two years later, I can remember sitting in here one night. I told Maxine, I said, “Maxine, I’ve got to have something that really gets me going again. I need something to get me activated.” I said, “I used to enjoy riding motorcycles a long time ago and I’d like to try it again.”
And she said, “You’re out of your mind!” (Laughs)
I was approaching 60 at that time. But anyway, it turns out that I did go and buy a motorcycle, and I rode motorcycles from 1980 until, let’s see, I was 81 so that would have been ’01 or something. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Probably among all the things that I’ve done in my life, I enjoyed motorcycles most
JM: Really. The wind in your hair and all that stuff
DF: All that stuff
JM: You mentioned that you and your two sons took a trip?
DF: Yes, that was the last trip I made. I was 80 at the time, and just before I turned 81, we went to Death Valley. It took 8 days to ride up there and back, and in that 8-day time I rode just over 1,500 miles on my motorcycle. I came to the conclusion that it was time to quit. If I kept riding, sooner or later I was going to have an accident.
JM: That’s a pretty intense thing to do something that much.
DF: Actually, it was only a few months after I sold the motorcycle, probably two or three months, until we came to the conclusion. I knew that I was losing energy and I wasn’t feeling good, wasn’t as alert as I had been. But I didn’t realize what was wrong. It turned out that I had some heart blockage, so I had open-heart surgery. That took a year to recover from that. But since then, I’ve been doing just fine. Uh hum.
JM: So, what are you doing now? You replaced it with something.
DF: Well, I replaced it with caring for my wife. Actually for the last couple of years she’s depended a lot on me for everything. She hasn’t been able to keep going. Her knees gave out on her, and she was in so much pain.
JM: And you have stairs coming and going.
DF: Yeah, its’ been two years since she could do those stairs, and just recently she’s started doing the stairs again. Back in July she had both knees replaced, and they told her it would be anywhere from 6 months to a year for a full recovery. We’re 5 months into that now.
JM: She’s doing good though
DF: And she’s doing good. There’s a continuous improvement. Since my heart surgery I have not had time to be concerned about what I was going to do. Not only was I recovering from it, but by that time, Maxine was failing and so we’ve gone through 2 or 3 years of that.
After retirement, over the years, I had had some exposure to home building, woodworking, stuff like that. Actually, in Show Low, I probably oversaw or built close to 20 homes, so I’d had a little experience, but I’d never really gotten into it. I always had other things to do.
I came out here and developed and equipped a woodworking shop for me. So for probably the first 15 to 20 years I spent a lot of time out there and thoroughly enjoyed it. I still do when I have time, but I’m not nearly as proficient as I used to be. My eyesight is not as good. I have some tremors, just from old age, and things like that, that keep me from doing as much as I would like to do.
JM: What kind of woodworking do you do?
DF: I did all kinds of making stuff, but I was mostly interested in things that had some utility, that somebody wanted. We didn’t need anything. I built that table, that little drop-in table.
JM: Oh, this is nice. Yes! Very nice! Well, we see a pattern here. What was your father doing when you were born?
DF: Furniture making! I built that table.
JM: Did you! Wow!
DF: Uh hum, and throughout the house, I built other stuff. Most of it has a utility factor to it. I don’t like to just build something for the sake of wasting my time. And my kids, there were years when they were all developing households and equipment and needed first one thing and then another. But that’s not true anymore.
JM: What are your kids doing?
DF: My oldest son is now 60. He lives in Santa Barbara and he is closing up his lifetime of landscaping. And he’s out there where there’s big money so he’s done really well.
JM: Beautiful area
DF: He’s done very well out there.
JM: Kind of scary when your kids are retiring isn’t it.
DF: Yes! He’s about ready to retire. Our second son lives in Payson. He is a real estate appraiser. We had three girls, and the oldest daughter lives in the San Diego area in the town of Ramona. Her husband is in electronics. Our second daughter lives up at Pinetop and she works in the hospital here.
JM: Oh! Is she a nurse?
DF: She was, but now she’s in administration. She’s Administrator of Proficiency at the hospital. Actually it’s to take care of problems. She says nothing can go wrong in the hospital, or no claim made by anybody that doesn’t come to me.
JM: Like being a mayor then.
DF: She’s a problem solver. Yeah, she’s very capable. And our youngest daughter is now 52, I believe. She lives in Arkansas and her husband just recently retired from the Forest Service.
JM: Oh, they didn’t fall that far from the tree did they? Each one of their occupations is something that you’ve had some influence in.
DF: I don’t know. I’d never thought of it that way.
JM: Well, except for landscaping there. I mean that’s part of it.
DF: Actually, he learned that here working for me. During the early days here, another man and I developed Show Low Country Club. Developed the subdivision and the golf course, and we ran it for 10 years. This subdivision that I live in, plus about 6 or 8 more we developed during those years and we had backhoes and trenchers and stuff.
He was a big kid for his age, and I worked him in the summertime on that equipment. He went out to school. He went to Westmont College in Santa Barbara. And when he finished there with a Business degree, he tried being a businessman and he hated it. So, one day he answered an ad for a landscaper and told them he knew all about it. They hired him and he’s been in it for 30 years now.
JM: So, you’ve influenced every one of your children, even the one that’s back in Arkansas with the Forest Service. You grew up in McNary.
DF: He came from Illinois. He came out here to go to ASU and met my daughter. She was in ASU, and they got married. Well, I don’t know much else to tell you.
JM: I think you just told me everything I needed to know!
END OF INTERVIEW
