GEORGE AVEY

GEORGE, THE FIRST . . . AND ONLY

George Avey's name will no longer appear on the masthead of this magazine because he was officially retired on October 1, 1972 after serving as Art Director of this magazine for more than thirty years. Anything we can say about George Avey will be at best an inadequate testimonial to the man who has given his life to his love . . . and this magazine was his love, his means for earning his living and his love made his life worth living. At the risk of being labeled "iconoclast" we must state that George Avey has never been accorded the recognition he deserves in the evolution and development of this magazine's prestigious status. Since 1938 through 1972 George Avey was the engineer and the builder who took Raymond Carlson's conceptual architecture and together they built the world's most beautiful magazine. George Avey was the quiet, soft-spoken, perfection-seeking dreamer who complemented the dynamic, outspoken, super-imaginative Carlson. From such polarity came the magnetic property internationally known as Arizona Highways Magazine. Too few of us know the degree of nobleness and sacredness he poured into even the simplest of everyday challenges.

The following is reprinted in part from "Arizona's Men Of Achievement," Volume II, by Paul W. Pollock: Avey's artistic genius has been a major factor in making Arizona Highways "the world's most beautiful magazine," in the words of a national magazine agency.

It was in 1933 that Avey left a job in a Los Angeles service station the best job he could find after leaving his architectural studies and accepted a draftsman's position with the Arizona Highway Department. Except for war work in 1942-45, he has been with the Highway Department ever since.

George Maurice Avey was born at Yellville, Arkansas, on October 18, 1906. His father, Edwin Avey, was a realtor whose work kept him away from home for months at a time, and George was reared primarily by his mother, Rose Hamilton Avey, an artist and art teacher of exceptional talent.

When he was a small child, George moved with his family to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where his mother earned a degree in fine arts at the University of Arkansas. In 1921, at the urging of an uncle of George, who at that time was growing cotton near Mesa, the Aveys moved to Arizona where Mrs. Avey became an art teacher at Mesa Union High School.

George was a star student at Mesa High and participated in almost every extra-curricular activity except athletics. He never got around to taking an art class from his mother, but he served a year as art director of the yearbook. In 1926, he graduated as Salutatorian of his class.

After a year of working in a grocery store, he enrolled at the University of Arizona and then transferred after two semesters to the University of California. Dwindling financial resources forced him to leave his studies in the School of Architecture at Berkeley, and he took a service station job to keep himself in eating money.

"Disappointed as I was then, it all worked out for the best," Avey says. "I took the Arizona Highway Department job, did engineering drafting, and worked on various department publications - determined all the while that I was going to go back to school and get a degree in architecture. But in 1938 Raymond Carlson became editor of Arizona Highways magazine. I helped him make some exciting changes in the magazine, became fascinated with it, and here I am holding the job I'd rather have than any other."

Avey was not hired by the Highway Department for his artistic talents. In his early years there he worked primarily on plans and proposals for highway construction. Soon his knack for illustration and publication layout became recognized, and he found himself spending increasing amounts of time designing brochures and other published materials. At that time, Arizona Highways was a prosaic black-and-white magazine devoted to technical articles on highway building. Most of its 10,000 copies were given away.

Raymond Carlson changed all that.

When the former newspaperman from Miami became editor in 1938, he began changing the magazine over to a publication portraying the exciting beauty of Arizona. He found Avey an invaluable working partner, and together they performed a major face-lifting on the stodgy old journal. In December, 1940, they startled everyone by introducing color photography to the magazine for the first time.

In 1942, Avey left the Highway Department to do war work at Goodyear Aircraft Company. Until late 1945, he did production illustration, mostly scale and perspective drawings of aircraft parts. When America returned to peace-time pursuits, Avey found no job immediately available for him in the Highway Department, so he took a job with Gilmore-Varney Architects, Phoenix, as an architectural draftsman.

Then, along came Raymond Carlson again.

Carlson, just back from service, offered Avey the job of art director of Arizona Highways. Avey accepted, quit his architectural job at once, and was at work on the magazine even before he was officially placed on the payroll.

George Avey has been confined to his home for the past several months. His address is 1220 West Missouri, Phoenix, Arizona 85013. He's starting a stamp collection for his grandchildren. Write to him.

OUR UNCOMMON PEOPLE

This issue is mainly about people. Their stories will not be probable again even under the auspicious advantages possible in these United States of America. Our people in one degree or another are part of the American scene representing a period our children will know as "the old days."

To those of our generation the "good old days" were something else. The rugged individualist, the pioneer and the trail cutter are rare and almost extinct. Dials, push-buttons, electronic brains, robot workers and credit card security have taken the earthy romance and adventure from our lives. We're not holding that the old days were better or today's ways are worse. One thing is certain . . . it is a different life . . . and it will never be the same.

And so with the people of their time.

There will never be another George Avey. For more than 33 years as artist, art editor and art director of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Magazine, George Avey "did his thing" and made of a common highway bulletin, a graphic masterpiece which has been honored, respected and cherished around the world.

The story of Charles and Lucile Herbert cannot and will not be duplicated in the future history of this planet. Their stories, photographs and experiences are most remarkable and significant when we realize that they all were part of one generation's lifespan — and what a generation it was!

The story of Mrs. James Ward Thorne and her Art of Miniature Rooms is a tribute to those unselfish souls who do almost impossible things for love and not for money. But for them, many aspects of our history might have been unrecorded.

It's going to be a long long time before the America of Peter Hurd will be nostalgia and memorabilia. For as long as our planet remains unconquered there will always be a part of it where the good life is of the earth and the people who love the soil and the simple miracles of Creation.

Patricia Paylore, from whose soul came the words with Peter Hurd's paintings, is little known to our readers. She is a native southwesterner with a special talent for exalting the most commonplace with words and expressions of lofty reverence. We'll be seeing more of her writings in future issues.

So much for what is evident in print.

We are fortunate to know John Meigs, a delightful wonderworking marvel of dynamic humanity who in one way or another has become part of the pattern of the worth-while way of life in our southwest. John was the "finger-man" for our "Months of Our Years" feature.

We know and sincerely hope you miss the photographs of our incomparable Arizona scenery. The land is forever and our plans for a December special will reward your patience.

In retrospect we hope you enjoy the words and pictures of a world we lived through and loved, and, for better or for worse, made possible the world as we know it today.

The inevitable and inescapable truth is that a new America is born with every sunrise. And will be a newer world every tomorrow.

With all due respect and reverence for the old days, we live in a world of unmeasured greatness as proven by the number of new world's records set in the 1972 Olympics. Those records will be broken by men and women in their destined times. Yes, beautiful grandmother, there are moons and worlds beyond the stars awaiting our restless grandchildren. And . . . who knows? There may be those who will choose to seek their fortune on some undiscovered planet.

We'll take our siesta in the sun on a desert hilltop in Arizona remembering last summer's roses . . . especially on New Year's Day.