In a Few Well Chosen Words

Bil Keane, a member of the National Cartoonists' Society, has won numerous awards (called Reubens, after Rube Goldberg, society founder), including the Best Syndicated Panel award; in 1983, he was named Cartoonist of the Year.

So Thel and I took a week to come check the place out, arriving here Halloween night, 1958. A balmy evening with stars twinkling in a velvet sky.

We bought this house and went back to Philadelphia to tell the kids we were moving to the clearest, sunniest, etc.

When we arrived back here, the kids tumbled off the plane and began laughing. It was pouring rain. But they loved it here, grew like weeds in the desert, lived the good indoor-outdoor life, and came to regard themselves "natives," though they've all grown up and migrated to California as their careers demanded.

"Family Circus" began when I looked around and I realized magazines were buying more kiddie cartoons than anything else. I figured, why not a feature? At first it was called "Family Circle," but a magazine of the same name didn't want me using that title. So we changed the le of circle to us. Circus is more indicative of the feature anyway.

Robert McCall Artist

Right now and for the past fourteen years, Louise and I live in our favorite place on Earth.

But there is a place I'd rather be. I'd rather be a pioneer in a space city of the future. They are only fantasy cities in my paintings, but when they become realities, I want to be there.

It is surely in mankind's future to colonize the moon, Mars, and beyond. Those first such settlers will experience the awesomeness, the magnificent magic of space. Of the universe.

But back to ground level, to fourteen years ago, to the three days that changed our lives....

We had a home in Westchester County. I had a studio in Manhattan. I was fifty years old; the children were grown; we had taken a trip and stopped in Phoenix for a three-day visit.

We were swept off our feet by the lifestyle and climate, and we saw and bought the home where we live. The whole thing was unexpected, impulsive, fraught with a spirit of adventurous change, fed by a newfound sense of freedom.

We've never regretted it. This place becomes more attractive, more dynamic as time goes on.

Nonetheless, we weren't at all sure the move to Arizona wouldn't destroy everything we'd built in the twenty-two years I had been an artist-illustrator in New York.

But this story has a happy ending. I kept right on working. With the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, Disney Productions, on both coasts, and for General Electric's Horizons Building in Florida....

And now I'm working on projects generated right here in Arizona: Louise and I have completed an eight-panel octagonal mural, executed in stained glass, that wraps around the top of the chapel at Valley Presbyterian Church; I am creating another epic-sized mural, The Spirit of Arizona, to hang in the new Industrial Commission Building. I worry when I'm not busy; I won't be worrying for months to come.

A retrospective showing of the artwork of Robert McCall opened last month in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum where an estimated ten million people will view it during its year-long exhibition. McCall is the designer of numerous postage stamps, most commemorating United States triumphs in space.

Erma Bombeck Syndicated columnist

Maybe if a company had moved us to Phoenix, the mountains wouldn't change colors so dramatically... the wildlife be so intriguing... the Grand Canyon so majestic. But Bill and I are the company, and we picked it.

I had been lecturing all over the country for seven years and never once did I go home and say, "Pack!" But when I was invited to speak to the Executive Dinner Club here in 1970, that's exactly what I did. We arrived for keeps in June, when I wore oven mitts to open the car door.

I hear stories of how it was in Phoenix before people like me came here, and I would have loved to have been here then.

Writing is not geographic. My humor is not "drier" here as was predicted, nor is it different. It doesn't matter where you park your typewriter; it's the feelings you bring to it.

Erma Bombeck's thrice-weekly syndicated column is read by thirty-one million people in 900 newspapers; her seven bestselling books of humor include the current Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession, and she appears twice weekly on ABCTV's "Good Morning, America" show.

I have written everywhere, but one of my favorite places is at our cabin at Pinetop, in the White Mountains, where I look out into a forest of trees and wildlife. I've done most of my books up there, despite the scenic distractions.

If there is one thing Phoenix lacks, it is my best friend, Mayva, whom I left back in Dayton, Ohio. When she and her husband visit here, he sits around reading the want ads. Their grandchildren are in Dayton, though, and are the strongest argument in the world for not moving. But our phone bills are outrageous. I call her every day there is sunshine and drive her crazy with a weather report.

Hugh Downs Television personality

When Ruth and I married forty-five years ago, we said, only half-seriously, that we'd like to live in Arizona one day. But we'd never seen Arizona.

When I met the late Joseph Wood Krutch, his philosophy of the desert was very attractive to me. But we'd never seen Arizona.

While I was on staff at NBC, a colleague subscribed to Arizona Highways Magazine. I looked at the pictures and said, “Bad photography. Rocks aren't red.” But I hadn't seen Arizona.

In 1967, we were invited to Phoenix. I was to talk to the Executive Dinner Club. One look. That's all it took. We both said, “This is the place,” and began house hunting from Wickenburg to Chandler.

Funny thing. We'd already been looking from Tahiti to Portugal, because by then we felt my career in broadcast was winding down, and we could live anywhere.

For sixteen years now, we've lived in Carefree with the sweeping views of Squaw Peak and South Mountain. There are other great views we know of: from the mountains of South France with the vistas of the Riviera shore; and from Kingston, Jamaica with a view of the bay and Point Royal. We're happy with the view we chose.

Meantime, my broadcast career did not wind down. I commute to the 20/20 set in New York on Tuesday nights; return home by Friday noons.

Hugh Downs has been characterized as the most familiar American television figure in the history of the medium. A reporter, newscaster, interviewer, and narrator, he currently hosts ABC-TV News' 20/20. An author-lecturer, his wide range of subjects include quality of life, energy, exploration of space, environmental concerns, and aging in America.

Dr. Ted Diethrich is founder-medical director of the Arizona Heart Institute; author of Heart Test, several medical texts, and more than 150 scientific papers; in 1983, he performed open heart surgery during a live Public Broadcasting Service broadcast. Additionally, he is owner of the United States Football League Arizona Wranglers team, founder of Arizona Frontenis (Jai-Alai) Association, and designer-developer of a variety of medical tools.

Dr. Ted Diethrich Heart surgeon

I'm a sun worshipper; when my own solar battery isn't charged, I'm sick. Other cities seem overcast and gloomy to me. Everything is upbeat here. I'm up before the sun, work all day, and feel good about it. (I see some great sunrises this way.) I came to Phoenix in 1971 to establish the Arizona Heart Institute, a facility for the prevention, detection, and treatment of heart and blood vessel disease. I was looking for a Southwestern city with a good population base. I was looking, more importantly, for a city that gave promise of dramatic growth over the next couple of decades. Phoenix was an ideal choice. It has grown into a metroplex, is still growing, and the institute parallels the city's growth.Happily, Phoenix turned out to be a I even like the hot days of summer.

Erskine Caldwell Author

Why do I live in Phoenix?

Erskine Caldwell has authored more than forty books published in forty languages, including two classics, God's Little Acre and Tobacco Road. During his career, he has been a cotton-picker, stagehand, professional football player, screen writer, foreign correspondent, and war correspondent. In 1982, he was awarded Poland's Order of Arts and Letters; in 1983, France's Commandeer de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

To plate the customs of its people, Tucson is a two-hour drive away.

My work is writing. It's not an easy career, so I avoid the extracurricular and the social rambles. I do some magazine pieces from time to time and am toying with the idea of an autobiography. I figure at age eighty, it's probably time.

Alice Cooper (a.k.a. Vince Furnier) Theater-rock star

You know what's wrong with this place? Seventy-five golf courses, that's what's wrong. And too many days just made for playing thirty-six holes. So when I have to write a gruesome song like "Monster Dog" I have to leave home. I have to leave Scottsdale and go hole up somewhere bleak. Like Massachusetts. I'm weird, you say? I'll tell you how weird I am: I love the summer heat. And summer thunderstorms over the Valley with those lights behind the clouds. Inspirational! And I'll just bet that Steven Spielberg remembered those lights from when he was growing up here and reconstructed them for his movie Close Encounters.

I've toured all the states and a lot of the world. No place else is so incredibly breathtaking as Arizona, nor filled with such amazing things as Meteor Crater, the Grand Canyon, Big Surf....I belong here.

Yep, the granddaddy of punk rock belongs here. But I'm really the granddaddy of music videos. After all, the old Alice Cooper Band pioneered the idea of surrounding rock music with theatrics. Isn't that what music videos are all about?

I had nothing to do with it when my parents brought me here from Los Angeles when I was twelve, but now I'm living exactly where the rest of the world tells me it wants to be: Scottsdale. It's an up-and-coming city with youngminded people who live here because they've chosen to. Very little apathy around here; a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

But I have some concerns. Is Scottsdale being groomed as a young Palm Springs? Will success ruin it? Tune in in the year 2001.

Glen Campbell Country and Western singer, television entertainer, recording artist

Phoenix is the best, most comfortablewell, wait a minute. I don't want to praise it too much. It could get messed up and more crowded than it is already. Maybe I just better say I've got a thing for the desert.

When I first heard the song, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," I was out in California with nothing happening. I hadn't cut a decent record in five years. I was homesick for my mama and daddy in Arkansas, and I cut that record because of something going through my head. That song kicked me off and helped me get here. I finally made it to Phoenix, and it was such a red-letter day for me, I've got it memorized. September 18, 1981. The good Lord willing, I'll be here for a long time.

I play a little golf year around (summers aren't hot here unless you think they are), tube down the Salt River from time to time, and next summer we'll do the Colorado River with as many family members as the raft will hold.

Arizona is a fabulous state, I'll tell you that. Now, that's exactly what I wasn't going to tell you.

Stevie Nicks Recording artist

I was born on this desert, and I'm still a desert baby. Desert is very healing to me, and my Phoenix home is where I go to write songs and let the creative juices flow. But there is this one thing: when I really need to rest, when I am physically and mentally exhausted from tours or recordDuring sessions, I never go home to Phoenix. There is something about the piano, the view of Camelback Mountain, my homewell, I get there and suddenly songs begin to happen. You don't stop them when they occur to you or they are gone forever. So when I go home, I write. Day and night, the clock around. And I don't rest. Sometimes, I see so little of my house, I feel I'm supporting air conditioning bills. But I couldn't stand not knowing it's there.

My father, Jess, and I have done some benefits for Arizona Heart Institute, a center, like City of Hope, that is very important to me. Singing on stage for two hours is easy; putting a benefit together is the hard, time-consuming part. So to help heart and leukemia research, I give songs away. Well, song royalties, I mean. It's my way of contributing to vital research I am incapable of doing myself.

My best friend died of leukemia because the research that could have saved her was six months too late. To watch that happen is to know you've got to do whatever it is you can do for others like her.

And suddenly every little cactus on the desert becomes desperately important. Every day and hour becomes important. Life takes on a new awareness.

Dorothy McGuire (Mrs. Lowell Williamson) Singer

What brought us to Phoenix? Probably it all began when we looked out the window of our home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and realized the tennis courts had been under three feet of snow for months. We had a lovely home there, an estate, really, with blue lakes and views of the green, green Canadian Rockies. To tell the truth, when I first saw Arizona, my heart sank. I thought, "Oh, no." The landscape looked dead and unexciting. I feared I had traded "lush" for "brush." But it didn't take long. I was waking up to clear skies every morning, views out the front windows of Four Peaks and out the back ones of Camelback Mountain and the Praying Monk, and tennis every day. Arizona has been home for nine years (BELOW) Dorothy McGuire is one of the three sisters called America's Sweethearts during the 1940s and '50s when they were regulars on the Arthur Godfrey Show. They have performed at the White House and gave a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. James Tallon photo Now, and I find it a beautiful place. I love it. Now the agents are talking up a comeback for the McGuire Sisters-Christine, Phyllis, and me. Offers we can't believe. But already, I know Arizona will never look better than when I come off the road and back home again.

Stewart Udall Attorney

As a native Arizonan, I'm distressed with the pell-mell growth going on here. I sense that Phoenix is racing to become another Los Angeles, and I don't like it. The biggest issue facing us is water conservation. We have some of the richest agricultural lands in the world here in this Valley, producing the year around. If we don't save Arizona agriculture, we'll be spawning a great tragedy. I cringe when I'm told that future water will go to big urban complexes and there will be none for agriculture. We've got to change our patterns: households can (BOTTOM) Stewart Udall served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. An environmentalist and conservationist, he serves on many national and state boards, including Central Arizona Water Board.

reduce water consumption by seventy-five percent; farmers can switch to drip irrigation. It's our biggest challenge, but if we don't meet it.... I'm not fighting growth, but I do think it needs to be slowed and redirected. If we are going to continue doubling and redoubling our population growth, the end result will be an Arizona with borderto-border people. Our much-touted "Arizona life-style" is not just a phrase. It's based on our magnificent resources our national forests, parks, lakes, streams, public lands. People have yet to realize how important our spaciousness is to us. That spaciousness is our playground. Think what impact uncontrolled growth will have on the spaciousness and magnificence of the state's out-of-doors. When I think of it, I shudder.

Paul Harvey Radio personality

I was first introduced to the Sonoran Desert by a wildlife manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, Bob Hernbrode. He and artist Larry Toschik taught me to appreciate the every-season beauty, the fragility, and the nocturnal magic of the desert. Every newcomer should have such an introduction. From our place in Carefree, we are a half-a-day's drive from the whole wide spectrum of Arizona's magnificence. No other state offers so much. Do I worry about the malignant growth of Phoenix? I do, indeed. When traffic clogs its arteries and high-rises obscure its sunsets, it will be a lesser place. Yet, with satellite technology, I can now do my broadcasts from anywhere in the world-and Angel and I are contemplating building our next home on the Biltmore Golf Course in Phoenix. So whatever the Valley of the Sun is not it's still the best of the best in this world Paul Harvey's voice is heard by twenty million Americans each week during his various broadcasts of "Paul Harvey News" via the ABC Radio network. He is ranked as the number one news personality in network radio.