War and peace...

War and Peace... 1942 1964

This park is dedicated to the veterans of all United States wars in recognition of their courage and sacrifice in the service of our country... -Monument tablet, Memorial Island, Prescott Like other communities across America, Prescott was changed by World War II. Unlike many others, however, the town experienced no direct impact from a near-by defense plant or military base. The war's principal effects were the departure of most of the young male population and the periodic reports of casualties. What was true of the nation as a whole was emphatically true of Prescott: some of its finest, most promising young men were killed in training or in combat.

Most of us, the fortunate ones, returned in 1945 and 1946 ready to get on with our lives. The war had stretched our horizons - not only the men but the young women, many of whom had gone off to defense jobs or service assignments, too. As part of a “dogface” family-my father, brother, and I were all infantrymen - I came home from Europe eager to take up my delayed schooling. During the postwar college years I worked during vacations in Prescott. The last of those summers was 1949, when my bride, Janice, and I occupied a tiny stone house off Park Avenue. It was the last time I could claim to be a Prescott resident.

Just as it had escaped the trauma of sudden wartime expansion, Prescott wasalso spared explosive postwar growth. A modest but sustained increase in the population set in, and in 1948 an additional elementary school was needed. It was named Dexter School, for my first grade teacher.

By the 1950s Dixon Fagerberg and Taylor Hicks, those high school graduates of 1927, my first summer in Prescott, were well known throughout the state. Fagerberg had become a certified public accountant, learned to fly an airplane, and was known among a far-flung clientele as “the flying CPA.” Taylor Hicks had continued his athletic exploits at the University of Arizona, then transferred to the University of Southern California to attend its dentistry school. Finishing there as valedictorian, he had returned home to launch his dental practice. In my senior year at Prescott High he had been elected to the school board, the beginning of a long career of public service. Though his specialties were teeth and schoolbooks, Hicks' interests were wideranging, and he kept an observant eye on his community. Only five years after the end of World War II, he watched young men leaving home again to serve in Korea although this time fewer were called, and fewer lost. Gradually but steadily the town was changing; and with his movie camera he began to record some of the significant events. Not all were signs of progress. One he remembers with nostalgia was the passage in 1962 of the last through train, when the Santa Fe rerouted its Ashfork-Phoenix line to bypass Prescott, leaving only a connecting spur.

Dr. Hicks was a fixture on the board of education for twenty-one years, and also served for seven years on the governing board of Arizona's community colleges. In 1955 he was elected president of the National School Boards Association. One of Prescott's favorite sons, he has held uncounted positions of local leadership from freshman class president to mayor of the city. But he found his work in education the most rewarding.

"Prescott has had a long tradition of excellent public schools," he once told me. "I benefited from that tradition, and I thought I should do whatever I could to maintain it for others."

His contributions were recognized in an unusual tribute. In 1964 Prescott named its newest elementary school for Taylor Hicks.

Another of the outspoken admirers of Prescott's emphasis on quality education is Budge Ruffner.

"Prescott is a great place to raise kids, both because of the environment and because of the superior public schools," Ruffner said. "Our most valuable resources are well-educated young people."

But Budge seldom stays serious very long. He keeps thinking of stories about his Uncle George, a famous Yavapai County sheriff. Once when George Ruffner was running for reelection, said Budge, one of his cronies was pressed into service to record the votes of any illiterate citizens. "Do you want to vote for Mr. Ruffner?" he would ask. If the answer was "Yes," he would duly mark the appropriate box. If the answer was "No," he would reply, "Well, then, we'll just mark that bastard out"-again making a prominent X opposite the Ruffner name.

Productive Artists and Appreciative Audiences

The evidence ranges from the oil landscapes of Kate Cory and the precise etchings of Claire Dooner-Phillips, representing the first half of this century, to today's im-posing bronze sculpture of Bill Nebeker and the delicate pastels of Rose Mary Mack: Prescott long has been a community of productive artists and appreciative audiences. And the interest and activity extend as much to the performing arts as to the visual arts. The "arts menu" regularly compiled by cultural groups and the Prescott Chamber of Commerce is impressive. In a year's cycle it includes the Prescott concerts of the Phoenix Symphony, the San Francisco Opera's Western Opera Theatre, professional theatre at the Elks Opera House, and a long schedule of art shows, musical events, drama, and dance-both professional and amateur -presented or sponsored by such organizations as the Prescott Fine Arts Association, Friends in Concert, all three colleges, the Prescott Public Schools, and the museums and galleries listed on page 17.

With the Rough Riders Memorial of Solon Borglum and the much more recent output of the late George Phip-pen as inspiration, Prescott has be-come a center of activity in Western sculpture and particularly in work in bronze. Two foundries are kept busy. One of the purposes of the still-young Prescott Community Art Trust is to encourage sculptors of the area and to erect some of their work in public places. On June 7 the trust made its first big splash with the unveiling of the heroic-scale Ne-beker sculpture Early Settlers on Memorial Is-land at the east-ern entrance to Prescott. The group of four figures, rising eleven and a half feet high, is the result of the first com-mission award-ed by the trust.

Survivors of the Sun People

Bordering Prescott along the low hills just north of town is the 1400-acre Yavapai-Prescott Indian Reservation, home of one of Arizona's three communities of Yavapai Indians. The others are located on the Yavapai-Apache Indian Reservation near Camp Verde and the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation northeast of Phoenix. Most though not all of the Prescott tribe's members live on the reservation, along with some spouses who are not Yavapais. The population of the community is about a hundred. The tribe is governed by a board of directors whose president since 1972 has been Patricia Vaughn McGee. The Prescott Yavapais are accustomed to feminine leadership. Pat McGee is the first woman president, but forty-five years ago her grandmother, Viola Jimulla, was named chieftess by the tribe upon the death of her husband, Chief Sam Jimulla. In succession the tribe has named two Jimulla daughters as chieftess: Grace Mitchell and Lucy Miller. Mrs. Miller died in 1984. "The roles of chieftess and board president are not the same," Mrs. McGee explained. "It's something like the distinction between the Queen of England and the prime minister. The tribe will decide soon whether to continue the position of chief or chieftess, and if so, who will fill it."

Recognizing that their reservation property is their greatest economic resource, the tribal government several years ago developed a comprehensive land-use plan. The board leases sites in an industrial park and a commercial park and operates a popular bingo facility. Its most ambitious undertaking lies just ahead: providing the land for the W. M. Grace Companies' construction of a Sheraton hotel and convention center on a hilltop overlooking the main entrance to Prescott. One unusual and highly successful project of the tribe was to engage building-trades specialists as instructors to train tribal members in construction techniques. The Yavapais thus learned how to build their own homes to high standards while becoming qualified construction workers for employment on other projects. In at least two instances the tiny Yavapai community has been Prescott's benefactor. When Trinity Presbyterian Church was organized in 1957, its sponsor was the congregation of a Yavapai Presbyterian mission with roots predating the turn of the century. And in the 1960s the tribe waived its claim to a valuable ninety-eight-acre portion of the former Fort Whipple military reservation on condition the land be used for the new campus of Yavapai College and an adjacent city park.