Senior Picture Rincon H.S.

By Michael Brewer

Late in the afternoon on November 10^th, 1959, my pregnant mother, my stepfather Ike, my brother Greg and I arrived in Tucson in a shiny new Buick Electra with our entire life possessions hooked to the bumper in a U-Haul.

The eighteen hundred mile trip was the first time my brother and I had seen anything beyond the banks of the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois. Greg and I had no idea there were that many cities in the entire United States, and they all had a Travel Lodge with that cute little bear. Isn’t it amazing what sticks in our memories?

Every one of our classmates at St. Mary’s Catholic school in Dixon (where my grandparents, aunts and uncles attended) who bid us farewell made us promise we would send  pictures of the cowboys and Indians in Tucson. We did. And they made it quite easy, as we had a package waiting for us from my 6^th grade teacher, Sister Angelica, stuffed with all the letters and addresses of my classmates. We had been gone but five days, and my pals were telling me how much we were missed. That stuck with me too.

We were in town for about two hours before my Dad had to be at work for the Cactus Corporation running Lucky Strike Bowl. His job was arranged months before. My mom started work two days later for Doctors Business Bureau, bringing with her computer programming skills (quite rare for a woman in the 1950’s) she had gained as a supervisor for USF&G Insurance.

Our developmental years were highly influenced by college educated women. My two aunts, my uncle, and my grandmother, mom, and brother all lived under one roof. Curiously we may be returning to this multi-generational mode of living.

My brother and I started school the very next day at Peter E. Howell.  We got wait-listed at St. Joseph’s Catholic school.

One week later this adventuresome 11 year-old started his job for the Arizona Daily Star delivering papers at 4:30 in the morning. I had the coveted honor of being El Con Mall’s first paper boy!  Within three months I knew every retailer in the Mall, some of them prominent Tucson families; Abby Grunewald, Steinfelds, Dave Bloom and Sons, Levy’s  too name a few. Is it any wonder that I went on to manage shopping centers and office buildings for a career?

Memories are made of this, 51 years of Old Pueblo nostalgia. And memories wait to be made on the California coast as my wife and I write our way out of town.

A Pennsylvania Hills Girl in 1955

By Lydia Brewer

Whatever possessed my parents to abandon the green hills of Pennsylvania for the hot, dry, shades-of-tan desert? Just eight years old, I have few memories of our family’s move to Tucson in June of 1957 except that it got hotter and hotter as we drove west. I do remember seeing my first dust devils outside of Benson, and the look on my mother’s face at the realization that we definitely weren’t  “in Kansas any more.”

My father’s parents and his brother had moved to Tucson, and Dad came back from visiting them, ready to move west. My parents had just finished building the home of their dreams on land that had been in my mother’s family for over 200 years. They sold the house, packed everything that would fit into a trailer bigger than our car, and we left behind the green hills, tall trees, and all of my mother’s very large family to join my father’s small family in the desert.

Less than one month after my eighteenth birthday, I left Tucson for Newport Beach, California. A year later, I married. Two years later, I became the mother of a beautiful son, and three years after that, I found myself a single mother. As much as I loved California, I needed the support of my family. My parents and grandparents were still in Tucson, and my brother offered to share his four-bedroom house, so I took a 35% pay-cut, left Orange County, and came home.

Family brought me here as a child, family drew me back as a young adult, and family has kept me here the last three decades. The time to choose a nurturing and supportive environment that sings a song in harmony with my heart is now. California, here we come!

Lydia Brewer