Scottsdale’s Giles Smith Trains for An Olympics Shot

Scottsdale Progress, February 10, 2019

Watch for this name when the precious-medal medals are awarded next year: Giles Smith. The Scottsdale resident hopes to travel to Tokyo for the Summer Olympics, where he would participate in the 100-meter butterfly and the 4×100-meter medley, if he qualifies for the first. While training for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he ruptured the bursa-sac in his left elbow, leaving him unable to pull on the arm at full force for several weeks. After months of physical rehabilitation, the Baltimore-born Smith and U of A All-American is training six–eight hours daily at various Valley locations. Looking forward to the Omaha Olympic Trials in June 2020, he plans to be one of the 52 men and women to become U.S. Olympians. He’s now beating the world’s best. For a Youtube, see youtube.com/watch?v=qrzEFxIT3XI.

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Power Couple: The Jarsons

Modern Luxury Interiors, Spring/Summer 2018

Scott and Debbie Jarson founded their Phoenix-based real estate company, azarchitecture/Jarson & Jarson, in 1990, specializing in post-World War II Mid-century modern vintage homes. Their life expresses a passion for the work of significant Valley architects/designers, including Al Beadle, Eddie Jones, Steven Holl, Wendell Burnette, Ralph Haver, Cal Straub, Ned Sawyer, Fred Guirey, George Christensen, Darren Petrucci, John Kane, Bennie Gonzales, Paolo Soleri, Brent Kendle, John Douglas, Rich Fairbourn, Hugh Knoell, Taliesin fellows such as Blaine Drake and Charles Montooth iconcoclast Paul Christian Yaeger and Will Bruder, who designed their home adjacent to the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. “The Jarsons . . . [combine] a passion for quality design and architecture, a richly informed awareness of the history of Phoenix and a keen ability to bring to this conversation buyers, colleagues and community members,” says Bruder, FAIA.

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Elie, Elie

LaSalle Collegian, 1973ish

Elie Wiesel (1928−2016) changed many lives; mine, too. Writer, professor, political activist, Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor. His first book, Night, harrowingly describes his survival of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, which his parents did not survive. My thanks to The LaSalle Collegian staff in native Philadelphia for finding this story in the newspaper archives, or morgue, as we once macabrely called it. This is an early piece written while I was the features editor and trying assiduously not to write for a career. The opportunity to interview a surviving child of the Nazi horror came about. Hearing him speak in such soft tones about the hardness of those years piqued this reaction, which earned a first prize the next year from Pennsylvania Collegiate Press Association. Wiesel went on to accept the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, and, despite my efforts, I succumbed to the passion of a career in writing. Thanks, Elie, for being a witness to history and watching over my history, too.

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Jeanetta Holder: ‘The Quilt Lady’

Highline Autos, November 2016

Kentucky’s Jeanetta Holder, 84, has been gifting Indy 500 winners hand-made quilts for four decades. Last May’s winner, Alexander Rossi, received one. Mario Andretti of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the 1969 winner, received his 40 years ago after claiming the 1978 Formula 1 title. The Unsers, Al Sr. and Jr. and Bobby, winners of a fabulous nine Indy’s, have a collection in Albuquerque. Roger Penske, the transportation-industry giant and race promoter, has some, as does Arie Luyendyk, the Phoenix-area resident who won in 1990 and 1997. And four-timer A.J. Foyt has some as does another quadruple winner, Rick Mears. The family of Jim Rathmann, the 1960 winner, received one, as did Parnelli Jones, who took the checkered flag in 1963. “She has always been a close family friend for 50 years, including babysitting my children,” says Bobby Unser, who won three times. “Thanks, Jeanetta, for being part of what makes the Indianapolis 500 and open wheel racing great!”

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Bob Bondurant: Winner’s Circle

Arizona Foothills, May 2013

Teaching and track: Bob Bondurant. This year, the champion race car driver and founder of the world-famous Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving is celebrating twice. On Feb. 14, he, his wife Pat, employees of the school and well-wishers marked the forty-fifth anniversary of the school, proudly located on the Gila River Indian Community in Chandler. Two months after the school event, April 27, he celebrated his eightieth birthday at his Paradise Valley home. Bob brilliantly raced Corvettes in the mid-‘50s, winning the west coast SCCA B Production National Championship in 1959 with a stunning 18 of 20 wins. For Carroll Shelby, Bob participated in the 1965 World Manufacturers Championship, besting Ferrari — almost a half-century later still the only American team to achieve this. Says the octogenarian track legend: “Let’s race!”

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