Phoenix 202 Completion

ENR, September 2019

The 22-mile South Mountain Freeway completes the Loop 101 and Loop 202 system circumnavigating the Phoenix area. Meeting the Arizona Department of Transportation’s January 1, 2020, deadline was just one of many achievements of this challenging project. While researching it for an Engineering News Record story, I was able to ride and walk part of the mileage with members of the joint venture of Fluor Enterprises Inc., Ames Construction Inc. and Granite Construction Co. This was during the scorching Phoenix summer, but that half day was vital. Another challenge for the contractors was blasting through four small granite hills. In one section sacred to the Native Americans, the land was blessed by a community leader, and no rubble from the blast could leave the area, inspiring the contractors to repurpose it for embankments and substrate.

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Plein Air Events Mark Grand Canyon and Zion Centennials

Western Art Collector, July 2019

Being even a small part this year of the centennial celebrations for Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks has been inspiring. I had the honor of writing a few pieces about these events; this is one of them. Part of the joy was that these are, indeed, commemorations of 100 years of national commitment and personal commitments of individual Americans to their preservation. But I will not be here for the next such event; neither will most of those reading this. Please remember that the next one is for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What President Teddy Roosevelt said of Yellowstone National Park in 1903 carries for all of these remarkable shared treasures: All of us, he said, looking forward 100 years and beyond, must “jealously [safeguard] and [preserve] the scenery, the forests, and the wild creatures.” Cherish this jealousy, practice it.

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Bentley: A Century of Class

Highline Autos, July 2019

In this GreatGarages, to honor the 100th anniversary of Bentley, I worked with a variety of gracious marque experts and fans worldwide for about five months. The home office of Bentley in England connected me with Frank LaVerda, Customer Relations and VIP manager, and Jon Simons, Product Marketing manager, for Bentley Motors-USA. Here, in Scottsdale, Beli Merdovic, general manager of Aston Martin, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, a Penske Automotive Dealership, was also helpful. Thanks as well to Phil Brooks, Williamsburg, Virginia; Graeme Cocks, Australia; Simon Hope and Julian Roup, England; Colin Dougherty, Keswick, Virginia; and Bostonian Bruce Male. Cheers!

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Gilbert, Arizona Veteran Remembers Normandy Invasion

Gilbert Sun News, June 2, 2019

Henry DuBay was there for the Normandy Invasion 75 years ago. He was there for his country. He was there for his family. For freedom, for democracy, for decency. The Gilbert, Arizona, resident, a C-47 pilot during World War II, was honored at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans June 6, 2019, for his participation in the most important battle of the last century, which took place along 50 miles of French coastline. He and other D-Day veterans were flown to the museum to discuss Operation Overlord and meet well-wishers from around the country. The costs had been high: approximately 2,500 Americans and almost 2,000 British and Canadian troops were killed just on the first day, June 6, 1944. Another 7,500 were wounded. But the battle was won, and the war in Europe would be over less than a year later.

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Apollo 11 at 50: One Giant Leap for Corvettes

Highline Autos, June 2019

“We all watched in wonder, with Walter Cronkite.” But I watched my father, too, July 20, 1969. Outside it was a muggy evening, and everyone had vacated the rowhouse stoops, where neighbors gathered on summer nights to chat and listen to Philadelphia Phillies games on transistor radios. Tonight, they were watching black-and-white TVs as window air-conditioners whirred. I watched him: the sense of amazement and awe (a Great Depression boy, he was not easily overwhelmed) at Commander Neil Armstrong’s historic hop out onto the moon. This was Jules Verne, Flash Gordon, H.G. Wells, Tom Swift and Commando Cody and the fulfilment of World War II victory. This July 20, I will be thinking of the moon, the stars and the look in my father’s eyes that magical summer night.

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The Hings Save Money Market in Superior

AFMA Journal, June 2019

Every story written brings some enjoyment. This one brought stories and stories of enjoyment. The Hings are a fourth-generation grocery family living and doing business in Superior, about 30 miles from Mesa, Arizona. Theirs is a story of hard work, toughness and persistence through 100 years of providing the mining town with fresh provisions and other necessities. Michael Hing’s grandfather started the business in 1920, less than a decade since coming from China; next year, then, is the centennial; he befriended Eddie Basha Sr.’s dad, who started that Arizona grocery company in nearby Kearney. He was also friendly with Colonel Boyce Thompson, the Magma Copper owner who founded the beautiful Boyce Thompson Southwest Arboretum. Please come through these doors, shop a spell and read about a family that makes Arizona, and America, great.

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The Home on Camino Sin Nombre

Highline Autos, June 2019

This magnificent has been completed in stellar Paradise Valley. With mountain views, the one-level will provide its new owners with spaces which exemplify the contemporary Southwest desert lifestyle. A commercial-size kitchen provides an expansive area for entertaining. Outside is an infinity-edge lap pool. Extensive hallways will showcase artworks. A large master suite is on one corridor and the family bedrooms and guest quarters on the other. The six-bay car garage has storage and work space for man-cave joy. On two acres, this 12,000-plus-square-feet home has space for even more bays, a she-shack, reading house or even a stand-alone casita.

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Remembering June 6, 1945: D-Day at 75

Highline Autos, June 2019

Speaking with Harry Swartz of Fostoria, Ohio, was one of a number of highlights working on this 75th-anniversary D-Day story with our friends at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. I was able to find Harry through the kindness of Lee Adams, whose grandfather is a Normandy veteran and who helps coordinate the D-Day re-enactment every August in Conneaut, Ohio, on Lake Erie. Please consider visiting both the museum and that event. Harry was there as a scout on the shores of western France early June 6, 1944. Speaking with him viscerally connected me to those hours: the incessant German machine guns on the ridges, the beach barricades set by Rommel’s Atlantic Fortress crew, the swirling cold water. His heroic fight for survival that morning, and that of his comrades, ensured the survival of democracy, of us and our children.

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For $ale!!! The Grand Canyon

Green Living, May 2019

Across political aisles, Americans support the preservation of our national parks, aligning with the goal that established the National Park Service more than 100 years ago: to ensure that these lands remain in perpetuity as shared national treasures. The parks, though, are threatened as well as our national forests, wildlife refuges, monuments, says author Stephen Nash in his Grand Canyon for Sale: Public Lands versus Private Interests in the Era of Climate Change (University of California Press, 2017). Central to the destruction is human-created climate change. Other assaults are attempts to privatize and commoditize them; overgrazing; mining on sensitive lands near the parks; the growth of gateway towns; and the noise of Grand Canyon overflights by scenic airplanes and helicopters. What do all of us do? Yell in the direction of Washington, D.C.

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The Challenges of Climate Change

Green Living, April 2019

Scientists agree that the earth has warmed during the last century and that human activities are the cause. The past four years (2015–2018), in fact, are the warmest since meteorological records started about 1880. The primary cause, the greenhouse effect, is an imbalance between the Earth’s retaining solar energy and reflecting it. These factors include burning fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Deforestation, the use of aerosols, for example, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), intensify this. Ozone is still another factor. In contrast, long-term climate changes occur across thousands of years as a result of orbital position. Our responsibility: Work together to change climate change. Recall the Kenyan proverb: “The Earth . . . was not given to us by our parents. It was lent to us by our children.”

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The Desert Hypnotic

Modern Luxury Interiors, Spring 2019

Desert Mountain is superb High Sonoran Desert living in north Scottsdale. Its luxury homes surround six Jack Nicklaus-designed championship courses and superlative clubhouses. The retired New Jersey natives sited their 5,700-square-foot two-level home above the community’s tough Chiricahua Tenth hole. Completed in 2016, the Desert Contemporary-style custom is the vision of Phoenix-based architectural designer Bryan Rains and was built by Scottsdale’s Phil Nichols Custom Homes. Angelica Henry and Claire Ownby, both Scottsdale, provided interior design elements. “The Clark home,” notes Rains, “is a harmony of site and structure.”

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Castle Hot Springs Reopens with Green Welcome Mat

Green Living, March 2019

“This spring is a beautiful place, surrounded with fine scenery, and if the water proves possessed of medicinal properties it will certainly be a place of resort in a few years,” wrote pioneer settler Abraham Harlow Peeples, in the Arizona Miner January 30, 1874. Castle Hot Springs did become a resort, opened by another Arizona pioneer, Frank Murphy, in 1896 for the health conscious about 50 miles from Phoenix in the Bradshaw Mountains. From here, his brother, Territorial Governor Nathan Oakes Murphy, made the first Arizona telephone call in 1902. The resort later welcomed, in January 1945, a Massachusetts naval lieutenant, John F. Kennedy, who completed a post-war rehabilitation here. The 220-acre “green-inspired” resort reopened February 1, 2019, with luxury bungalow and cabin accommodations. Come: “Take the waters.”

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Ice King: ‘Chill Out, Be Cool’

AFMA Journal, March 2019

Some assignments have a chilling effect. A recent visit to Ice King did this, while also inspiring the final text. The small business produces ice products, such as blocks and cubes, for the Phoenix area. An early morning interview transpired during a winter chill that had brought wind and rain to the desert areas of the state and record snow to the high country. Starting out in the cool parking lot, we warmed to the snow-making machines that are hot in the sizzling Valley summers. Then we moved inside to a cooler space where giant cylinders harvested ice. Next was the inventory freezer, cooler still, and, finally, an especially frigid freezer set at 6 degrees. All the while, we met The Robot, which, undaunted by the cold, palleted the products, without so much as donning an Extra Large sweater. This piece is served un-neat for your sipping pleasure.

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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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Lexus LC500 & LS500

Highline Autos, February 2019

We particularly enjoyed the Lexus LC 500 luxury coupe for a weeklong test drive a couple of months ago. The company flagship brought thumbs-up signs with its potent 5.0-liter normally aspirated DOHC 32-valve V-8 producing 471-horsepower/398 lb/ft-torque engine. We were especially impressed with the car’s graceful 10-speed automatic transmission and wheel-mounted paddle shifters. The powertrain delivers 0-to-60 mph runs of 4.4 seconds. The LS500 is equipped with a 3.5-liter, twin turbo DOHC 24-valve V-6, also paired with the 10-speed automatic. The family-oriented sedan is not quite as quick as the two-door LC, but you’ll still handle most of life’s road challenges very capably with 4.7-second 0–60 times. The LC500h Hybrid completes the line-up of fine 500 models.

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Grand Canyon National Park Celebrates Centennial

Green Living, February 2019

“You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths,” wrote John Wesley Powell in The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons. This year, 2019, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Powell’s milestone 1869 journey through the mouths and labyrinths of the Grand Canyon in what is today Arizona. We also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the creation of Grand Canyon National Park, by President Woodrow Wilson, February 26, 1919. At the same time, we recognize that in celebrating the parks by even visiting them as often and as lovingly as we do, we harm them through wear. Stewarding the Grand Canyon National Park through another 100 years, then, is as challenging today as it was a century ago.

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Hassayampa Inn

Western Art & Architecture, December 2018/January 2019

Approaching its 100th anniversary, Prescott’s grande-dame, the Hassayampa Inn, is as grand today as then: “Infinite planning and real artistry have been employed to make the color effect in the lobby blend perfectly. To achieve this end, nothing has been overlooked, from the tile coloring in the spacious fireplace and the wall borders to the golden hued walls themselves,” enthused the reporter for the Prescott Evening Courier, November 19, 1927, on the just-opened hotel. The 67-room Spanish Colonial Revival/Italianate four-story is in mile-high Prescott, about 90 miles from Phoenix. Its adjacent Peacock Room serves fine food and drinks. A visit to the Hassayampa is a visit into the history of the Arizona’s first Territorial capital, founded in 1864 by emissaries of President Lincoln. Take a look inside the story, and the hotel, and enjoy.

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Love Canal Legacy

Green Living, December 2018

Forty years ago, Love Canal, near Niagara Falls in New York State, was an environmental nightmare that awakened America. Approximately 22,000 tons of chemicals, stored in steel drums, buried and capped in clay from 1942 to 1953, had leaked into the adjacent working-class homes. By 1978, the released diozin, halogenated organics, chlorobenzenes, heavy metals and hazardous waste had begun to produce high incidences of heart disease, cancer, rashes, kidney failure, allergies, immune diseases, epilepsy, asthma, migraines, nephrosis, birth defects, leukemia and miscarriages. Today capped, fenced and closely monitored almost two decades following EPA remediation, the 70-acre site still contains most of the chemicals. Some positive results were Superfund legislation and our state environmental agencies. But the best outcome was the inspiration to prevent similar future events. (Thanks to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for the Love Canal images.)

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Reginald G. Sydnor

ARA, Fall 2018

Look anywhere in the Valley and you’ll read the late Reginald Gene Sydnor, AIA, signature: the 1957 Motorola Governmental Electronics Plant, Scottsdale; 1960 ASU Hiram Bradford Farmer Education Building, Tempe; 1969 St. Luke’s Hospital and Medical Center Major Expansion, Phoenix; and six homes from the 1960s and 1970s. The native of Bellpoint, West Virginia, pioneered post-World War II Phoenix architecture, with notables such as Edward L. Varney, a principal of Varney Sexton Sydnor Architects with whom Sydnor worked for much of his Phoenix career. During 42 years of practice, most in Arizona from 1955 to 1991, “Reg” (“Redge”) completed 250 projects in Arizona, Washington and California. Sydnor’s architectural legacy continues with one of his sons, Doug, who says, “He went through life with the utmost integrity, delivered every promise without exception and brought balanced judgment and fairness to every situation.”

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The Treasured Life at The Village at Silverleaf

Interiors, Fall 2018

The Rural Mediterranean-style villa comprises 6,924-square-foot on three levels, with a light-filled entertainment basement and an upper-level master suite. The two first-level bedrooms comfortably accommodate guests. Co-owner Lauren Rautbord is principal of Paul Lauren Design Consultants, a residential interior design firm which recently relocated from her native Chicago to Scottsdale. This and all of the available homes at The Village at Silverleaf are designed by Don Ziebell, president of Scottsdale’s Oz Architects Inc., and built by Rod Cullum, principal of Cullum Homes, also Scottsdale. Customized to fit their collectibles and treasures, the home synthesizes old and new, combining classic European design and repurposed materials with today’s open-space layout. “The end result is contemporary timelessness,” Rautbord says.

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