Newspaper Reporter

Living in Fredonia was very different from living Mesa. We had no television and limited radio reception. It was a long way to go to a bigger shopping center in Flagstaff, Cedar City, or Saint George. We had to find things to do with our personal time.

I contacted the Arizona Republic newspaper and became a correspondent reporter. I sent in news stories about every week and got paid for every inch of print. I wrote for the Flagstaff newspaper, also. I even wrote stories for the weekly paper from Kanab, Utah. Some of my Kanab stories got into the Salt Lake papers. I didn’t get rich doing it but I enjoyed it very much.

I learned that the people of the Arizona strip really resented being ignored by the leaders of the Arizona, the Coconio and Mohave County officials. The Fredonia people had been trying for years to get the road paved through Pipe Springs, Cane Beds and Short Creek to Hurricane, Utah and made a state highway. No one in Phoenix paid them any attention. I explained the problem to my editor of the Arizona Republic. His name was Turk Smith and I loved working with him. I’m told him that I thought the road through Short Creek would keep them from being so isolated and possible force them to move on or change their ways. Turk liked this idea so he and I set up news conferences in Fredonia and Short Creek about it.

We’ve met with the leaders in Fredonia and Kanab civic and church one morning. I wrote a neat story about the ideas that people had. Turk brought a photographer along and he took pictures of all the participants.That afternoon Turk, the photographer, and I assembled a group of people in Short Creek for a news conference. I wrote of the ideas that came from this group also. We had some good photos of the people and the homes in Short Creek.

The story was picked up by the Associated Press and came out in papers all over the United States. It was a successful venture because they eventually put in a good State Highway where it had been a dirt road. The terrain was conducive to road building, few hills, mostly sandy soil that was well drained and there were no right of way issues.

My stories were basically uncut in the issues Turk sent me.One of the neatest stories I wrote about was our square dance club in Fredonia. I had learned to square dance in mutual in Pima as a kid and I really liked it. Wanda and I joined a square dance club in Mesa before we went to Fredonia.

With no television and lots of time on our hands I found several people in the church had done some square dancing. Some of the non-mormon couples joined with us and we organized an official square dance club. We were able to use the town hall, a fairly new facility, for our activities.We chose the name of our club “The Arizona Strippers.” I was president of the club at first and I had a treasurer. We paid dues annual to pay for our record player and new records. We danced once a week.We had no one who wanted to call so we used recorded calls. I did some teaching to new dancers but had help from two couples from St Johns that worked for Whiting Brothers Lumber Operation.

I wrote a story about our square dance club and Turk turned the story over to one of the papers cartoonists. He drew a cartoon showing a bunch of old men sitting in the hall and one said “when does the show start”. It was a near cartoon.

I wrote all kinds of special stories about things I ran into and made the people in Southern Arizona aware of lots of things about the Arizona Strip. When the Glen Canyon Dam contract was agreed upon I was able to attend the meetings and wrote a story about Brown and Root getting the contract and all the important information about the dam. The meeting was in Kanab, Utah and again m stories were picked up by Associated Press and went all over the country.