News

OF THE 14 multimillion-dollar bond issues approved enthusiastically by Phoenix voters in 1988, the city’s $15 million proposal to preserve its architectural heritage was uniquely ambitious. Never before had the city even considered devoting such resources to historic preservation. No one familiar with Phoenix’s screwy sprawl would have believed the…

I went back out of curiosity. They were presenting this year’s Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia University in New York City. It was the 75th-anniversary celebration of the Pulitzers, and they had actually taken the trouble to invite every previous winner to come to New York to attend both the ceremony…

Dr. Robert Tamis built his medical practice by making it easier for women to have babies. In the early 1960s, the Phoenix obstetrician was one of the first Arizona doctors to prescribe epidural anesthesia, a treatment that made his patients’ labor and delivery less painful. A decade later, he opened…

When the City of Phoenix put a private consultant in charge of its international-relations program, supporters of then-Mayor Terry Goddard hailed the injection of free-enterprise energy into sleepy old City Hall. But some folks who work closely with the city’s Office of Trade and Protocol claim the results fall more…

BIOSPHERE 2 GETS a lot of ink these days. The project has finally reached “closure.” A couple of weeks ago a handful of scientific-looking people sealed themselves inside a big greenhouse near Tucson. For two years, the story goes, they will live under the dome, drink their own recycled pee…

MARK HOLLANDER WAS on top of the world when he reported for his first day of work at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1989. The 24-year-old Hollander could hardly believe the senior lawyers’ plush offices, with window views of the White House and…

Alex Macias, at age 19 the youngest buff present, first got interested about two years ago. “I got tired of hearing stories that he was a killer,” said Macias. “Then you’d hear other stories about how sensitive he was. I decided to find out for myself.” Macias brought his girlfriend…

THE REMAINS OF Billy the Kid were assembled recently, for purposes of a postmortem. The Kid, a long-dead horse thief, gunman and ladies’ man, still can draw a crowd, and the remains, in this case, were not your typical forensic mess of gristle and bone, but the crowd itself, as…

THE REMAINS OF Billy the Kid were assembled recently, for purposes of a postmortem. The Kid, a long-dead horse thief, gunman and ladies’ man, still can draw a crowd, and the remains, in this case, were not your typical forensic mess of gristle and bone, but the crowd itself, as…

ON THE FIRST DAY of school this year at Winkelman Elementary, a second grader asked teacher Gloria Guzman if she was mean, and Guzman answered: “Remember, only mean kids have mean teachers.” “Mean,” however, is not the same thing as “strict.” Now in her 25th year of teaching, Guzman likes…

At the same time legislators quibbled about an $18 monthly increase for Arizona’s welfare mothers, House Speaker Jane Hull hired a media spin doctor–at a salary of $4,500 a month. Jack Lavelle, who covered the legislature for eight years at the Phoenix Gazette, has been at his new job as…

With his attorney’s license in jeopardy for lying to clients, Jim Feeley needed to pull something out of his hat. What he produced was way out in left field. This is the way Dr. Francis Enos of the Institute for Human Services tried to explain Feeley’s behavior to a State…

Ethics evangelist Michael Josephson is trying to heal Arizona, a state made gimpy by corruption. Last week he spoke to a large roomful of attorneys. This week he speaks to the Arizona State Legislature, then the Arizona Press Club. He has cornered all the usual suspects, in other words. Josephson,…

State land officials will continue defending a disputed land-giveaway law despite being slam-dunked by environmentalists in the state Court of Appeals. The decision to fight the appellate court’s ruling was made last Thursday by state Land Commissioner Jean Hassell, and it was done with the blessing of Governor Fife Symington,…

Elaine Sweet Horwitch always threw a great party, but her final blowout was unusual, partly because it was so dignified and certainly because it took place without much notice. Stunned by the sudden death of the gallery owner whose name has long been synonymous with Scottsdale, about 1,000 people last…

IT STARTED unpromisingly enough in a kitchen in central Phoenix in 1986. Pat Coultrap and Mary DeConcini were venting their frustration over the proposed Esplanade development. They knew it would bring dense traffic and cut off their neighborhood’s view of Squaw Peak, but developer Fife Symington had the city council…

When Carol Hottell answered the telephone in her east Mesa home late on the evening of September 6, she heard a voice that made her shake. Her half-brother Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins was calling from death row in Columbia, South Carolina. She always felt confused about Pee Wee. This time…

IT BURSTS OUT of the asphalt steppes at McDowell and Scottsdale roads like a Dada stage set, a crazed, skewed, hallucinatory caricature of pueblo architecture. Part nightmare, part cartoon, it looks like it might have been designed by a committee composed of Salvador Dali, R.C. Gorman and Fred Flintstone, all…

“What a beautiful day!” said the Governor. J. Fife Symington III was smiling incessantly and reached out to shake my hand. There was a blissed-out look in his eyes. “A really beautiful day–and the weather was perfect!” Symington said, still pressing my flesh. The barkeeps were pouring expensive liquor at…

Maryvale movie maven Jack Hardy has problems. Reel problems. Luckily, his family understands. “My wife is very supportive of this,” says Hardy as he gingerly picks his way through the maze of film cans, videocassettes, editing tables and movie-history books that have transformed his west Phoenix home into the equivalent…

As government bureaucracies go, the Arizona State Legislature is usually an open book. You want public records? Just ask. Unless you’re a legislator. Eleanor Schorr, a Tucson Democrat in the Arizona House, is embroiled with House Speaker Jane Hull, a Phoenix Republican, over access to public information that even lowly…

College is in session once again, and once again I’m moved to offer some advice on the topic. Your college years, of course, are extremely important. Some say your course for life is set at the university level. Never again will you have such opportunity to test your beliefs or…