Ten years ago, when state health officials first learned that children in Maryvale were dying of leukemia at twice the national rate, they delayed further health studies of the west-side community and quietly covered up the problem. When news reports of Arizona Department of Health Services’ four-year delay in studying…
You subscribe to a newspaper, but it never arrives. You’re upset and want your money back, right? Likely not, if you happen to be one of the “charter subscribers” to Evan Mecham’s would-be newspaper, Arizona News Day. Originally slated to go to press in September 1991, the “newspaper” has taken…
Doug Wead, the preacher-turned-politician who moved to Arizona last year looking for work in Washington, D.C., was one giant step closer to becoming a congressman. It was a few minutes past 10 p.m. on September 8, and the early returns showed Wead well ahead of two opponents in the primary…
The Arizona Republic is really cashing in these days on its connection to Vice President Dan Quayle, but the newspaper’s not exactly tooting its own horn about it. Twice this month, the Republic, which is owned and operated by Quayle’s Pulliam relatives, has been savaged by national magazines Newsweek and…
The national media went crazy over the rape, especially since it came so quickly after the shooting. –Barry Switzer, former University of Oklahoma football coach, in Bootlegger’s Boy Let’s examine the events surrounding Arizona State University’s fleet-footed quarterback and admitted sneak thief, Garrick McGee. Charles Harris, the slippery, smooth-talking athletic…
“I think that eight or nine years ago they made a mistake,” says Mayor Paul Johnson. “You had a group of merchants who were down there and were making it work, but it was a new mayor and council looking to get downtown redeveloped. It ended up being an experiment…
Amid the orange groves of Mesa, the boys play catch. A dozen baseballs snap through the bright air. From their matching tee shirts and the casual formation they’ve made along the left-field line, these boys look like teammates, and this seems to be an organized practice. From their calm eyes…
If it shines, it’s as a symbol; in every other way, Square One is worn down at the heels. It squats in the center of downtown, an entire block of shuttered buildings, all of them scarred with posters tacked up long ago by AIDS activists and the fans of L…
Bill Rathje talks trash. He makes offal puns. He’s the duke of disposable debris, the garbage guru. Like Indiana Jones, Rathje is an archaeologist. And like that fictional University of Chicago prof, this actual University of Arizona prof occasionally finds himself in sticky situations. But they’ve got different ideas about…
All Sheila Dixon wanted to do was give her daughter a head start on a science project. What better place to go than the library? Instead of books, she and 14-year-old Melinda discovered a truth about computers: Don’t trust em. At least the Dixons wound up with enough time on…
What price faded glory? Plenty. This summer, a recession-plagued public has shaken its collective head in disbelief over the jaw-dropping sums paid for a couple of well-publicized pop-culture artifacts. Several weeks ago, when 1946 Oscar winner Harold Russell put his statuette for The Best Years of Our Lives on the…
The 911 operator took the call at 3:34 a.m. on April 29, 1991. “Did he cut you with the knife?” she asked a frantic-sounding woman. “Always. He puts it up in my face.” The operator dispatched police to the northeast Phoenix apartment of Ann and Dennis Roper, then returned to…
In Doug Wead’s dining room, there’s a photograph of George Bush cradling Wead’s son Joshua. On August 24, there was a Bush son in Doug Wead’s living room. Neil Bush, the son who has had to pay $50,000 for his part in the collapse of the Silverado S&L in Denver,…
“Hellooooo, Mesa!” That was geriatric superstar Pat Boone’s greeting last month during a benefit fund raiser for his pal Doug Wead, who’s running for Congress from Arizona’s new District 6. Boone then conducted a search in the audience of 800 for “square” people who support right-wing Amway evangelist Wead. Boone’s…
“What? Me matriculate?” Or so Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman might ask when he–along with a hundred other objets d’art from the 40-year-old humor magazine–takes center stage at a monthlong public hanging at Arizona State University beginning Tuesday (September 8). Titled “Humor in a Jugular Vein: The Art, Artists…
With the Rehnquist Court apparently ready to overturn the privacy guarantees established in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, pro-choice advocates see the legislative process as a potential fire wall against the torching of reproductive freedom. To help pro-choice voters identify candidates of kindred spirit, Planned Parenthood of Central and…
@body:Look at the money we make off predominantly poor, black kids. We’re the whoremasters. –Dale Brown, Louisiana State basketball coach I sit there watching Arizona State University athletic director Charles Harris very carefully. Harris moves confidently into the room with his chin held high. The first thing you spot about…
Pastor Fred Pettison moved his congregation to midtown Phoenix after his church on the south side was destroyed by a fire bomb. These things happen when you are gay, like Pastor Fred, and your ministry is to homosexuals and lesbians. No one was charged in the arson, one of many…
Henry Cruz was feeling feisty that morning when he woke up in the barbed-wired, concrete-block cage where kids who break the law are kept. That wasn’t usual. Cruz, better known as Frosty to his homies and his weary keepers, stood 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed about 112 pounds…
Late in 1938, a funny new fish was hauled aboard a trawler working the Cape coast of South Africa. Once back at dockside, the ship’s captain notified the curator at the local natural-history museum. Unable to identify the catch of the day, the curator tossed the blue fish into a…
Paul Pedraza is quick to correct anyone who calls him a butcher. “I’m a meat cutter,” he insists. And meat, he says, is the only thing he is willing to cut for Fry’s Food Stores. A few weeks ago, Fry’s sent its employees a new dress code that, among other…
A Tucson law firm’s legal reference book for journalists that claims to be a “search for the truth” has been nationally recognized by the American Bar Association as a successful advertising ploy for the firm. The American Bar Association honored Mesch, Clark & Rothschild for The Reporter’s Guide to Law…
