FLAGSTAFF PUBLIC LIBRARY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Richard and Beatrice Riordan
Interview number NAU.OH.28.79

Richard Riordan, who is a native of Flagstaff and is the son of Michael James Riordan, who was part owner of the Arizona Lumber and Timber Company. His wife Beatrice is also interviewed at the end of the fourth tape. Interview conducted by Kristine Prennace on June 15, 1976 and July 8, 1976. Transcriber: Naomi Morrison.

Outline of Subjects Covered in Taped Interview

Tape 1, Side 1: Born is Flagstaff in 1907; Parents; Michael James (MJ) Riordan, from St. Charles, Illinois; Elizabeth Metz Riordan, from Pricehill, Ohio; Married in 1892; How MJ Riordan came to settle in Flagstaff; Denis Matthew (DM) Riordan, brother of MJ; Moved to area in 1878 and was Navajo Indian agent; 1882, Ayers started sawmill; Santa Fe railroad construction needed timber; DM became manager of Ayers sawmill and later owner; Timothy Allan (TA) Riordan joins lumber company; MJ moved to Flagstaff to recover from tuberculosis; Brothers and sisters; Clare Riordan Quirke; Lived in Ireland, how met husband; Blanche Riordan Chambers; Lived in Flagstaff, how met husband; Victor Riordan; Died at 18 months; Arthur Riordan; How met wife; Died in polio epidemic in 1930; Funeral, described; How mansions were built; How families are related; Robert Riordan; Mayor of Flagstaff, had polio; Died of Hodgkins disease; Wife, Mary Gavin Riordan; Richard’s schooling; Catholic school in Flagstaff; Urban Military Academy, Los Angeles; Loyola High School, Los Angeles; St. Mary’s College, Kansas; Studied medicine, dropped out of school; Occupations; Sargent in Los Angeles sheriffs department; Air Force in World War II; Worked for family’s Northern Arizona Gas Co.; President of Riordans, Inc.; Classmates in Flagstaff; Mary Switzer; Mexican-American students; Teachers; Sister Beata, Sisters of Loretto; Sister Jane Frances; Special activities at school; Boys and girls couldn’t play together on playground during recess; Big snows in Flagstaff; Priest had to come to home for baptism when he was infant, because snow was too deep; Mirror Lake, in area of NAU (lake no longer exists); Roger’s Lake (was much larger than now); Orpheum theatre roof collapse in snow of 1915; Flooding in City of Flagstaff; Wooden sidewalks washed away, children floated on them

Tape 1, Side 2: Flooding, continued; Farmer’s field disappeared; Father built dam by Holiday Inn to hold back water; Lake Mary, dam for sawmill; Mary Chambers Riordan, discussed; How met her husband; Other Riordans’; Came from Jerome, Arizona (no relation to Flagstaff Riordan family); MJ Riordan (his father), described; Studied for the priesthood; Conducted burials and other ceremonies; Hawks brothers murdered in jail; Corresponded with the Pope; Wanted to be a Jesuit; Personal Library; Wrote poetry that appeared in Catholic magazines America and Common Wheel, in LA Times and Chicago Tribune; Member of first legislature; Named Coconino County; Named El Tovar Hotel at Grand Canyon; Dining room is like ball room at Riordan mansion; Downtown area, described; Majestic theatre; Orpheum theatre (owned it at one time); Monte Vista Hotel development; Site of old 4th of July celebrations; Community hotel project, people bought shares; Peery Francis, sheriff; Churches; Design of Nativity Church by Michael Riordan; Gargoyles are native animals from Flagstaff area; Harvey House railroad stations and Michael Riordan; Street names; Mike’s Pike named after Michael Riordan; Sam Finley’s store; Poetry signs; First National Bank; Bank notes with fathers name on them; Other streets in town named by family

Tape 2, Side 1: Central Arizona Railway Co. story; Hauled logs with bullock teams; Railroad to Phoenix; Didn’t know about Mogollon Rim; Family bought railroad and used it to haul lumber around Mormon Lake area; Road to Anderson Mesa; Logging; Cross cut saws; 4 foot stumps; Flagstaff water system; Jack Smith Springs; Reservoir at Flagstaff Country Club from Jack Smith Springs; Pumphouse pipeline to Kachina Village area; Dr. Raymond; Sheep business; Gold Trap ranch with Riordan’s; Funeral, involvement with Basques; Buried at Kachina Village area; Social life of wealthy in community; Riordan mansion; Other mansions; Dave Babbitt home; Francis home; George Babbitt home; “Pink Castle” CJ Babbitt home; Riordans’ and Babbitts’ related; Eastern visitors during summers; Children went to college in the eastern part of country; Picnics; Progressive dinners among families; Tennis parties; Dances in ballroom; Winter entertainment; Children in boarding schools in east; Phonograph collection; Used victrolas for music; Formal dances; Romances; First car in Flagstaff; Sisson family’s electric car; TA Riordan’s 1907 REO gasoline car; First power plant in Flagstaff; In Riordan’s mill; Power plant at university training school and laundry; Power plant at Mike’s Pike; Flagstaff Electric Light Co. run by steam; Political activity; Verkamps, discussed; Three Verkamp sisters married Babbitt brothers; Relation to Riordan’s; “Maggie” Pulliam and running of Flagstaff

Tape 2, Side 2: Political activity, continued; Maggie Pulliam, continued; Where lived; No Phoenix influence on community; Historical events; World War I; Brother Arthur built first radio station in Flagstaff; First radio station in world licensed to a woman; Mary Costigan, also owned Orpheum; First airplane in Flagstaff owned by Harold Cameron; Richard as pilot; George Tyson, pilot; Claude Ryan, pilot who taught Richard to fly; Built Lindbergh’s plane; Yost family lost son in WW I; Babbitts’ in WW I; Flu epidemic after WW I in Flagstaff; Restricted travel; Story of Mrs. Pershing in San Francisco; Prohibition in 1930’s; Tex Wright; Bootlegger, ran Wright Flight Co. at airport; Saurs and “speak easies”; Dances and drunken parties; Making beer and wine at home; Grape juice story; Tim Riordan and making own beer; Sister’s wedding; Gangsters; Bootlegger Pop Wilson at Roger’s Lake; Barbecue near Bellmont; Famous people at barbecue; Famous people who visited Flagstaff area; Gary Cooper story; Bill Boyd, Hop Along Cassidy; Tom Mix and Commercial Hotel; Zane Grey and bear hunting story; Clark Gable stayed at Monte Vista; Spent summers fishing; Lupe Velez; Robert Taylor; Dick Powell; Harry Owens; Musician wrote music

Tape 3, Side 1: Sisson House; Lolomai Lodge in Oak Creek, pre 1930’s; AL & T hospital, Doctor’s hospital in 1930’s; Description of Milton (Mill Town); IB Koch house; First airport was Koch Field in Doney Park area; Boarding house; Bachelors lived and ate meals; Hours of operation at mill; Wages were 25 cents/hour; Shack row; Mexicans lived; Statue of Christ; Mill open most of winter; Sawmill company work, described; Sawyers cut trees; Swampers cut limbs and logs; Workers; Sweeds, Mexicans; Loggers; Lumber "jack"; Black mill workers; Cady Lumber Co. (sewer mill story); East Flagstaff development; Belonged to George Babbitt; Sold lots, became “shanty town”; Sold larger lots and became Sunny Side; Voted on “East Flagstaff”; Changes in Flagstaff; World War II; Ordnance Depot; Why built in Bellemont; Defensible against Japanese

Interview on July 8, 1976

Tape 4, Side 1: First radio station in Flagstaff; Owned by Costigan family; Orpheum theatre; Musicians; John and Mary; Professor Maxemin, violinist; Monte Vista hotel; Studio for radio station in lobby; Sheriff’s sale; Riordan’s acquire Orpheum; More about the Orpheum; Majestic Theatre; Story about New Year’s eve dance in 1915 and collapse of roof during snow storm; Auto races on the Weatherford road; Special built cars; Aviation in Flagstaff; Koch Field in Doney Park; Kept plane at field; Sunflower story; Winslow airfield; Air search for crash

Tape 4, Side 2

Aviation in Flagstaff, continued

Damage to airplane by cows

1929 Buick Roadster

Jack Irish

Pilot and fire chief

Lost airplane, search

Riordan’s plane grounded by inspector

Stunts with airplanes

Curtis Challenger engine in his plane

Learning to fly with Claude Ryan in San Diego

How the plane started

Beatrice Riordan’s personal history

Born in Clifton, Arizona

Joseph Smith McFate was her grandfather

Came west with Mormons when a child

Moving to Arizona

1881 established railroad tie business in Flagstaff

Moved to Alpine, Arizona

Father, Roy Lisk McFate, 1887

Mother, Gladys Duke, born in Thatcher

Brothers and sister

Yale McFate, Bruce McFate, Portia Cox

Move to Flagstaff

Father went to college at Normal School in Flagstaff, wanted to become a dentist

Went to UofA to become school administrator, instead

Beatice, schooling at Training School

Father’s occupations

School administrator in Parker

Mother’s education

First husband was George Prochnow

Owned Commercial Hotel

Occupations of Beatrice

Worked for different attorneys and judges

Karl Mangum, Judge Russell, Larry Wren

Kristine: This is an interview with Richard Riordan who is a native of Flagstaff and has lived here since 1907. The interview is being conducted on June 15, 1976 at Mr. Riordan's home at 507 Navajo Road in Flagstaff by Kristine Prennace, representing the Flagstaff City - Coconino County, Public Library.

Tape 1, Side 1

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay, Mr. Riordan, when and where were you born?

RICHARD RIORDAN: I was born in Flagstaff in 1907, May the 2nd.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: And who are your parents?

RICHARD RIORDAN: My father was Michael James Riordan. My mother was Elizabeth Metz Riordan.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay.

RICHARD RIORDAN: They were married in 1892. That piano, there, was one of their wedding presents in 1892.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Where did they come from?

RICHARD RIORDAN: My father came from a suburb of Chicago, called St. Charles. My mother came from Price Hill, a district in Cincinnati. Most of the people of course, all of the people in the wild west had to come from eastern cities. That's where they all came from. They all came from Chicago, or Cincinnati, or Boston, or someplace. They all had to come from somewhere in the east.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: And, uh, what did they do?

RICHARD RIORDAN: My uncle, Denis Matthew Riordan, came here in 1878 to be a Navajo Indian Agent. He came here four years before the railroad. He came here on horseback and for years he was the Navajo Indian agent. There is one time… and its in history you can find that in the museum out here, where he put down a Navajo rebellion all by himself; waiting for the army to come from Gallup, New Mexico. Then in 1882 the Santa Fe Railroad came through here and a man named Ayres, A-Y-R-E-S, started a sawmill because the Santa Fe Railroad had to have ties and bridge timbers. Now in those days they didn't know how to make steel bridges, so the bridges were made out of great, huge timbers. And the bridges were not called bridges they were called trestles. So in 1882, Ayres, a man from New York, started a sawmill to cut ties and bridge timbers for the Santa Fe. It wasn't long before Mr. Ayres got sick and tired of the Wild West and wanted to go back to New York. At that time my uncle, Denis Matthew Riordan was his manager. He had quit the Indian, um, uh, agent business and he now was the manager of this new sawmill. Um, Mr., Ayres sold the sawmill to my uncle and this was the deal: "You give me what you think it’s worth when you can make it." And they shook hands on it. That's the way things were done in the Wild West. Now of course what happened was, that Mr. Ayres got about three or four times what it was worth, because everybody was very honest in those days. So my Uncle Matthew, Denis Matthew, gained control and ownership of the sawmill. Shall I go on with this?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Mmhm that’s wonderful.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Alright. Now he had himself a sawmill and it was thriving. My, his young, his next younger brother, Timothy Allan, A-L-L-A-N, Timothy Allan Riordan ran away from home at the age of 14 and joined a circus in Canada. He finally went around with the circus here and there and ended up in Flagstaff with his older brother, Denis Matthew, and he joined the lumber company. Now there's two Riordan brothers running the sawmill, and its thriving. The next brother, the next younger brother was Michael James Riordan, my father. He was studying to be a Jesuit priest at the Jesuit Noviciate in Florissant, Missouri. He contracted tuberculosis while he was studying to be a Jesuit priest. The, um… he was in a dying condition, so the Jesuits sent him to the only relatives that he had, his two brothers in Flagstaff that had a sawmill. And that was very fortuitous because many people in Flagstaff were people from the east who had been sent out here to be cured of tuberculosis. This was a center for tuberculosis people because of the dryness and the altitude. My father was cared for by his two brothers for two years. He didn't get out of bed for two years. Incidentally, he came to Flagstaff on a stretcher in a baggage car. He had had 32 hemorrhages. People usually die on their first hemorrhage. He gained, he regained his health; he joined the sawmill; he married a young lady from Cincinnati; made a lot of money; had a nice big family; built the beautiful mansions that are still over there near the college. That's where I was born, and lived to die in old age of something, nothing to do with tuberculosis.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: What year did he come to Flagstaff?

RICHARD RIORDAN: I don't know, Kristine.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: It was prior to 1892 if he got married then.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, I don't know, I don't know. I could, I could look it up somewhere if I tried real hard, but right off I don't know.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: That's okay. Um, who are your brothers and sisters?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, I have had, I have two sisters. One is Clare, C-L-A-R-E. She is named after County Clare in Ireland. She lives in Ireland. She married a man who was the main general in the Irish Rebellion of 1960, William Quirke. He was the first man in charge of the rebellion under President de Valera. Now in those days the IRA wasn't the kind of an outfit that it is today. It was an honest group of people trying to win their freedom from England, like our revolutionaries did, won our freedom from England. They were an honest army. Well, he came to Flagstaff because he had a friend that was working in our logging camp. My sister Clare met the man and married him. They were married in Los Angeles and they got on a tramp ship, a trade ship in Los Angeles called the Andy Johnson. And they rode around through the Panama Canal to Ireland where they settled down in Ballinard Castle in County Tipperary. Ballinard Castle was 500 years old when Columbus discovered America. She lived from then on… she has grandchildren now in Ireland. She still lives in Dublin, her husband has died. He died; he fell off his horse in a foxhunt. He didn't fall off, he, they said he had heart failure. He was never known to fall off his horse. So that accounts for my sister Clare.

Now I have another sister, she's the oldest in our family. Her name, today, is Blanche Chambers. She lives in the home where I was born. She runs the front door of the hospital here on Saturdays and Sundays. She is 80 now. She married Walter Chambers, the son of the Vice-President of the Santa Fe Railroad. Um, he subsequently attained great prominence because he was in charge of the Grapes of Wrath situation in California. He has died, recently; he has died subsequently. My sister Blanche Chambers still lives in our old home.

I had three brothers. One was named Victor; he was the first-born in our family. He died at the age of 18 months of pneumonia. All my family, beginning with my grandmother, are in our family plot out at the… in the Catholic graveyard here. The next to be born was my sister, Blanche, then my brother Arthur. Arthur was one year younger than Blanche. He married his girlfriend from St. Mary's, Kansas, where he went to college. And he died about 1930 in the terrible polio epidemic that we had in Flagstaff. It's a matter of history. Many people in Flagstaff died in that terrible polio epidemic and he was one of them. He came home from the bank where he worked at noon; he walked home, about a mile, and um, because he didn't feel well. He was dead at midnight. I was giving him artificial respiration when he died. Dr. Ploussard was the doctor in charge. Dr. Ploussard has died subsequently also.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay, we were talking about Arthur.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Arthur died in this terrible polio epidemic and also, the same day, my double first cousin, Anna Riordan, who lived in the other house, died on the same day. She died the next morning, but it was the same day. We had a double funeral in the house. In the old houses up there, we had a double funeral. And the city authorities would not let us have a Mass at the church, because of the polio epidemic, so the priest came up there and we had a funeral mass, a Requiem Mass in our ballroom up there. Um, after that we were quarantined in our homes for two weeks. We couldn't leave and nobody else could go to the funeral.

Now, I'll tell you how it happened in that house. My father and my mother built one of the houses. My uncle and my aunt built the other house. The two houses are connected by a ballroom. Now, in the other house the lady in the other house was my mother's sister, and the man in the other house was my father's brother. Two brothers married two sisters.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: That was T.A. Riordan?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Timothy Allan and Michael James…

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Married two sisters. So the children of that other house were my double first cousins but we had common grandparents, but we're not brother and sister. Now, one of us in each house died on the same day of that, in that polio epidemic.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay, did you have another brother named Robert?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, I'll… I can get to Robert.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Oh, okay go ahead.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Robert, who was three years older than I am… we were going to school at St. Mary's College, St. Mary's, Kansas, a Jesuit College. My brother, Robert, contracted polio; here comes polio again. He was brought home and spent about a year in bed. By the time he got out of bed, his left arm was completely paralyzed. And, um, he got along pretty well in spite of the paralyzed arm. He carried his arm in a sling from then on. A kind of thing like the saxophone players put around their necks; a thing that kind of looked like that. All right, he subsequently became mayor here. Um, the way he became mayor was that somebody asked him if he wanted to be the mayor, and he said, "Sure." In those days the mayor was the city councilman who got the most number of votes. So my brother Robert went off to Los Angeles on some business at sometime and when he came back he found himself mayor, without doing anything about it.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: No campaigning…

RICHARD RIORDAN: No campaigning. He resigned from being mayor because he said that he didn't have time to attend to his own business. That the duties of being mayor, um, um, were so numerous and required so much of his time that he couldn't make a living and be mayor at the same time. He eventually… in 1937, he died in the Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles of Hodgkin's Disease, a nasty way to die. He left a wife, Mary Gavin Riordan, who had been a schoolteacher here in Flagstaff and who had been, up until recently or she may still be a professor at Stanford. He left four children. That's the history of Robert. He's buried in the family plot out in the Catholic graveyard.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Then you were the next, the last?

RICHARD RIORDAN: I'm the last, yes.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay, tell my about your occupations, your education.

RICHARD RIORDAN: I um, uh, my first education was in the Sister's School here in Flagstaff. Um, when I was about in the fourth grade or so, I was sent to the Urban Military Academy in Los Angeles. I spent several years there. When I was 11 years old I entered Loyola High School, when I was 11. And I went several years to Loyola, then I went to the Jesuit College in St. Mary's, Kansas. Of course Loyola in Los Angeles is a Jesuit College, too. I spent the rest of my education in St. Mary's, Kansas. I was educated mostly, entirely by the Jesuits, like Bing Crosby and Governor Brown of California.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: What was your major field.

RICHARD RIORDAN: I studied medicine. I intended to be a surgeon. And um, later on when I was going to medical school, I, um… It was years later I went back to school and I found that I had great trouble in keeping up with youngsters, because they had, they were single minded and I had other things to do. There was fishing to be done, there was Saturday nights, and there was all sorts of other things to be done. And um, on a Thanksgiving Day weekend, I put all my books in the stove and that was the end of the surgeon. After that I was a Sergeant in the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles. Then when World War II came along, I enlisted in the Air Force. I went through all the big battles in Europe. I didn't miss any of them. And was discharged on points even before the war was over. After that I came home from the war to find my family had acquired a small gas company. I went in to this gas company and built it into the biggest privately owned gas company in the world, the Northern Arizona Gas Service, which exists today with the big trucks running around on the Indian Reservation and everything. I worked at that for the rest of my life. My, um… I became president of the Riordan family corporation, called Riordans Incorporated. And in 1966 we liquidated our corporation and we sold the big gas company to my brother Arthur's son whose name also is Arthur, but not junior, because he has a different middle name.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm, okay, uh, did the other brothers… well, Arthur and Robert, participate in the family business also?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Arthur died before the family had a big organized business. My brother, Robert, was president of the family corporation at the time of his death.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay, and your schooling in Flagstaff, can you remember any classmates particularly well?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, I can remember one very well. She is now Mary Sweitzer, Mrs. Russell Sweitzer. She sat in front of me in school. Most… that is the main one that I can remember. There are a few Mexicans still around here whose names I cannot recall. And a lot of my other companions at that time, in childhood, are dead. So about the only one that comes to my mind quickly is Mary Sweitzer.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Any teachers…

RICHARD RIORDAN: My beloved teacher in… when… Mary Moorman, her name was Mary Moorman. I can't hardly say Mary Sweitzer; it always comes out Mary Moorman. And that's M-O-O-R-M-A-N, Moorman.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Our beloved teacher was a Sister of Loretto, named Sister Beata, B-E-A, B-E-A-T-A, Sister Beata. And then we also recall one of the nuns there, whose name was Sister Jane Francis. I cannot remember any of the other names.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Did you have separate grades?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, grades from 1 to 8. I didn't go through the eighth grade because I went… about the fifth grade, I went to Military School in Los Angeles.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Do you remember any special activities that went on at the school?

RICHARD RIORDAN: At the Sister's School?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Mmhm

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, I can remember one thing, and that was that the boys and the girls weren't allowed to play together at recess. The girls went on one side of the building and the boys went on the other side.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: You were together in the classroom though?

RICHARD RIORDAN: We were mixed up in the classroom, but um, on the playground, um, we were separated. And, of course in those days nobody came to school in a car or anything. Everybody walked. I walked from the old Riordan mansions up there, over a mile, and um, even when it was snowing. And of course in those days we didn't have these big powerful plows, so you'd walk through the snow.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: So you remember some of the big snows that we've had?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, I remember that snows were much larger than they are now. For instance, I was born on the second of May and um, about two weeks later, I couldn't be taken to the Catholic Church to be baptized because of the snow. Now, in those days there were no cars and the travel was done by sleighs and horses. And horses and sleighs can go through a lot of snow, much more snow than a car can go through. I could not be taken, in the middle of May, to the church to be baptized. So a Spanish Bishop, who happened to be visiting here, came to the house and baptized me. And he couldn't speak English. My name is Richard White and he called me, he baptized me Ricardo Blanco. So sometimes I call myself Ricardo Blanco.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs)

RICHARD RIORDAN: So, that gives you some idea of the snows of yesteryear, or the snows of yesteryear. Now there used to exist around here a lot of lakes that no longer exist. There used to be a lake right outside of our fence where now the university is. And there is an old part of the housing at the university that's made of stone. They call it Cottage City or something. All right… that used to be what we called Mirror Lake, right there. And I had a boat on it.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: It was that large?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, I had a boat on it, on Mirror Lake. And in those days the place that we call Roger's Lake now, um, eight miles south of town, southwest of town… it was a large lake and it had a pier with motor boats tied up to it. Now in those days there were no outboard motors. A motor boat was a thing with an engine inside of it with a flywheel flying around. There were motor boats tied up to a pier at Roger's Lake. That's an example of um, of um, two examples of how much water we used to have here that we don't have any more.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Um, okay, do you remember the snow of 1915 very well. You must have been very young.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Uh… let me see.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: That was the Orpheum I think, caved in.

RICHARD RIORDAN: That was the Orpheum in, uh… New Year's Eve of 1915 the Orpheum Theater caved in. Now earlier in the evening, on New Year's Eve of 1915, there had been a dance there. In those days the theater did not have a sloping floor like it has now; it was a flat floor that you could dance on. And when it was used as a theater they'd put folding chairs up. So the whole town had been there to a dance, almost everybody in town. And half an hour after the dance was over, it collapsed. And it would have killed almost everybody in town. That was 1915. Yes I do, I do remember that.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Do you recall any flooding in Flagstaff?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes. There is a gorge, a small gorge that is between the present Holiday Inn on old 66 and the Santa Fe Railroad track. That used to drain the whole...that part of this town. The rest of the town was drained by the River de Flag. Modern people call it the Rio de Flag. Us old timers, we old timers call it the River de Flag. Now, great floods would come down from the mountain, the San Francisco Peaks, when the snow melted and the whole town would be flooded. I've seen water almost up to the front door of the Weatherford Hotel. And in those days the sidewalks in Flagstaff were all wooden sidewalks, and sections of sidewalks would go floating around all over town. And the children would go poling themselves around on pieces of sidewalk all over town. And when the floodwaters receded um, they couldn't find all the sidewalks; they had to build new ones each time.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: That happened several times… the flooding?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes. And that flooding, oh it happened all the time.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: What time of year?

RICHARD RIORDAN: In the… when the snow was melting in the spring, and then when the torrential rains came in the summertime. Twice a year. Then the water would run down the River de Flag, flooding everything in… down there in Mexican Town, the south San Francisco Street to… uh, call it… that the Mexicans would like to call it better. Then it would run around, out past the new country club. Then it would go under the Santa Fe Railroad out there and it would empty finally into the Little Colorado River…(end of tape)

END TAPE 1, SIDE 1, BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE 2

RICHARD RIORDAN: …that night in 1911 that was a farmer's field. But when he got up the next morning after the earthquake, the bottomless pit was there. His whole field had dropped into a big hole. Now that big hole was kind of like a bathtub. It had a drain on one end of it, a hole about six feet in diameter. So now, when the River de Flag would flood, it emptied into this big hole and went down… we have pictures of it coming down all of the sides of this big hole and emptying into that six-foot drain, like a bathtub. So the river stopped there at that time and it has never gone any farther. Now, some of the water that came down that pass between the, today Holiday Inn and the Santa Fe Railroad… my father put a cement dam across that, right where the Holiday Inn is now, and it stopped. It formed a lake there. And that stopped a good deal of the flooding from that end of town. Now that dam is still there and it has words written in the cement in Latin. You see my father was learning to be a Jesuit priest, he could talk Latin. So on this dam that exists today, it says in Latin, "Thus far and no farther shalt thou go." You can go and see it today.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: That's the flooding situation. Yes indeed, we did have floods. And the reason we don't have floods now is because the water from the peaks and other places have been directed um, down Sweitzer Canyon and other places, so that we don't have that problem anymore.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm. This kind of brings me in to water shortages and was it… correct me, I'll probably be wrong… Timothy Riordan, that started Lake Mary?

RICHARD RIORDAN: My father, Michael, and my uncle, Timothy, uh, who owned the sawmill at that time, built that dam with the idea of using the water in the sawmill, because water was very scarce in Flagstaff. And a sawmill needs lots of water in order to make steam to run the mill. So they built that dam and they didn't discover until later, after they had built the dam, that the water would have to be pumped three times in order to get it to that sawmill. And that was so expensive and so much trouble that they gave up the job. Now, just a few years back they gave the dam to the Forest Service.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: And they named the lake formed by the dam, they named it after Uncle Tim's oldest daughter, Mary. Now, Mary Riordan, who lived in the other house, my double first cousin, she was also married to a Chambers, Robert Chambers, who still lives… he still lives in that house. He's in his eighties now. He still lives there. Now, you see I told you before, that two brothers married two sisters, who built those houses. Well, my family was friendly with Edward Chambers who was then the Vice President of the Santa Fe Railroad. He would come out here with his private car and he would bring his older, his second son, Robert Chambers, with him. Robert Chambers and Mary Riordan fell in love and married. Then, later on, Robert Chamber's younger brother, Walter, who was the one who came in charge of the “Grapes of Wrath” affair there in California, um, my sister married him. So two double first cousins married two brothers, again. So at present the people who are living in the big houses up there are all named Chambers.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Mm hm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Because my sister… her name is Chambers, and the man who is now a widower, who was the husband of “Lake Mary”, he still lives there. He lives there today.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Were there other Riordans that came in after your family was here, that were not related?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes. There is another family of Riordans here who are the descendants of some Riordans who came from Jerome, a then flourishing mining community. So that the Riordans, the other Riordans, who are not members of my family are no relation to us.

Now, I'm the oldest living Riordan of the old timers. The only other person named Riordan here is my nephew, Arthur Riordan, who is the son of my dead brother Arthur. He also lives in the old house up there with my sister Blanche.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: He lives there today.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: What did the other Riordans… what kind of business did they engage in?

RICHARD RIORDAN: What other Riordans?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: The ones that came from Jerome.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, the um, the um, oldest son that came here became a surgeon. And he was a quite well known surgeon in Phoenix. He's still a doctor, a surgeon in Phoenix. Whether he works in surgery or not, I don't know. Now, his oldest son is a young man here, named Joseph Riordan. And um, he married Joe Dolan's oldest… let me see… no; the surgeon married Joe Dolan's oldest daughter, Helen. Their son, the son of the surgeon and the oldest daughter of Joseph Dolan, is Joe Dolan… is Joe Riordan, that you know today.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: He's in real estate?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, and um, there's a couple more, there's a couple of other brothers. There's a Michael James Riordan that oddly has my father's name, who's some officer in the Arizona Bank. So that's… we're no relation.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Great big coincidence.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, it's a coincidence that’s all.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Um, we didn't talk much about your father's literary skills.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, my father was a… um, in the early days, in the 80's, 1880's, when he was here, he was the only man in this community that had any education. So whenever there was any kind of ceremonial that had to be done that had something to do with perhaps a burial, or something like that, he was always called upon to do that, because he was highly educated. He had been learning to be a Jesuit priest, and you have to study for eighteen years to be a Jesuit priest.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Mmhm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: They're the highest… they're the most educated group within the world today. Always have been. So, as an example of that I'll tell you about the three Hawks brothers. The three Hawks brothers were in jail for killing somebody and a lynch mob came to take them out of their jail cell, to take them out and lynch them. They couldn't get them out of their jail cell because there are so many things to grab a hold of; it was almost impossible to get a man out of a jail cell without killing him. So they shot them in their cell and they took them out and buried them where the old armory is now, up near the university. That old armory is right on top of their graves. Now, at that time nobody knew how to conduct a burial, so my father conducted the burial of the three Hawks brothers who were murdered, or lynched, you might call it, I guess. That's an example of that.

My father corresponded frequently with the Pope. I think my father wanted to be the Black Pope that’s what he wanted to be when he was a young man, the Black Pope, the general of the Jesuits. I think he was bitter all of his life because he didn't get to be the Black Pope. But he went um, once every two years to see the Pope and he corresponded with the Pope frequently. The Pope, of course, doesn't write to anybody; he has a monsignor who does this, who is his secretary and um, um the monsignor, who is the Pope's secretary, does the correspondence. My father had a houseful of thousands and thousands of books, many of them written in Greek, many of them written in Latin. Most of his elegant books now are in the library at the university. We have given them, the fine books to the university.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: He used to write poetry.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Oh yes, he wrote poetry, which was frequently in the main Catholic magazine, called America. There are two Catholic, main Catholic magazines, one is called America, the other one is called Commonwheel. His poems were frequently in one or the other of those Catholic magazines. And when Dr. Agnes Allen, of the university up here, compiled a book, a few years back, of western poets, she had a number of his things in her book. Agnes Allen is the famous professor at the university today. I believe she is still a professor if she hasn't retired.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: I don't know.

RICHARD RIORDAN: And my father would also write poems and send them to the Los Angeles Times or the Chicago Tribune. So many times they had poems that he wrote. I remember he wrote a poem about the Grand Falls out here on the desert, he called "Little Colorado River." "Tremendous organ, booming Titaned note, down cathedral valle of azure sky," Very grand. And then he would sign one of his children's names to it. That one about the Grand Falls, that I just quoted some of, that was signed, Blanche Riordan… Let me see if I can think of something else…

My father, being the only man with any education in Northern Arizona, at the time that Arizona became a state in 1912; he was a member of the First Legislature. My father, incidentally also, named this county, Coconino County. That's on record out there in the museum and I also have a record of it. It tells about it in the Highway, Arizona Highways, about how it came about. My father, being a scholar, he knew things that other people didn't. He named this county, when they were searching for a name, after a tribe of Indians who had lived here in prehistoric times. No white man had ever seen them. The only reason we know that they were here is the results of the efforts of the archaeologists. But Coconino was the name of an ancient, a prehistoric Indian tribe that lived in these places here. And there are many things left that they dig up around here of that ancient tribe that is extinct now. So that's how the name of this county got to be Coconino.

My father also named the El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon. Now, when my parents built their wonderful houses that are still existing up there, they hired a crack architect from Los Angeles, a man named Whittlesey. He designed those houses; he also designed the furniture. Now there is none of the furniture that was ever bought in a store. The next job was building the El Tovar Hotel. He copied our houses in the El Tovar Hotel. The El Tovar Hotel dining room was copied after our ballroom, which exists today. Subsequently, the people who ran the El Tovar Hotel took all the wonderful, handmade, um, chandeliers and things out of that wonderful dining room there and substituted chrome and plastic for it as it is today. The way the name came about was; that they wanted a name for the place, and my father suggested the name of the first white man that ever heard of the Grand Canyon, not the first man who ever saw it, but the first white man that ever heard of it. His name was Tobar, T-O-B-A-R. So they decided that that would be a pretty good name, and named it after the first white man that ever heard of it. So my father got to thinking, "Tobar," well, people would start making jokes about it; "Let's go to the bar." So, in Spanish, as we all know, V and B are interchangeable. People named, Baca, are really named Vaca, which means cow. B and V are interchangeable, so luckily, being interchangeable, they changed the B to V and it came out El Tovar. Now when they built that El Tovar, the architect wanted to build a small dining room on cantilever supports out over the edge of the canyon, so that you could sit and eat your supper and look down through a glass floor a mile below you. They didn't do it because of fear of earthquakes. That's some of the history of the El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay, um, do you remember the downtown area very well; what it was like?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Why, Kristine, I uh, I have a very good memory of the downtown Flagstaff. It would take me a week to tell you about it. For instance where Babbitts Men's Shop is now. You know where that is? Right next to the big store downtown, that used to be the Majestic Theater. That's where I saw Mary Pickford in "Poor Little Rich Girl," when I was a child. That was the main theater, the Majestic. And it was the theater that was before the, the present Orpheum. Incidentally, I used to own the Orpheum Theater in its present condition. I owned that theater and I sold it to the people who own it now.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Oh, hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Um, I remember when the Monte Vista was nothing but a vacant lot. It was about 10 feet deep. And they used to have celebrations there. That used to be the site of the 4th of July celebration. There was an empty lot. It was about 10 feet under the sidewalk and my sister Blanche managed to drive the Cadillac into that lot, that empty lot one time, when she was a young woman. Now that Monte Vista was a community hotel project. You can see the names of all the people who were involved in this community hotel project. That means that the people of Flagstaff all bought shares in it. They all contributed to it and they all bought shares so they would receive their shares if it ever made a profit. All right, there is a plaque, a bronze plaque that hangs next to the elevator in the Monte Vista lobby right today. It has the names of the people responsible for getting that place built. My uncle, Timothy's name is there, my brother; Arthur's name is there. Uh, I don't recall if my father's name is there. Um, when the hotel was built, with the efforts of all the community, it failed to run at a profit. My company, my family company, Riordans Incorporated had a mortgage on the place and the hotel company, corporation, association owed Riordan Incorporated $144,000 and nobody seemed to be able to run the hotel at a profit until they put a man in there named, Frank Snyder. He and his wife, Lu, L-U-, I guess, they ran the hotel at a profit because they put in slot machines and the hotel was paid off. $144,000 was paid off in no time with slot machines, by money that tourists put in the slot machines. Then subsequently… um, Perry Mason, not Perry Mason, Perry Francis, Peery Francis, P-E-E-R-Y, Peery Francis said, "If you make me sheriff I'll get rid of the slot machines and also the um, the um, unsavory houses on South San Francisco Street.”

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs) go on.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Peery Francis said, "If we make him Sheriff he'll get rid of slot machines and prostitutes." And they did make him Sheriff. He was sheriff for 18 years, I think. And he indeed did, he did get rid of both of those to the detriment of Flagstaff, because then we didn't make any money off of slot machines, anymore.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: That wasn’t the same as John Francis?

RICHARD RIORDAN: John Francis was… I don't know if that was Peery Francis's father, or his uncle. His uncle, whose name I cannot recall right now, had been sheriff before him, at one time. Now after I got out of World War II, I was made… I was put in charge by Peery Francis of his senior deputies. So I ran his senior deputies for a number of years under Peery Francis. Now I can tell you something about churches around here.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Good, yes.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Alright. The big Gothic… (phone rings). In regards to the Nativity Church, a large beautiful, gothic church… was designed by my father. The newspapers around here and other people say that Father Albouy, who was the then pastor of the Catholic Church, built the church. Well, he built it insofar that he was the pastor when it got built. Now, the newspapers also say that a crack architect from Los Angeles designed it. But what they have never said, so far… this is the first time that Flagstaff will ever hear this story. Indeed a crack architect came from Los Angeles, but somebody had to tell him what to design. Somebody had to tell him what to do. When you tell an architect what to do, you tell him that you want him to build a garage or a cottage or a cathedral. And if you say, "build a cathedral" he'll say, "well, what do you want it to look like? Do you want it to look like St. James or St. Patrick's?" My father was the one that told him what to do because my father was familiar with the gothic cathedrals in Europe; Rheims, Charte, Cologne. So under my father's direction this gothic cathedral looking thing, was built. And you will note that there are gargoyles around under the roof of that church. Those gargoyles, you will note… the spout where the water comes out is a mountain lion's head. And those gargoyles are composed of four different animals that used to walk and land on that ground before the white man came. The mountain lion walked across that place. The eagle… this figure has wings on it; those are the wings of the eagle that came and landed there. The haunches of a deer, and I can't think of the fourth animal. There is a fourth animal involved here. But my father looked at the gargoyles on the cathedral of Notre (No `tre) Dame in Paris. In America it is called Notre (Nor ter) Dame. Other people call it Notre (Not er) Dame, meaning "My Lady" in French. He observed the wonderful gargoyles there and he invented these ones on the church in Flagstaff, um, out of his own imagination. Four native animals that walked on that land before the church was… So that's how that church came into being.

My father also designed the railroad station. Now, anybody will note that all the railroad stations; we call them Harvey Houses, perhaps before you were born, Kristine. They were all early Spanish. There is a marvelous one down in Winslow. There's a huge one in Ash Fork. There's one in Williams, a lovely one in Williams. There's one in Barstow. All along, but they were old Spanish. My father says, "Why don't we build an English Inn, instead of old Spanish?" Now, he did that, he suggested that with his tongue in his cheek. And the city fell for it. And he couldn't believe it. So we got an English inn instead of an old Spanish hacienda. And he started that as a joke and the town fell for it.

My father also named a wonderful main street after himself, called Mike's Pike. He did that with his tongue in his cheek, too. In the early days you see he could do about what he wanted because he was the only man with any education here. So… and he was funny too. So, a few years back some of the newcomers around Flagstaff wanted to change the name of that street. They couldn't have a street in Flagstaff called Mike's Pike. They wanted to change it to Third Avenue, or something. So the Riordan family went to bat right away. I have the papers in my possession that describe how it became Mike's Pike and when and all about it. We had to go to City Council meetings to keep the newcomers from changing it to Third Avenue. It's still Mike's Pike.

Now up in, around where the Holiday Inn is up there, there is street up there called Robber's Roost. There's another one called Prairie Dog (Hills?). Many prairie dogs used to live there. Another one is called Metz Walk. That was my mother's maiden name.

Well, let's see… we started in with the Orpheum Theater collapsing in 1915 and then we went to the Majestic Theater downtown. I remember when the building that is now Sweitzer's Hardware was built. It was built by a funny fellow named Sam Finley, F-I-N-L-E-Y, Sam Finley. And he wrote poems, little doggerels and he put them all over Coconino County, out on the highway, on the trails, near the ranches. Little white signs with a little piece of doggerel on it in regards to his store with a funny little figure running toward the store. Now, on the north side of that building there used to be the following thing written on it: "A Flagite was poor, but his troubles are o'er, he has money to burn, if he trades at this store." Now, here, it says Sweitzer on there now, but if that fades out and fades out and fades out, this poem there, I'm sure will appear there. That's where it is, on the north side where it says Sweitzer's Hardware now. "A Flagite was poor, but his trouble's are o'er, he has money to burn, if he trades at this store." And those funny little signs were all over Coconino County. And he made a fortune on them. He built the building and subsequently he moved to Phoenix and started another crazy store down there called the (Swaperee?). And, then the Sweitzer family bought that building from Sam Finley, F-I-N-L-E-Y, and they, um, still have it.

The Bill Sweitzer that owns and operates it now, today, is the son of Bill Sweitzer Senior, who first bought it and they look exactly alike.

Well, let's see, the corner, catty corner across from the Monte Vista Hotel, which is now the (Valdis?) photography place; that used to be the First National Bank. My brother, Arthur, was working in that bank the day that he came home and died. Now, the First National Bank was owned by my father, my uncle, Billy Babbitt, and Dave Babbitt. Now, I have in my possession, right now, in a bank box, I have a number of $20 bills, $10 bills, and $5 bills with my father's name on them. In those days, the president of First National Bank could sign bills. And in those days, of course, the bills were twice as big as they are now. And I don't know what year they started making them so small as they are now, but it made a boon for the people in their pocket books, their wallets, because the pocket books and wallets, used to be much bigger. So, I have those bills with my father's name on them. Now, let's see, what else can I think of? Oh, I'll tell you the crazy story of the Central Arizona Railway Company. This is a story that is unbelievable… (end of tape)

END TAPE 1, SIDE 2, BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE 1

RICHARD RIORDAN: This story leads up to where my people got their first railroad equipment to haul logs in from the woods to the sawmill. Here to fore, they had been hauling logs in with, believe it or not, with bullock teams. Now, in our old yard up there where our old houses are, you can go up there and see some old bullock wagons that are still up there in the yard. They are rotting now in the sun and weather. A bullock is a huge thing that used to be a bull before he was altered. That's where a bullock comes from, it used to be a bull and that's the reason they are so big and strong. So, my people acquired a railroad, which facilitated matters with no end. Our company was formed… called the Central Arizona Railway Company, and they assayed to build a railroad from Flagstaff to Phoenix. So they started from Flagstaff with a compass and they built the railroad toward Phoenix. They finally came to the Mogollon Rim and they didn't know it was there. You know what the Mogollon Rim is? Wicked cliffs like in Oak Creek and everything; famous place, the Mogollon Rim. They didn't know it was there, they had never sent a man ahead to see if anything was in the way of the railroad. So when they came to the Mogollon Rim they quit and my people bought their railroad equipment: their engines, and their cars, and their old railroad equipment. They didn't know the Mogollon Rim was there. They hadn't sent a man ten miles ahead to see what's down there ten miles.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Is that the one, the train that ran to the Grand Canyon eventually?

RICHARD RIORDAN: No, Kristine, this train had… we had five engines. I learned to run a steam engine when I was about seven years old. Um, it just ran around in the woods and they built big trestles all around Mormon Lake. Every where you go around here on the road to Phoenix and around Mormon Lake you can see old railroad bridges. Now, the road that goes up to the astronomical installation above Lake Mary… you ever been there?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: No.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, there are some big telescopes. About in the middle of Lower Lake Mary, when you are going toward Mormon Lake, there is a road that goes up the side of the mesa and then switches back and goes up to… up on top of Anderson Mesa, up to the observatory and ranches and things up there. Well that used to be… my father built that road to begin with as a railroad. And they… because they were logging up there on the side of Lake Mary, and that now is an automobile road, but it started out to be railroad because they ran trains up there.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Now, they couldn't use an ordinary engine to go up a steep hill like that, they used what is called a shay engine, S-H-A-Y. It is a 3 cylinder geared engine. It has the cylinders on the side that turns a shaft that is geared to all the wheels. It doesn't have big wheels like a regular engine, they are all the size of a boxcar wheel, and they all have gears in them. And it is a really low-geared engine; it won't go fast at all. It couldn't go more than 15 mph wide open, but it can climb and so that's how that present day road got there.

Now you will notice on that side of Lake Mary there is hardly any, no timber on that side, because of logging. Now on the other side of Lake Mary there's lots of trees because there has never been any logging over there. You can see the difference. Now in the early days of logging, they cut the stumps… they cut the trees off at a comfortable height because the trees were sawed off by two men on the end of a saw, of a cross-cut saw. I have one out there, out on the porch. And it was more comfortable to stand up straight and use that saw, but the results were the stumps were about 4 feet high. Now any place that you see around here where there are places where the stumps are 4 feet high, my people did that. Subsequently the Forest Service, the government made a law that you have to cut the stumps off at ground level and that made the work awful hard. To stoop over all day long and work that big saw back and forth at ground level is terrible work. Now of course, they do it with power saws. But any place that you see stumps sticking up, that was the early logging operations that my people did.

And also they did quite a bit of destruction because there wasn't any law about certain trees that you can cut. Today, the Forest Service men, goes out and says what trees you can cut and what trees you have to leave. In those days they cut everything. And there's a couple of places, especially out in Pump House Valley, which is, um, where the Kachina place is now on the way to Phoenix. Kachina subdivision, that big green valley there. And… there's places there where you can see lots of stumps sticking up there and they just about, uh, tore everything down. Now shall I tell you about the early water system of Flagstaff?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Yes.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Alright. Out at the old country club, Flagstaff what's called the Flagstaff Country Club, which is, uh, north of town. Do you play golf?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: No, huh, huh.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, there's a big hole there, on the first fairway. On the first tee you have to drive straight ahead and then you have to go around this great big hole. Well, that great big hole… it doesn't look very big now. Some people drive right over it, but the ones like myself we go around it. That used to be the city reservoir and it was fed entirely from Jack Smith Spring. Jack Smith… we call it Jack Smith Spring, which is up there on top of the peaks. It's way up there in the crater. First of all it has a pipeline all the way down the peaks and that was the Flagstaff water system when I was a child. That big hole that's out there now had a roof over it to keep dirt out of it. And the water was pure snow water, H20; it didn't have anything in it. And the service stations around here used to advertise: "We put the water out of the faucet in your (hand?)" cause it was nothing but melted snow. And there wasn't very much water, that is, that one little reservoir, um, it was, I guess perhaps adequate in those days. People didn't have great big lawns and things like they have now. Well, subsequently, two new reservoirs… when Flagstaff grew a little two new reservoirs were built and they are out there right now, you can see them out there when you go out to the Flagstaff Country Club; two great big round things with fences around them. That became the Flagstaff water system and they were filled entirely from Jack Smith Spring up on the mountain.

And… then my people built a pipeline to Pump House Valley. That is the green valley where Kachina subdivision is now, that big flat green valley that you cross when you are on your way to Phoenix. There is a big spring there, so my people built a pump house there and it ran by steam and a four-inch line all the way to the sawmill. So, that as the town grew there wasn't enough water to run the sawmill and the town from the city water system. So we developed our own water system and it continued until recent years. I don't know whether that pump house is still there or not, I don't think so. I don't think there is anything there. Now that valley there, we call that the Pump House Valley, that was owned by a famous and beloved doctor, who delivered me, Dr. Raymond O. Raymond. A very famous man here and beloved citizen who was buried here just a few years ago. Now Dr. Raymond… Oh, shall I… should just ramble on?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Uhuh huh.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Dr. Raymond… O. Raymond had his office where Jean and Trox House of Sound is now. That was Dr. Raymond's office. You can see Dr. Raymond's bedroom as it was today. It is still today as it was then. You can go in to the toilet there and still see the beautiful old wooden seated toilet. And you can see the paneling in there. That's where Dr. Raymond lived. He was a bachelor. And he lived there. And, um, he was a famous and beloved doctor. He was a man who came out from Cincinnati with arthritis. He came out on crutches. He couldn't walk and Flagstaff was supposed to be a good place for not only tuberculosis, but arthritis. He became not only a famous doctor, but a famous sheep man. He would quit doctoring for awhile and go into the sheep business and lose all his money. then he'd go back into the doctoring business again and make another fortune, and he'd lose that in the sheep business. He subsequently became a partner with my father in a beautiful sheep ranch, 14 miles north of Ash Fork, called the Gold Trap. Lovely name for a ranch, the Gold Trap.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs)

RICHARD RIORDAN: And my father also had a sheep ranch called the Gold Trap. So Dr. Raymond lived his life out here. He never became… he never walked exactly right. He always walked… he gave up the crutches, he got that much better, but he always walked… he had an odd walk about him. And that was his office, where Jean and Trox House of Sound is now. He lived there and he built that building. And, uh, when he died his funeral was the funeral that I liked the best of any I've ever seen. Um, the new highway to Phoenix was just being built and it wasn't… it was just rough. You could hardly get over it with a truck. And now we'll go out to that green valley, near Kachina, that flat green valley of which you go across when you go to Phoenix. He was buried there and his grave is there and you can see it from the highway. There's a grave off to the right before you turn into Kachina. You can see a place with a stone fence around it and an iron rail on top of, an iron fence on top of the stone fence; a thing big enough to surround a grave. You can see it from the highway. That's where Dr. Raymond is buried. Now, he was put into a pine box that was knocked together by some of his friends… with some brass handles on it. He was hauled out there in a pickup of a sheepherder. He was the… all the sheepherders around here, the sheep men, excuse me, sheepherders… the um, um the sheep, the woolgrowers, the wool gatherers; he was friendly with them because all the wool gatherers, the sheep men around here are all Basques. So in order to be in the sheep business, you have to associate with Basques. And they're the (life of these, liveliest?) people. So they hauled Dr. Raymond out, in a pickup, and almost all of the people who were at the funeral, at the burial, were either Basque sheepherders or Dr. Raymond's children, like me; ones that he had delivered. So, Dr. Fronske stood up. Do you know Dr. Fronske? He's in his… he's pushing 100 now. Dr. Fronske stood up in the back of the pickup and he looked around at the assembled people and he said, "Friends, we're here to bury Dr. Raymond" and he stepped down. The sheepherders put him in the ground covered him over (___?). And you can see the grave today; you can see when you go past in a car. And I liked that funeral better; it didn't cost anybody anything.

And the famous beloved man...that man taught me to shoot. He had an arms collection and he taught me to drive. I was taught to drive on his Model T Ford. He would hold me on his lap and let me steer it when I was about 3 or 4 years old.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Uh, do you remember any of the social life in the community?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, Kristine, I remember the social life in the social circle that I was in. The social circle I was fortunate enough to be within, within the elite around here. My family was the, uh, um… I choose to say my family was the first family in town. The Babbitts were the second family, of course when the Babbitts here me say this, they'll all get mad and say that's not right, the Babbitts were the first family and the Riordans, we were the second. But never the less my family sat in the first seats in the church; in the one and number two seats in the church. But anyhow, there were a… there was a social group here who owned the big mansions. Our… oh, I was going to say, our big mansion is the only one that's left now. No, that's not true. The oldest Babbitt house is still here, the Dave Babbitt House. He was the oldest of the Babbitt brothers, of the five Babbitt brothers. The house where he set up housekeeping with his bride, Emma Verkamp, still exists. It is across the street from the big Gothic church down there and I think the Sisters live in it. You know there's a white house, large white house… just go across the street toward the Sisters School from the big church and you'll find there a large white house. That was the original Dave Babbitt House. Now, another house still exists, that was not one of the original ones that was built, uh, before the turn-of-the-century, but subsequent to the turn-of-the-century, is the Francis House which is out here on Meade Lane. The Dan Francises lived there, or was it the John Francises? I don't know.

Now, the George Babbitts, another one of the Babbitt brothers had a marvelous mansion that was copied, a good deal, after our houses, in, uh, what is now known as Pine Crest. The foundation still exists there, I could take you up there and show you the foundation; it was destroyed by vandals. It was a marvelous, beautiful place.

Well, then, I don't know, if you've only been here for five years you don't remember what we called the Pink Castle. It sat on the empty spot now where the Flagstaff Public Library is. There's is big empty place there. There was a four story high castle, lovely big house where the Charles Babbitts lived. It was… always, had beautiful hardwood stairs and railings on the stairs, beautiful place. I played there with John Babbitt when we were children. The present day Babbitts who lived there, um, Paul Babbitt and John Babbitt of the, um, Babbitt Company. John Babbitt is my cousin. The Riordans and the Babbitts are related.

And um, so, there was a grand bunch of social life in the summertime among all these people with the big houses. Because all of the big houses would have guests from the East that would come and stay all summer. Everybody had houseguests. Some of the young people usually who were our friends, college friends, of the people of Flagstaff that went east to go to college. Most of the people here, the young people, men and women, went back East to go to fancy colleges. And uh, so there would be a grand round of parties all summer. Everybody would go to this place for Saturday night, and then the next Saturday night they'd all go to the other place and bring their houseguests with them. And, uh, then there would be picnics on Sundays and there would be 40 or 50 or 100 people at the picnics, mostly all related, with their summer guests.

And there would be progressive dinners. A progressive dinner goes like this: You go to one of the houses for soup, you go to the next house for salad, you go to the next house for the main course, you go to the next house for dessert, and then you end up probably at our house, because we had a ballroom, for the rest of the evening. And then we'd dance all evening. Of course in those days I was a youngster and I wasn't part of it, but I was allowed to watch. And there was romances going on and dashing young men with their um, with their um, old fashioned automobiles tearing around and, um, their wonderful costumes.

And tennis parties, um, on our, on our estate we had a tennis court and there would be marvelous tennis players. And we'd put Japanese Lanterns all out in the garden and put all the Navajo rugs out on the front porch to sit on and there would be tennis tournaments that would last all Sunday afternoon. And then there would be a buffet dinner and there'd be big dances up in our house.

We had two houses with a… connected with a ballroom. And we'd have an orchestra and have everybody, have everybody that we knew there. Have the whole place full; both houses all lit up with candles everywhere and Japanese Lanterns out in the garden, things like that. That's just a sort of a, a little idea of how the summer social… life went.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: What did you do during the winter?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, of course everybody, the kids, all went back to school. And the people in the group that I lived in all went to boarding schools; they went to boarding schools back east. Some of the boys went to St. Mary's Kansas; some of them went to Georgetown in Washington. My cousin, John Babbitt, was um, um, a graduate of Georgetown. And the girls went to Eden Hall or they went to some, uh, Catholic, uh some uh, Convent of the Madames of the Sacred Heart or something like that. So… and everybody went back to work, the summer guests left, and all the young people would, uh, go to boarding school.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: It was very quiet.

RICHARD RIORDAN: So the old folks, the people that stayed home, there not being any radio or TV… the only mechanical music we had was, uh, phonographs and we called them mostly Victrolas. Because the Victrola was the name of the main one, the most popular one, so it sort of got so that everybody called any kind of phonograph a Victrola. Now, I, I, uh, collect old records and I have most of the old records that was played in 1950. I have the first record that I ever played when I was about 3 or 4 years old. And I have saved the records that my brothers and sisters, um, bought and my people and my cousins bought, and I have thousands and thousands of records that have come down through the years, from about 19… well let's say 1911, when the phonographs were quite crude. And um, and I'm still doing that. I still collect records and I have thousands of them and I haven't got room for them in this little house, so I keep them in storage. But, um, I still have the records of the twenties, of 1918, the war years, and um, the roaring twenties and the thirties and forties, and I have all the records, the originals.

But, um, we used to have dances and we'd have a formal dance, uh, the young ladies would come in evening gowns and the gentlemen would have on their dinner jackets, and in those days there wasn't any drinking. There was a lot of romancing; there was a lot of nice romances. People had romances, rather than affairs in those days. They had love affairs, which were a lot better than having sex affairs. There wasn't any drinking with anybody. Nobody would think of suggesting it. Everything was clean and gay and beautiful and romantic. Now, I'll ramble around a little bit for you.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Um, okay…

RICHARD RIORDAN: I'll tell you about the first car in Flagstaff.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay.

RICHARD RIORDAN: The first car in Flagstaff was an electric car. And it belonged to a family named Sisson, S-I-S-S-O-N, I'll tell you about the Sissons later on. It belonged to the Sissons and it was an electric car. But the first gasoline car was bought by my, Uncle Tim, Uncle Timothy. It was a 1907 REO. Now the way, um, the car got the name REO was by its designer, R.E. Olds. He's the man that the oldsmo… is… that's where the name Oldsmobile comes from, R.E. Olds. We still have REO trucks with us. So, the first car was a 1907 REO. I can still remember it. If I could see one now, I could drive it. And I still remember how it smelled… its one of the most pleasant memories of my childhood is the smell of that car when it first started. And we didn't have a garage for it, it stayed, it stood out. There wasn't even a garage to put it in. So… my Uncle Tim, didn't, he couldn't drive it, my older brother, Arthur, was the only one that ever drove it. So that was how the first car came into existence.

My people also built the first light plant in Flagstaff, the first power plant. It was in the sawmill. There was a big steam engine that turned an electric generator in the sawmill. The sawmill was the only place in town that had enough steam to turn a generator, so, my family started the first electric plant here and then they built another one. I can hardly explain to you where it is. Beatrice, what's the name of that building just when you go into the old road into the college? It used to be a library. One of the first buildings that you meet on your right when you go up the old road to Old Main.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Well, there was the Training School.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yah, the Training School.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Then there was the administration building.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, right along in there. Uh, that was the next light plant, that was built to be a light plant, and it was also a laundry. The same steam engine that ran the light plant ran the laundry. Then, my family built another light plant, which still exists. Down at the head of Mike's Pike there is a laundry. Across, catty corner across the street, where those two streets come together, there is a big gray old building. It is between the street and the Santa Fe Railroad. It still stands there. That was the big that was the big light plant that my father built. And it was called the Flagstaff Electric Light Company. And in subsequent years, my family sold the light company to a big outfit that came here; buying up all the small town light companies that made any profit on it. So that's how that building came into existence. It had a big functioning light plant in it. And the light plant was run by steam of course and the steam was made by falling sawdust and bark and stuff, scraps down from the sawmill. There is still a railroad that still exists that you can see where the logging train would push carloads of scraps from the mill and dump it down there to run the light plant… Now, where are we?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Do you remember any political activity within Flagstaff?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, I know that one of the summer visitors that came out here, one of the Verkamps, Leo Verkamp, got to be mayor. A summer visitor came out here and got to be Mayor. (laughs) I might tell you who the Verkamps are. The Verkamps are the family who run the Verkamps Store at the Grand Canyon. And they first came here because three Verkamp women, who lived in Cincinnati, married three of the Babbitt men; three brothers married three sisters. Three of the original Babbitt men married three Verkamp sisters. And the Riordans, on my mother's side, are all related to them. So the Babbitts and the Riordans are all mixed up together. And my family, two brothers married two sisters. And that family, three brothers married three sisters.

In regard to the political situation here, I didn't take much interest in the early politics when I was a child, or when I was a very… when I was very young. But, there was one political figure here who I would like to speak about, "Maggie" Pulliam. His wife, Loretta, who lives here today, called him Clarence. At the time had a beloved nickname for him, a pet name. His name was Maggie, M-A-G-G-I-E, Maggie Pulliam. Our airport is named after him, Pulliam Field. Maggie Pulliam ran this town. It didn't matter whether there was city council or mayor, or a Chief of Police, or anything else, Maggie Pulliam ran this town. He was funny, he was strictly honest, and he ran the town according to rules and laws. I remember when I was a young man, a teenager, probably an early teenager. I would be frequently… (end of tape)

END TAPE 2, SIDE 1, BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE 2

RICHARD RIORDAN: There was one time when I was arrested for thirteen different counts. I had an old jalopy that I had paid $12 for. And they got me for thirteen different things. I didn't know what they all were. One of them, of course, was making too much noise. One of them that my headlights didn't work right. Another one that something else didn't work right, and I don't know. But I had thirteen things on my ticket at once. Now Maggie Pulliam ran this town that way. There wasn't anybody who was immune from being arrested for making too much noise, or speeding, or anything. There was an iron fist that ran this town, benevolently. Now, I deplore the loss of those days, sometimes, because today there is no check on noise. In this house here on Navajo Road, many times I can't talk to my own wife or listen to the TV, because of the noise in the streets. Kids on motorcycles. There are kids that have motorcycles that you can hear from miles away, when you are up on Observatory Hill. Now that's the way Maggie Pulliam ran this town all his life, ‘til the day he died. He started in as a young man. As a young man, he lived in the house that exists today, right there at that intersection of Mike's Pike where the laundry is. Right across the street at Mike's Pike, the beginning of Mike's Pike where the electric plant… old electric plant is, there's a two-story white house. That's where Maggie Pulliam lived when he was a young man. His father, Tom Pulliam, had, in the, uh… I guess he was the mayor, or the city manager? Tom Pulliam occupied the… the uh… City Hall before Maggie did. I can't remember exactly what he did. Maggie Pulliam was the most beloved man, outside of Dr. Raymond, that this town has ever had. He ran the town with an iron fist, but the iron fist had a velvet glove in it. And they thought so much of him that when he died, they named the big airport after him. That is about the only thing I can remember about politics, except that my father was on the first state legislature when Arizona became a state in 1912.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Did the Phoenix people exert much influence in Flagstaff, do you know?

RICHARD RIORDAN: No, these communities were entirely autonomous at that time. Each community was a separate world of its own. They elected their own officials, they, uh, the only thing that we ever had anything to do with Phoenix about was, um, after 1912, helping to elect a governor. But these towns were completely, uh, little, uh, microcosms. Completely self sufficient, and self-operating.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Maybe we can discuss how some of the historical events affected you and the Flagstaff community; such as World War I.

RICHARD RIORDAN: World War I affected the community insofar as most of the families sent a young man to the war. My brother, Arthur, went to the war. WWI lasted only such a short time that not many got overseas. My brother, Arthur, never got overseas. He was in uh, he was in the Signal Corps, and uh, cause he was an electrical sort of genius. Uh, this is in aside, in parenthesis.

My brother built the first radio set in Flagstaff and he also instal… built and installed the first radio station in the world licensed to a woman. Mary Costigan who used to own the Orpheum Theater. The first woman ever licensed to own and operate a radio station, my brother, Arthur, built and installed. And he also built the first radio set that was ever seen in Flagstaff, and it was built on a washboard and it was in the window of the First National Bank downtown. They would look at… and the first time that people ever heard a radio work was at the Elk's Picnic out at that old hole. Out there where the… that old reservoir that I told you about, that was where the Elks had their picnic. And he brought his radio out there and that was the first time that people in Flagstaff ever heard a radio.

Incidentally, I'm the first person to own, operate, and fly his own airplane in Flagstaff.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: There was one other airplane that was in Flagstaff before mine. It was one of the old "Ginnys". The first plane that Lindbergh ever flew. It was owned by… uh…

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Har…

RICHARD RIORDAN: It was owned by, uh, what was the Cameron man's name?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Harold.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Harold Cameron, it was owned by Harold Cameron, but he couldn't fly it. So… it was flown only by me or by George Tyson, who lost his life in the Battle of Kwajalein in the South Pacific in WWII. Uh, George Tyson, he was the first flyer in Flagstaff. I was the second, but the man that owned the first airplane never flew it, he couldn't fly it. But, I… but I had an airplane and I could fly mine and I gave lessons. Now, my instructor, the person who taught me to fly, was Claude Ryan, the man that built Lindbergh's ship. I came to Claude Ryan three years after he built Lindbergh's ship. So I was one of the early flyers. Now what were we talking about?

Politics?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Uh, we… talked about WWI.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Oh, WWI. There were any number of young men in Flagstaff who lost their lives in WWI. The Yost family is one, um, a case in point. Howard Yost and his sister still live in the old Yost house in Flagstaff and his older brother…

BEATRICE RIORDAN: John.

RICHARD RIORDAN: John Yost lost his life in WWI. Now, Howard Yost is well known here, because they have a uh, a uh, thing that they give to the… scholarship that they give to a student, some crack student in the university each year, the Yost scholarship, and a, uh, cup that goes with it. Um, so many of the young men got a disease and the Yost boy was one that got a disease in WWI. That was because the army camps were such, uh, pest holes that many of them died in the camps, they were, they were such awful places. And the oldest Yost boy was one that died that way. And so many of the young men here died.

There were several… um, let me see who I can think of. Now, Ed Babbitt, who ran the Babbitt Ford place until his cousin Jimmy Babbitt, inherited it from him when he died; he was in the Army in WWI. Um… the youngest Dave Babbitt son, Mable's husband.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Dave. Mable's husband was Dave.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Young Dave, he left France and he came home injured because he was hit by an airplane propeller… and permanently injured. He was the only one that I can think of that actually got overseas and was either injured or killed. But there was a great deal of disease in the Army. And then of course, soon after that, right on the tail of the terrible war came the great Influenza epidemic and cleaned out about a third of the American nation. And it cleaned out about a third of the people in Flagstaff. There was, uh, steady funerals around all the graveyards in Flagstaff during that epidemic. When that happened I was in Military School in Los Angeles. And, um, there were only two boys at that whole Military School that didn't have the influenza in a dying condition. I was one who was in a dying condition. My brother Robert and one other boy were the only two that didn't get it. Now, nobody that was in school could come home and no parents could come to see the sick children because travel was forbidden. If you had a kid in school, in boarding school, you couldn't go see them. And the kid couldn't come home; travel was restricted. And almost everybody lost members of their family in that epidemic. I don't know… hundreds and hundreds of thousands, and somebody said that maybe perhaps a third of the American population died… in that terrible epidemic.

Now, let's see, world war, World War I. It didn't last long enough so that very many Americans ever got there. One of the lovely things about the American Expeditionary Forces under General um, um, Pershing was that the Americans arrived in France singing love songs. When my Expeditionary Force in WWII arrived there, there was complete silence. In WWI they arrived marching up the streets and singing "Long, Long Trail, until we meet again", a love song.

I can remember… this has nothing to do with Flagstaff except that it is a memory of a Flagstaff citizen, when I was seven years old my aunt took myself and my brother, Robert, to San Francisco. I don't remember what the occasion was, but… it was the World's Fair of 1915 had just closed and the buildings were still there. They're still there today, many of them. And we were walking along the street one-day and there was a carriage going along the street and we saw a car, it was 1915. We saw a car coming down the steep hills. San Francisco is full of steep hills. And that car crashed right into that carriage that was passing. Turned the carriage over and demolished it and a woman was thrown out on the street and it was Mrs. Pershing.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Oh.

RICHARD RIORDAN: The car had slipped its brakes, it didn't have a driver in it. Just a memory of my childhood. I can't tell you much about politics around here because I, I didn't mix up in politics much.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: I'm sorry. Do you remember anything about the Prohibition?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Oh yes. I can write, I can talk for a week about that. That was the most beloved era of my life. That was the era when life was fun. Everybody could drink, everybody was alcoholics at the age of 16, because if you had enough money any bootlegger would sell you as much liquor as you could buy. And there were lots of bootleggers around here, just lots of them, and some of them are still living. One of the main bootleggers, I can talk about him now because he died recently was Tex Wright. He uh, he ran the Wright Flight Company out at the airport. Have you been here since the Wright Flight Company, they called him Fly Wright?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Oh, uh, uh. He was involved in the Elks club?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Oh yes, very much. And his wife Beth took over the flight instruction and chartered flights after his death. Well, he was, he was one of the main bootleggers and he operated a bootlegging joint across from that liquor store that’s over on the road that goes to the University. It's called uh, Howard Taft, Howard Taft's Liquor Store. You know where Ruffs is?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Oh, I know.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, you go down the street a little farther and you find one in the middle of the block. Well right across the street was a house that belonged to some people named Sauer. That name still exists, in um, um, um Food Town. I believe somebody named Sauer still has an interest in that. There was a nice brick house there and there was a… they operated a bootlegging place there, a Speak Easy. And when you knocked on the door, somebody opened a little trap to look out at you and you said “Josephine,” so then they would let you in. Except if they didn't have a little trap door that they looked out of they had a one-way mirror. There was a mirror on the inside, but they could… no there was a mirror on the outside and people would stand out there and fix their necktie while the boss would look out to see who it was. They thought it was a mirror. Well, there was many times in there where there would be three generations all getting drunk in there at the same time; grandfather, and father and mother, and the 15 or 16 year old children. They were all in there getting drunk at the same time. Now, because drinking liquor was forbidden by law, it made everybody want some and because bootleggers would sell liquor to anybody, children could buy. All they needed to do was to sneak some money out of their mother's purse and they could go downtown and get drunk. So it made America into a nation of alcoholics and I had so much fun doing it. We'd go out to dances on Saturday night at Lake Mary and um, uh there would always be bootleggers out there selling pints of bootleg whiskey, and we'd give them $3.00 for a pint of whiskey. And then we would go and hide it someplace outside under a pile of rocks because if your car was caught with whiskey in the car, they confiscated your car. The sheriff's yard down here was always full of confiscated cars that he'd sell that he'd auction off. And so in between dances everybody would go out and dig up their bottle of booze and pass the bottle around and then hide it under the rocks or something again. (laughs) And everything was fine, everything was wonderful, everybody'd fight, everybody'd make love, that, it, it was just wonderful. And uh, everybody had drunken parties.

Now, I'll tell you about my father. My father, being a very religious man, VERY religious, he said that "wine is part of the fruits of the earth and it is not within the rights of any man to take it from me." So my father would order a big barrel, about 50 or 60 gallons, a huge barrel, of grape juice from the Christian Brothers in Los Gatos in California. And along with this big barrel of grape juice would come a list of instructions. And the list of instruction… they may be in the old house up there still. The list of instructions would say, "In order to keep this grape juice from turning into a certain kind of wine, don't put this much of this in it, don't put that much of this in it, and don't keep it at this particular temperature for this length of time." So the result is my aunt Alice always had a barrel of wine um, um, stewing in the linen closet. And the reason it was in the linen closet was because that's… in the wall of the linen closet all the chimneys of the house went up through the wall and it was always warm in it. So we always had this barrel of wine in there. There is still some of the wine in the old house. It's spoiled now, I opened a bottle of it a couple of years ago and it's sour. There still some of it in a wine closet up there.

So… and my Uncle Tim in the other house kept, um, um making beer for the same reason. Now, my Uncle Tim would have a, they'd have a big party in Uncle Tim's house and in the middle of the party there, there'd be a "BANG" down in the cellar, some of the beer would blow, and then another "BANG." And the um, um the priest would go out on picnics and um, um drink a lot of wine with everybody else. And um, we had more fun in the bootleg days, with the Speak Easys and the bootleggers and the constant drinking, um. I had my first big, um, um, drinking, round of drinking on the day that my… sister Blanche was married. Um, the groom's father was in Flagstaff, he was the Vice-president of the Santa Fe, and he was here with his monstrous private car. And the private car was full of liquor. Now, you see, they could take the private car into Canada and fill it full of liquor then bring it back. They could, he could ride around on any railroad in the Western Hemisphere and so they'd go up to Canada and fill it full of liquor and bring it back. So that day of my sister's wedding… I was 16 on that day, because that was the summer I was 16, that was the first time that I'd ever, that I'd ever did any drinking. And I'd do quite a bit of drinking and I got a little tipsy. But um, prohibition was the time when we all had the most fun of any times in our lives. Cause everybody was drunk all the time.

Now, that was, of course, what brought on the gangsterism. Before Prohibition there weren't any, what we'd call organized gangs. There were small-time hoodlums, that is, people who would go out and rob the bank or hold people up on the street, or something like that. But, selling liquor gave the criminals means. They all went into the liquor business and that was the beginning of the big gangs, like Capone, and the big gangs that warred with each other in the streets of Chicago. My sister Blanche can tell you about seeing them warring with each other, shooting machine guns at each other in the streets of Chicago. And, um, that is what brought on organized crime. Then after they made fortunes, they made millions, millions, many millions, millions of millions. That gave them power. Money gives you power; that gave the gangs power. They branched out in other things, they branched out in prostitution and protection rackets. You know, uh, you pay me a thousand dollars a week or I'll blow up your tailor shop. That kind of thing. So, when Prohibition was over, the gangs kept on going with their other rackets: their race track rackets, their prostitution, their dope, and all the other things that keep things like the Mafia and gangs going today. They are still at it, and it was Prohibition that brought that on.

Now, there was one bootlegger here that operated out of a tent, out on the Roger's Lake road under the big beacon light that goes around and around out there. He operated out of a tent, and we'd go out there and buy a gallon of booze out there and um, we'd um, let him drink some of it. We'd say, "we'll take a drink" and pass it to him… "you, now you have a drink." Pretty soon… he couldn't drink as much as we could, we'd get him drunk and then we wouldn't have to pay for it. And he had a seven-year-old idiot out there that was drunk all the time. He had raised six of his own children and had raised six, seven foster children and two of his foster daughters were as pretty a couple of girls as I've ever seen, and he sent them to fine schools. And he was a dirty old bootlegger that lived in a tent. And the idiot, he uh, he had a nice wife too and she was drunk all the time and he'd said ________ woman. He said the reason that he had the uh, that the seven year old idiot was drunk all the time, he said "he might as well be" and he said, "he's better off being drunk, drinking himself to death here with us than being in some sort of asylum where they wouldn't pay any attention to him at all." At least they paid attention to him and were kind to him. And he was one of seven that they had raised and sent to good schools.

Um, he eventually… when the bootleg days were over, he started a nice barbecue place out on the road, 12 miles out, near Bellmont, on the old highway, Pop Wilson's Barbecue. Now it was a real barbecue, that is the meat was put in the ground and covered up. It wasn't just put in an iron oven some place. It was put in the ground, a whole bunch of meat, a carcass, a whole side of beef or something would be put in there then covered up and cooked in there for several days and then dug up again. And you would go out there and get barbecued sandwiches and you didn't even get a knife or fork or anything, you ate with your fingers and the whole town was out there all the time. Sunday night, Saturday night, the place would be just mobbed all the time.

Now, um, being an old friend of mine, being my old bootlegger, he had an annoying habit. He had false teeth and he kept cracking his false teeth all the time and it sounded as though he were breaking sticks. Now, one day, Gary Cooper and his wife showed up there. It was on the main highway at that time. And the reason they lost the place was because the highway moved three different times. It moved, the highway moved away from the place three times. And they tried it three times and then quit. Gary Cooper and his wife came out there one day and Mrs. Cooper says, uh, hey "Pop" uh, "Where's the lady's room?" and he said, "Good Lord, ma'am there's 13 acres of timber out here."

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs)

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, let's see…

KRISTINE PRENNACE: That was Gary Cooper, the actor?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Oh, yes. Yes there were… you see Flagstaff um, um, was famous for the actors that came here to visit.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Do you remember others?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Oh, yes. Bill Boyd, who was a star of Hop-along Cassidy, before you were born… You remember Bill Boyd and Hop-along Cassidy?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs) Oh, yes.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, he was the star of one of the fine cowboys series. He used to rent rowboats out at Lake Mary. He used to work for the man who owned the rowboats. And he used to try to get dates with my sister, Blanche, and she would have none of him. And he turned out to be the famous actor. Tom Mix used to come here and stay. Tom Mix used to come and stay in the Commercial Hotel, which burned down a few months ago. We uh, I used to own that hotel once. And uh, Tom Mix used to come here and make pictures… Zane Grey pictures. And so everybody in town knew, um, Tom Mix and, of course, I'll now progress to Zane Grey. He used to come here and stay in the Commercial Hotel. He used to come here every year to go bear hunting.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm

RICHARD RIORDAN: And um, he would come to town and he would assemble a bunch of wranglers and cowboys and a big party. Um, and he would go out for several weeks and he'd bag one. So one year, they changed the bear season two weeks, put if off for two weeks, changed the law. So Zane Grey came and um, he wanted to go bear hunting, um and my cousin-in-law, Tom McCullough, who was then the game commissioner around here, he was married to the daughter of the George Babbitt family, Margarite Babbitt. So that made him a cousin-in-law of mine. He was the game commissioner. So Zane Grey wanted to go and hunt two weeks early, because, he said, "I'm Zane Grey" and he says, um, "I've advertised Arizona more than any man has ever advertised Arizona," and Tom McCullough, said, "Yeah, you've made everybody in the world think it's nothing but a steaming desert!"

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Mmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: So, Zane Grey used his influence and his power, but Tom McCullough was firm and didn't allow him to go hunting two weeks early. So Zane Grey says, "Alright, if that's the way it is, I'll go away from Arizona and I'll never come back." He never did. Now, I have a story to tell about Zane Grey when he was here to go bear hunting. He had a room in the Commercial Hotel and at 3:00 in the morning someone knocked on the door. And he opened the door and here was one of these nine-foot cowboys standing out there. You know, a monster of a man with a three feet high hat and six-inches high boots on, that'd make him about nine feet tall. And the cowboy says, "Are you Mr. Zane Grey?" He said, "Yes." Says, "Did you put an ad in the paper that you wanted to have somebody go bear hunting with you?" He said, "Yes." But he said, "Mr. Grey, I just came up here to tell you that under no circumstances will I ever go bear hunting with you."

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs)

RICHARD RIORDAN: Now, uh, Clark Gable used to come and spend the whole summer here.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: He would live in the Monte Vista, and that was when he wasn't married to his lovely Carol Lombard, who I knew before she was Carol Lombard. I knew her as Jane Peterson, ain’t nobody _____. And he would come and spend the whole summer here, um, um after he left clothes (close?). And he had a little, um, um pretentious Plymouth Coup. And he'd go out and fish in Lake Mary all afternoon or something. He never appeared much in public. When he'd come in from whatever he did all day, alone, he'd go to his room. He'd have supper and then go to his room and nobody ever saw much of him. But a couple of times he came and spent the whole summer here. Lupe Velez came and spent a lot of time here. Uh.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: (Do you know who else?)?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Huh?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Harry Owens?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Um, Robert Taylor would come and stay here. Dick Powell would come and stay here, always at the Monte Vista for some reason or other.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: They were here with pictures, weren't they.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Usually here with pictures. But some of them would come and stay otherwise. Now, a uh, a uh, show person who came to great fame would come here and stay all summer. He was a friend, a college friend of John Babbitt's older brother, Jimmy Babbitt, who was, at the time of his death, a state senator. He died, by tragic in bear hunt in 1944. The young man would come out… his name was Harry Owens. He would come out and he wouldn't stay at the Charlie Babbitt's house, but he'd stay up at the Dave Babbitt's house all summer, for some reason or other. He was also a friend of George Babbitt, who still lives in Scottsdale, and George Babbitt also went to Loyola, so they were friends. This Harry Owens ran the orchestra, Loyola Orchestra. When he got out of college he started playing at the Moonlight Cafe in Hollywood then later on he opened the Marvelous Miller's Cafe on 8th street, right across the street from Westlake Park in Los Angeles. Harry Owens attained great fame as the author… the first of his great pieces was (Lenahonne?) I watched him write that up there in George Babbitt's house one summer. He figured it out with a paper and pencil and that was his first big hit. Do you know (Lenahonne?)?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: No

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, it's one of the most famous pieces in music history in America. He made his first fame and fortune with that piece. Then he went and played almost the rest of his life, at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Hawaii, Honolulu. And he wrote many pieces. I heard one of his pieces on the radio last night, _______ Sweetheart Aloha. And, um, he wrote… (end of tape).

BEGIN TAPE 3, SIDE 1

RICHARD RIORDAN: This will be the story of the Sisson house, S-I-S-S-O-N. The house still exists in a semi-ruined condition. It is the second house down the street from the present Holiday Inn. The first building that you come to is my father's old office; the gray stone malapais building. The next house down the street is an old house with a big stone stairway. It is boarded up now; it's uh, falling into ruins. That house was built by a family named Sisson, who, at one time, was a partner with my Uncle Tim and my father, Mike Riordan, in the sawmill. He built that building as his home and he and his family lived there. They had two children, a boy and a girl. The boy's name was Billy, Billy Sisson and I can't remember the girl's name, but I'll tell you a little story about the girl. They were playing in a barn and they had a bow and arrow that was made out of umbrella stays. And the idea was to shoot the arrow up through a knothole in the ceiling. So the girl was upstairs and she looked down through the hole to see if he was ready down there and at that time he shot and put her eye out. What is important about the Sisson family is the fact that they also built the lovely Lolomai Lodge in Oak Creek Canyon, which is now in a state of complete ruin. It was the most beautiful lodge that you ever saw, and none of the family ever saw it.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Its present ruin is about a quarter of a mile up the creek from the present ranger station that used to be Mayhew's Lodge, the old building down there, where, um, it used to be a hotel. Now it is a ranger station, I think. They built this marvelous thing for a summer home and it was so large that it subsequently became a hotel that could have about 50 people in it. And it was built for a playhouse. And when it became a hotel it became known as Lolomai Lodge. The reason it became known as Lolomai Lodge is because the party that they had down there to um, um, um, the first party, whatever you call that, they asked the guests to suggest names for the place. The name that was accepted was Lolomai Lodge. My sister, Blanche, suggested that. The word lolomai, in Navajo, means beautiful, pretty. You say that this thing is lolomai. That's like, in Hawaii, they say… it means almost anything, it's almost like aloha. That, it means beautiful or pretty. A thing that is beautiful and pretty is called lolomai. Well, we had wonderful house parties down there. And different people operated it as a hotel, but the property still belongs to the Sisson family. It still does to this day. And when it… the last time that I saw the place in sort of condition, I went in there, oh, when I was about 18, 19 years old. I'm not going to stop and figure out what year that would be. And the place had been vandalized; it was no longer used as a hotel. The last people that operated it as a hotel were Art and Mrs. Vandevier, who subsequently built Vandevier Lodge in Flagstaff, and he became sheriff here. They were the last ones. When I was down there, there wasn't anything left. Even the big commercial-type stove in the kitchen had been hauled away. Strangely the old phonograph was still there. And on the table in the upstairs hallway was the old register. I went home with that register that day. It was still there; I still own it. And it has the names of kings and queens and presidents and all kinds of people in it from the time that that Lolomai Lodge became a hotel, operated of course only in the summer time. Now we'll get back to the house in Flagstaff. Um, the Sisson family eventually went back east and were no longer associated with the sawmill. So their home, which was a lovely place, all in hardwood paneling and hardwood railings on the banisters on the stairways. It was kind of a cluttered up house like the old fashioned houses were many small rooms and passageways and things.

It became the company hospital; the Arizona Lumber and Timber Company Hospital and there was quite a good use for a hospital in those days because men were frequently being injured in the sawmill, and there were many men in the sawmill. Like John Steinmetz and Dan Williams, who had arms off. There were different men who had legs off. A sawmill was a dangerous place in those days. And then, of course, the wives and families of the men who worked in the mill could go to the hospital. And then it quit being a hospital in the days of the big Depression, starting in 1929 and going through the early 30's. It was vacant then. But then a bunch of doctors got together and started it in as a hospital again. And it was called the Doctor's Hospital. Beatrice's son was born there. And my mother died there in 1954. I uh, held my mother in my arms when she died there in 1954. It was the Doctor's Hospital. I had my tonsils removed there. Dr. Sechrist Sr. sat astride my lap and took my tonsils out! So it kept on being a Doctor's Hospital until the new Community Hospital was built, then the doctor's left that place and moved up to the new Community Hospital up here on the hill, and after that the building has never been used again. So that's the history of the Sisson House.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: What was Mill Town like?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Mill Town, it was called M-I-L-T-O-N, Milton, which of course meant Mill Town. There was a whole community there; that was a company town. There was lots of houses there. All the people who worked in the mill, except the Mexicans, who lived over in Mexican Town, all lived there. Managers, department managers, and the key personnel and everybody; they all lived in those houses and all the houses were different. My father had seen to it that every one was different so that it didn't look like a company housing project. Each house had a different shaped fence around it. And it had a company store we called the commissary. And um, it was a general store. It had groceries, shoes, um, um, guns, clothes, tobacco. It was a general store and it was called the commissary. And the next house down the street, below Sissons; the third house down the street now from the Holiday Inn, that big three-story house, that was built by my father when he hired a man named I.B. Koch to come and be the manager of the lumber company. He was a man who had, before that, had been the manager of a lumber company in Bernalillo, New Mexico. My father built that house for him and Mr. Koch lived in that house and raised his family there. He lived there for the rest of his life. Incidentally, he lived there free all the rest of his life. The house was connected with the boiler room at the sawmill for heat. He filled his car up from the company pump and um, um, but the house was built for I.B. Koch who eventually became the mayor here. And the first airport, the old airport is named Koch Field. It's still called Koch Field. So that's how that house came into being.

And there was a whole… there was a boarding house where I used to eat when I worked in the sawmill. And um, um, there was an old lady there who ran a boarding house for men who worked in the mill who were bachelors, and there were lots of them in those days. So they would come in there to eat. They'd come there to have breakfast and they would have um, um sometimes she'd send them off with a, with their lunch pails for lunch. They'd come and eat their supper there. And the meals were wonderful, like old-fashioned boarding house meals were. Those houses are all um, um gone now. There is one or two that are still left. But there was a whole community there and um, it was peaceful; nobody had a key to their door.

And incidentally up until the time when I was about 20 years old, there was very few people that owned a car. Nobody came to work then… there was about 500 men worked for the mill… and nobody came to work in a car, including the uh, the uh department managers. And the Mexicans had to walk from Mexican Town on South San Francisco Street through deep snow in the wintertime.

And the mill got started at a quarter to seven in the morning. So we worked about an hour in wintertime in the dark and then didn't quit until 6:00. And in the summer time we worked what we called quarters. We worked ‘til 9:30 at night; from a quarter to seven in the morning until 9:30 at night with 45 minutes off for lunch and 45 minutes off for supper and doing hard, heart breaking work, because the things were done by hand there, not with machines. So there were 12 and a half-hours a day of heart breaking work. And the common laborer made 25 cents an hour. I'd, I'd make 25 cents an hour, I never made more than 25 cents an hour because I was the owner's son. I couldn't get (control of it?) So at 25 cents an hour an ordinary 10 hour day added up to $65 a month.

Now the Mexicans, many of the Mexicans who worked in the mill, lived in what we called Shack Row. Shack Row was rows of little houses composed of only one room and they were charged $4.00 a month for it. It didn't have running water or inside toilets. They had a faucet outside where they filled the water up out of buckets and they went to outside toilets. And my father put a great big statue of Christ with his arms up there on the main street in Shack Row, because the Mexicans are all Catholic. I think that statue is still there.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: So that's the way the… and the mill didn't work all winter because the logs were cut and hauled around in the woods with those great big wheels. And when the snow came, the big wheels and the monstrous horses that pulled the wheels, the big Percheron(?) horses would make nothing but mud, and they had to quit. So they worked 12 and a half hours a day all during spring, summer, and fall in order to pile up enough logs um, um near the mill so that they could keep the mill running all winter sometimes.

Now, very few of the people who worked in the mill when I did, as a youngster, are still alive. Two of them that I know are still alive were the two brothers who ran the boiler room, Enrique and Edwardo Mayorga, M-A-Y-O-R-G-A. Enrique, E-N-R-I-Q-U-E, and Edwardo; they are still living and their sons and grandsons have uh, a welding shop here in town now.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Did they contract out to, uh, private woodcutters at that time?

RICHARD RIORDAN: No, um, um, every man that did anything in the company was a company man. Now the men out in the logging camp, uh, would um, cut the tree down. They're called sawyers and they would cut it with a two-man saw bending over. Then some other men would come along with axes and cut the limbs off the tree. They'd walk along on the tree and cut the limbs off. They were called swampers. Then the sawyers would come back and cut the tree in log lengths and each one of them got 16 cents a log. And some of them made as much as $6.00 a day. The men in the mill were making 2 and a half-dollars a day. They would go out at dawn and work until dark. And most of them were 110 pound Mexicans. Now, if you can divide 16 cents a log into $6.00 you can see how many logs they must have cut by hand in a day. Sawing, both of them sawing furiously 10, 12 hours without stopping. No man today could cut one log in a day. Most men today, even the strong men today couldn't cut one log. And they'd cut enough logs to, uh, make $6.00 a day.

The Swedes were the first ones that worked in the logging camp, but… the uh, big powerful Swedes. But when the Mexicans started coming from Old Mexico… it turned out that a 110 pound Mexican could out-work one of those tremendous Swedes. And so little by little the hard work, uh, got to be Mexicans, little, runty Mexicans instead of big Swedes.

Now along… talking about the lumber mill… there is nobody in the lumber industry that is called a lumberjack. That is a fiction, storybook word. There is nobody in the whole lumber industry that is called a lumberjack. The people in the woods that cut the trees down are called loggers. Now the only thing in the whole lumber industry that has the word jack to it, is the thing that they put boards on off of a truck, uh, um a little wooden truck load of board, they put it on to this device that is a thing like a knife blade on a tripod. They put the board on it. They bear down on this end of it. They turn it and shove it into the boxcar. That's the only thing in the whole industry that's called a jack. And they use that same instrument piling lumber out in the lumberyard. They use the same instrument for one man to hand the board up to another man higher. That's the only thing that's called a jack in the whole lumber industry and there is no man that is called a lumberjack, at least not in Arizona.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Do you remember when the black mill workers and loggers came?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, I was there that day. There was another mill on the other side of town we called it the sewer mill, because one year when uh, when there was a water shortage here, they used water out of the sewer and um, even when they blew the whistle it smelled like the sewer. When the wind came from that direction you could smell… the sewer mill. And we… the old timers around here still call it the sewer mill.

Well, the mill over there changed hands every once in a while and this time it was bought by an outfit in Louisiana, called the Cady Lumber Company, C-A-D-Y. And the young man in the Cady family, Wim, mind you, W-I-M, Wim Cady was sent out here from Louisiana to run the mill he bought, lumber mill in Flagstaff. He took a look at the runty Mexicans and said uh-uh. Said his big powerful Nigers, excuse uh, excuse me, Blacks, uh, colored people, whoever hears this, I apologize. He said these big Blacks from the swamps of Louisiana can certainly outwork these, these runty Mexicans and are probably cheaper. So, he put 300 of them on a train and I was down there the day the train arrived with 300 Negroes on it, men, women, and children. They backed that train onto the track that goes to the sawmill. Of course the sawmill has to have a track that articulates with the Santa Fe in order to get the lumber shipped around the country. They backed that whole train over to the sawmill. They unloaded all those colored people, 300 of them or more, into company houses. At that time, as far as I know, there was only one colored family in Flagstaff. I think today there is only one colored family in Williams who have been there for generations. I think there was one colored family in Flagstaff.

So, after these colored people had gotten a couple of paychecks, they all quit and they went downtown and got better jobs that weren't half so much work. That's where all the colored people in Flagstaff came from. The uh, thousands that are here now are all descendants of that trainload. So, they had to go back to Mexicans again because the colored people all quit, it was too much work for the amount of pay that they got. So, they dispersed themselves around town doing other odd jobs. That's where the colored population, the large population came from.

Now, in my company, Riordan's Incorporated, all the… down through those years, we had a man who came out at that time with that company. His name was Joseph (Hoggins?). He was our accountant up until the time that Riordan's Incorporated liquidated. His wife, Ina (Hoggins?), still lives here and she is one of the people who works, who's done the longest amount and most of the work up at the community hospital. His son, uh, uh, Joe Jr. runs Sun City.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: That's the way he came here. He spoke with a Louisiana accent, so does his wife, who still lives. Now what'll we talk about?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Can you remember the uh, development of the east Flagstaff area?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Oh, indeed I do. That uh, what we call East Flagstaff, belonged to my cousin George Babbitt, the son of elder George Babbitt, who was one of the first Babbitts that came and had the big mansion on Pinecrest Hill. When his father died and his mother died, he inherited all that, that we now call East Flagstaff. There wasn't anything there. So he started selling cheap lots out there and people started building shacks out of um, uh old boxes and um ammunition boxes and uh shacks made with old rusty tin (nails?) and dirt floors and bare footed, runny nosed children. It became an absolute slums. And we, who are old timers, called it Shanty Town.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, it built up, and it built up, and it built up, and pretty soon George Babbitt got wise to himself and started charging more for his lots. So, a better class of people, maybe the kind of people who could put a floor in their shack started buying lots out there. Well, it grew, and it grew, and pretty soon, the people who lived in Shanty Town wanted to have a better name, so they called it Sunnyside. So, we, who are old timers, got into embarrassing situations as a result of that change of name. Because we would say, um "Joe, I want you to meet Pete. Pete lives out in Shant…(clears throat) I mean Sunnyside." For years we stumbled over trying to say Sunnyside, instead of Shanty Town and we embarrassed ourselves and other people. It finally got to be Sunnyside. Well, uh, it got a nickname too. It became "Funnyside." So, the people then got um, um, to updating themselves and they wanted to have a post office so they applied for a post office. The post office department said, "You can't have a post office named Sunnyside because there's already one in Arizona someplace. You can't have two of them in the same state." So then they had an election out there and the uh, uh people with their wonderful imaginations, their literary bents and everything, they decided that "we'll call it East Flagstaff". Now, they could have called it all sorts of wonderful Navajo names, Hopi names, or make up names. Like, for instance, when they start a new town in New Mexico, one of them's called Silver Bell, another one is called Truth and Consequences, Truth OR Consequences. Of all the wonderful names that could have been made, they wanted it to be East Flagstaff, and such it is. There's the story of East Flagstaff.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay. Can you remember when the big change started to happen in Flagstaff, and more and more people came here?

RICHARD RIORDAN: I can tell you why Flagstaff's tremendous sudden growth. At the beginning of World War II, Flagstaff amounted to about 3500 people. Some say it might be as many as 4000. They built a monstrous ordnance depot out at Bellemont and it was originally called the Navajo Ordnance Depot. It was a place to keep bombs, to store bombs. Now the reason they put it there is because it was a place that could be defended. If the Japs had come in to Los Angeles instead of stopping along the way at Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December 1941, they could have walked right in to Los Angeles. We would have had no way of keeping them out. We had no army at that time. Well, as they would come eastward, the first thing that would be in their way would be the big desert. The next thing that they'd hit would be the Colorado River. And all we'd have to do would be to blow up the bridges and it would take them an awful long time before they could cross that river. And we could defend that river from the other side. On the north was the Grand Canyon, which is absolutely impenetrable, uncrossable. All right, down south was Mexico, so we first had the coastline, then the desert, then the Colorado River, then the next thing, we had this Coconino Plateau. There is… at that time there was a very twisty, turning road coming up from Ash Fork towards Williams. It was called the Ash Fork Hill. All right, that was another place that would be easily defended. You could put big guns on the top of the Ash Fork Hill at that plateau and those um, strong cliffs there. And that was another place to defend the place. So that's the reason it was put in Flagstaff. Well, people came here by the um, hundreds to work in that place. They originally intended only to have Navajos work there, but there weren't enough of them. And there were so many Navajos in the army, um, and uh, so lots of people came in here from other states and places. And that was what started the sudden big growth of Flagstaff. Is that… it's called now the Army Ordnance Depot, I think. But it started in life to be the Navajo Ordnance Depot. And that was what caused the cancerous growth in Flagstaff. (tape goes blank at this point)

END TAPE 3, SIDE 1, BEGIN TAPE 3, SIDE 2

Blank

TAPE 4, SIDE 1

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay, Mr. Riordan you mentioned, uh, at one time before… about radio programs that would come out of the Monte Vista.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Well, the first radio station in Flagstaff was built for Mary Costigan. Now Mary Costigan and her brother, John Costigan, owned and operated the Orpheum Theater. Now, I do not remember whether they built the Orpheum Theater or not. I believe they did. John Costigan was a musician. Mary and John were brother and sister. John Costigan was a musician and he would play for the silent movies down in the pit. John Costigan suffered from tuberculosis and he died of it. After his death, Mary Costigan continued to operate the theater. And she had a pair of people working for her who were musicians. One was a man named Professor Maxemin and his wife. The wife was a redheaded Caucasian who had been an actress in road shows such as Chautauqua's. And he was a very fine and internationally famous violinist. They were also here because of his health. He suffered terribly from asthma. And they would play for the pictures; they would play for the shows. He was a master of the violin and I believe he had a Stradivarius and she was an excellent piano player, because she had played professionally in theaters and road shows. So they were hired by Mary Costigan to play the music in the theater. And it was charming to hear them, because they were both excellent musicians; husband and wife.

Mary Costigan then, during this time, built the first radio station in Flagstaff. The station itself and the antenna, if that's what you call the thing that sticks way up high, was in her yard, on her front lawn. And the machinery was in her house. Now at that time, her house, with this radio station in it, was right across the street from the front door of what is now the fire hall. If you'll just walk across the street from the fire hall today, that is where that house was. Now, this radio station that she built was the first radio station in the world licensed to a woman. And my brother, Arthur, who was an electrical sort of genius, built that station for her. He manufactured it right on the spot. Now, the studio for this radio station was in the Monte Vista lobby. A little room just off of the Monte Vista lobby, in that little hallway where you go from the Monte Vista lobby into the Monte Vista dining room. I think there is an office there now. So, the um, person in the studio there; a young… usually a girl, would play records and talk, and um, put on some chatter and some patter, along with the records, and say who played the record and what was the name of it. And anybody that came along was welcome to come in that studio and do anything that they could do or wanted to do.

There was a piano there (clears throat) and if you could sing or if you could tell jokes, or if you could play the piano, or if a group had been out to a party and was a little looped perhaps, why uh, sometimes a little group would drop in, perhaps late in the evening. And somebody could play the piano, and somebody else could sing, and chatter and tell jokes; and just do anything that you could do or felt like doing, just to break up the monotony of the phonograph records.

Now, subsequently, Mary Costigan died. And these Maxemin people, Professor Maxemin and his wife, acquired it, the theater. And then they operated it, they owned it and operated it, um, until the day of his death. Um, he died of the ailment that had plagued him all his life, terrible asthma. He um, he had trouble breathing. He was a great big, heavy man; big and fat man. And he was a Mexican. At least he was mostly Mexican. Um, his uh, he had some relatives in Mexico that he went to see every once in a while. These um, um, Jose' Cuervo people that make the, the famous Tequila. Now, at the um, at the time of professor, I don't… I never have… did know what his first name was. Everybody called him Professor. And after his death, I believe that that was when, I believe that was when my family acquired the Orpheum Theater after Professor Maxemin's death.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: It was the, uh, family business then that acquired it?

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Riordan…

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, uh, uh, the Riordan corporation, Riordans Incorporated acquired that theater at a Sheriff's Sale. I don't recall the details, of the uh, of how that came about or why it was up for a Sheriff's sale. But my brother Robert went and bid on it and he was the only man who came to the Sheriff's Sale. As you may know, when there is a Sheriff's Sale, the Sheriff stands on the steps of the courthouse and that's where a Sheriff's sale take place. My brother was the only person that came to bid on that theater and that's how the Riordan family acquired the theater.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm, how long did you own it then?

RICHARD RIORDAN: I don't remember, Kristine. We owned it, we owned it for a long time and then we sold it to Harry Nace who still owns it.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Maybe we can talk about the auto…

RICHARD RIORDAN: Uh…

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Oh, I'm sorry did you want to go on?

RICHARD RIORDAN: I can tell you some more about that theater.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Sure.

RICHARD RIORDAN: It's coming back to me a little bit.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Mmhm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Before it was the Orpheum Theater, it was the Majestic Theater… wasn't it?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: I don't know, (laughs). There was a theater downtown, by Babbitts now.

RICHARD RIORDAN: There was a theater called the Majestic Theater where Babbitts' Men's Shop is now. There was a large building there that has now been all cut up into small shops and things. There was building there big enough for a theater. That was called the Majestic Theater. I remember seeing Mary Pickford as a child, in the "Poor Little Rich Girl" there, when I was a child.

Now, we'll go down to what is now the Orpheum Theater. Perhaps it was the Orpheum Theater when it commenced, I don't recall. Maybe it was the Majestic, but on the night, on New Year's Eve, 1915, there was a dance in that theater. At that time the theater had a flat floor in it and when it was used as a theater they put rows of folding seats, folding chairs, on the flat floor. But the flat floor was a hardwood floor and it was used for dances. You take the chairs out and use the place for a dance. And the orchestra would be up on the stage. So, there was a big dance on New Year's Eve, in 1915. And everybody in town was there. There weren't very many people in town at that time and they had a big dance and they were there when the new year came in and then everybody went home. About an hour or so after everybody went home, the theater collapsed. Of course there had been an unusual snow. And if the theater had collapsed an hour sooner, it probably would have killed most everybody in town.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Okay, you mentioned something about auto races up the Weatherford Road.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, I do not recall what year it started, but the Weatherford family, the same family, I believe, who built the Weatherford Hotel, built a road up to the top of the peaks. The remainder of that road is still there; you can walk on it now. You probably could go up it in a, perhaps in a Jeep. But I know you can go up it in the wintertime with a snowmobile, when the snow is on the ground. Now that road was not built exactly to the tip top of the highest peak, but it was built up as far as Jack Smith Springs, which is way up in the uh… past the saddle, and it is the rim of the crater within the peaks. So you could get to, almost to the top of the peaks.

Well, when you got to the top of the peaks, when you got to the top of that road, you are at such an altitude, somewhere over 12,000 feet, that cars would barely run. There was a place up there, right at the top, where the road was level for a little ways, where it was level. And in order to make a car go on that level spot, you had to have it in low gear. And you could push the throttle all the way to the floor and the engine would just slowly pick up its revolutions, as though it was sick. And that's on account of the altitude.

Well, when the road was finished, they had an annual race up that road and people would come from all states around to see that race. And people would build special racing cars in order to um, do this race. It had to be special cars because the road was rough, the turns were short, and um, it required a very rugged car. And they were all special built cars. And they came from all the states around here. And people, lots of people came. It was almost like the annual motor race up Pike's Peak only on a… to a lesser degree because the road wasn't that good. It wasn't as good as the road up Pike's Peak. So the very powerful, expensive racing cars were not used here because the expensive racing cars that would be used at Pike's Peak would tear themselves to pieces on this road, because it was rather rough. Well, I have some pictures somewhere of um, that race. I remember being up there at the top on the flat place to see the cars arrive. And about half of them would arrive. The others would um, file off into a ditch someplace, or blow a tire, or something like that. That was quite a number of years ago, I don't remember how long ago it was. I was quite young. I imagine that I was in my teens; probably I was 16 or 17 or 18, because I remember how old the cars were. I haven't seen the pictures that I have, for years and years so I can't judge how long ago that was.

Now that road was built at a very great expense of course, and it required a great deal of effort and money to keep it in repair. The idea of the road to begin with was that it was to be a business venture, a commercial venture, with the idea that there would be a toll gate at the bottom. I believe that the toll gate, I believe that it might still exist out there where, um… is it Dr. Stilley's ranch? I believe it's Dr. Stilley's ranch now that is on the road that first… the commencement of that road that led up the mountain. That's where the toll gate was. The idea was that it would be such a marvelous road that everybody in the world would come to see it, like the Grand Canyon, or the Eiffel Tower, or something like that. And they'd make a fortune selling tickets a $1.00 apiece, or probably 25 cents apiece at that time. And it never prospered, because there weren't enough customers. And little by little it fell into disrepair and finally was abandoned. It got so bad that it was abandoned as a commercial venture. And, I'm not sure, because I haven't been up there for a number of years, it may be that the Forest Service maintains that road good enough for tractors or something to operate on to um, to use as a Forest Service road. But, um, until these trees grew up across the street from our front window here, I could see part of the Weatherford road up there, from out of my window, especially if I used my field glasses. Its uh, part of that road is visible right from here. If you just move over here…

KRISTINE PRENNACE: I realize that you were a pilot. Well I don't know if you still fly or not, but you should know a little bit about the development of the airport around here.

RICHARD RIORDAN: There was gentleman who lived here at one time, he was the manager, the general manager of my father's sawmill, The Arizona Lumber and Timber Company. His name was I.B. Koch, K-O-C-H. Now he became mayor. And a good deal as a result of his efforts the town acquired an airport. And the town, because he was the mayor at the time, called it Koch Airport.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Koch Field.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Koch Field; that is right, Koch Field. Now Koch Field was out north and east of Flagstaff, sort of uh, sort of a part of Doney Park and uh, uh Black Bill Park. It's out there among the cinder hills. It's surrounded with cinder hills, but it's a nice flat place. Now here-to-fore it had been a farm. They raised wheat or barley, or sometimes potatoes, or beans there. And it had an old farm house right in the middle of it. The place still exists today and it is still called Koch Field. The uh, trap shooters and the skeet shooters have a place out there. And they go out there to have motorcycle and drag races and things today.

Well, in order to take care of the place, they had the farmer who lived there keep two runways open. One that went east and west, and one that went north and south. And they crossed each other in the middle like a cross. Now the idea was that he would cultivate all the rest of the property with whatever he wished to raise, but he would keep two runways open. Now the runways were just about wide enough for a big airplane. The biggest airplane at that time that ever landed there was one of those old tri-motor Fords, that they called the Tin Goose. And so the result was that when there were two airplanes operating at the same time out there, it was impossible for them both to pass each other on one of these runways, so one of them had to go off the runway.

And in August the sunflowers grew up there about 8 feet tall. You could walk among the sunflowers out there and, with them above the top of your head. So that when I would land out there and another airplane was operating, I would have to taxi out among the sunflowers, and I suffered from hay fever. And so I would go down through the sunflowers with my propeller cutting a swath through these sunflowers and blowing it right back in my face, these airplanes of course being the open cockpit type. That was in the days of helmets and goggles and boots and open cockpits.

Now, there was an old hanger there and I had the only airplane that stayed there most of the time. The other airplane that existed here that belonged to Harold Cameron was usually taken by its pilot, George Tyson, to Winslow when the snow… when the winter came on, to keep it out of the snow. Well, my airplane took up the whole hanger that existed on Koch Field. The old hanger was a thing built in the shape of an airplane. It had two wings sticking out that covered the wings and it had a place that the nose of the airplane went into, and it just fit the airplane, just about exactly. And it didn't have any doors on it that I can remember.

Well, one winter, it was a very bad winter, in the early 30's. I would say 1932. The farmer out there had cows and in order to keep the cows from freezing in this terrible blizzard condition, the cows were put into the hanger with the airplane. Well, the airplane wings were made of little pieces of wood, delicate little pieces of wood with cloth stretched over them. So, the cows liked to scratch those things, and rub their horns against things, and they would get under the lower wing of the airplane and rub their backs against it, up underneath, thereby crushing the little pieces of wood that the wings were made out of. Then they would try their horns on it and tear the lower wing all to pieces. So, I'd go out there one time on skis. I had to go out there on skis and found my airplane all torn to pieces with the farmers’ cows. Well, I tried to sue the city, but being in the depths of the Depression, the city didn't have any money, and nobody else had any money, and I spent more money on lawyers, trying to sue the city for my… for the destruction of my airplane and I never got a cent out of the city. I still am a little angry about that. I think I should have, because I considered my airplane safe in the city hanger; and that was considered the Flagstaff City Hanger. Well, my friend, George Tyson, who was the pilot for Harold Cameron's plane, he and I went out there on skis all the rest of the winter. One time we both froze our faces going across that big field on skis from old Highway 66. And we repaired that airplane, in that hanger, good enough so that we thought that when the snow was gone, we could fly it down to Winslow where there was a TWA installation where they had good mechanics.

Now it is illegal to work on your own airplane. You have to have a licensed engine mechanic work on your engine. You have to have a licensed airplane mechanic work on the fuselage, which is the airplane's body. If you do your own work, you have to have it undersigned by a licensed mechanic to show that it's all right. All right… here there were no licensed mechanics. The closest one was in Winslow. So, when the spring came and the snow was mostly gone, between the two of us we managed to fly that thing to Winslow. That is, I flew it, and he drove the car down that I am now restoring in my shop.

Now in July 1976 I am restoring the car, it a 1929 Buick. Incidentally there is a thing that you people won't believe, but it took place. He helped me, he held my wing while I revved my engine up in order to get it going as fast as it would, cause I had to get it out of the snow. There was snow a short distance in front of me. So after I was in the air, he got in my car. When I landed at the old airport in Winslow, he was sitting there waiting for me. He had driven my Buick Roadster faster than I had flown that airplane in a straight line! Not only that, but he had gone through the downtown district of Winslow before he got to the airport. My car was sitting there steaming and it was ready to explode. And that's one of the times that I have been the maddest that I have ever been in my life. My car was capable of it, but I wouldn't have thought of doing anything like that. My car could do about 120 mph even in the early 30's; very powerful car that is being restored in my backyard right now. So, um, my airplane stayed then in Winslow and I taxied it in to the backyard of a family. ________plumbers. I don't recall their name. There were four brothers who were plumbers.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (Bernstein?)

RICHARD RIORDAN: I don't recall what their names were. Now, at that time; that was in 1932. We're back to 1932 now, we're back in the time machine. A flyer who used to be the fire chief here in Flagstaff, a man named Jack Irish, was a pilot. He flew, in his life, six different airplanes and ruined them all. He um, …five of them he wrecked, and he spoiled mine. Here's how it worked out. The then editor of the Winslow paper, whose name… I don't know the name of the paper. His name was Columbus(?) Giragi and he was a famous editor. So he had an airplane and he couldn't fly it, but my old friend Jack Irish, who now lived in Winslow… No he didn't. He lived in Flagstaff and went to Winslow to fly other people's airplanes without their consent. He undertook to take Columbus Giragi, in Giragi's plane, to Phoenix. They were lost. It set off the biggest airplane search, I guess in the history of northern Arizona. The army came. All kinds of private planes came and the airport in Winslow, the new airport in Winslow, was just crowded with airplanes; TWA planes, army planes, private planes. I joined the search. A man would be assigned to me as my observer. I'd do the flying and somebody that I couldn't know, would be assigned to me as an observer. So we'd fly around, up and down the canyons, between Winslow and um, and the Verde Valley searching. On my last trip in, I found the wreck. I was coming, cruising along… I was coming out of Rainbow Pass, which is southwest of Winslow. And I was cruising along, low, over the desert and I came across the wreck. Now, I can't claim that I found it because there was a ground crew who had found it just a few minutes before I came along. But I was the first one that found it from the air.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Hmm.

RICHARD RIORDAN: And I was the first one who gave the news that the wreck had been found, because I gave the news when I landed, because I had come across it. Although a ground crew was there, they had no way of communication in those days. Now, because there were so many airplanes collected there, that brought a Civil Aeronautics Inspector. Well, the city… um, um, the Civil Aeronautics Inspector took a look at my airplane and he got his pocket knife out and started cutting my wings to pieces, cutting holes in my wings. My wings were made out of cloth. We called it fabric… (end of tape)

END TAPE 4, SIDE 1, BEGIN TAPE 4, SIDE 2

RICHARD RIORDAN: A few years later, the airplanes either had peep holes in them, made out of something transparent, or the inspection holes had zippers on them, so you could zip them open. Well, the inspector found that the main spar in my right wing was cracked and there was four cracks in my motor mount. So, he took my propeller away from me. That's how he grounded somebody in those days, he took their propeller away from them. So, um, you got your propeller back when your plane was repaired to the specifications of the inspector.

Well, I knew very well that I never bounced my airplane and I never injured my airplane; Jack Irish, who died in this affair, used to take my airplane out without my permission, in Winslow, and do stunts with it. Now that's very bad to do stunts with those old airplanes because it stretches the wires and the wings and everything, and then you have to work on it for a week to get it all back to specifications again. So anybody that owned an airplane did stunts at his own… He knew that he was getting himself into a lot of work if he did stunts. Because if I did a few stunts over Flagstaff, I had to work for several days to get everything back into a proper adjustment, which we did with the aid of a book that came with the airplane. So, I'm sure I did not do the damage to my airplane that the inspector found. Well, I had to leave my airplane at the TWA place, great monstrous big hanger at the new airport in Winslow. By the time that all the repair work was done I couldn't pay for it. This was in 1932 in the midst of the big Depression, and I was a young fellow at that time and um, I didn't have enough money to repair my airplane, so I sold it to a Santa Fe Railroad engineer who paid for the repairs. He got the airplane for paying for the repairs. I can't think of his name. He has died subsequently. Now, he took it over. He could fly a little bit, very little. And he flew it away from there and took it over to the old airport in Winslow where there was a city hanger. He put my airplane, or his airplane at that time into the city hanger. The city hanger burnt down and there went the airplane.

Now, this airplane was a Curtis Fledgling and it had been used in the U.S. Marines. The fittings on the wings in different places had stampings, the Marine stampings which used to be a sort of a circle which means the earth, and an anchor, I believe. It had originally been a basic training plane in the Marine Corps. That's where I got it. Well, it was a Curtis Fledgling, and in it was a six-cylinder radial engine called a Curtis Challenger. Now, this was the only engine of its kind that was ever built. Most radial engines on airplanes have odd numbers of cylinders. They have to have odd numbers of cylinders, either three or seven or nine. Now this engine, this Challenger engine had six cylinders. It had… it was two three-cylinder engines on the same crankshaft, one a little bit behind the other. There was two throws on the crankshaft, each operated by a three-cylinder engine. Now, when you heard the airplane going by and you were on one side, it went brrt, brrt, brrt, brrt, brrt and when I'd land… why people would say "your airplane's missing" because you could only hear three cylinders on one side and the exhaust on the other side and the other three cylinders. So that when you were on one side of it, it sounded like three cylinders were going and it sounded as though it was missing.

Now, (clears throat) I'll tell you how I learned to fly. I was taught to fly by Claude Ryan. Claude Ryan was the man who made Lindbergh's ship in San Diego. I came to Claude Ryan three years after he built Lindbergh's ship. I believe he built Lindbergh's ship in 19… I think Lindbergh flew in 1927. I came three years later and I was taught by the man who built Lindbergh's ship. And I stayed there in a school for six months and went to class all morning and flew all afternoon. And on Saturdays and Sundays I went around with some other students in the school to different airports around southern California, around San Diego, and rented planes; rented all kinds of planes at different airports. And so we got a lot of experience. So, the result was that I had the best training that anybody could possibly have in the early 30's. Beatrice: Richard, I think you ought to say about… you got to the point where you said this man put your plane… now his plane in a different hanger and I think that you got side-tracked there. I think you wanted to go on and say something happened to the plane in the other hanger and that was end of this, that's the end of that.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Yes, the plane was put in the hanger at the old Winslow airport and the hanger burnt down and my ship was in… my old ship was in there and it was destroyed along with every other plane that was in there. There were several other planes in there too. Beatrice: So Richard's plane, that was the first ____ ordinary plane in Flagstaff… that was the end of it. That was the sad end.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Yeah.

RICHARD RIORDAN: Now, I still have… I still have some pieces of my old airplane. I still have the starter crank that, uh… It had an inertia starter, which some old timers will remember. You put a crank handle in the side of the airplane and then you started cranking. Little by little the zzz… zzz… zzz… zzz… zzz and you started a fly-wheel going and when you got it going, when your tongue was hanging out and your eyes were crossed and sweat was running off the end of your nose, why then you quit cranking and pulled a string, a wire, and that inertia started… was supposed to start the big engine. And half the time it didn't, and sometimes it did. And you couldn't turn that crank fast enough, more than twice in a day because it was so much work.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs)

RICHARD RIORDAN: It's interesting to note that there is plane just like mine in the Smithsonian Institution. I have a picture of it flying. There was a picture that I cut out of a magazine, and a picture of a plane just like mine that had been restored to perfection, and it was flying. And underneath the picture in the magazine it said "Flight to Valhalluh (sp?)" and then it described… It said that this plane has been completely restored and its last flight is to the Smithsonian Institution. So it resides there now; one just like mine.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Mrs. Riordan, you've lived in Flagstaff for a long time also. When… where were you born?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: I was born in Clifton, Arizona and it wasn't long before we moved to St. John's. Now, let me see, um… My grandfather was Joseph Smith McFate and he was born in uh, he was born in the east before the trek west with Brigham Young. He was four or five when he came west. And then in 1881 he came down from Utah and settled in St. John's. And then uh, later, maybe three or four years later he sold out there and moved to Bush Valley… to Alpine, and built his home and had a sawmill there! It's strange, you know, because Richard's father had a sawmill too, and my grandfather had one about the same time, but (clears throat) I think it was uh, let's see, that was my grandfather… I'm trying to get the next date straight now… I don't know my history very well.

In 1881 my grandfather came up here to Flagstaff, left his family in St. John's, came up here to Flagstaff, and out here. Now I don't know… I don't believe the Riordan mill site was there at that time in 1881. Richard could tell you that. Wasn't there a Riordan in 1882? Okay. In 1881 my grandfather was situated about a mile north of where that Riordan mill became situated and uh, and he was running a tie operation. He had a contract with the railroad to haul ties. And he hauled them from that northernly mill… they had a kinbook (?) somewhere north of town.

Uh, my father and his wife's brother, M. Tenney (sp?) were dear friends and they worked together and now, the contract may have been in both their names, I really don't… I don't know about that. I know my grandfather was one of them and uh, so, for three years the family was situated in St. Johns, but he was hauling ties over to… around near Holbrook. And the railroad was coming all the while this way, and then when it got a little further, then the Riordans… I'm sure the Riordans made all their ties for them through this part. And it may be that they were… see, he was here for three years, so the Riordan mill was operating too at the same time. I guess they needed all the railroad ties they could get. So um, my grandfather um, moved then to Alpine and had a mill there, and that's where my father was born. And my father's name was Roy Lisk, L-I-S-K, McFate and he married Gladys Duke.

Let's see… my father was born in 1887, I think, in August of 1887. And uh, my mother is just about his same age. And she was a Thatcher. I guess my mother's family beat my father's family to Arizona. (laughs)

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs)

BEATRICE RIORDAN: I don't know, but she was born in Thatcher. That's another Mormon community… Thatcher and Safford, beautiful Mormon farming community.

RICHARD RIORDAN: (whispers)

BEATRICE RIORDAN: What is it?

RICHARD RIORDAN: (whispers again)

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Yes, my mother is still alive in Mesa. My father died two years ago in July, in his nineties. I think he, I think he might have been 88, something like that. Am I speaking loud enough?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Sure,

BEATRICE RIORDAN: You think?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Yeah

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Now, let's see. As to the rest of my family… I have a brother, Yale McFate, who's a Superior Court Judge in Phoenix, and has been for many years. And I have a brother, Bruce, who has worked for Southern Pacific Railroad many years… Oh, I think he retired! This very year he retired! And Yale's ready for retirement too. And I have a sister, Portia, whose married name is Cox, and I think she is retiring this year too. Isn't that weird?

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs)

BEATRICE RIORDAN: I married… I'm the youngest one, and I married Richard, and I, I retired first.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs) Now when did your family then come over to Flagstaff?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Well, I'll tell you, my father, Roy, and his brother (Don?) in St. John's, had a barber shop and pool hall. My father was not an educated man at that time, but he was plenty bright, you know; that doesn't change. So they had this business, and I can remember it as a child. I must have been very young, but I can see it plain as day. First my father was alone in a tiny little barber shop about the size of this living room, maybe 15 feet square, maybe smaller even. And we up through St. John's once when I was about 10, on the way to see my uncle Jim in Miller Valley, and here was this weather beaten sign still hanging out in front of this small barber shop, "Roy McFate Barbershop" and gosh, (laughing) all these years later. It seemed funny, but no one ever took the sign down. It may be still hanging for all I know. But later, of course, they moved in to this large place, it had a fancy pool hall in the back end, and barbershop in front, and then came the war. And my father, who had four children, and a wife, enlisted and went up to Oregon to camp, to learn to be a soldier. And he did something terrible to his knee and uh, I don't know if he would have ever been sent across the sea with that terrible injury to his knee; but at any rate the war came to an end and so he came home. I remember him coming home, I was just a little shaver, 2, I guess. He picked me up on his shoulder and carried me into the house. Everything, he looked so grand in his uniform. But then he had this knee that… he couldn't stand and barber anymore. He just uh, his uh, you might say it incapacitated to the point that he had to learn to do something sitting down. He did so want to be a dentist.

He came up here and went to college two years, and it was Northern Arizona Normal School. And then he planned to go to the coast and finish his education and become a dentist. Well, we moved. It never occurred to anyone that they wouldn't accept his credits. We moved bag and baggage to Los Angeles and after about two weeks it became clear; we knew that it wasn't going to work. They weren't going to accept these people's, they weren't going to accept Normal School credits at the dental schools in the University of Southern California. So, we packed up and came home.

And so my father was a little disappointed, but he shouldn't have been because he's one of the world's great teachers, really. He ended up going to the University of Arizona and got to be a school administrator. And his specialty, really you might say, was going in and starting rural schools; starting them from total scratch. They wouldn't even have a building. He's even built the school if you know him. He's even pitched in and built additions to schools so they'd have… I know he built in Parker, one summer, he built a building to house the primary grades, because there wasn't any money. And then started off teaching the next winter there.

Let's see, he came up here to school the fall of '21, and I started in first grade. All of us, all of the kids were in train… Normal School Training School there, we were all in Training School. And my father then made this quick trip back and forth from Los Angeles, and then we all moved to Tucson, and he finished his education at the University of Arizona. And his first teaching job was in _____ in the Queen district. And he stayed one year and then he got this nice job in Parker and we were there three years. And then he bettered himself with a move to Woodlands.

Now in Parker, he was… people would call him Superintendent of the Schools. I don't know, but he started a high school there, and there was a grade school, and as I said, he built the primary so that there'd be enough room for everybody, so he could start the high school. He really was quite a guy! And he had a really good reputation as school administrator and teacher and philosopher. And I'll lend you a little book there, a little piece of writing so you can see what I mean to be a very good man. And he wrote histories of himself and his father and grandfather, all of which are down there in Tempe somewhere, that the kids like to read and to get a little history.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Now he… did he work within the Flagstaff Public Schools when he finally…

BEATRICE RIORDAN: No, he never worked in Flagstaff.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: He never did?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Never did.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: He went to school here though when McMillan was president. McMillan and his two beautiful full grown daughters. I remember them so well. They were so beautiful; never saw them again. You know, a first grader isn't totally oblivious as to what's going on in the world. And I remember that McMillan had two beautiful daughters.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs)

BEATRICE RIORDAN: They were grown up. And then Gammage. He was here when Gammage was president. Gammage later moved to Tempe. You probably know of Gammage.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: I've heard of him.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Gammage Auditorium down there… But he didn't teach here, but he was very well known here because he came back. You know he'd come back to school and when a town is small, the way this town used to be, everybody knows everybody and my father was well known in the world of education.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Uh huh. Now, so you moved around the state, wherever he was teaching.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Yes, now he was teaching in Williams and from Williams, I left home to come up here to college. That was in the fall of '31. I came to college and I didn't finish, but the whole family went to school up there. My mother graduated from Normal School with my father. And my two brothers and my sister all graduated there. And…

KRISTINE PRENNACE: So your mother was married at the time that…

BEATRICE RIORDAN: My mother and father were married and had four children when they went to school up there!

KRISTINE PRENNACE: That was very unusual wasn't it, for her to be going to school?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Yes, well there were some women…

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Married women?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Well, there were some young women too. I remember them. Well in those days teaching was really… there were a lot of women teachers.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Uh huh, right.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: The men would be the principals and the women would be the teachers, and the men would be the coaches. Now, that's about the way it was in the old days.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: And the women weren't married… most of them that were teachers were they?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: In fact, a lot of contracts would specify that they couldn't get married. If they were married, they were fired!

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs) So, you've been here pretty much since 1931, when you came to school. When you left then, did you get married and stay here?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: In '21 I started (grammar?) school, in '31 I started college.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Right, right. And so you stayed in this area from…

BEATRICE RIORDAN: From '31 on, pretty much I stayed here. I was gone a year during the war years, my then husband was George Prochnow, the father of my children. And… (B and K talking at same time) they did have prominent family and they well deserved their prominence, it's a fine family. They had Charlie Prochnow and Elizabeth Prochnow, the mother and father, and they had twelve wonderful kids. Twelve wonderful kids! (laughs) Unbelievable! For that generation… now in my father's family there were thirteen; in my mother's family there were twelve and in those days, I guess there wasn't anything to it. I guess everybody had about that many. How many children were there in your family, Richard?

RICHARD RIORDAN: My parents had six children.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Six.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: So now, you were married to George Prochnow. What did he do.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Well, he was a hotel man. But we spent this year on the coast and he was working in the… at the shipyards, as a (foreman?) It was just to… (by the way?)

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Yeah. I think they had the Commercial Hotel?

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Yeah, they had the Commercial Hotel. George ________ bells for his father. He'd stay there just long enough to get enough money to take me to the show.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: (laughs) So then, you worked for an attorney after...

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Well, let's see. When I was 16 I, in my first… it wasn't my first job, but it was my first job for an attorney. I started working when I was 16. I had this job in Phoenix, which didn't pan out and I came back home where I belonged. And so um, I moved to Phoenix for the _____________ and a while for Babbitts and then I got… but first I worked for Karl Mangum who was county attorney. I guess that was my first job, right here in Flagstaff. And he didn't have enough money in his budget to have a secretary, but every time he'd get a few bucks ahead, he'd say "Bea, calm down, I've got a batch of letters for you." Well, when I was 18, I did get… I was county stenographer and there was money in the budget to pay one. Can you imagine, can you imagine, working along like that without… Karl was very young. Karl was from Gila County also. My parents and Karl Mangum's parents were old and dear friends.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Huh, and you both ended up working together.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: (Laughs) Yeah. So here I end up working for Karl when I'm 16. I worked for him in earnest when I was 18 and then, let's see. I don't remember. I worked for Bill McQuatters, who was a lawyer of very good repute here in town and in 1941 I think it was the… Just before, just a little while before the war started, I worked the first time for Karl Mangum as court recorder. And then we moved to the coast, as I've said. And then when we moved back… let's see it was 19… I guess it was 1946 or 7, I moved back again and I stayed for about, I guess 18 years as court recorder.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Oh, goodness that was a long time.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Yeah. I was glad to do it. It was an exciting job.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: You saw a lot of judges come and go.

BEATRICE RIORDAN: Well, I worked for Karl, and then he volunteered in the service. He went in as Lt. Commander as a legal officer, you know. But he did end up overseas in, uh… he wrote me from some island, so I know he got overseas, but he was in a legal capacity. So he was gone and Judge Russell came in. Now let's see, how did that work out… When Karl left, I quit shortly thereafter, but then later when Russell was judge he asked me to come back. He couldn't get anyone… you know they'd come and go, come and go and just stay a little while, and it was hard on him. And so, I came, and I worked for Judge Russell then for many, many years, and he died. Then Larry Wren was judge. And after Judge Russell died, Larry Wren became judge, he got the appointment. And I worked with him for several years, and then I quit.

KRISTINE PRENNACE: Yeah. You got married…(laughing)

BEATRICE RIORDAN: (laughs) Well, I quit and got married. There was a few years difference right in there, it all worked out.

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