Today as I join Arizona in mourning the loss of one of the greatest people of our time,I remember the day Eddie Basha and I cried together.
It was 1994. He was running for governor. I had recently written “The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd.” To my surprise, Winnie Ruth, who had secretly moved back to Phoenix, called me one day and asked for a “favor.”
“Will you please vote for Eddie Basha for governor,” she said over the phone in her tiny voice, and I laughed at first, wondering where this was coming from. “Why?” I asked, not letting on that Eddie already had my vote.
“Because during my trial [in the 1930s] my parents moved here and they were very poor and Eddie Basha’s father gave them a turkey and they’d never had a whole turkey before. So please vote for him to thank him for his father.”
I called Eddie to tell him the story. I could hear the tears over the phone, as his pride in the father he adored just grew another branch. And I cried too, that a simple kindness 60 years ago could still inspire a “thank you.” And it made me understand Eddie better–he’d learned at the knee of a kind man and he made kindness an art form.
Eddie’s father would have been proud of the son the state of Arizona and people around the nation are mourning today. His wife and sons and grandchildren should burst with pride that they shared this earth with that wonderful man. His friends came from the highest and most respected in the state, to those whose names we’ll never know.
He will never be replaced, but he will never be forgotten, either.