Inconceivable in 1966

I’ve got a birthday game for you: Think back 40 years to the Phoenix, Arizona, of 1966. Got it? OK. Now, name“ 40 things you never imagined could happen 40 years ago. ”My friends and I put together the list you’re about to read, and what’s most amazing is the transformation this city, Valley and state have experienced in the past four decades.

As you’ll see, some changes are fabulous, some are terrible, some are funny, some are sad. But all of them have happened since the first issue of PHOENIX magazine was published back in 1966. So, let’s play after all, this is a birthday party.

After assembling the list, I was struck by four items in particular: four astonishing things that have to be mentioned right at the top. As my friend, Ivan Makil, who once led the Salt River Pima Tribe, notes: Forty years ago, nobody would have dreamed that in 2006, Indian tribes would be sharing their revenues with the state of Arizona.

There was no such thing as Indian gaming in 1966, and any interest in Native Americans was mostly as a novelty; no one thought of them as contributing members of society.

The reservations were notoriously poor, underdeveloped and desperate. Indian tribes had no economic or political clout, and were seen as burdens on society, not contributors.

All of that changed with the introduction of gambling. Arizona now has 22 casinos that bring in billions of dollars each year money that is helping transform the reservations with new housing, education and business opportunities. In addition, the casinos share revenues with the state $65 million to Arizona in fiscal year 2005; $80.4 million in 2006; with even more expected in fiscal year 2007. The money has brought the tribes to the table in business and politics.

The second big change since 1966 was the status of women: Forty years ago, we hadn’t seen any real gains in women’s equality. And the idea of a female governor? Well, as Athia Hardt reminds us, in 1966, Arizona hadn’t even had a female press secretary yet the only women in the governor’s offices were secretaries. (Later, in 1978, Hardt became the state’s first female press secretary under Governor Bruce Babbitt.)

Women were basically invisible in the media back then, too. My friend, Marge Injasoulian, was one of the few who had cracked the ceiling she was director of communications for Channel 10, which, back then, was the CBS affiliate in town. (Incidentally, Injasoulian was recently inducted into the Arizona Broadcaster’s Association Hall of Fame.)

“Forty years ago was before the women’s rights movement got going here,” Injasoulian remembers. “There were no women on the air all the reporters and anchors were men. There were no women bank presidents. There would never have been a female mayor, to say nothing of a female governor. Local politics were controlled by the Charter Government Committee, which was always headed by men.”

Margaret Hance ended that legacy in 1975 when she was elected the city’s first female mayor she ran as an independent. By the way, the Charter told her she wasn’t mayor material and suggested she go home and “take up macramé.” She certainly showed them.

Like Hance, Injasoulian would end male control of the Charter when she became its first female chair in 1977. “And who’d have ever thought we’d be on our third female governor,” Injasoulian adds. Democrat Rose Mofford became the first when Evan Mecham was impeached and removed from office in 1981. Republican Jane Hull took over for Fife Symington in the ’90s, and Democrat Janet Napolitano won the office in 2002.

Perhaps most astonishing of all is that from 1998 to 2002, all five of Arizona’s top offices were occupied by women. Dubbed the “Fab Five,” their tenure was a first for the entire nation.

The third big change since 1966 was the destruction of the Charter Government an at-large election system in Phoenix.

Since 1948, a group of businessmen calling themselves the Charter Government Committee had handpicked every mayor and Council for the city of Phoenix. The “slate” was presented to voters for a rubber stamp. Such an elitist approach seems absurd today, but 40 years ago, it was the bedrock of Phoenix politics.

Rounding out the Top Four requires nothing more than a look at a map of Phoenix. Even in 1966 it was starting to grow, and we all expected the city to grow even more, but not as big and as far as it has. Of course, this is only the beginning our economy has long relied on the growth industry, and probably always will.

The rest of the list is all over the board, but it provides an intriguing glimpse at what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained. Forty years ago, we would never have imagined:

• That the Phoenix 40 would come and go so quickly thinking it was such a potent political force, only to evaporate and be forgotten.
• That South Phoenix would have more golf courses per capita than the city as a whole.
• That the Grand Canyon would have to be protected.
• That anyone would try to revive the disgraced “Operation Wetback” deportation program of the 1950s. My friend, Alfredo Gutierrez, says he lived through it then and never dreamed he’d have to see its ugly head rise again, but it’s back on the table.
• That the finest restaurants of the 1960s Navarres’, Beef Eater’s, Neptune’s Table and the Smokehouse would be just memories, and that Durant’s would still be going strong. Thank goodness.
• That salsa, a staple of the Southwest would outsell ketchup nationwide.
• That women business owners in the Valley would be such an important part of the economy, and that Latina businesswomen in particular would be the fastest growing segment.
• That Arizona State University would have a new campus in Downtown Phoenix.
• That Phoenix would find the will and the money to create the Phoenix Mountains Preserve to protect hundreds of acres of ournatural environment.
• That we’d lose the Japanese Flower Gardens that used to line Baseline Road. Phoenix will mourn this loss for the rest of its existence.
• That Phoenix and Glendale would each have two major sports stadiums.
• That Phoenix wouldn’t have attracted the 15 to 20 Fortune 500 companies one would expect from the fifth largest city in the nation. (My friend, business columnist Jon Talton, says this is one of the key pieces we’re missing to ensure a vibrant economy.)
• That Phoenix would be home to the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), which is conducting cutting-edge research on cures for disease.
• That the University of Arizona would have a medical school in Downtown Phoenix (which doesn’t mean they love Tucson any less, but isn’t it nice that the ASU-UA rivalry didn’t get in the way of this expansion?).
• That Arizona would have the nation’s largest nuclear power plant just west of Phoenix, in the middle of the desert.
• That Arizona would ever have elected Evan Mecham governor.
• That 18 Arizona lawmakers would be indicted for taking bribes in the infamous AZSCAM scandal of 1991.
• That having been mired in Vietnam 40 years ago, we’d find ourselves mired in Iraq in a similar situation today.
• That this nation would be building a wall to separate the United States from Mexico, considering that in 1966, Germany was divided by the hated Berlin Wall. (Who will be this generation’s voice to repeat the words of Republican President Ronald Reagan, who said, “Tear down this wall”?).
• That a generation as passionate as the ’60s crowd would raise children so apathetic and apolitical?
• That we’d be debating the role of religion in politics, considering it’s been a bedrock belief for so long that we have a separation of church and state.
• That we’d be rebuilding the Phoenix Convention Center, considering it hadn’t even been built yet 40 years ago.
• That all Phoenix television stations would be owned by out-of-state corporations. Forty years ago, all but one were locally owned.
• That there would eventually be an upstart weekly newspaper called New Times (founded in 1972) that would leave its mark on Phoenix and eventually become the nation’s largest alternative newspaper chain, even owning the Village Voice.
• That Arizona would one day sponsor a major bowl game back in 1966, the Fiesta Bowl wasn’t even a dream.
• That Arizona would send the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor to the United States Supreme Court.
• That we’d wipe out a thriving agricultural economy in order to build more cookie-cutter houses on those once ripe fields.
• That it would take until now to build a light-rail system an amenity we’ve needed for a long, long time.
• That Phoenix would be the only major American city without passenger train service our antique depot sits empty and forlorn Downtown.
• That Barry Goldwater, who was in the early stages of his long, illustrious political career, would today be considered too “liberal” for the dominant right-wing of the Arizona Republican Party.
• That Pat McMahon would still be a Phoenix treasure. Personally, I think he gets better with age.
• That Phoenix would have a Major League baseball team something not even on the radar screen 40 years ago and a World Series Trophy to go with it.
• That we’d have rowers on a lake in Tempe, or that Phoenix would have a modest but lovely park along part of the normally dry Salt River bed.
• That the Victorian mansions torn down on Central Avenue and Palm Lane in the ’60s and ’70s would be replaced as we speak with a new wave of Victorian-style, $3 million “urban mansions.”
• That Al McCoy would still be doing the play-by-play for Suns games, and that he’d be as razor-sharp as ever.
• That I’d end up in Arizona, I was just graduating from the University of North Dakota back in 1966, and was looking east, not west. I’m grateful I finally came to my senses.