Two Pasts, One Vision

They sit across from one another in the official meetings of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors – he a Republican, she a Democrat; he a Mormon, she a Catholic; he of English descent, she of Spanish and Mexican. But it’s what they share that makes Don Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox such a reflection of Arizona – especially this month, as Arizona celebrates its 93rd birthday.

These two elected leaders are both from pioneering families who staked their claims in what was then the Arizona Territory. Five generations of Stapleys have called Arizona home; four generations of Mary Rose’s family have been born here. They represent two crucial faces of our past – it’s not hard to argue that this state was largely built on the labors and perseverance of Mexican and Mormon pioneers.

Besides, a look into their family attics reveals some delicious nuggets. For example, Mary Rose’s grandmother once sheltered the infamous outlaw known as the “Apache Kid.” “He told her if she provided him food and water he wouldn’t hurt her,” the family legend goes.

Don’s great-grandfather supplied all the hardware to build the Roosevelt Dam. Stapley Hardware, with 11 retail outfits, was “what Home Depot is today,” the great-grandson says with pride.

Today, these two politicians help run the fourth most populous county in the nation. And if you sit down to lunch with them – naturally, at Mary Rose’s El Portal restaurant south of Downtown Phoenix – you find that a lot of that pioneer spirit is still at work.

“There were three important things to my family: church, family, community,” Mary Rose Wilcox explains, as Don Stapley shakes his head in agreement for his own kin.

“We came from different cultures, but they are so parallel,” Don adds. “We both come from very strict churches, both from very demanding cultures.” They both admit that the most unbreakable rule was that you had to marry within your own religion. “We could marry an Anglo, but we couldn’t marry a non-Catholic,” Mary Rose points out.

“And we both grew up with a love for Arizona,” she adds.

“In those early days, everyone had to work together,” Mary Rose says, again with strong agreement from Don. “The hardships our great-grandparents faced didn’t allow you to be prejudiced,” she adds. But both admit they felt the sting of prejudice growing up – Mary Rose, because of her race, Don, because of his religion. Both think Arizona loses something precious when it lets prejudice divide people, and both are known today for their efforts to bring everyone together.

“Mary Rose and I have a pretty special relationship because of this history,” Don says. “We get along really well. I respect her greatly.”

Mary Rose offers similar praise: “It’s very mutual. Although we were raised in different cultures, both of us were raised to respect the community, were raised religiously, and we both understand Arizona.”

In addition, they both speak Spanish – some claim Don’s is actually better than Mary Rose’s – and it comes in handy: “We speak to each other in Spanish if we don’t want the other members on the Board to know what we’re saying,” Don admits.

Both beam with pride when they talk about their ancestors, and, as it turns out, both have considerable bragging rights.

On her mother’s side, Mary Rose Wilcox traces her Arizona ancestry back to 1871 – when her great-grand-father, Teadoro Nunez, was born in Tucson.

Her great-grandmother, Rosa Ruiz, was born in Magdalena, Mexico, in 1875. The couple was married in Florence in 1893, after which Teadoro supplemented his farming with a freight business that supplied wood to local mines.

In 1903, Teadoro moved his young family in a covered wagon to the new town of Superior, making them one of the first families to settle there. He eventually built his family a home – it is still the family home – but by 1918, both he and Rosa had died, leaving a family of three sons, five daughters and two foster children.

Even though all were minors, the children stuck together, raising one another and taking jobs as they grew – the girls in stores, the boys in the mines. And the community helped, Mary Rose remembers. Her grandmother, Minnie, was the third daughter in the family.

“They were extremely proud to be Mexican-Americans,” Mary Rose says. “They were very proud to be U.S. citizens. Eventually, the men served in the war and the family was very patriotic. They took umbrage when people said they weren’t Americans.”

Minnie married Roy Whitlow, who was three-quarters Mexican-American and one-quarter Scottish-Irish. They had two children, including daughter Betty, who was Mary Rose’s mother.

Mary Rose’s parents, Betty and John Garrigo, grew up during the height of segregation. John, whose parents were Mexican and Spanish, came from Jerome; Betty went to a segregated high school out in Superior. “The schools were segregated up until 1953,” Mary Rose remembers. “We had segregated swimming pools, too. Mexicans could go on Fridays and Saturdays – right before they changed the water.”

Mary Rose’s parents helped break some of those color lines. Her father was a short, feisty boxer (Mary Rose is particularly proud that she is now the chairwoman of the Arizona Boxing Commission), who worked in the mines of Superior. He helped form the union to get better working conditions for the miners and then was tapped to be the first Mexican-American in a management position. He rose to shift foreman.

“Even now, people come in the restaurant and say, ‘If not for your dad, I would have lost my job – he really helped me,'” Mary Rose says with pride. “It was really a big thing because he broke the color barrier.”

Mary Rose’s upbringing in Superior was very different than that of her parents. “We were told we’re just as good as anyone else – anyone else being Anglos,” she remembers. It wasn’t until she enrolled at ASU in 1967 that race became an issue.

“When I came to ASU I was shocked. I came from a town with 90 percent Mexican-Americans, where you were in the majority and where you were the pom-pom girls and the football stars. I was not prepared for this. I lived on campus in a quad and they put the Mexican-American and African-American girls in one section – all the rest were for the whites. We protested.”

She had a similar disconnect when she came to Phoenix. “The Mexican-Americans could not live north of Van Buren in those days, and I thought, ‘Why do they take it?’ It was so prejudiced.”

It did not take Mary Rose long to become a political activist. “I was a Chicana,” she says proudly. “I had to study where we came from. In my family, we learned the history of Mexican-Americans in this country – Mexico to us was a foreign country.”

She’d like to see more of Arizona’s “first families” of Mexican-American heritage claim their place in the state’s remarkable history. “Before she died, I got my mother to register with the Pioneer History Museum. Too many Mexican-American families think it’s just for Anglos.”

And for all the distance she’s come – all the honors and awards and achievements of a long political career – you cannot take Superior out of the girl. “There is nothing prettier than the sunset on Picket Post Mountain in Superior,” Mary Rose whispers.

The handsome face peering out of the 1916 poster looks familiar, and the name is now a staple in Arizona, but it’s still amazing to learn that the O.S. Stapley of Mesa who was looking for voters 90 years ago is the great-grandfather of today’s chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Don Stapley loves the poster that asks voters to choose O.S. – the man “who will work for a bigger state and your interests,” the poster reads.

Don’s people converted to Mormonism and emigrated from England to Australia in the 1850s, but then came to America, settling in San Bernardino, California, as one of the first farming families.

In the 1870s, when Mormon President Brigham Young called everyone “home” to Utah to safeguard the faithful, great-great-grandfather Thomas started moving the family. But they never got that far, settling instead in the Salt River Valley, where they ran out of money.

Legend has it that Thomas had only 75 cents in his pocket when his young family arrived in what is now Mesa. His son, O.S. (Orley Seymour), was 6 years old.

O.S. would go on to make quite a name for himself. “He was the earliest Stapley that made it big,” Don says with pride. In 1895, he opened the first Stapley Hardware Store in Mesa, eventually owning 11 outlets and becoming the first farm-equipment distributor in the world when he landed a franchise with International Harvester. His contract to supply all the hardware for the Roosevelt Dam made him a rich man.

He also led the way in “giving back to the community.” O.S. was a member of the Constitutional Convention that wrote Arizona’s constitution to gain statehood, and served as a state senator from 1916 to 1918 – as a Democrat. “They were all Democrats in those days,” Don says, laughing. O.S. also served on the Mesa School Board for about 20 years.

Don’s grandfather, Lorel, opened a hardware store in Phoenix and raised his family there, including Don’s father, Thomas. Thomas was born, ironically, in a house across the street from where Mary Rose now lives on Fourth Avenue. Eventually, the family moved “to a brand-new subdivision called Encanto.” Grandpa Lorel helped build the YMCA on First Avenue in Downtown Phoenix.

Don’s dad was chairman of the County Hospital Board in 1971 when the new hospital opened on Roosevelt Street (he shared board duties with John O’Connor, whose wife, Sandra, would become the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court).

When Don entered politics, he found that the legacy served him well. He fondly remembers getting support from a woman because O.S. had helped save her family farm during the Depression.

Growing up in Mesa, Don remembers looking askance at the prejudice that seemed so strong in the city of Phoenix.

“Phoenix schools refused to accept Indian kids,” he remembers, “and they had segregated schools. In Mesa schools, we had Indians, blacks and Mexican-American kids – we got along fine; we didn’t know any difference.”

He also saw prejudice far closer to home. “I realize the prejudices of my parents and grandparents,” he says. “The practice of not allowing blacks to be priests [within the Mormon Church] bothered me, but I didn’t leave the church, I worked from within.” (Today, blacks can be priests.)

Don served his Mormon Mission in Uruguay, where he learned his excellent Spanish. “I spent two years living in a Third World nation,” he says. “And I traveled all over Mexico afterward. It gave me a much better appreciation of other cultures.”

He “absolutely” has a strong sense of his pioneer heritage, he explains. “I grew up singing songs in church about our pioneers; I grew up playing in Pioneer Park.” He knew some of his grandparents; he knows that some lines of his family came west in the famous Handcart migration, literally pushing and pulling handcarts across the prairie to reach the “promised land” in Utah. And any day he wants, he can go to the Arizona Historical Museum in Tempe to see one of the wagons O.S. used to carry materials to Roosevelt Dam.

He wishes more families would explore their ancestry and help their children and grandchildren understand the importance of history.

Getting to know Don Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox is a good place to start – two faces from different cultures, both looking forward in their common love for the state of Arizona.