A Page of Praise for My Hometown: The Cowboy Cradle of the Southwest!

by Irene Daniel

I was born and raised in Florence, AZ in the mid-1950s. Ike was President of the USA; and copper, cotton and cattle were King in the Grand Canyon State. I grew up around cowboys, farmers and miners.

Every Thanksgiving Weekend, the Florence Jr. Parada still brings cowboy families from all over the country, to the oldest rodeo for minors, 6-16 years of age, in the entire USA.

Our neighborhoods consisted of families of union copper miners, farmers, ranchers, nurses, schoolteachers, merchants and, since our town was the County Seat of Pinal County, there were many government jobs too. And because Florence was home to the Arizona State Prison maximum security facility -- that's right, the big house, as well as a federal prison at one time -- there were a lot of prison guards.

Ours was a working class community, full of different kinds of people, with different kinds of jobs. There were several churches, always full on Sundays. There was one elementary school, a jr. high school and one high school; which was a union high school, meaning that it incorporated the outlying rural community.

When I say there were all kinds of people, I am talking mostly about wealth-class, not necessarily ethnicity. For Florence was a community of predominantly whites and Mexicans, whose families had been intermarrying and producing offspring for generations. There were also a few Native Americans, and a few African-American families; but it was populated by whites mostly, and Mexicans, and sometimes, the mixed ethnicities of white and Mexican families, that were most predominant at that time. However, there were no Asians or Jews. It was a town that was morally conservative, but often politically liberal in its distribution of town resources; in part due to the union influence of nearby copper mines.

I had to leave it to appreciate it, but there is something very special about this little town. Founded in 1866, it has a history of shoot-outs on Main Street in the wild west days, as well as a rich history of merchants buying and selling and trading on the banks of what was once a mighty flowing Gila River. During the Gold Rush, people would float down to Florence on the Gila. From there, they could buy horses and wagons to head to Northern California. Or maybe they'd stay in Florence, finding work on the local farms and ranches.

Perhaps because of all the commerce, Florence was not prone to the "otherizing" of ethnicity so prevalent in other Arizona towns, many of them segregated, especially the neighboring mining towns. This segregation was aimed at Mexicans, as there were few African-Americans, or other ethnicities other than Mexican and Native American, there in the early 20th century. Recently however, an old Florence newspaper clipping was sent to the town's librarian, having been found among the papers of a recently deceased man who used to live in Florence. The paper was dated from the late 1890s, and contained an advertisement for a Japanese import shop! Wow. Until recently, I don't remember hearing of any Asian influence in the region, so this bit of news makes me even more proud of our little cow town, with 2 stoplights in the whole place.

40 years ago, I could not have imagined singing praises to my hometown. I was so anxious to leave it. It was boring. Nothing ever happened there, it seemed to my insecure teenage self. I wanted to be in LA, where there were riots and earthquakes -- excitement!

Today, I live in Los Angeles, and I have a good life here -- sans riots and earthquakes for the moment. However, I will never, ever forget where I came from, nor the village that helped raise me and my brothers and all the kids in town.

Florence is where I learned that leadership is found in those who encourage us all toward our higher selves, rather than pander to the lowest human instinct. I learned this from people of high ideals and high expectations for all of us; people like Art Celaya (and his brothers), Olga Cathemer, Santos Vega, Mrs. Quno (?spelling), Carol Gomes, Wanda Malmo, Esther George, Donna Anello and an entire regiment of the best teachers, doctors, judges, pastors and -- most of all -- parents, who looked out for each other, and each other's families, every day.

It was a place where different kinds of people learned to peacefully co-exist by seeking and finding the best in one another. How I took this valuable foundation for granted for so long is unfathomable to me now. For now I see that much of my frustration with the rest of the world is that it is so unlike Florence, with its constant striving to choose higher, and to take care of its own.

I'm glad that I can go home again. Thank you, Florence, Arizona!

                                                                                                  Irene Daniel   Copyright 2014   All rights reserved.