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Terri Swirnoff

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1987

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Abe and Mildred Morris

by interviewee Terri Swirnoff

August 25, 1987

Transcriptionist: Carol Ruttan 

Interviewer: Dorothy Pickelner

Arizona Jewish Historical Society

                                  Log For

                           Abe and Mildred Morris

By

Terri Swirnoff Interviewee

Pages

1 Ray, Arizona 1950

1 Father born 1898; Oskaloosa, Iowa Abe Philip Morris

1 Socorro, New Mexico

Gov. Jack Williams

2 Chihuaha, Mexico

3 Silver City, New Mexico

3 Parents married 1938

5 Tvillim and Tallit

5 Brother Jack - born 1940

5 1944 - Terri born Santa Rita,

New Mexico

6 Home in Ray, Arizona

8 Education in public schools

9 Judson school Barry Goldwater

10 Jewish education by father

10 Brother to Phoenix Beth El every

weekend to get ready for

bar mitzvah Jack Finkelstein

11 What father did for mining

industry in Arizona 

Governor Paul Fannin

Harold Giss

Jim Patrick

Pulliam

Durham

Walter Bimson

12 Father and Israel - advised

desalination - Dead Sea, George Atwood,

potash mining, copper mining Pres. of Duval

12-13 Potash needed in Israel - asked

to go to Israel to develop

King Solomon's copper mines, but

died before he could go

14 Safety awards - in mines

14 Mines & Highway Safety National awards

14 ASU - award speaker

14-15 Landmark law case in Arizona - father

defended mining practices - won the

case

15 Irving Vincent in Florence

15-16 Entertainment at house - mother best hostess in Ray

18 Kearney, Arizona - new town

18 John Galbraith community built

19 Ray - kind of town owned (?) by

Kennecott Copper Co.

19-20 Growing up in Ray - social life

20 Ray phased out and replaced by Kearney

20 Kennecott chief tax payer

20-21 Father supported education - lectures

at U Of A

21 Gave scholarships - apprenticeship

trainee programs

21 Father on Board of Governors

21 Kennezonian magazine for which A.P.

Morris wrote

22 Silver Beaver Award from Scouts

23 Road named Morris Avenue

23 Father's library rich in Jewish lore,

education, Ramah

23-24 Came for Seder Mallins

Fay & Joe Gross

Finkelsteins

24 Came to Phoenix for holidays -

to go to Beth El

24 Hard to keep Shabbat - by compiling

notes on Friday

26 Father's illness - cancer discovered

too late Dr. Ashton Taylor

26 Moved to Billings Hospital in

Chicago - died March 1965

26 Tribute by Gov. Williams

26-27 Letter by Mildred Morris to Williams

30 Letter from Abe to Williams

telling of his adventurous life

30-32 Tribute from Kennezonian

32 Arizona Daily Star editorial

32 Tributes from many in the mining field

33-34 Mildred Morris - her lifestyle

living in small mining town

34 Entertaining 50-60-100 people

34 Visitors from many countries and

distinctive personages

35 Mom always worked; a perfectionist;

cooked and worked all day

35 Stocked the clubhouse Kennecott Co.

kept for visiting VIPs with food

35 Pride in her work

36 Hostess with the mostest - loved by community - helpful


	Terry Swirnoff Interview


This is Dorothy Pickelner and I am interviewing Terri Swirnoff of Phoenix,
Arizona who has a fascinating story to tell about life in the very remote
areas of this part of the United States not so long ago, but it's a
fascinating story that you'll enjoy hearing.

PICKELNER: Terri, how did you happen to land in Mexico, New Mexico and all
those foreign sounding places?

SWIRNOFF: Well, Dorothy, I was born in Santa Rita, New Mexico. But when I
was six, in 1950, we moved to Ray, Arizona. Memories of life in Ray, which
we'll talk about, probably need to begin quite a bit before that. In 1898,
April 14th, when my father, Abe Philip Morris, was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa
to immigrant --

PICKELNER: Was his name Abe Philip?

SWIRNOFF: Yes, Abe Philip Morris. He was known as A.P. or Abe. He was born
in Oskaloosa, 0-s-k-a-l-o-o-s-a, Iowa to immigrant parents, Mr. and Mrs.
Jacob Morris. His mother was born in Odessa, Russia and his father in
Germany and they came here to the States in 1880. He was one of seven
children and perhaps the only to attend university. He met my mother, the
former Mildred Shrago, who had also lived for a time in Oskaloosa, then
moved to Webster City and finally in Chicago, where they met.

My Dad attended the University of Iowa and graduated from the New Mexico
School of Mines in Socorro. In 1923 he joined the Engineering Department of
Chino Copper Company in Santa Rita, New Mexico. He wrote a letter to a
friend who was the former (Arizona) governor, Jack Williams, when

Mr. Williams had a program in Phoenix on KOY in the '60s and '50s and he
talked about the experiences that my Dad had had in the early '20s when he
worked for the United Sugar Company out of Los Mochis. Many years later
when my father died, Governor Williams, who was then not the governor but
still had his program, wrote quite a lovely tribute to my father which he
dedicated to one of his programs and he referred to this letter.

It seemed that after his schooling he indicated in the letter that he went
back to work at a gold mine in the High Sierras near Chihuahua and he had
some pretty incredible experiences there. Some he related to Jack Williams
in the letter. A story that wasn't in the letter that he had told u; about
many times was about a friend and he who had been held up by some drunk
locals who were taking their watches and anything that they had on them and
had tied them up and they were very fearful for their lives. But they
proceeded to get so drunk that they fell asleep and so my father and his
friend were able to make a harrowing escape. These were the kinds of
stories that my Dad was famous for. He was a wonderful storyteller and
people loved being in his company to hear the interesting experiences he
had to relate.

He worked at the Maluvia (Sp?) De Oro Gold Mining Company from 1924 to '26
in Mexico and he operated a leased lead silver zinc mine in Durango. From
1927 to 1936, to give you some of the chronology, he worked for the Nevada

Consolidated Copper corporation in Santa Rita, New Mexico, as sample
foreman, transit-man, assistant mine engineer and mine engineer. He then
spent nine months as city engineer in Silver City, New Mexico and he
returned to Santa Rita as Chief Engineer for Kennecott Copper Corporation,
Chino Mines Division in December of 1936.

He had been introduced to my mother by his brother. My mother was now
living in Chicago. She said that, even though she was romantically
entangled with someone else at the time she was introduced to my father,
she knew quite readily that this was the man that she wanted, as she would
later tell us, to introduce to her children as their father. She admired my
father's intelligence, his education and his values. They were a perfect
match.

I guess to digress for a minute - from the time I was very small I used to
tell my parents that I always knew I was special and the only reason I knew
that is because I knew that God had picked such incredibly wonderful
parents for me that I must be special. They were a wonderful match.

So my father married my mother in Chicago in 1938 and they moved to Santa
Rita right after the wedding. Let me tell you that was no honeymoon. The
locals took one look at my mom, a sophisticated city girl, and they told
one another that they would give her, at the most, six months to see what
life in a small mining town was like and she would never last. My mother
recalls her mother crying at the train station when they left, not having
any idea where she was sending her off to, but knowing that it wasn't at
all what she had been used to. What the locals didn't understand was the
perseverance, the dedication to hard work and perfectionism that were
rooted in my mother since early childhood. My Mom and Dad set up a kosher
home in this small mining town where they were the only Jewish family. They
got their kosher meats from El Paso and we learned just this week that El
Paso got their meats from Chicago, so that was a connection that we didn't
know about.

PICKELNER: How did this meat get there - this was a problem for many Jews
who lived in outlying communities?

SWIRNOFF: How did it get from El Paso to Santa Rita?

PICKELNER: Yes.

SWIRNOFF: I suppose much the same way that my mother would get it when we
lived in Ray. She needed to come to Phoenix. My mother never learned to
drive and so somebody would need to drive her to El Paso or, when we lived
in Ray, to Phoenix. We would take one of those large freezers and pack it
with dry ice and bring the meats back with us in that way. When we lived in
Ray, which are my memories, we had two large refrigerators and a huge
standing freezer to pack all these meats in so that we would have them.
My parents met two or three other Jewish families in the nearby towns of
Baird and Silver City, who became lifetime friends of theirs.

PICKELNER: Do you remember their names?

SWIRNOFF: Well, I remember the Schroeders, who had a dry goods store in
Baird. There was Mr. and Mrs. Matt Kay, Matt and 
Bea Kay, who now live in New York, and they lived in Silver City. And those
were two families that were and continued to be lifetime friends for my
parents.

My father continued his ritual of davening twice a day at home, donning his
Tvillin and Tallit. Those are memories I have of my growing-up years, of
seeing him every morning putting on his Tvillin, walking back and forth in
the living room in our home in Ray, davening every morning and trying to
keep out of the way of the housekeeper who probably thought something very
strange was going on when she looked at my father. He would come home in
the evening and repeat the rituals in the same way.

It was in Santa Rita that my brother, Jack, was born in October, 1940. I
know that they brought in someone to do the bris, which I believe was
performed in El Paso. I recently came across a beautiful letter that my Dad
wrote my brother on the occasion of his fifth birthday. My father, as I
expressed to you, was a wonderful storyteller and he was a very expressive
writer. He had the ability to say a great deal in a few words and this
letter is a masterpiece that I shall cherish. My mother would take us to
Chicago to visit our grandmother, our cousins, aunts and uncles on a yearly
basis, so this was at one of those points when we were not in town and he
was writing my brother.

I was born in August, 1944, in Santa Rita and didn't know it then but was
destined to live my formative growing up years in this kind of small mining
town environment unique because of my parents' adherence to traditional
Jewish practice. I would have known little about this rich heritage had it
not been for the dedication my parents had in keeping kosher in a time when
it would have been easy to say it just isn't possible when we lived as the
only Jewish people in both Santa Rita and Ray. It was a great inconvenience
for my parents to get the kosher food, to celebrate the holidays, to have
Passover the way they did, but they were committed to practicing what they
believed and to pass on to their family what Judaism was. I'm very grateful
for that.

My Dad spent nine months as City Engineer for Silver City. In 1936, as I
told you, he was Chief Engineer for Kennecott's Chino mines, and in January
'48 he became Assistant Mine Superintendent. In March 1950 Pit
Superintendent at Chino. In September 1950 he joined the Ray Mines Division
and in May 1951 he became the General Manager.

We lived in a wonderful house in Ray where each previous manager had lived.
Prior to my Dad taking that position the General Manager, whose name was
Mr. Thomas, had a wife who was blind. They, therefore, had made one large
living room out of four separate rooms. They had a spacious outdoor terrace
off an upstairs bedroom. It was an extraordinary home of over 4,800 square
feet on a very large piece of property. The large terrace on the side of
the house overlooked the open pit copper mine which brought us there. There
was a large brick patio with a huge palm tree
in the center with a brick planter around it as you ascended the stairs to
my home.

In addition to this oversized living room area there was a sun porch
overlooking a floral array of bougainvilleas, sweetpeas, pyracantha
berries, a spacious dining room where my mother entertained regularly. Her
dinner parties were the highlight of social evenings in Ray. Not only was
she an unbelievable cook, but her perfectionistic presentation and my Dad's
ability to create a stimulating and entertaining evening made these very
special evenings to remember. We not only had six separate sets of dishes
because of observance of Kashrut, but we had two separate trays for our
dishwasher.

Since my Mom never learned to drive, the company had a driver that often
drove my Mom and Dad to Phoenix where my Dad attended business and civic
meetings and my Mom did her shopping at the kosher market. As I told you
before we took a freezer with dry ice to transport the meats and
perishables on that terminably long trip home. It was about a two-hour
drive to Phoenix but the last 30 minutes from Superior to Ray were, for the
most part, unpaved and terribly winding, so that my Mom and I took
Dramamine to survive this leg of the journey. If you'll remember the first
few years the cars were not yet air-conditioned, so the summer trips were
quite unbearable except we loved coming to Phoenix.

PICKELNER: Most fascinating. Now, what kind of an education were you
children receiving at that time? What were the
schools like in these remote little towns?

SWIRNOFF: Well, my brother and I attended the public school in Ray. It was
the Lincoln Elementary School from first to eighth grades. Then we went on
the high school there, Ray High School. The education was actually quite
good. There were a number of scholars that came out of those schools. My
brother was a National Merit Scholar and had one of the highest scores that
they had had on that exam. He went on to be accepted at Stanford, so I
suppose that the schooling didn't hinder those of us -- I'm talking about
him -- who were bright enough to go on to excel in whatever it was that
they were studying.

PICKELNER: How many students did you get in those classes and was it like a
one-room schoolhouse with all the grades?

SWIRNOFF: No, actually it wasn't. Each grade had a room. There were about, 
as I remember in grade school, 20-25 people in a class. When I went to high 
school there were about 120 or maybe 130 in the whole school. My graduating 
class probably had 35 to 40 students. The town of Ray had 1,500 as a 
population at the time I was growing up there.

I had one year in high school when there was quite a difficult strike going
on. We had a number of unions that worked in the mines and when their
contracts would come up for negotiation, very often there was a strike.
This one had lasted quite a long time. My parents were getting some
threatening letters about what they were going to do to the daughter and so
my parents thought for my safety they ought to ship me out for a little 
while to finish off the strike and then I could come home. So they had heard
about a school in Scottsdale - Judson - and sent me there. I was quite 
unhappy. I went with another gal who was the daughter of my father's 
assistant whose parents also wanted her out of town at the time. Neither of 
us was very happy at Judson, but I had some interesting experiences.. one 
was -it was my first incident -- it was kind of interesting, having grown 
up in a town where we were the only Jewish family, one would think I had 
met up with anti-Semitic incidents before this, but really I hadn't. But we 
had a dorm mother at Judson who was clearly anti-Semitic and made my life 
pretty miserable. My parents had a wonderful way of turning that into a 
positive for me. They explained to me that somewhere along the line this 
woman had probably had some bad situation with someone that was Jewish and 
therefore was blaming us all and that we had to show her that we were not 
all that way. So, quite remarkably, they won her over and changed the 
situation. But it didn't change my not wanting to stay there very long.

One of my classmates while I was there was Peggy Goldwater, who was Barry
Goldwater's daughter. She told us if we elected her president of the class
we'd have a slumber party at her home, which we did, and those were nice
memories. Actually, Barry Goldwater was a friend of my father's and had
come to Ray on a couple of occasions to speak at commencement exercises. He
and my father had a writing relationship for a number of years.

When you ask about my education I remember that my Jewish education was
mainly enforced by my father who was quite knowledgeable. He would spend
every shabbat that he could reading the portion of the week. I can still
see him sitting on our sun porch with the portion and he would like to
discuss it with us. He taught me Hebrew as best he could. I remember
sitting with him and having him teach me moda onie (?). When my brother was
preparing for his bar mitzvah we were members of Beth El from the time we
came to Arizona and we would make that trip to Phoenix every weekend so
that my brother could prepare for bar mitzvah and I would attend Sunday
School. I wasn't very comfortable because my peers were not people that I
saw regularly enough to be friends with, so I felt quite out of place, but
we made the trip.

Upon first arriving in Ray, my Dad met Jack Finkelstein who came up on a
business trip and having heard about this observant Jew living in Ray
decided to call upon him. That fateful first meeting between Jack and my
father led to a lifetime friendship and devotion. It is now 22 years since
my father's death and you will not find a more devoted proponent of keeping
someone's memory alive than that which Jack holds for my father. I believe
that's because he came to understand my father, the man. He was aware of
him not only as a friend, but as a brilliant engineer who in his field
contributed greatly to the mining industry, as well as his contribution to
the State of Israel.

If I can here, I would like to just take a minute to read some of the
things that my father did for the mining industry, which I think are part
of the history of the state which are important. He was recognized as one
of the foremost copper mining authorities and consultants all over the
world, in addition to his counsel and wisdom in guiding industrial and
government officials at all levels of administration. Former Governor Paul
Faunin, who also was a friend of my father, said at one point that Abe was
responsible for introducing and guiding more good legislation during his
term as governor than any other individual.

He was highly respected and his counsel was sought after by leading
bankers, industrialists, copper company leaders, in addition to people like
Ed Guggenheim of the Guggenheim family who was a leading stockholder at one
time in Kennecott and a major stockholder in American Airlines. I'll never
forget when he and his wife, who wintered in Phoenix, made their first trip
to Ray because they wanted to meet my parents. We had this two-story home
and we had three bedrooms upstairs. My mother had learned that Sis
Guggenheim, Mr. Guggenheim's wife, had broken her leg and was on crutches,
so she knew that she didn't need to put the good spreads on the beds
upstairs because she'd never go up these stairs. But she didn't know Sis
yet and Sis came to our home and there wasn't an inch of it she didn't want
to see. So we laugh a lot about the time that Sis came and my mother, who
was such a perfectionist, did not put her good spreads on to take them
around. They became also lifelong friends of my parents, along with Barry
Goldwater, Harold Giss, Dr. Harvol (sp?) of the University of Arizona, Jim
Patrick of the Valley National Bank and there were many more. In fact, I
just came across -- my father was a part of the Arizona Academy and someone
had sent my mother in May of '82 a clipping about business involvement
being-strong at the Arizona town halls and they list the Academy founding
members. I see in that list a number of the people whom my father dealt
with in business and my father was one of those founding members, along
with Pulliam of the newspapers and Durham of Arizona State University,
Walter Bimson and Lawrence Mehren of the Valley National Bank. It seemed
that Kennecott would keep a million dollars on reserve at one of the local
banks and so, apparently, my father would spread that between valley and
First National Bank so that everybody got a share.

He had an intense interest for Israel during its formation as an
independent state and he lent his knowledge and experience, along with his
tremendous influence, in developing the industrial aspects, especially in
Israel in the desalination process and irrigation programs and copper
mining, along with potash mining at the Dead Sea. Some representatives from
Israel had come to my father and asked him if he would get involved with
potash mining at the Dead Sea and he indicated that that was not his area
of expertise but he was responsible for encouraging George Atwood, who is a 
non-Jew but he was the president of Duval Corporation and he motivated him 
to  become involved in developing Israel's potash industry.

The potash industry was one of Israel's most important ingredients in the
early days for making munitions and fertilizer and other related products.
People from Israel who had come to visit my father had reached an agreement
with him the year before his death to come to Israel voluntarily for two
years to develop the King Solomon copper mines. This was my father's great
dream. He never lived to see it, unfortunately, but he was very excited
about that possibility. We had many visitors from many different countries
who came to visit and consult with my father.

One time when we had some Israelis visiting they happened to be at our
house for Passover. They were so startled at the way this family living in
the Galut, really, with no Jews around in this kosher home had a seder, and
they joined us. They watched my father perform the seder and my mother
bring all the traditional foods out and we sang all the songs and we had a
very traditional seder. They looked at my Dad at one point and they said,
"You know, you're going to be very disappointed when you come to Israel."
My father said, "Why do you say that?" And they said, "Because people there
aren't as observant as you are in Ray, Arizona."

He also had an enthusiasm and interest for developing
young talented men who were in the process of developing careers. He was
devoted to his family. He had a great interest in the working conditions
for the plant workers and for safety. He was given a number of safety
awards and Governor Fannin had placed my father on the National Traffic
Safety Council when he was governor. He had developed a group of
businessmen to develop a highway safety program and my father served on
that foundation. He actively promoted safety. He was awarded a National
Safety Council Award of Merit, a Joseph A. Holmes Certificate of Honor, a
State of Mine Inspector's Top Safety Award and the National Safety
Council's highest award of honor in 1957.

He was the keynote speaker at a two-day annual Safety Conference held at
Arizona State University at which he called upon Arizona professional and
business leaders, educators, clergy, service organizations all to work
unceasingly in their own communities and areas of influence in the cause of
highway traffic safety.

He was interested in a solution to the air pollution problem and he made
numerous speeches in an attempt to present the facts as to the actual
contributors to this problem. There was a landmark law case that the mines
were being taken to task for, and my father took it upon himself to defend
the mining industry in Arizona and he used the law firm of Fennemore,
Craig. Mr. Fennemore is a longtime lawyer in Phoenix and they became
friends of my parents. We are looking up this landmark case because it was
- actually my father got old-time miners to testify and they had very fancy 
lawyers on the other side and my father was very proud of the fact that he 
had won this landmark case. We're going to try through Irving Vincent, who 
was another friend of our family in Florence, another Jewish man in a town 
who was also very dedicated to his Jewishness, and we're going to try to 
find more about this case. I think in the archives we'll be able to figure 
out more about what happened in that case.

Maybe the best way to paint a picture for you of my mother is to read a
portion of a letter that my father's secretary wrote my Mom after my
father's death. She said, "I want to thank you so much for your
thoughtfulness - it has been your trademark down through the years that I
have known you. To name a few instances that you may not remember - when my
husband was working as Mr. Morris' secretary you both came by to see our
new baby, Donna." This gal, Donna, now lives in Phoenix not far from me.
"That was a surprise but we appreciated the gesture so much. When Bonnie
was getting married I saw you one day in the beauty shop and you asked if
there was anything that you could do to help with the reception in the way
of serving pieces. Again, I marveled at your concern toward the families of
those who worked for your husband. On top of that you both made that long
trip on such a cold night to attend her wedding in Tempe."

To tell you about my mother's life in Ray - she managed this very large
home and she was a wonderful mother to my brother and me. She entertained 
at these very large sit-down dinners almost on a weekly basis, because 
someone either from Kennecott was coming in to visit or we had these 
out-of-town and out of the country visitors. Because there weren't any fancy
restaurants to entertain people the place to come was to our home. My 
mother would make these sumptuous meals and everybody would have cocktails. 
I remember as a youngster coming in and meeting all the people and going 
through the awkward stage where I didn't want any part of it. They couldn't 
understand that, because as a youngster I'd loved it. After dinner many 
times the poker chips would come out and they'd play poker, bridge, canasta,
all the games that they played at that time.

When my father came to Ray it was an underground mine and the first thing
that he did as manager was the transition to open pit mining in Ray. That
was a large undertaking. He also was instrumental in the formation of the
industrial relations, public relations and industrial engineering
departments. He set up a modern teletype communications. He brought in
state utility companies like Mountain Bell and Arizona Public Service to
replace the local utility companies. He participated actively in concluding
collective bargaining agreements with numerous unions. Both in Santa Rita,
as an award that he was given indicates, and in Ray, he was responsible for
a development of a waste dump leaching program that went on to have great
impact in the mining industry.

He was given an award called the Jacklin (Sp?) Awards Committee. To read in
part from this, the first sentence says, "Copper mining progress and A.P.
Abe Morris have walked hand-in-hand across two states and one foreign
country during the last four decades. Wherever Mr. Morris has worked in the
last 40 years he has left his mark. These accomplishments have truly become
monuments to one man whose vision and imagination have drastically revised
common and accepted practices in the processing of copper ore." The
successful development of this waste dump leaching program in Santa Rita
was one of these proud achievements. After moving to Ray he continued to
develop that leaching program and he expanded the plant four-fold.

He also recommended and directed a large scale prospect drilling program.
Some of the highlights that they mention in Ray in terms of his mining
direction was this conversion of the underground mine with a daily capacity
of 10,000 pounds to the open pit operation with a daily output of 23,000
tons. The prospect drilling campaign that he started a year after he came
to Ray triggered an expansion integration program which was completed in
1960. He directed a $40 million expansion program as general manager. Part
of that was the $20 million smelter which had a 50 percent increase in mill
capacity. During this expansion, at the time he was given this award, they
said that the division contributed more than a million dollars per month to
the economy of the State of Arizona in the form of wages and salaries,
purchases and taxes.

He had an invention that was patented that had to do with a leach
precipitation flotation process. The types of fertilizer explosives which
resulted in blasting economics was also started under his direction. Then
they went on to talk about his dedication to safety and they give the
statistic that the year he became general manager the frequency rate for
lost time accidents was 47.74 per one million man hours. A decade later in
'61 the division achieved the record breaking low of 2.26 accidents per
million man hours worked.

He was responsible for finally phasing out the towns of Ray and Sonora. I
think what I didn't tell you is that, when we went to grade school it was
just the town of Ray. There was an all Mexican town of Sonora which was
just adjacent to Ray and they had their own public school. Then the
students from that school and the students from Ray would join together in
the high school, which many times caused problems because they weren't used
to mixing with one another, but it seemed to work out okay.

But they phased out because during my father's tenure they found that there
was ore under the town and so they needed to completely mine out the town
of Ray. So he was responsible for establishing a new town of Kearney. He
was the architect then of the building of Kearney, Arizona, and he brought
in the John Galbraith Development Company, one of the then world's largest
builders. They built a community where there had been an empty field in the
50's. At that point they were able to transfer housing ownership from the 
company to the employees, because everything in Ray was company-owned.
To give you an idea of the town of Ray -- the town was one main street. On
that main street were two grocery stores, one owned by a Chinese gentleman
from Superior, Mr. Tang, and one by a Mr. George Milton. There was a
cleaners, a movie house, a courthouse, a basketball court, a hardware
stare, a drugstore, a café, a dry goods store, and that's about all of the
town of Ray. That was our one main street.

PICKELNER: Terri, did you make friends with the people you went to school
with and what kind of people were they?

SWIRNOFF: Well, just about everybody in the town worked for Kennecott or
owned one of these businesses on the main street. Because our home was on
one side of the town and the rest of the residential area was divided by
this main street that I described for you, my brother and I did not live
near our friends. But we made a lot of friends there. In fact, people said
about my brother that he used to go overboard to be accepted by everybody.
He was a student body president and he was involved at every level, and I,
too, was very active and had many very good friends there. I didn't know
any other way to live, other than what we saw when we came to Phoenix or
when I went to Chicago. So we really enjoyed our growing-up years. We had a
big hill behind our home where my brother and I used to climb and explore.
Up on that hill was a fort that the Indians used to use and the binoculars
that they used were still there built into this brick fort. I probably got 
interested in drama because there was so much time I had by myself that I 
pretended a lot and that probably led me to my interest that I pursued when 
I went to university.

But, yes, we had friends. There was a bowling alley that we would go to,
and a tennis court, and one swimming pool that everybody in the town of Ray
used and one swimming pool that everybody in Sonora used. So our
socialization was usually sleeping over at one another's homes and school
projects, car washes and dances at school became a focal point of our
socialization. There were parties that we would have in one another's
homes. So we had quite as busy a social life as people in other communities
would have.

When the town of Ray was phased out and they established this new town of
Kearney, they constructed a new hospital to replace the old Ray Hospital.
They constructed new schools at Kearney and at Hayden, which was another
town where the Kennecott smelter was. Kennecott was the main taxpayer.
My father was a great supporter of education, both Jewishly and secularly.
Upon his recommendation his company contributed $2,500 annually for a
number of years to Arizona State University for the purchase of
spectrographic equipment. It was one of two universities in the United
States at that time to have this equipment. At that time scientists called
it the seventh wonder of the scientific world.

He funded, through Kennecott, a lecture series at the University of Arizona
that were presented there from '55 through '62. The series began with the
subject of trends of American culture and covered things of vital
importance, ranging from the role of the U.S.S.R. in world affairs through
the impact of science on civilization, to the development of Latin America,
a discussion of Africa in transition. My father attended many of these
lectures in spite of a very busy schedule in his office 75 miles away. My
father had a habit when he would travel into Phoenix, because he served on
a number of committees here, of having the driver drive him so that he
could do his reading back and forth. Mr. Williams alluded to that in his
tribute.

He gave a lot of scholarships to high school seniors at the local schools
and additional funds for summer music scholarships at the state
universities. He supported tuition aid and he had on-the-job training for
craftsmen, apprenticeship training. He selected and trained local employees
to enter supervisory ranks. He had engineer trainee programs.

In his profession he served on the Board of Governors of the American
Mining Congress and he was Chairman of the Arizona section of the AIME. He
was governor of the Arizona chapter of the American Mining Congress.
Although quite ill at the time, there was a magazine called the
Kennezonian, which I have here which the company put out every year. He
always had a column from the general manager's desk. He penned these words
just a few months before his death to his co-workers. He said, "We who live 
in  this wonderful land of freedom have much to be thankful for and only by 
taking a  personal interest in those affairs where we can exert our 
influence can we assure the perpetuation of the priceless heritage that is 
ours. We can make our wishes heard in the cause of freedom and righteousness
in our local communities, in our counties and state, by putting our stamp of
approval only on those men and women of integrity and ability who aspire to 
lead us. Let me take this opportunity to express to you personally our 
appreciation for your cooperation through the past year."

In his reference to people who lead us he was always very interested in
politics. He was acquainted with many people in the political field who
would consult with him, because, I suppose, of his knowledge and his
position. He many times consulted with Harold Giss and, I remember, Polly
Rosenbaum, who was active in politics at that time who was a friend.
As a business leader he supported the March of Dimes. He received quite a
lovely award from the Scouting program, one of the highest awards they give
which is the Silver Beaver award. I remember going that evening when he was
presented that award.

He was involved in the Boys and Girls State programs and he was presented a
medallion of merit at the AIME meeting in Tucson in '59 for his
contribution to the industry by the University of Arizona on the occasion 
of its 75th anniversary celebration. I told you he was instrumental in 
traffic safety and he was very dedicated to improving the state highways. 
He obtained, finally, improvement of State Highway 177, that terrible piece 
from superior to Ray that I alluded to before, and Highway 77 from Tucson 
to Hayden. There is now in Hayden something called the Morris Avenue, which
was named to honor my father for his tireless work on behalf of better
highways for the area.

He encouraged the establishment of a credit union in Ray where there were
no banking facilities, and Hayden became an incorporated community and
received the All-America City Award there.

I recently came across a letter that Miriam Salter, who lives here, had
written to my father. He must have called and asked her to send him some
books on the Sephardic and the Ashkanazic pronunciations in Hebrew and this
letter indicates that she is forwarding these books and how he needs to use
the pronunciation. My father's library, which is alluded to in somebody's
letter here, was very rich in Jewish law -- a lot of books on Jewish law.
He did an extensive amount of reading and was very interested in Jewish
education. Through his friends in Phoenix, the Finkelsteins whom I've
already alluded to, who were friends for years, he became interested in
Jewish education and was a supporter of Ramah.

There was a time when the Mallins and Fay and Joe Gross and the
Finkelsteins all came up for a Pesach Seder that my mother remembered. 
These were all friends that we met from belonging to Beth El. My father, 
by the way, used to take his vacation to come in to attend holiday services 
each year. We would stay at the -- then Beth El was on McDowell and 7th 
Avenue, which is now a pawn shop.

PICKELNER: 3rd Avenue.

SWIRNOFF: 3rd Avenue. And we would stay at the Los Olives. My mother, as my
brother would say, would pack everything except the kitchen sink to come
for the holidays, because she would bring all the food for every meal. We'd
stay at the Los Olives so that we could walk to services.

My father used to tell Jack Finkelstein, who would sometimes come to visit
my father on the weekends, he would tell him how envious he was of Jack
because Jack lived where he could walk to shul every day on the Shabbat and
keep shabbat. My father very much wanted to be able to keep the shabbat,
but he had a problem in Ray in that he needed to get reports to New York,
the head office, by Monday morning. So he was usually busy compiling them
so that the driver could drive them into Phoenix Saturday night so they
could go out in the mail and arrive in New York on Monday morning. But he
called Jack one day so excited because he had finally figured out a way
that he could keep the shabbat. He found that by compiling his notes on the
week on Friday before shabbat and having the driver take them in Sunday
morning he was able then to keep the shabbat and not have to work or drive
on the shabbat, which was an indication of the
kind of dedication that my father had to his religion.

PICKELNER: Terri, did Kennecott appreciate what your father did to the
extent that they should have, because he built that place up for them?

SWIRNOFF: In terms of his mining abilities?

PICKELNER: Yes.

SWIRNOFF: Yes. I believe that they did. I think he was at that time the
only Jew that Kennecott had ever hired and I remember when it was Pesach,
my father would take his lunch and his matzos in a paper bag to the office,
because the people in the office would see him do that. I think that he was
appreciated by the company as the tributes that he received indicated. He
was well respected by the company. He was well respected by the community
and in Phoenix where he served on many committees. I think the one
disappointment to my father, and I remember it distinctly, because I
believe I was in college at the time so I was old enough to have a little
knowledge of what he was involved in. There was a position open on the
board at the University, a position that was always held for mining people.
He was really up to be selected for that position and he was not granted it
and he was told by friends later that it was because he was Jewish. That, I
think, probably did something to him. In those days that was somewhat of a
prevalent attitude, I guess, at certain levels. But for the most part it
wasn't something that he had to deal with, I don't know, a great deal.
Perhaps with the people that were at the head of Kennecott. I don't know
because I was too young to really have shared that information with him.

My father became ill in December of '64 and he had just returned -- his
mother had died that year. He had gone back for her funeral. He was sitting
shiva, and he began to have some problems that were diagnosed as
diverticulitis, but really was cancer, which was discovered a little too
late. He was in the hospital in Phoenix and treated by a Dr. Ashton Taylor
who still has offices here. Because of my mother having some family
associated with the Billings Hospital which was doing a lot of cancer
research at the time in Chicago he was moved to Billings in January where
he stayed until he died in March of '65.

There was that broadcast that I had mentioned that Mr. Jack Williams had
made. My mother had been told about it and wrote to him and said, "After
listening to your broadcast Mrs. Breland, the wife of Jack's boss at
General Electric, alerted Jack, I am grateful for her thoughtfulness. I
have not been in the mood for radio or TV and regret having missed your
other programs. If it is possible to secure a reprint of this portion,
could I please have one."

She went on to talk about when she learned that my father was so ill she
prayed for a miracle so that he might realize some of his dreams for
retirement, like the trip in Mexico by rail which he alludes to in the
letter, and to spend some time in Israel to see the country and to help
with their mining problems. She talked about the evening
that Mr. Williams had brought his wife to Ray and gave the high school
commencement address as being one of her fond memories.

"Although we postponed our travels to the indefinite future when we thought
we wouldn't be so busy, in a way the world came to us. There were
businessmen of your high caliber with interests in varied directions -
mining men from foreign countries, like Africa, South America, Israel,
Australia, Japan who came to the U.S. to visit and observe mining
operations across the country with Ray as one of their stops-" And they
would come to visit my father and consult with him.

She said, "I always enjoyed listening to their interesting stories and I'm
much richer because of the experiences and now have these memories, for
what solace they can offer."

Jack Williams wrote her back thanking her for the letter and deeply
thrilled that she wanted the broadcast. He sent his rough notes and he
said, 'If you'll forgive my presumption I'm enclosing something else. it
might provide some small comfort. May I add an answer to your paragraph
about Abe's realizing some of his dreams for retirement. Most of us men do
what we really want to do. We tell our wives of other plans, but Abe was
happiest with you and his work. The things he planned to do were there to
think about and dream about, and perhaps he's doing them now." In his 
tribute he said, "There is a poem that ends around the corner a vanished 
friend" - do you recall it?

It came back to me not so long ago when I learned that Abe Morris of
Kennecott and Ray and Hayden and so many community activities had left us.
I'll probably never know whether Abe got my last letter. I wrote it a scant
few days before his death, having learned of his illness in a hospital in
Chicago, so far away from the canyons and copper and the rugged western
land he had lived in for so many years.

"I know in that letter I said that I missed him, that we missed him, and we
do because Abe was a rare sort of individual -modest, unassuming, effective
and brilliant. I suppose I've known him or had known him for a long time,
but I felt I really first came to feel I knew him on a trip I made to speak
at a commencement at Hayden, I believe, or Ray. one of the schools had
graduation exercises and, as a speaker, we paid a visit to Mr. Morris'
home.

"He was manager of the mines and smelter, anyway connected with the
company, and in a copper mining area. When you say 'the company' or 'the
mines' everybody knows what you're talking about. Mr. and Mrs. Morris had a
reception before the exercises and I commented on the lovely high-ceiling
home they had. I looked at the library of books and gathered that his was a
Catholic taste" -- he was wrong, it was a Jewish taste -- "that ran into
many fields. Somehow since then I felt a warm friendship which did not need
always touching base.

'Abe, representing his company, spent many hours on the road between his
home and Phoenix because he served
unselfishly on many community area-wide committees. So I would see him at
the Arizona Academy, town halls, at Chamber of Commerce functions, on other
committees, including the Governor I s Arbitration Committee which met 12
hours at a clip to thrash out a problem. I learned that on the long drives
down from his home into the Valley his driver drove and he caught up on his
reading - surprised to learn it because it is a practice that I have found
invaluable.

"I gathered that Abe listened to this program when he had time and it was a
knowledge that I treasured because of my high regard for him personally,
and an affection that I probably never let him know. His illness came as a
complete surprise, the fact that he was in the East a shock, because I
assumed until I learned otherwise that he would be in one of our local
hospitals.

"I went through a file and ran across a letter that Abe wrote to me June 2,
1964. The sentence that misted my eyes a bit was this: I I must make that
trip by rail as the trip by mule back was in the rainy season with all the
discomforts of insects and periodic showers."

"Well, Abe won't make the trip by rail but he was booked for another.
However, in the letter I learned a great deal more about his adventurous
life than I'd ever known before. The letter is a collector's item and I'm
glad to have it in my files, but I want the original to go to his wife."
Of course, I'm so grateful he did because now I have it. He went on to talk
about the dramatic courage of these
executives who the mining companies and the sugar companies and the cotton
companies would send out to the far parameters of civilization. He talked
about that and then he read my father's letter to him and then he said,
"Isn't that a vivid description of an area? The rain trip was the one I
took on the new line between Los Moches (sp?) and Chihuahua." He went on to
refer to that.

He said, "What dreams men had and what pygmies criticized them today.
Pygmies who would not have the courage to stir outside their
air-conditioned offices into the drenching humidity of the jungles or the
biting cold of the high mountains or the rugged barrenness of far places
where the hand of the maker is still discernible.' This is what Jack
Williams said. And then he said, "Thank you, Abe Morris, for that letter."
I'm so delighted that he sent this wonderful letter back about my father's
experiences in Mexico.

I want to read a part of a tribute that was in the Kennezonian, because it
sums up a lot of what my father was about. It says, "Over the past 14 years
many types of messages have passed over this desk from the pen of our late
general manager. While I regret the necessity, it is now my duty and
privilege to present the side of Abe Morris with which you may not be
familiar. This was a man who had influence and commanded respect in
whatever circles he chose to travel. He was equally at home conversing in
Spanish with an old-timer or in the language of engineers, university
presidents, lawyers, bankers and scientists.

"He was interested in people and their welfare. He was interested in
communities and their problems. He was a friend of education at all levels
from kindergarten to the university graduate student. Scholarships were
always one of his favorite programs and he was constantly urging that more
funds be made available for this purpose. He recognized the need for
special equipment and annually made funds available until now the ASU
spectroscopy laboratory is the finest department of its kind west of
Boston.

"He recognized the need to broaden the scope of information available at
the University of Arizona and was instrumental in obtaining corporate
financial support for the Kennecott lecture series and the mineral and
chemical seminars. He was keenly aware of the need of the area around Ray
mines Division for new roads and the improvement of existing roads. Down
through the years he battled often almost alone for highway improvement.
"He was on a first-name basis with people in all walks of life. He had the
time to ask a man on the job about his health or the health of some member
of his family. He had the time to go to high school functions and to listen
to students' reports, music and plays. He was a staunch supporter of the
Arizona Academy, Arizona Traffic Safety Foundation and a hundred and one
equally worthwhile movements.

"Ray Mines Division has lost a mighty important man. His employees have lost a 
real friend and the State of Arizona has lost one of its finest citizens."

PICKELNER: How beautiful.

SWIRNOFF: The editor of the Arizona Daily Star wrote an editorial when my
father died and he said, in part, that, "Mr. Morris represented leadership
at every level of the new type that helps communities and states grow."
There were a number of tributes about the work that he did in the mining
field. I think what each of them picked out was that he had pride in his
heritage and that he was loyal and tireless in his work for the company. As
one of them said, in closing, "Each one of us might well pause to consider
the example set by this man as we go about our business and personal
lives."

So I feel that my father left a great legacy for myself and my family. I'm
thankful that my mother is still living and is still nourishing and
nurturing me. She has so many fine qualities, as I said before, that made
them such a vital team in the efforts that they made to befriend the people
in Ray, to serve the community, to serve her family As I said earlier,
putting together this information for the Historical Society has really
been an impetus for me to put together something that will last for our
family and for the community, if it's necessary. I'm very grateful to you,
Dorothy, for coming to interview me and for the Historical Society for
letting us do this.

PICKELNER: Terri, this has been a very interesting experience for me, too,
and I thank you. I met your father just once
but had always heard what an unusual and splendid man he was. This must be
a labor of love which you are doing to collect all this. I know that it
will be important to the Historical Society because there weren't very many
men of his caliber loose in these canyons and byways and highways of
Arizona at that time. We're grateful to you for keeping and presenting all
this material to us.

I think, perhaps, your mother deserves more expansion on her life because
it is a rare experience for a young Jewish red-haired beauty to make her
life in this atmosphere, and something which she did so magnificently.
I have a feeling that your mother contributed a great deal more than we
have given her credit for at this point. What was her life like? I know
that she'll probably have stories of her own to tell, but what was your
impression of her lifestyle?

SWIRNOFF: Well, as I told you, Dorothy, you're very accurate in saying that
she deserves a lot of credit, because I can't imagine many women doing what
she did as well as she did for all those years in these small copper mining
towns. As I told you, there was a wonderful story when she lived in Santa
Rita as this new bride. She was learning to bake bread. Of course, the
altitude was so different there that the bread came out and it was as hard
as a brick. So she decided not to let my dad know that she had goofed as
his bride, and she took it out in the alley and dumped it in a trash can.
Well, there were burros around there that used to get into these trash
cans. one evening at a dinner party when some of the locals were wanting to 
know how my mother was faring, she said, "oh, well, I'm doing fairly well." 
My father piped up and he said, "oh, yes, she's doing quite well, except 
for her bread baking." My mother looked at him so surprised and she said, 
"What do you mean by that?" He said, 'Well, she baked some bread that was 
so hard that even the burros wouldn't eat it.' He had been out in the alley 
and had seen the burros take this brick of bread out and not even touch it. 
So he knew her secret.

She went on to master all the skills of living in a mining town. I
mentioned how she entertained and my memories in Ray were of these large
sit-down dinners where she would seat -- probably in our dining room we
could get 12 or 14 around the dining room table and then, in this large
living room, which had once been these four rooms, she would set up several
more tables and then another one on the sun porch so she could adequately
seat up to 100 people for a sit-down dinner, and many times had 50 to 60.
There were other times when she'd set the tables outside in the patio and
have these summer evening dinner parties. They were, as I said, a real
highlight for the people there because we many times would have these
visitors from the foreign countries of Japan, Australia, South Africa and
the stories were so interesting. But my mother was the one who did all the
work. She was caring for this very large home every day.

She was taking care of the two of us, involved in community
activities and making these trips to Phoenix to buy her groceries and her
kosher meats. My recollections of my mother were that she always was
working. We always teased her because she never sat down. She never sat
down to watch TV, she never sat down to read. She was always cooking or
baking or taking care of something in the house. She did it all as a
perfectionist. So, not only did she stay up til two or three in the
morning, because my mother has always been a night person and she used to
kid and say she'd only get her work done when the kids went to bed. So,
she'd start her cooking - I can still remember her frying the chicken at
about eleven o'clock at night and making her famous black-bottom pies.
There were so many delicacies that she was famous for, because she was not
only a wonderful cook but a superb baker. We lived high up on a very steep
hill and at the bottom of this hill was a clubhouse and a guest house for
Kennecott visitors. Many times before these dignitaries and visitors from
other countries would come to visit she would also stock the clubhouse with
food so that no one would go hungry for any meal that they weren't eating
at our home. She would prepare huge lunches and dinners when visitors were
there. These dinner parties for 50 or 60 people - she had a couple of
ladies who lived in town who would help her serve. She had many beautiful
serving pieces and had an elegant way of presenting the food so that it not
only tasted wonderfully, but it was displayed so beautifully. She has
always taken pride in whatever she does and it's always done to the most
superlative. So it was always a treat coming to those dinner parties and
seeing the way she did things.

PICKELNER: Wasn't she considered the hostess with the mostest?
And tell us what she looked like - I think that's interesting.

SWIRNOFF: Yes, she really was the hostess with the mostest, because she
made it look so easy, and yet we knew how much work and effort she had put
into it. She had always a very charming, pleasant personality. You rarely
ever saw my mother angry or upset. She was loved by the people in the
community, because she was a very real and caring person. She always had
time to listen and to take things to help people out as best she could. She
has always been a very sincere person in that way.

What did she look like? She has always been a redhead with quite a lovely
figure, and dressed beautifully. We would come to Phoenix to buy our
clothes and it was always fun going with my mom and seeing her being
wardrobed. I remember that we'd always come in before the holidays to get
new clothes for the holidays. That was always a special time for us to go
shopping. Those whirlwind trips in Phoenix where she would go to the
hairdresser, then to get clothes, then to the grocery store, and had to get
everything done in a very short amount of time so we would be ready to make
the trip back to Ray. I remember her using, at that time it was Dorris
Heymann to decorate the home in Ray. The decorator would come up there and
it was done in beautiful taste. When we moved to Kearney, once again, they
designed and built that house, so she once again had to bring a decorator
in to do everything. She did it all with grace and expertise. As I say, I
was very fortunate to have the kind of role models that I had, that I had
the values and the benefits of their knowledge.

PICKELNER: Didn't your grandmother come to visit often from Chicago? I
remember her, such a charming lady.

SWIRNOFF: Yes. My grandmother was a real favorite of all the locals,
especially the men, because they loved to play poker with my grandmother.
My grandmother, my mother's mother, who lived in Chicago, would come and
visit. Of course, once she found out that life was not quite so bad for my
mother as she imagined she was able to enjoy it. When my parents would go
to the mining conventions, she would come and babysit for my brother and
me. I have very fond memories of being the only fourth grader who knew how
to play poker, kaluki, and every other card game, because my grandmother's
hobby was cards. So she would say to us, "Now, you children get your
homework done and then we'll sit down and play cards." So that's what we
would do. Of course, when she would come to visit when my parents were
there they would entertain for her. She would be the lone woman seated
around the table with all these men playing poker and kibbitzing and they
adored her, because she had such a cute personality and was such fun to be
with. It was always a treat when my grandmother came to visit.

PICKELNER: Thank you. I'm sure Mildred would say, "Oh, this
wasn't quite the way it was." Because she's a very modest person. We're
going to hear from Mildred herself, perhaps, soon.

Thank you, Terri.

SWIRNOFF: Thank you, Dorothy.

What I want to add is two areas. One is, how grateful I am for the choices
of friendships that my parents selected for themselves when they came to
Ray and began to meet our Jewish friends in Phoenix. I've already mentioned
that Jack and Kitty Finkelstein were the first Jewish people that they met
here and how fortunate that was for them, because Jack and Kitty were a
wonderful resource for them, of reaching out to our family, incorporating
us into all their Jewish celebrations, including us, having their home be
our home away from Ray. My parents would go there to change clothes before
they went to some of their traffic safety meetings in Phoenix or the
Governor's council on something or a mining convention meeting.

Jack and Kitty were also wonderful in introducing them to many other Beth
El friends that my family made over the years. That was a result of Jack
and Kitty's introductions. Sol and Sylvia Mallin are one good example of
that, who have continued to be friends, like the Finkelsteins, to this day.
We're very grateful for that friendship, along with many, many others. We
met the Newmarks; we met the Multers; we met the Oserans, and so many other
Beth El families through this networking effect.

That helped to make the move for my mother when my father died so much
easier, because of the adjustments of having these friends through the
years who have continued to be her friends today. So I'm very grateful. It
says something about my parents and the type of people they were to have
had this long lasting relationship. Even though the distances years ago
separated us were we able to make these connections, and they were valuable
to our family, and to the impact that the Phoenix Jewish community then had
on us as we made the move and wanted to be a part of that community that
had reached out to us earlier.

The other thing I wanted to mention - in preparing for this interview I had
a conversation with my sister-in-law, who reported to me that at a high
school reunion that my brother attended a year or so ago, a number of his
schoolmates came up and mentioned the important impact that my father had
on their continuing education. They remarked how my father role modeled for
many of them by coming to our high school programs, by presenting awards,
by continuing to encourage the students to continue their education, by
providing Kennecott scholarships to local universities so that many of the
students who would not have had an opportunity otherwise went on to study
and make successes of themselves and their careers by this encouragement
and by the tangible offering of scholarship dollars to pursue a further
education.

My father's priorities were straight. He always encouraged education for
young people and did it, as I said, in very tangible, real ways. He 
encouraged Jewish education for my brother and me, and saw to it that even 
though we were disadvantaged in that we lived in a community as the only 
Jewish family, he found a way. He didn't let that stop him. He drove my 
brother every week when he was studying for bar mitzvah for study. He saw 
that I learned with him every week the Hebrew alphabet, how to say some 
prayers in Hebrew. That was very important to him, because he studied every 
Saturday by himself to continue and he had a terrific Jewish library from 
which to study. He studied the portion of the week up until the day he died.
I remember when he was dying in Chicago he read the portion of the week 
every Saturday and when he was ill and not able to read himself he had my 
mother read to to him. The last portion of his life he heard and died later 
that day.

So Jewish ...(unintelligible) ... education, secular education, the
dedication to improving his surroundings as was illustrated by his devotion
to seeing that road conditions in the state improve, that traffic safety
was a priority, that he got involved on a state level participating on the
traffic safety council, his impact on politics in the state, his
friendships with Paul Fannin as governor and Barry Goldwater as senator and
Senator Giss and others, Polly Rosenbaum, throughout the state, allowed him
to make political impact as well, because that was important to him.

The priority of his family and his Judaism probably at a time in his life 
when both would have been easier not to have prioritized - he was very busy 
in his profession as manager of Kennecott, but his family always came first,
and we knew that. His attention to detail in terms of Judaism. No, he was 
not close to a synagogue but that didn't stop him from davening twice a day 
every day of his life. That was a Jewish commitment. He and my mother were 
committed to keeping a kosher home, and even though that was difficult and 
meant a trip to Phoenix every week to get kosher food, they were committed 
to do that.

Having these priorities straight was a great lesson for me growing up in
this family, and I'm very grateful for the role modeling and the lessons
that I learned from the two committed parents that I had.

[End of interview.]