Searching for Rose I: Mesa, Globe, and Pima

My mother, Rose Eyring Calder, was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1912.  Her parents were refugees, fleeing the Mexican revolution.  At the time, they hoped to soon return to Mexico, but it never happened.  Instead, Grandma and Grandpa Eyring bought a farm in the tiny town of Pima, in southeastern Arizona.   On January 13, 2022, Dave and I flew to Phoenix for a driving trip around Southern Arizona.  We searched for pieces of my mother's life and culture.

We began our search in Mesa, where Mom taught at Mesa Union High School from 1935 to 1940.  She described those years as "five of the happiest years of my life." Mesa was then, and still is, a majority LDS suburb of Phoenix.  Dave and I attended a temple session in the newly refurbished Mesa Temple.  We then drove over the mountains to Globe, directly east of Phoenix, where Mom taught high school in 1933-34, and then drove to Pima, next to Safford, where Mom grew up.  Pima didn't make this map, but Safford is near the boundary of New Mexico, southeast of Globe.

The temple was beautiful, with flowers and palm trees outside and silk and crystal inside.

We stopped at the Gila County Historical Museum in Globe.

I searched through Globe High School yearbooks from the 1930s and found photographs of Mom, as a 22-year-old, just out of college on her first job.  She was sponsor for both the yearbook and the newspaper, The Papoose.

We stopped by Globe High School, built on a hill in this mining town.  Mom taught there during the Depression.  I remember her mentioning that the mines had closed and many of her students' parents were out of work.

The Globe city center still had the look of an old mining town.

This Globe building looks like a 1930s courthouse.

After exploring Globe, we drove two hours further to Pima.  We stopped at the local museum and met Darwin Weech, a curator who offered to show us around town.  We passed the old Pima Ward, where Mom went to church.  I asked Darwin if there had ever been a bell on the church, since Mom told about hearing church bells ring to mark the end of World War I .  When we returned to the museum, Darwin showed us the old bell from the Pima Ward.

Darwin told about a black car with President Henry Eyring in it driving up to his house, the previous year.  President Eyring asked Darwin if he could show him the Eyring homestead and town.  Darwin was digging postholes in his front yard. Darwin called a fellow historian who, he told President Eyring, was better qualified than Darwin.  Darwin looks back on that experience with regret.  He had a chance to spend an hour with a counselor in the First Presidency, and instead he drove poles into the dirt!

Darwin drove us to the Eyring homestead, where a double-wide trailer had been installed over the foundation of the original Eyring home.  As we drove up the lane to the house, a man shouted at us, “Go away!  This is my property!”  Darwin explained that we were relatives of the prior owners, and just wanted to look around.  “Now??” the owner shouted incredulously. That the Eyring homestead should sink so low!

Darwin drove us around the back side of the property.

We saw the wash where my mother played as a little girl.  It was overgrown, but I could imagine Mother climbing out of that sandy, shrubby area, with so many places to hide and chase lizards, when she heard the church bells ringing the end of World War I.

We stopped at the graveyard, to see the graves of my grandpa, Edward Eyring, and his two polygamous wives, Emma and Caroline.

As we passed the train tracks, Darwin repeated a story I had never heard before.  Rumor had it that my Uncle Spencer paused on these tracks, when asking Aunt Camilla to marry him.  She agreed, hurriedly, to get him to move off the tracks!  That doesn't sound like Uncle Spencer....

In the background of Pima is beautiful Mt. Graham.  Uncle Spencer's father, Anthony Kimball, was sent to Arizona to become president of the Mt. Graham Stake, and Uncle Spencer later became president of that stake himself, before being called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.