A Phoenix firefighter lies paralyzed from the waist down following a bizarre Memorial Day incident at a local hospital in which he fell and hit his head after he was given a painkilling injection. According to accounts by friends and fellow firefighters, Kenneth Gardiner, a 22-year-old ambulance driver, had gone…
Is Phoenix’s potential “Central Park of the Southwest” going to become just a piece of little-used turf stuck amid yet another gaggle of shiny high-rises? That’s what some activists fear is inevitable as an eight-person team starts its job of overseeing the planning of midtown’s controversial Indian School site. “You…
“How much difference is there between `gosh darn’ and `God damn’?” asks D.C. Martin, Grand Canyon College’s chairman of religious studies. “Is it the spelling of the words, or is there a technical difference between the two?” Those were some of the questions that prompted Martin to teach a class…
The mourners at last Thursday’s wake for firefighter Dale Brandt paused at a table laden with his mementoes. There were photos of sixteen-year Phoenix Fire Department veteran Brandt and his partners, a pair of aviator sunglasses, a tape of Dirty Dancing (his favorite record), an essay about him written by…
No one knew what U-Haul founder L.S. Shoen had in mind at his “Celebration of Love and Respect.” L.S. was as unpredictable as a desert storm. I’m a 180-degree guy, he often said, and I’ll change direction before you blink if I think it’s right. He had started U-Haul with…
Michael Swartz is one of those teens to whom parents of other kids point and bemoan, “Why can’t you be like him?” Swartz, vice president of the student body at Barry Goldwater High School, was having what he calls “a really great” senior year. Until, that is, he became known…
At least one person in Ann Arbor was unhappy when basketball coach Bill Frieder escaped to Tempe last week. He is Steve Blonder, associate sports editor at the Daily, the University of Michigan’s student newspaper. Not that Blonder loves Frieder. It’s just that the coach made such great copy. “The…
Earl Platt leans his old body on his battered pickup and points to the mountains beyond his sprawling ranch in eastern Arizona. It’s way out there, he says, where the Zunis say they have to pray. “Those Indians say it’s important that they cross my land,” Platt starts. “It’s important…
It’s the cops who always are accusing judges of turning criminals loose on technicalities. These days, however, nine current and former Phoenix Police Department officers are smiling because a technicality may have gotten them off the hook. Not that Max Dunlap’s civil suit against the cops, filed in June 1982,…
To see Kim Sonderegger on-stage– her elegant face covered in layers of make-up, her slender body wrapped in net and tulle–you’d never think she was just a “grunt.” You might guess she used to prance around her parents’ living room, dreaming she was a prima ballerina. You might guess, from…
John Mitchell’s clothing store in downtown Superior is suspended in time. Three-piece suits hang in neat rows. Stacks of shirts rest on a display table. The cash register sits on a counter near the front door. The store looks open for business, but it’s not. Mitchell’s was an anchor on…
