Phoenix 101: The Mormons
Posted inPhoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: The Mormons

Mesa_Temple

The Arizona Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mesa.

Growing up in Arizona, I found the Mormons neither strange nor mysterious, much less threatening. They were part of the wonderful mosaic of a state still tasting of the frontier, before it had been overrun by immigrants from the Midwest and miles of lookalike crapola subdivisions.

We had a Book of Mormon in our library, more a testament to my mother's insatiable curiosity than any desire to convert. My great-grandparents were among the first non-LDS farmers to settle near Mesa, and Grandmother reveled in telling the story about how the Saints pestered them to convert and "seal" their marriage in the temple, much to the horror of these former Presbyterian missionaries. But it was a story told gently and with affection for all.

The Mormons were revered among the great Arizona pioneers. They were known for their generosity, including to "gentiles," something our family experienced. Mormons were hard-working, reliable, self-reliant, patrons of education and the arts. Mesa in those days was a beautiful small city, a monument to the energy and far-sightedness of its LDS founders. We would regularly drive down neat and prosperous Main Street to see the beautiful Arizona Temple. The Mormon kids with whom I went to high school were among the most talented in one of the country's top high-school fine arts program.

The Mormons were also powerful. That was clear even at an early age.

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Posted inPhoenix

In the kill zone

We don't know the details yet. But I imagine Doug Georgianni as another struggling, underpaid guy trying to find that illusive Arizona dream. Now he's dead, a young 51. Three months ago he took a job servicing the speed cameras on Phoenix freeways. Sunday night, while parked on the Loop 101 near 7th Ave. in a marked Department of Public Safety photo enforcement van, Georgianni was shot multiple times. The suspect, since arrested, is a white male (of course) driving a Chevy Suburban (of course).

I never completely understood the loud controversy over speed and red-light cameras. Metro Phoenix has a horrendous problem of major traffic violators, fatal and often spectacular wrecks and pedestrian killings, many hit-and-runs. Meanwhile, the religion of tax cuts and Arizona's unwillingness to fund its public sector to keep up with population growth mean there aren't enough traffic officers. The problem is made worse, of course, by sprawl, huge freeways and eight-lane "city streets," plus a population driving giant vehicles they can't really control on streets with increasing numbers of pedestrians. Even the former Catholic bishop came to grief this way, and in his character-revealing response of driving away from the victim like so many other 'Zonies had done.

Yet to the Kookocracy the speed cameras were the worst kind of "big brother." It's funny, they didn't have a problem with their party's implementation of torture and rendition as American policy, or with the tactics of "America's toughest sheriff." I wonder if any of them — from the pols to the talk-radio "hosts" — now regret the years they have spent fighting the cameras with the usual intemperate language?

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