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Bullard opened store ‘out in the boondocks’
Frederick Gray Bullard used an eclectic mix of friendly advice and hardware and department store goods to create a loyal following at his Casas Adobes-area store that has existed for decades.
Mr. Bullard, founder of the Bullard’s store on North Oracle Road near West Ina Road, died Monday after a long illness.
The store – founded more than 40 years ago ”out in the boondocks,” according to early interviews – still carries his name long after he sold it.
Mr. Bullard, a Chicago-area native, cultivated a reputation as a fair, honest and perceptive businessman.
He opened the store Oct. 1, 1957, at a time when the Northwest Side was mostly a sleepy area with a few custom homes and horse properties.
The store began as a hardware business and gradually evolved into a department store as Bullard and his successors worked to keep up with demands of customers.
Mr. Bullard was born Nov. 8, 1906. He graduated from Francis Parker Academy in Chicago and later from Stanford University.
During his four decades in Tucson, Mr. Bullard maintained a low profile – getting mention only once in the Tucson Citizen, when, in 1975, he was named to the buyer’s advisory committee of the California Gift Show.
Mr. Bullard and his wife took a month off from running the store each fall and traveled to different parts of the world.
He was a longtime member of Casas Adobes Congregational Church.
He retired Oct. 1, 1981, selling the business to William and Barbara Fuerst, who have maintained the philosophy of service.
Mr. Bullard is survived by his wife of 60 years, Beatrice, and by several out-of-state relatives.
No funeral services will be held, at Mr. Bullard’s request.
(Dated Dec 11, 1997)
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Ex-Chevy dealer
John Matthews, 79
Former Tucson car dealer John H. Matthews founded a life insurance company and a savings and loan, but his passion revolved around the automobile industry, one of his sons said.
Mr. Matthews – former president of Matthews Chevrolet, now Watson Chevrolet – died Saturday of a heart attack in Coronado, Calif. He was 79.
Calling his father ”inquisitive and imaginative,” Jefrey Matthews of Tucson said Mr. Matthews’ dabbling in different kinds of businesses was born out of the needs he saw in the car industry.
Those needs inspired a patent dealing with automobile sales account methodology, which Mr. Matthews sold to National Cash Register in the late 1940s – almost a decade after he opened his first car dealership in Ohio in 1938.
”He was an extremely energetic and involved individual,” his son said.
Mr. Matthews and his sons, Jefrey and Peter, sold Matthews Chevrolet to Watson Chevrolet in 1984.
As the president of Matthews Chevrolet, Mr. Matthews regularly supported University of Arizona sports programs.
He was on the board of Tucson Medical Center for more than 20 years, and served as the president of the Arizona Automobile Dealers Association for several years.
In Tucson, he founded a computer hardware and software company, which later became part of another company in Dayton, Ohio.
He was born Jan. 10, 1918, in Delaware, Ohio. Mr. Matthews graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1938 and married Mary L. Lemichuk in 1940.
He started an Oldsmobile dealership in Ohio in 1938, adding a Cadillac dealership later. He also founded a bank in Ohio.
Mr. Matthews moved to Arizona in 1958, and organized Greater Arizona Savings & Loan in Scottsdale, which operated statewide for more than 20 years. He also founded Trans City Life Insurance Co. in Phoenix.
He moved to Tucson in 1964 and was active with the Chi Phi Fraternity chapters at Ohio Wesleyan and UA. He was a golfer, a skipper and a licensed pilot.
Jefrey Matthews said his father had been spending the past few months in California to escape Tucson’s kissing bugs, to whose bites he had a strong allergic reaction.
Mr. Matthews is survived by his wife, Mary; two sons, Jefrey and Peter Matthews of Tucson; a sister, Addie Lee O’Brien of Delaware, Ohio; and many nieces and nephews in Ohio and Tucson.
Services will be held Monday in Delaware, Ohio.
Jefrey Matthews said a location has yet to be chosen in Tucson for a memorial service, to be held Jan. 10.
The family requests donations be made to the John H. Matthews Memorial Academic Scholarship Fund at the University of Arizona Foundation, P.O. Box 210109, Tucson, Ariz. 85721-0109.
(Dated Dec 18, 1997)
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Robert Flores, 91, craftsman
• Tucsonan helped build Sasabe schoolhouse, worked on I-10 overpasses.
Visitation will be held tomorrow for Robert F. Flores, a Tucson craftsman. He died Monday at St. Mary’s Hospital of complications following surgery.
He was 91.
Mr. Flores, born in Tucson on Dec. 17, 1906, began his career building homes and schoolhouses.
A schoolhouse he helped build in Sasabe still is in use today, said his son, Robert Y. Flores.
Mr. Flores started Robert F. Flores and Sons Construction in the 1940s but closed it several years later and went to work for San Xavier Rock and Sand.
Mr. Flores and his son, Robert, worked side by side for more than 20 years at San Xavier Rock and Sand.
He worked on all the concrete forms for the Interstate 10 overpasses from West Prince Road to South Sixth Avenue.
”He loved to work,” the younger Flores said. ”I remember working Saturday and Sunday for many months, even Christmas and holidays.
”He was pretty rough. He liked good work. He wanted the work done his way, the right way.”
Mr. Flores is survived by sons Robert, Richard and Raymond; daughters Geraldine Bartlett and Elva Davis; sisters Fina and Virginia Andrade; brothers Rudy and Raymond Flores; 13 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Maria Yslas Flores, and brother Ronald Flores.
Visitation will be held from 4 to10 p.m. tomorrow at Carrillo’s Tucson Mortuary, 240 S. Stone Ave., with a rosary recital at 7 p.m.
Mass will be held 9 a.m. Saturday at Santa Cruz Catholic Church, 1220 S. Sixth Ave. He will be buried in Holy Hope Cemetery.
(Dated Dec 25, 1997)
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Tanner stood out as writer, teacher
• The UA anthropology teacher dies at age 92 after a weekend car wreck.
Clara Lee Tanner, a University of Arizona anthropology teacher for half a century whose writings and lectures educated the public about Native American arts and crafts, died Monday after a weekend automobile accident.
Mrs. Tanner was 92.
One of the first three people to earn a master’s degree in anthropology at UA, Mrs. Tanner went on to a successful writing career that helped generations of people worldwide better understand Native American arts.
”I would say she played a very seminal role in the gathering of systematic knowledge and the real understanding of Native American arts and crafts,” said Raymond Thompson, the retired curator of the Arizona State Museum.
”Hers was what I would call cutting edge research on the Native American arts and crafts right across the board. And she did this at a time when Native American arts and crafts had become quite popular but were not well understood by the general public.”
She was born in Biscoe, N.C., in 1905, where her father was a machinist. The family moved to Tucson two years later. She attended school in Tucson and in Clifton, earning her diploma from Tucson High School in 1923.
She began her college career intent on becoming an author, and found her subject after taking a freshman anthropology course from Byron Cummings at UA.
Mrs. Tanner joined Emil Haury and Florence Hawley Ellis as the first postgraduate class in anthropology at UA, earning her master’s degree in 1928. That same year, she began a teaching career that lasted until 1978.
Combining her interest in Native American arts and crafts with her love for writing, Mrs. Tanner went on to pen a collection of books that remain the authoritative tomes on the subject today.
”I think she was a real leader in that her books appealed not only to a scholarly audience, but to the general public. That was a great accomplishment,” said Bruce Hilpert, curator of public programs at the Arizona State Museum and a former student of Mrs. Tanner. ”They were some of the first serious works about material culture, but they were written in a way that the public found very accessible and informative.”
Her books – sold in 85 countries and among the most popular ever published by the University of Arizona Press – include ”Southwest Indian Painting,” ”Southwest Indian Craft Arts,” ”James T. Bialac Collection of Southwest Indian Painting,” ”Southwest Indian Painting, A Changing Art,” ”Prehistoric Southwestern Craft Arts,” and ”Portraits of Turquoise.”
Mrs. Tanner was the recipient of eight Arizona Women First Awards and won first-place awards from the National Federation of Press Women in 1969 and 1974.
She garnered much recognition for her work, including induction into the UA Hall of Fame in 1977 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in Craft Arts from the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 1993.
But her 50 years in the classroom at UA also left a profound mark on generations of students.
Helga Teiwes, who became the staff photographer for the Arizona State Museum, recalls Mrs. Tanner as a demanding teacher with much to impart.
”She was very strict but she was very good,” said Teiwes, who was Mrs. Tanner’s student in the late 1960s. ”If you applied yourself, you learned a lot. Through her excellent teaching, I really respected her greatly and admired her.”
Hilpert, also a student in the 1960s, said her excellence in the classroom was the product of her scholarship and understanding of the Native American culture.
”As a student of Southwestern material culture, she was just one of the greats in that field,” he said. ”She was a great scholar, she had good relations with American Indian people. She did so much to stimulate students and other scholars.”
Mrs. Tanner is survived by her husband, John; her daughter, Sandy; a son-in-law, Karl Elers; her brother, Edward P. Fraps of Dallas; two grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews.
At her request, no formal services will be held.
Remembrances may be made to the Clara Lee Tanner Publishing Fund at the University of Arizona Press, 1230 N. Park Ave., Tucson, Ariz. 85719.
(Dated Dec 25, 1997)
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