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Longtime newsman Brinegar dies at 87
PHOENIX – David F. Brinegar, former executive editor of The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, died Thursday after a four-year illness involving heart problems and neuropathy. He was 87.
Brinegar worked on and off at the Star from the time he started as a cub reporter in April 1925 until he retired at the end of 1974. When he was 9, he helped his uncle handset type at a rural newspaper. At 13, he sold papers on Tucson streets.
He also covered state government for The Arizona Republic and worked there later as a copy editor.
After Army service during World War II, Brinegar was hired in 1946 as the first managing editor of the now-defunct Arizona Times. About two years later Brinegar began working for the Central Arizona Project Association and later became its executive secretary.
He returned to the Star in 1956 as an associate editor and was named executive editor in 1961.
”He was one of these people who was unflinchingly honest. He came from that time in newspaper work when honesty was supposed to be the mark of every respectable journalist, where it was just something you would expect,” said friend and fellow newsman John Bret Harte.
Brinegar’s first wife, Lorette Cooper, died in January 1978. Brinegar moved to Scottsdale when he married Mildred in July 1978.
In addition to his wife, Brinegar is survived by his daughter, Dr. Becky L. Gill of Temecula, Calif., a captain in the Navy.
No services will be held, at his request.
(Dated Jan 03, 1998)
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Abbey Grunewald, retired owner of local jewelry business, dies at 77
When she took over her late husband’s jewelry business in the mid-1970s, Abbey Jean Grunewald had never held a paying job.
But that did not stop Mrs. Grunewald, then 54, from managing the business’s three stores with competitive flair, even in the face of personal tragedy.
”Keep your head down and your eye on the ball,” she once said of her business approach. ”Don’t look around to see what anyone else is doing.”
Mrs. Grunewald, also a prominent community volunteer and philanthropist, was found dead in her home yesterday in the Sam Hughes neighborhood. She was 77 and had been in poor health.
”Her husband passed away in 1974. She jumped in that business and learned it. She took the horse by the reins so to speak,” Mrs. Grunewald’s close friend Mary Peachin said yesterday.
The business once had two stores in Tucson and one in Phoenix. The original Grunewald & Adams store was on East Congress Street in downtown Tucson.
A branch opened at El Con Mall in 1960. The downtown store closed in 1981, and in 1982 Mrs. Grunewald opened another location at Foothills Mall.
She closed the business in 1995 when her health began to fail.
Abbey Grunewald inherited a large operation from her husband, Arthur, when he died in 1974.
The El Con store in the early 80s, for example, employed 13 people, including two watchmakers, two jewelers and a gemologist.
Grunewald & Adams was at one time the oldest family-owned jewelry store in Tucson. The company began in 1906 and was once the only place in southern Arizona for pioneer brides to purchase sterling silver and china.
Through the ’70s and ’80s, the store maintained a reputation throughout Tucson for expensive elegance, said Sally Drachman, a friend of Mrs. Grunewald and lifelong Tucson resident.
”It was the most prestigious (jewelry store),” Drachman said. ”She took over that company and paid off the debts. I really admired her. She was a good businesswoman.”
In 1992, the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce gave Mrs. Grunewald its Founders award to recognize her long-term community involvement.
”She was a great contributor to many organizations in the community, especially the Jewish organizations, the YWCA and the University of Arizona,” Drachman said.
”I think the thing she’d like most to be remembered for is the Grunewald-Blitz Children’s Speech and Hearing Clinic.”
Mrs. Grunewald gave more than $500,000 to the UA to establish the clinic in memory of her grandson Nicholas who was born in 1971 with severe communication impairments. Both Nicholas and Mrs. Grunewald’s daughter Karen died in France in 1976.
Mrs. Grunewald served on the Grunewald-Blitz Clinic’s Board of Directors. The UA later awarded Mrs. Grunewald with the Arizona Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Citizen Award.
Mrs. Grunewald, a petite, darkeyed woman, suffered from asthma, and had survived cancer and several heart attacks, her friends said.
”She was a wonderful mentor and friend to many people. What a magnificent woman,” Drachman said. ”She had so many tragedies in her life, and she came out courageous. She had a bad heart, asthma . . . She just came shining through.”
Dottie Stephens, one of Mrs. Grunewald’s close friends in Phoenix, said Mrs. Grunewald closed the Grunewald & Adams’ Phoenix location in the posh Biltmore Fashion Park about four years ago.
”Her claim to fame was top-of-the-line jewelry, never any of the discount stuff,” Stephens said. ”It was very high-quality, like Tiffany’s, stores like that. She’d go to shows in Europe, New York, to conventions in Las Vegas, everywhere.”
In 1989, Mrs. Grunewald told the Tucson Citizen that she’d turned around Grunewald & Adams from being a business that her late husband ran ”by the seat of his pants” to a successful operation.
”I love working and I love business, and I think the financial side of it is simply fascinating,” Mrs. Grunewald told the Citizen.
But she added that, ”In my day it wasn’t seemly for women to work. . . . I mean the only two professions that were really acceptable were teaching and nursing. But then when she married, she wasn’t supposed to work.”
The daughter of a jeweler, Mrs. Grunewald was born Jan. 28, 1920, in Fargo, N.D. She attended Stephens College in Columbia. Mo., and Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., before moving to Tucson in 1941 with her husband, Arthur. The two were married in Chicago in 1940.
In Tucson, Mrs. Grunewald took courses at the University of Arizona, and earned a degree in art history and anthropology in 1960. She was the first-ever docent at the UA’s Museum of Art and worked there as a volunteer for 10 years.
Among her other numerous community activities, Mrs. Grunewald served as president of the Arizona Federation of Junior Women’s Clubs from 1956 to 1957. She also served on boards of directors for the American Red Cross, the Tucson Symphony and the Tucson Community Council. In 1985, she was named honorary chairwoman of the UA art department’s Fund for Excellence fund-raiser
”She was more than a longtime friend. We were like sisters really,” said Stephens. ”She was very energetic, though she was never a tremendously healthy person. She had serious asthma, but it was not enough to stop her from going full speed.
”She always got involved and she just loved the university.”
A memorial service has been tentatively set for 1 p.m. Monday at the Adair Funeral Home, 1050 N. Dodge Blvd. The funeral home’s phone number is 326-4343.
Mrs. Grunewald is survived by daughter Kathy George of Mission Hills, Calif.; brother Tony Horwitz of Yuma; and sister-in-law Zella Horwitz of Tucson.
(Dated Jan 03, 1998)
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Services set Saturday for John H. Matthews
A memorial service for John H. Matthews, former president of Matthews Chevrolet, is scheduled for Saturday in Tucson.
Mr. Matthews, 79, died Dec. 13 of a heart attack in Coronado, Calif.
Services will be at 2 p.m. at Grace-St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St.
The family will receive relatives and friends after the services at The Mountain Oyster Club, 283 N. Stone Ave.
Mr. Matthews, who moved to Tucson in 1964, was a supporter of University of Arizona sports programs and served on the board of Tucson Medical Center for more than 20 years.
He moved to Arizona in 1958. Two years later, Mr. Matthews was elected to the Board of Freeholders, which wrote the charter for and created the city of Scottsdale.
Mr. Matthews and his sons, Jefrey and Peter, sold Matthews Chevrolet to Watson Chevrolet in 1984.
(Dated Jan 08, 1998)
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Dorothy Bond, widow of cowboy singer, dies at 79
Dorothy Louise Mercer Bond, wife of the late cowboy music legend Johnny Bond and aunt of former New York Yankees player Bobby Mercer, died Monday at age 79 in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, Calif.
Mrs. Bond, a native of Oklahoma City, Okla., married Johnny Bond in 1939.
Mr. Bond, who is in the Western Music Hall of Fame, was best known for his hits ”I Wonder Where You Are Tonight,” ”Cimarron,” ”10 Little Bottles” and ”Tomorrow Never Comes.” He was also on the first board of directors for the Country Music Association.
Mrs. Bond was very involved in Red River Songs Publishing and Vidor Publications. Vidor Publications, which Mr. Bond owned with Tex Ritter, was one of the first and largest of the cowboy/Western music publishing companies, according to music historian Fred Goodwin of Murfreesboro, Tenn. Its roster of composers included Harlan Howard and Cindy Walker.
The Bonds’ daughter, Sherry, is chief executive officer of Red River Songs and Vidor Publishing, which is based in Nashville, Tenn. She is also director of the Nashville entertainment Association and a former board member of the Tucson-based Western Music Association.
Sherry Bond was a special guest at November’s Ninth Annual Western Music Festival in Tucson.
In addition to Sherry Bond, the couple are survived by daughters Jeannie and Susan, and six grandchildren.
Mrs. Bond’s funeral was scheduled for today at United Methodist Church in Burbank. Bobby Mercer was expected to attend.
Pedro Espinosa
popular at rodeo time
A rosary will be said tonight for Pedro ”Pete” Espinosa, a fixture at the Tucson rodeo parade who was a working cowboy on his family’s Colorado ranch before moving to Arizona in the 1940s.
Mr. Espinosa died Tuesday at age 81 from complications of congestive heart failure.
”He and his brothers drove cattle for a fairly good distance, between Colorado and New Mexico,” said his son, Philip.
Mr. Espinosa was born April 10, 1916, at Manassa, Colo.
He moved to Arizona in the early 1940s, going to work at the mines in Morenci before moving to Tucson in 1945.
Here, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Soon after he moved to Tucson, he met and married Melanie Leon.
Later, he worked as a truck driver for Ralph’s Transfer & Storage, and eventually operated Charkete Products for many years before becoming yard foreman at Central Pipe & Supply.
But Mr. Espinoza was a cowboy at heart. ”He always wore a cowboy hat,” said his son. ”And we’re burying him in his boots.”
His cowboy expertise was in demand at rodeo time, when he was called upon to help wrangle horses and to harness livestock for the annual parade, routinely driving one of the larger rigs in the parade.
Mr. Espinosa was a devout Catholic and was a member of Holy Name Society and Cursillos.
A rosary will be said tonight at 7 at St. Ambrose Catholic Church, 300 S. Tucson Blvd.
A funeral Mass will be said at 2 p.m. tomorrow, with burial to follow at Holy Hope Cemetery, 3555 N. Oracle Road.
The family suggests donations be made to the Catholic church in Mr. Espinosa’s name.
Survivors include two sons, Philip and Frederick Espinosa, both of Tucson; a brother, Felix Espinosa of Tucson; a sister, Sister Rebecca Ann Espinosa of the Elizabeth Seton Order in Pennsylvania; and seven grandchildren.
(Dated Jan 09, 1998)
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