We've met a lot of people (and more than a few animals) in the Green Valley News and Sahuarita Sun this year. Let us reintroduce you to a few who've left an impression.
Dinah the cat
Dinah is the official greeter at The Animal League of Green Valley and spends a lot of time ensconced in her upscale retreat with cat-sized furniture. The gorgeous feline didn’t always have it so easy. She was brought to the shelter in 2013, overweight and full of cuts — misguided attempts to remove matted fur. Today, Dinah is fit, friendly and, of course, queen over everything she sees.
Nathan Gunn
We only met him on screen, but Nathan Gunn, a Grammy Award-winning opera singer, has a solid Green Valley connection — his parents, Walter and Nancy Gunn, live here in winter. Nathan has taken the opera world by storm for his wonderful baritone and hunky good looks. Green Valley saw him on the screen at Desert Sky Cinema last January, beamed from a New York stage.
He's a fighter
It’s been 25 years, but John Russell of Green Valley remembers it like it was yesterday. Russell coached boxer Buster Douglas to one of the biggest upsets in sports history when he beat Mike Tyson in Tokyo on Feb. 11, 1990. After the fight, “I sat down on a bench and I put a towel over my head and I just broke down crying,” Russell says. “It was the pressure. It all just hit me at that time.”
Love lasts forever
On Valentine's Day, we shared Jerry and Carol Pulliam’s decades-long love story. Three weeks later, on March 5, 2015, they celebrated 70 years of marriage – a high school romance that outlasted a world war, moves around the country and a few tough UA basketball losses. It also paved the way for four beautiful daughters. Jerry and Carol, in love just as much in 2015 as they were in 1945, died within weeks of each other later in the year.
Back on course
Bob Barrette of Green Valley was looking for just the right person to build a set of custom golf clubs for. Ryland Morgan, 8, of Sahuarita was looking to get back on the course. A perfect match. A disability made it increasingly difficult for Ryland to handle standard clubs and play the game his grandfather – his biggest cheerleader – had taught him. His grandfather’s death in 2014 added to his setbacks. Barrette approached the family and went to work on a light-weight set of clubs just Ryland’s size. He promises to make Ryland’s next set of clubs, too.
Gotta dance!
Lynn Bienen has been dancing for decades and doesn't plan to stop. We met the 90-year-old Sahuarita woman last January and learned about her time with the noted Diane Davisson Dancers in Los Angeles. Bienen still takes dance lessons from Nancy Sakal in Quail Creek, and doesn't plan on stopping her lifelong love of movement. "Hearing the music and keeping up with the rhythm, it makes me feel so good,” she says.
Knows her stuff
Canoa Ranch golf pro Kris Hanson has done it all in golf and now shares her expertise with Green Valley.
She was a member of the 1983 NCAA championship-winning Texas Christian University women's golf team before spending 10 years on the pro tour. Her favorite memory as an LPGA pro was finishing 12th at the 1988 U.S. Open. "I still have goosebumps just thinking about it, because I got to live my dream."
Now this is fast
Green Valley's Rick Dorfmeyer is a speed freak. He has entered the Speed Week events at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah for seven years and holds the record for fastest aggregate speed on a motorcycle in the 650 CC division, going 194.3 mph in 2010. His goal is to build a bike that can go 212 mph — 14 mph faster than any time he's posted in seven attempts.
He's been around
In February, Green Valley News columnist Scott Dyke introduced us to Sahuarita cowboy and poet Marvin Haas. Haas regaled us with stories about faraway places like Turkmenistan and Angola, where he was a member of the Farm Credit Administration, which partnered with the U.S. government to supply agricultural supplies to underdeveloped countries. Haas picked up poetry a decade ago while living in Colorado, and enjoys writing about the desert. He has a soft spot for all things Western, having grown up in North Dakota.
Loves to ride
Longtime professional bull rider Scott Raftery retired to help take over a family horse cutting business south of Green Valley. Raftery learned the ins and outs of rodeo from his father, who was a cavalryman in the Army. Raftery went on to become the Arizona Junior Rodeo Association champion in 1971, and turned professional in 1975. He also won the bull-riding event at the Tucson Fiesta de los Vaqueros in 1982, and was the Turquoise Circuit champion that year. He said the fraternity he shared with his fellow riders was unmatched, though cutting horses with his daughter and son might be close behind.
Two great shots
English golfer John Phipps hit possibly the rarest shot in golf by sinking a double-eagle on the par-five fifth hole at Quail Creek's Roadrunner course in March. Phipps, 67, is a relative newcomer to the game, having picked it up two years ago after playing tennis growing up in Yorkshire County, England. "I really smashed it, and it was a very good shot for me because I'm not a very good golfer," he recalls. The odds of making a double-eagle are 6 million to one. That made it all the more interesting that just days later, Dave Pickering of Green Valley made the same shot — on the par-five fifth hole at Canoa Ranch. Pickering said he and his playing partners were confused because they thought the ball flew the green, and only found it in the hole after scouring the rough around the putting surface. "If you take the shot, there's always the potential for something great to happen," Pickering says. "Golf's all about potential."
Keep swinging!
In March, sports reporter Christopher Boan played a round of golf with Green Valley's Dick Pomo, who hosts a tournament for blind golfers from across the country. Boan tried his hand playing with a blindfold and a special pair of goggles that replicate macular degeneration. Pomo, 73, has been totally blind for 13 years, and plays with the help of longtime coach Clark Lambert.
If he builds it
Tubac legend Herb Wisdom has spent the better part of a decade building a ball park. Wisdom estimates he's spent close to $30,000 of his own money on the park, and said he's committed to helping the children in Tubac have a safe place to play. Wisdom began working on the field three years ago, and has received several donations, including a $3,500 check from American Legion Madera Post 131 in Green Valley. "Growing up here, we never had a park," Wisdom recalls. "So we always had to go on the road, and even today kids have to go to Nogales, to Rio Rico or to Tucson to play, because we don't have a park. I want to change that."
Loves the commute
Ruperto Del Angel loves to bike, and Pima County loves him. In 2015, he was named Pima County Bicycle Commuter of the Year. He rides his bike from Elephant Head to the Continental Road Safeway where he works. Del Angel has made the commute for 14 years, traveling 14 miles each way through all types of weather, and carries an extra inner tube and pump in case of a flat tire. "My body feels good when it's riding a bicycle," he says. "I enjoy doing it, so I just keep going, and I'm doing well because of it."
Raising a winner
Rose Estes bred several prized stallions during her career, including Saluter, who won six straight Virginia Gold Cup steeplechase races from 1994-99. Estes got into the horse business after becoming an avid fox hunter in the early 1980s in Loudoun County, Virginia. She launched her breeding career in 1986 with a few horses, but struck it big when Saluter was born in 1988. "I pretty much lived in the barn, and the night Saluter was born I was staying in our tack room," Estes recalls. "It was really cool because it was the first time that my parents had ever seen a newborn foal or had ever witnessed anything like that."
Just one more!
Green Valley golfer Jack Lutz, who has eagled or hit a hole-in-one on 17 of the 18 holes at Desert Hills Golf Club, is still gunning for the last one.
Lutz, 91 when we met him last year, picked up the game as a school teacher in California nearly 50 years ago. He still plays at least four times a week. He's hit 11 holes-in-one in his career, and had a simple explanation for his success: "L-U-C-K. Luck." He says the only thing that haunts him is the lone hole he's never beat, the par-three third. "Everyone, it seems, in this whole club has a hole-in-one on that hole expect for me," he said. "Even my wife has a hole-in-one on that hole."
He's No. 1
He says he's not as good today as he was five years ago, but 95-year-old Tudor ApMadoc still plays tennis every chance he gets. At one point, he was ranked No. 1 by the United States Tennis Association in the 90-year-old age group. Now, he has aged out of USTA-sanctioned events and doesn't play competitively. He picked up the game after serving in the Army during World War II and still calls it fun. "That's what matters,” he says.
Carving genius
Jack Blossfield has crafted more than 100 walking sticks out of yucca wood, and gives them to friends and family as gifts. Each is unique, but each also includes the image of a kokopelli. Blossfield says he struggles to produce the quantity he did in his younger days because his fingers aren't as nimble.
Historically accurate
Bobb Vann has painted portraits out of his Tubac studio for 20 years. Vann, trained at the Philadelphia College of Art, works to depict an accurate image of what life was like for African-Americans throughout history, including the Buffalo Soldiers who fought for the Army in the mid-19th century. Vann's work has been featured in galleries across the country, and says he enjoys painting pictures that are historical in nature. "I want to be honest in my work and I want to paint images that are historically factual and represent life as it was and still is," he says.
He's got the ring
World Series champ and Sahuarita resident George Vukovich played Major League Baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies and Cleveland Indians before finishing his career in Japan. He doesn't hold back when recounting the memories. Vukovich was a collegiate All-American with Southern Illinois University before moving to the majors, where he won a World Series ring during his rookie year in 1980. He was traded, and describes going from a perennial contender to the so-so Indians: "From the penthouse to the outhouse." He went on to win two championships in Japan with the Seibu Lions, but it never proved to be an enjoyable experience. "It was not a good fit," he recalls. "I hated them and they hated me. Tokyo is a hard place to get around." Vukovich still gives batting lessons to kids in town.
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