Events by this organizer

Win was the sixth publisher of the Arizona Highways magazine, a task he excelled at for 18 years. He is now an informal ambassador for the magazine and will join us to talk about how Arizona Highways has remained relevant for a century. Through historical and contemporary photographs, we’ll learn how this fabulous publication has thrived by attracting elite landscape photographers and by using an unconventional publishing business model.

Win grew up in the Chicago area. He holds a degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University. After a delightfully circuitous route in advertising, he moved with his wife, Carolyn, and their
three children to the Valley in 1980. He has been recognized for his contributions by a variety of organizations, including the Arizona Office of Tourism, the Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association and the Business Journal. He was inducted into the Arizona Tourism Hall of Fame in 2007.

Lunch may be purchased online or reserve your place with Susan Howard and pay by cash or check by October 3.  Members with reservations are responsible for payment even if unable to attend.

The Historical League welcomes guests to our monthly general meetings and programs. Meetings start at 10 a.m. followed by a program and catered lunch. See our website, HistoricalLeague.org for more information.

As we honor our veterans this month we will be joined by Diane Burke Fessler, author of No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses of World War II. She wrote her first book to honor the nurses of the 1940s. Her aunt was an army nurse who wrote letters every week from her stations overseas and led Fessler to want to write about her. After attending a reunion of the 166th General Hospital in 1989 with “Auntie Raine” (Lorraine Krause Taylor), she interviewed and wrote the oral histories of more than 200 nurses whose stories had not been told. Covering all theaters of war, the nurses told of their overseas assignments, including the first flight nurses, women at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, prisoners of the Japanese in the Philippines, and African American nurses who served in a segregated U.S. Army.
Diane Burke Fessler grew up in Chicago, graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in Journalism, and lives in Phoenix. She also contributed a chapter about women in Arizona during the 1940s to a book titled Arizona Goes To War: The Home Front and Front Lines During World War II, published by University of Arizona Press.

We are delighted to be welcoming Pat McMahon as the speaker for our December holiday celebration. Over the course of his career, he’s won seven Emmys, is an inductee into several halls of fame, and is a 1993 Arizona Historymaker. He is the winner of both an International Broadcasting Gold Medal and an Edward R. Murrow Award. He is a longstanding fixture of the Phoenix broadcasting scene, serving as a program director, a disc jockey, and a talk-show host, among other positions. But most of us know him as Gerald, the over-privileged brat; Aunt Maud, the elderly storyteller of dark tales; Captain Super, the phony superhero; Hub Kapp, the rock and roll star; and a host of other characters from the Wallace & Ladmo Show. The show was one of the longest running locally produced children’s shows in America. He’s proud of that, and we are too.

Pat was born to life-long vaudeville performers Jack and Adelaide McMahon, who performed a variety-dance act that took the three McMahons worldwide. He was home schooled on the road but later attended a private high school and college in the Midwest. After a stint in the Army, Pat made his way to Arizona in May 1960, where he has made his home ever since.

Oh, the stories he’s able to tell, and we’re looking forward to hearing them all. Pat will tell us about his life and how the Wallace & Ladmo shows impacted him and Arizona history.

The Historical League welcomes guests to our monthly general meetings and programs. Meetings start at 10 a.m. followed by a program and catered lunch. See our website, HistoricalLeague.org for more information.