Museum: Arizona Heritage Center

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.

Join us and Dr. Yolonda Youngs for a presentation on her recent publication Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon.

From the University of Nebraska Press: In Framing Nature Yolonda Youngs traces the idea of the Grand Canyon as an icon and the ways people came to know it through popular imagery and visual media. She analyzes and interprets more than fourteen hundred visual artifacts, including postcards, maps, magazine illustrations, and photographs of the Grand Canyon, supplemented with the words and ideas of writers, artists, explorers, and other media makers from 1869 to 2022. Framing Nature provides a novel interpretation of how places, especially national parks, are transformed into national and environmental symbols.

Join us and author David DeJong for a book talk on his most recent work, Damming the Gila: the Gila River Indian Community and the San Carlos Irrigation Project, 1900–1942. Damming the Gila chronicles the history of water rights and farming activities on the Gila River Indian Reservation up to 1942. Centered on the San Carlos Irrigation Project and Coolidge Dam, it details the history and development of the project, including the Gila Decree and the Winters Doctrine.