Category: All Stories

[caption id="attachment_52" align="alignleft" width="700"]Gerardo Armendariz runs through salsa dance techniques in a class before the Sunday Salsa Social at Arizona Ballroom in Tucson. The social is held every second and fourth Sunday of the month. (Photo by Josh Morgan/ASNS) [/caption]

 

Rodrigo Fernandez swiveled and shook his hips with what looked like chaos inside the Tucson ballroom but in fact was the precision of his body moving with each pounding beat of the salsa music.

Fernandez, 28, a junior network administrator at DLC Resources Inc. in Phoenix and a 2005 University of Arizona graduate with a double major in computer science and math, said dancing salsa in his spare time is one of his passions.

“I say, people should try dancing at least once in their life,” said Fernandez, who speaks softly and always with a slight smile. “I think it’s one of those things you have to do before you are no longer on Earth.”

Christie Coombs’ husband was senselessly taken away from her in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but the Yuma native who now lives in Abington, Mass., has dealt with her sorrow for the last 10 years by giving back to others in need.

Coombs, a 1982 University of Arizona journalism graduate, lost her husband Jeffrey, a 1981 UA business graduate, when the plane he was on slammed into the World Trade Center in New York.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Jeffrey Coombs boarded American Airlines Flight 11 in Boston, on his way to Los Angeles on a business trip for his job at Compaq Inc.

Flight 11 was the first airplane to hit the World Trade Center.

[caption id="attachment_47" align="alignright" width="600"]Odell Borg, owner of High Spirits Flutes, says anyone can learn to play the Native American flute. (Photo by Sandra Westdahl/ASNS)[/caption]For Odell Borg, one of the most elusive qualities of a good flute is consistency.

“Nowadays, when you’re playing with other instruments, be it guitar, piano or any other instrument, it has to be in a certain key,” said Borg, owner and chief craftsman at High Spirit Flutes in Patagonia. “That’s always a challenge, to get consistency in tuning.”

Borg has been making and selling handcrafted flutes for more than 20 years. He and his staff of 14 work hard to achieve the kind of consistency expected by their discerning customers. He said the current process of making a flute has been honed through trial and error. It takes between two and three weeks to transform blocks of wood into musical instruments.

Though it began in a one-car garage in California, High Spirits Flutes has expanded year by year and now offers 65 Native American-inspired flutes of differing keys and pitch ranges. All of the instruments are crafted onsite and then sold locally and internationally.

It takes thousands of taps from a small wooden hammer onto cowhide to make a fancy saddle, and Talabartería Rancho Grande in Magdalena, Sonora, has been doing it for more than 60 years.

Strips of leather are piled in one corner of the saddle shop, which occupies a corner of a narrow one-way street in the Mexican town about 50 miles south of the border. The smell of leather is distinct throughout the shop.

Luis Molina founded Talabartería Rancho Grande in 1949 after he heard ranchers complaining that they didn’t have a comfortable saddle to ride in for hours, or the saddles they did have weren’t durable and broke too easily.

Ruben Suarez’ dreams are too tough to die.

The real estate investor owns the historic Bella Union at 401 E. Fremont St. and the Adobe Lodge Motel at 501 E. Fremont St. in Tombstone, and even though both of the businesses are forcibly up for sale because Suarez is in the midst of a bankruptcy proceeding, he still has his dreams.

Suarez, a father of three and Tucson native, said he was drawn to Tombstone because “the history thing kind of made my business judgments a little fogged. It was a little emotional thing. You can’t get emotional.”

Despite his problems, Suarez said he hopes to keep the Bella Union, which he called his second home and the gem of all his holdings, which also include a motel and bowling alley in Benson and various lots in Tombstone.