Among the Tucsonans that I visited while researching my 1990 book were first cousins, Oliver and Roy Drachman. Both had lived there with their own families of young children in the 1930s. Now in 1990 with a lifetime of service to the community, either could be called "Mr. Tucson."
"The house at 1029 Palm Road was the first home I ever bought" said Roy Drachman. He told me the price, number of years he and his family lived there; while talking, he drew a diagram from memory listing the names of the families on the street. "The Palm Road neighborhood would make a good story" he said, when I showed him my proposed book.
What a memory, I thought, for someone who has bought and sold so much of the real estate in Tucson in the last sixty years, to remember all the details about the first home he bought!
Oliver Drachman, too, remembered the neighborhood families. They rented 1041 Palm Road in the early 1930s, moved in December 1941. "She was a fine lady" he said, as I showed him some of the pictures from her family album. Oliver's father had owned that same land in 1906.
"It was a lovely neighborhood to raise the children." said Mrs. Oliver Drachman. "That vacant lot was the neighborhood playground.
Mrs. Marshall gave it to my parents as income property and a possible retirement home.
When the University expanded my parents were paid the appraised amount of $9,000. In
1990 it would have been convenient home for our son Brian, as his office was in South Hall.
"Sometimes I feel as though I were washed up and stranded upon some foreign shore," Louise wrote on April 27, 1953 in a letter to Leila Harrington.
A correct comment considering how much had changed since she first came; she did not know that soon the entire neighborhood would vanish!
toward the University, Second Street crosses the middle of the picture, meeting it
(left) is Palm Road and (right) Olive Road. The U-shaped building in the center of the
picture is the Marshall Terrace Apartments. At the base of the UA is the Marshall
home. The meeting-room addition to the home is nearest the Terrace and the dark circle
is a round garden (the carriage turn-around). In the upper right comer of the picture is
South Hall and Arizona Hall (now South Hall) and in the upper center is Old Main.
Photo courtesy Special Collections, University of Arizona Library.