“It’s the end of a really big era here in Tucson” as David Fitzsimmons retires from his public life of raising “easily a million dollars” for community organizations and charitable causes as an emcee extraordinaire for decades.
So notes his fellow community fundraiser and longtime partner in standup comedy, attorney Elliot Glicksman, who adds: “It’s not only the money he raised. He would speak at every high school class. He would emcee every auction, every event. Roasts. Letting himself be roasted. He does almost all of them without pay. He’s tireless in how much he does.”
Agrees Tom Beal, a now retired writer who was a longtime colleague of Fitzsimmons at the Arizona Daily Star, “He has been such a champion of everyone who asked, for free. He could be making money at these gigs, but that’s just not who David is. He’s not just the funniest man I know, he’s also the kindest.”
Early this year, Fitz also retired from his storied career — finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; nationally syndicated in about 700 newspapers when that many still existed — as a Star editorial cartoonist and columnist.
And now, at 68, he must take care of himself.
“I no longer will be performing in front of audiences anymore,” he announced Wednesday, in words that sound like he needs to convince himself, in the newsletter “David Fitzsimmons: Arizona’s Progressive Voice” he will continue to write on the online publishing platform Substack.
“You heard me right. In order to focus on recovering what health I have I am retiring from public speaking. All of it. Standup, keynotes, school lectures, emceeing, auctioneering, luncheon speeches, moderating. No more exertion. Nothing that might leave me winded. You’ve got to know ‘when to leave the stage’ and protect your health.”
“… The same arteriosclerosis that blocked my heart’s main artery, a year and a half ago, and required a stent, is now plugging up the teeny tiny itty bitty capillaries (more medical mumbo jumbo) around the southeast portion of my heart, causing me to crave oxygen, like a Koi out of water, and to experience Angina, which I was surprised to learn is not a small African nation.
“Which means I have to take being a slacker seriously.”
Arizona Daily Star cartoonist David Fitzsimmons gets his ribs in on then-Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik at a surprise roast in 2015.
Oh, but first, there will be one more big show, “Dave Fitzsimmons Presents: The 9th Annual Old Pueblo Holiday Radio Show,” on Dec. 9 at the historic Rialto Theater, featuring “the Arroyo Cafe Players, with guests Bobby Rich, the vocal stylings of Mindy Ronstadt, Tucson’s #1 comedian Priscilla Fernandez, MixFM’s Marty Bishop, Elliot Glicksman, Lucinda Holliday, and Dave Membrila, with our rocking house band the amazing ‘Cadillacs’, our fabulous ‘Grandsons of the Pioneers’ and our astonishing pianist, on loan from the Gaslight, Sly Slipetsky.”
“Even if I have to be wheeled around the stage by Nurse Ratchet like Hannibal Lecter I’m doing the show,” Fitzsimmons wrote in his newsletter a few days ago, adding, “EMTs get in free” and proceeds this year will benefit Doctors Without Borders. Also, this bit of reassurance: “My situation is not dire, just tiring,” all praise to “miracle drugs” and good cardiologists.
The holiday event started out as a fundraiser for the Southern Arizona Diaper Bank, just one of his favorites. Here’s a list of recent benefits Fitz has done: Youth On Their Own, Dancing in the Streets, Casas Alitas, Dr. Valenzuela Project, Standup to Stop Violence, Friends of Sun Sounds, Step Up for Justice, Reveille Gay Mens’ Chorus, The Gut Check Foundation, Tucson Girls Chorus, Pima JTED, Tucson Musicians Museum, The Loft, Amphi District Gala, Miracle en el Barrio Comedy for Charity, Moms Demand Action, Homicide Survivors, Pima County Retired Teachers, Tucson Unified School District’s Camp Cooper, Tucson Festival of Books Young Authors Awards and Authors Banquet, Jazmin’s Lunch Break at Diamond Children’s Center, Odyssey of the Mind, Laughing Liberally, Making Strides Against Cancer, Viva Tucson at El Casino Ballroom and Tucson Children’s Museum.
In his recent memory he also emceed the St. Patrick’s Day Parade & Festival, gave commencement addresses at Desert View, Sunnyside and University high schools and the University of Arizona College of Science, and spoke at the federal and state prisons here and two juvenile centers.
For years he was the entertainment for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department awards banquet. “Every year they find a different way to bring me to the stage, cuffed in jail orange, strapped to a dolly like Hannibal Lecter, riding the bomb robot like Santa on a sleigh,” he said. “My favorite was wearing a dog trainer suit so I could be attacked onstage by PCSD K-9s. Nothing gives you an alpha rush like a K-9 running at you at full speed and leaping at your arm.”
“David’s really a beloved character in Tucson,” said Glicksman, quickly adding, “He certainly has his detractors.” Describing what he did for a living as a liberal political cartoonist, Fitzsimmons would tell audiences “I piss people off.” He had a running gag that his kids liked it because “I pay them a dollar a day to start my car.”
Fitzsimmons remembers the fun he had riffing on stage for 5 or 10 minutes on a Trump fan who had just stalked out of a luncheon in a huff with his wife, musing about him “bitching about me until dinnertime.”
But because ripping politicians and institutions to hold them accountable was his job, Fitz found, starting in about the late 1980s, that raising funds for groups he cares about was a way to flip the script. “I thought it was important to reach out to the community and be a good ambassador,” as people “kick newspapers like we’re the gas company or the postal service” rather than “humble humans doing our best everyday,” he said.
The Star’s editors added it up once — he was representing the paper at some 150 community events a year. And this from a guy who says “I was honestly a shy person in high school” (at Rincon, class of 1973).
Beal said the gushing about him after his announcement in the past week sounds almost like a eulogy to the man who was, as Glicksman pointed out, always called on to do those, too.
“Part of me hopes this is a ploy to get people to write eulogies about him while he can still read them,” while spurring a sentimental surge in ticket sales for the “supposedly last” holiday radio show, Beal joked (get them for $22.50 at bit.ly/48ViSrt). “Maybe he’ll be back next year, like Cher.”
“I think we as a community need to say, ‘You know what, Fitz, you rest, and we won’t ask anymore,’” said Debbie Rich, director of philanthropy for Tu Nudito, a cause she said he championed since its founding 28 years ago, “his heart close to our mission” of providing grief support to children and families. “He’s given so much.”
“He’s an icon,” Beal said. “He’s Mr. Tucson. And he’s not going anywhere. We’ll still be able to read his insightful, heartfelt and funny columns on Substack.” (“Writing them pleases my heart,” Fitz said. They’re at substack.com/@davidwfitzsimmons.)
“And I’ve talked to him. He’s gonna be OK. He just needs to slow down a little bit.”
As Fitz put it, “I am curiously happy with this decision after a lifetime of being a public figure who has enjoyed the good will of this unique, beautiful, diverse, welcoming, wonderful community which I have called home most of my fortunate life.”
