Armando Carrillo once held Elvis Presley’s hand.
Carrillo, a Tucson boy who found fame on the gridiron as the all-star quarterback for the Tucson High School Badgers, was the rock and roll star’s commander at Ft. Hood in Texas. One day in training, Presley, who had been drafted in 1958, injured his hand.
Carrillo took Presley’s hand, examined it, and declared the guy with the famous hips was fit for duty.
That’s a story that Carrillo loved to tell friends and new acquaintances. But he was known to his circle of family and friends for more than having held the King’s hand.
Carrillo, who died July 24 at the age of 88, was a retired U.S. Army colonel-turned-educator who taught special education and coached football at Amphitheater Junior High School. He was also a descendent of one of Tucson’s pioneering territorial families and the grandson of the founder of La Cebadilla Ranch at the foot of the Rincon Mountains.
“He was very proud of the family legacy,” said Carrillo’s daughter, Carla Carrillo Otterson.“In addition to being a third-generation Tucsonan, he gave back to the community quite a bit.”
Her father was active with the Tucson High School Foundation. He is in the school’s Hall of Fame, and served as president of the Tucson High School Alumni “T” Club, helping raise funds to support the school and students.
Service to community and country was a core value of his.
After Carrillo graduated in 1945, he enlisted in the Army and served in the Philippines. In 1951, he married Rachel Sepulveda of Ft. Huachuca and returned home to attend the University of Arizona, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1953. Having left military service, Carrillo re-enlisted in the Army, served in the Korean War, and was subsequently stationed at Ft. Hood.
Later he served in Vietnam during the war, and was stationed in Germany and in the Panama Canal Zone. Carrillo retired from the Army in 1975, and returned to Tucson with his wife and two children, Robert and Carla.
He enrolled a second time at the UA to earn a master’s degree, launching his 12-year education career.
But his real dream was to have been a cowboy, said Carrillo’s daughter.
“He would always tell stories about growing up on the ranch,” she said.
Carrillo’s grandfather, Eduardo Carrillo, established the cattle ranch — now La Cebadilla Estates — north of the Tanque Verde Wash, near North Wentworth and East Redington roads. Carrillo began the ranch after registering his “EC” brand in 1887.
The Carrillo name was already well-established in Tucson. Leopoldo Carrillo, Eduardo Carrillo’s uncle, came to Tucson from Sonora in the late 1850s, after Tucson was incorporated into the United States.
Leopoldo Carrillo was an entrepreneur. He created Carrillo Gardens on South Main Avenue. Tucsonans could rent rowboats on spring-fed ponds, eat at the restaurant, socialize in the dance hall, ride ponies, view animals in the zoo, and best of all, savor ice cream. Later, Carrillo Gardens became known as Elysian Grove.
Carrillo Elementary School is named after Leopoldo Carrillo, who was one of the founders of the Arizona Territory’s first school district, today’s Tucson Unified School District. Carrillo’s name is also attached to one of Tucson’s oldest dwellings, downtown’s Sosa-Carrillo-Frémont house.
“The Carrillo family has been around for so many generations,” said Otterson, who, along with her brother, graduated from Sabino High School. “Everywhere you look, there is a Carrillo connection.”
In addition to the Carrillo connection, Armando Carrillo’s grandmother, Dolores, wife of Eduardo, was the daughter of another well-known and accomplished Tucsonan, Carlos Velasco.
Velasco founded the weekly Spanish-language newspaper El Fronterizo in 1878, which operated for more than 30 years. In 1894, he was a co-founder of the Alianza Hispano-Americana, a mutual-aid association for Tucson’s Mexican-American community, which eventually expanded across the Southwest.
Otterson said her father always had an attachment to Tucson. When he retired from the Army in 1975, her parents could have picked California or Colorado to live in. But the connection to Tucson and the family legacy was too strong a lure, Otterson said.
“He had a strong sense of family and family values,” she said.
