Crawling on her stomach through Kartchner Caverns with former Gov. Bruce Babbitt, Betsy Bolding was grateful for her childhood summers scrambling over boulders in Iron Springs, near Prescott.
Bolding, 74, has her parents and grandparents to thank for those summers β and for her deep involvement in the city and state.
As the first director of the governorβs Southern Arizona office, Bolding accompanied Babbitt on a secret tour of the newly discovered cave in the 1980s. Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts, the men who found the cave, wanted to properly protect it before making it public knowledge and led a group that included the governor, Bolding, a University of Arizona geologist, members of the Kartchner family and Babbittβs two sons. One of them lost a shoe in the mud.
βWe climbed down into this thing on our stomachs, and it was really wild,β Bolding says.
It was a step toward protecting the caverns as a state park.
This is her lifeβs work. From a position at the governorβs office to her involvement in countless local organizations to a 25-year career with Tucson Electric Power that ended in March, Boldingβs passion is to preserve and serve this state.
βI love Arizona,β she says. βI love its beauty. I love everything about it, because I grew up here.β
FAMILY ROOTS
Boldingβs Midwestern grandparents moved to small ranch between Phoenix and Glendale before Arizonaβs statehood. Her grandmother taught in a one-room school house, and Bolding remembers hearing her mother talk about visiting Phoenix when Arizona became a state.
She rolled bandages with her grandmother for the American Red Cross and tagged along when her mother and grandmother volunteered at well-baby clinics.
She learned to love the arts through those trips to the city. Sometimes, they caught a ballet or theater performance.
βYou have the men who held elected office and ran things, but then you have the women who settled the communities,β Bolding says. βThey built the libraries and they taught in schools and they did the well-baby clinics. They are the ones who made the communities livable places.β
Her family talked politics at the table. Her grandmother, a staunch Republican and teetotaler, worked on campaigns and adored Barry Goldwater. A photo of him still hangs in the family cabin in Iron Springs, alongside recent additions of Babbitt and Sandra Day OβConnor.
Boldingβs grandfather was on a water board in the Phoenix area and made decisions about farmersβ water use.
βI would sit under his desk and listen to him talk,β she says. βLater in life, I realized why people brought us big crates of lettuce and buckets of eggs. Itβs always politics.β
Her grandparents honeymooned in Iron Springs and then purchased a cabin there in 1936. Fathers took the train up on weekends, but βduring the week, it was just dogs, kids and moms,β Bolding says. They went for 13 weeks and took 13 chickens.
There, in the cooler temperatures, her family met others with Arizona roots. She βpalled aroundβ with future supermarket magnate Eddie Basha and remembers a tennis tournament with the OβConnor family shortly after Sandra Day OβConnorβs appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
βWe used to laugh if she called the ball out,β Bolding says. βThereβs no arguing with a Supreme Court judge.β
POLITICAL ITCH
The University of Arizona brought Bolding to Tucson.
She graduated with a bachelorβs degree in journalism and a masterβs degree in English and got a teaching job at Palo Verde High Magnet School.
Later, as a Santa Rita High School teacher, she started doing news interviews part time for Channel 11, where she met politicians such as Babbitt. In 1978, she would co-chair his campaign and become the first director of the governorβs Southern Arizona office, where she worked for eight years.
Jan Lesher, a deputy county administrator for Pima County, met Bolding on the Babbitt campaign.
βShe is one of those women that once she gets someplace, she makes sure that other women get something as well,β Lesher says. βWhen she was in the governorβs office, she was always finding boards and commissions and things for the governor to appoint a Southern Arizona woman, so they could get to Phoenix to understand the Legislatureβs process.β
Following her work in Babbittβs office, Bolding briefly became the director of Tucson Tomorrow Inc., a problem-solving organization that focused on social and economic issues, and eventually ended up at Tucson Electric Power as the manager of consumer affairs.
But politics called again. When Mayor George Miller left office, he encouraged her to run in 1999.
βIt was a great experience. Iβm glad I did it,β says Bolding, a lifelong Democrat. Sheβs also glad she didnβt get elected.
βBeing the idealist that I am, I would have been really disappointed,β she says, adding that since then she has seen the challenges and limits that a mayor faces.
βA FORCE OF NATUREβ
When Leigh Spencer, the program coordinator for the UAβs Womenβs Studies Advisory Council and Womenβs Plaza of Honor, met Bolding nearly a decade ago, she didnβt realize the extent of her community involvement.
βI worked with her for over a year and did a Google search on her before I realized she is a complete force of nature,β Spencer says. βIf I had known, I probably would have been afraid to talk to her.β
The number of organizations that Bolding has supported over the years is formidable β The Loft Cinema; Arizona Public Media; Prescott College; Southern Arizona Research, Science and Engineering Foundation; Southern Arizona Green Chamber of Commerce; Habitat for Humanity; the UAβs Cooper Center for Environmental Learning; the UAβs Womenβs Studies Advisory Council.
In her fledgling retirement, she doesnβt sit on all those boards anymore and is βno longer the president of anything.β Sheβs held that post on the boards of the Arizona Theatre Company, The Loft Cinema, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, the Womenβs Studies Advisory Council and Prescott College. In 2002, she was named Woman of the Year by the cityβs chamber of commerce. And that still doesnβt cover everything.
βIβm just interested in a lot of things, and I have a lot of curiosity, and itβs a curse,β she says. βI canβt go someplace without making a suggestion, and then I find myself drawn in.β
Lawrence Lucero, Boldingβs recent boss at TEP, jokingly says she βhoards organizations.β To fit it all in, she worked long hours.
βIf I came in on a Saturday or Sunday to work or catch up on stuff or stayed late, invariably she would come toddling in,β says Lucero, senior director for government relations and economic development for TEP. βThatβs so Betsy.β
Itβs not uncommon to receive a late-night email from Bolding β who then scolds prompt responders for not being asleep.
BETSY BOLDING DAY
In February, Supervisor Sharon Bronson proclaimed March 1 to be βBetsy Bolding Dayβ in honor of Boldingβs retirement and dedication to the community.
Her boss sent her to the meeting that day with orders to represent TEP and support the companyβs Trees for Tucson program.
βBronson starts reading this proclamation and only then does it dawn on her that this is about her,β Lucero says, laughing. βShe is behind me, and I hear this gasp, and then she says, βIβm going to kill you.ββ
LOOKING TO RETIREMENT
Bolding has plans for retirement: humanities lectures at the UA, more movies (in theaters, not at home where distractions abound) and finding a good reading chair. She is raising her teenaged granddaughter β after raising three children, she finds parenting different this time around.
She doesnβt think she will ever truly retire. And Tucson isnβt about to let her go quietly, anyways.
On March 1, more than 100 people showed up for her retirement party at The Shanty. On May 16, the UAβs College of Social and Behavioral Sciences will present her with an honorary degree.
Even though sheβs no longer working, she still seems to be everywhere. And she seems to know everyone.
βThe best fundraiser in the world would be to auction off Betsy Boldingβs Rolodex,β says The Shantyβs owner, Bill Nugent, a longtime friend. βWe would make millions of dollars.β
