Street Smarts: Eddie Araiza, cowboy, businessman and proud veteran

The Veterans Memorial Overpass in Tucson honors all who have served our nation’s military, including Eddie Araiza, who went from being a ranch and racetrack hand to patrolling European bases as part of a military police company during World War II.

Eddie was born in 1924 in San Bernardino, California, after his parents, Alfredo and Francisca, moved there in 1922 to continue working for the Isaacson family, who had moved their cattle operation from Southern Arizona. They moved there with Alfredo’s sisters, Ernestine Araiza and Sarah Salaz.

In 1926, Eddie’s parents returned to Arizona to live with family near Cascabel, along the San Pedro River north of Benson, because Francisca had developed tuberculosis. She soon died.

Alfredo remarried, to her sister Isabel. They would have children Ernesto, Helen, William and Mary.

Eddie stayed in California with his aunts until he was 5 years old.

In 1929, Alfredo returned to pick up Eddie and take him to live in Cascabel with his widowed-maternal-grandfather, Miguel Gamez. It was his mother’s wish.

Miguel was living in a one-bedroom adobe house that had a dirt roof and a fireplace in the kitchen that was seldom used because the old wood-burning stove was hot enough.

“My grandfather Miguel always kept a pot of beans and a pot of coffee on the stove for anyone to have if they came by, and the screen door to the kitchen was always open,” Eddie recalls.

“He took me all over the place, on the back of his horse to check on his cattle, in his Model A Ford for trips to Benson … wherever he went, I went. My grandfather took me with him everywhere.”

“I remember my grandfather was very strict with my four uncles, Juan, Ramon, Miguel and Rafael, making them work hard on the ranch. He wanted them to be good workers, and it rubbed off on me.”

“When my grandfather Miguel died in Benson, they took his body back to Cascabel, and put him in the bed of a Model T pickup truck, and my uncles Ramon and Miguel stood on the running boards with their hats off, one on each side, all the way back to the family cemetery.”

Eddie’s education consisted of attending the rural Pool School, named for a nearby rancher, which was the only school in Cascabel. After his eighth-grade graduation, Eddie stopped going to school and did odd jobs.

“The reason I did not go to high school was because my family did not have the money for room and board to send me to Benson, which was about 30 miles away. Benson had the closest high school at the time,” he said.

He was 16 years old in April 1941 when he went to live and work near Vail at the X-9 Ranch, where he was a handyman and also helped the cowboys during roundups. It was here in December of that year that he learned the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, but he didn’t realize how the world would soon change.

In late 1942, still too young to serve in the military, Araiza went to live and work for Rukin Jelks, a horse breeder, at his ranch and personal racetrack on River Road, which would later become the Rillito Racetrack.

In March 1943, Araiza received his draft notice and soon joined the military.

By then, his father and the rest of the family had moved to Tucson. His father gave him a ride to the downtown train station and unceremoniously left him there, he recalls.

Eddie Araiza was waiting for his train when he met Santiago Gallardo, who was also heading off to war.

It turned out that Santiago Gallardo, who lived in Tucson’s Barrio Hollywood, ended up not only going through training with Araiza, but that they would be in the same outfit throughout their time in the U.S. Army.

Araiza initially reported to Fort MacArthur, outside of Los Angeles, where he completed the first part of his basic training, including getting all of his shots and clothing. He continued his basic training in Fresno, California, then went to Camp Ripley in Minnesota for more training along the upper Mississippi River.

During their time at Camp Ripley, Araiza’s outfit was designated as the 1185th Military Police Company and received advanced infantry training, including bayonet training. They also were taught to drive all types of military vehicles, 4x4 trucks, jeeps, motorcycles, etc.

When winter approached, they went to Ft. Snelling, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they were moved into three-man huts to get out of the freezing weather. From Snelling the unit went to Camp Shanks in New York, the largest Army embarkation camp used in World War II.

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The unit departed for Europe on the Queen Mary in November 1943. The troops slept in hammocks during the trip. If you were on the bottom hammock, you could not even turn around when sleeping because of the bodies stacked on top of each other, Araiza said.

After disembarking from the ship, the unit traveled by train, arriving at Cottesmore, England. The Royal Air Force had an air base there, but it was used to house units of the U.S. Army, including the 1185th Military Police Company.

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There, the 1185th was on duty patrolling the base, using jeeps along the perimeter and monitoring the activities at the two gates to the facility.

In the summer of 1944, after the Normandy Invasion, the 1185th flew into a captured airfield outside of Roye in northern France in C-47’s.

There they pulled guard duty at the gates to the airfield that was used by the Ninth Air Force combat units shortly after its capture. In addition to the air combat units stationed at Roye, the facility housed supplies, ammunition and fuel along with potable water and an electrical grid for communications.

He was still in Roye in May 1945 when Germany surrendered.

“We celebrated with our company commander, Lt. Paul, and we got in a weapons carrier vehicle and drove to town. There were a lot of people celebrating. The people all came out to their main plaza, where they offered us cognac to drink. They didn’t have much themselves but they did a lot of dancing. We didn’t want to take any of their food so we didn’t stay very long.”

In early August, the 1185th was loaded on to the U.S. Navy transport ship USS General J.R. Brooke, originally headed for the Philippines, but ended up being redirected to New York after the Japanese surrendered.

After getting to Chicago from New York, Araiza left by train for home in November 1945.

When he arrived at the train station in Tucson, he took a taxi to his parents’ home, which at the time was near what is now East Pima Street and North Swan Road. He reunited with his family, with many tears shed.

A couple days later, he headed downtown to get some money at the Valley National Bank, now Chase Bank, where he ran into Rukin Jelks, his former boss. After greeting him, Jelks offered him his old job back at his ranch and racetrack. Araiza replied that he didn’t know what he wanted to do.

“I didn’t want to go back to the racetrack or any ranch because they were not paying that much and the work was too hard.”

His years of military service had given him the idea of what he was able to accomplish, giving him more confidence in himself and a kind of discipline he never had before.

In time, he got a job working with this uncle Rafael Gamez at Adam’s Tree Service, trimming and removing trees and doing some landscaping. In 1950, after five years of learning the trade from Adam’s, he decided to start his own tree trimming business.

The same year, Araiza married Dolores Guerra, whom he had originally met at the Blue Moon dance hall on Miracle Mile. They would have three kids, Laurita, Alfredo and Frances Deanna.

Over the years, his business, the Araiza Tree Service, thrived. By the 1970s, he owned three work vehicles, including a one-ton dump truck, a wood chipper, and a number of chain saws.

For the next 30 years, he continued his main business operation until he finally closed it down by 1980. Then for the next 19 years he worked on his own.

Even though he didn’t return to ranching work as a way of life after the war, he never ventured too far from his cowboy roots. After the war, he roped calves, then competed in team roping events as a means of recreation on weekends. He stopped competitive roping by the time he turned 75.

In 2000, he made a special trip to the family cemetery where Araiza’s ancestors have been interred since the late 1800s, near Cascabel, which was on the C-Spear Ranch property, just north of his uncle Ramon’s home.

The purpose for Araiza’s trip was to replace the white, termite-riddled cross his father and uncle Ramon had placed on the top of the ridge overlooking the cemetery years before, with a much bigger and sturdier cross of his own.

He told his son: “My dad and uncle were the first to put one up. It was my duty to put up the (new) cross. It will be your duty, or someone else’s, to put up the next one. It is our family obligation.”