Fitz's Opinion: My interview with Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Former Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup is turning 85 on Nov. 14. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis has him tethered to oxygen 24/7 and Bob is telling me stories, while he still can, at his dining table, all the while smiling that indefatigable smile.

From Ames, Iowa, Walkup’s still tall as a barn and honest as a cornfield. When this cross between Harry Truman and Jimmy Stewart, with a touch of Ike, says aloud, “The thought of telling a lie is so painful,” you believe him.

This give-me-a-problem-we’ll-fix-it man served in the Army Corps of Civil Engineers, oversaw Fairchild-Republic’s production of the A-10, seamlessly consolidated and moved Hughes’ newly acquired missile production operations to Tucson and led 6,000 skilled taxpayers to Tucson.

When Bob was mayor, Tucson annexed the land his old missile-making employer sat on, hauling in a bundle of revenue for our city, helped create the Regional Transportation Authority plan, persevered through Rio Nuevo’s initial boondoggles, kick started the streetcar and planted the seeds that would revitalize our downtown.

I told him I thought his greatest accomplishment was rebuilding a ’77 VW surfer van to cherry perfection. Bob laughed. We sat among the many grandfather clocks he made for his kids. “Good legacy,” I said.

Legacy has been on his mind.

A lifelong Republican, he told me his greatest regret was not standing up to the tea party in 2006 when they cleansed his beloved party of the old-school Republicans. Folks like himself.

When he went to the statehouse asking for help, the tea-party punks sneered at him, deriding him as a “RINO” — Republican in Name Only. Bob’s sin? “When a proposal came up I asked myself, ‘Is it right or wrong? Good or bad? Not, ‘Is this an R or a D?’”

I voted for Bob three times.

“I was a track star,” he told me. “Set the state record for hurdles in 1954.” Never waste your time trying to slow Walkup down with hurdles. Engineers love challenges.

Attending his 60th birthday party, Sally Drachman, a Tucson philanthropist on the board of everything, greeted Bob with the title she hoped he’d hold. “Hi, Mister Mayor.”

Then she added, semi-apologetically, “Oh, it’s just you.”

The hint stuck with Bob.

“Mayor. I like that title. That’s the title for somebody trying to do something,” Bob told me. “I don’t want to be ‘just’ Bob. I can learn how to do this.

Beth, his bride, partner and personal “James Carville,” nudged him. “You’d be a great mayor. And I’d be a great campaign manager.” Beth’s dad and grandfather had been mayors of small towns in the heartland.

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An accomplished educator and fundraiser, she met Bob when she was representing Care International at a conference back in ’94. The focus was on raising money for a Challenger Center at Tucson’s Children’s Museum. Beth’s first impression of Captain Confident was, “Who does he think he is?”

Weeks before the ’99 mayoral election he went to a candidates’ debate in the Carrillo Elementary School cafeteria. Most candidates bored the assembled kids with talk of streetlights and potholes.

When it was Bob’s turn he pulled the mic off its stand and sat down on the bottom step to speak eye to eye with the third graders. “How many of you have a pet?” Bob talked about his love for his dog, Zoey. “You love and protect and care for your pet, right?”

Same with our parents, and our friends, and our city, right? The master storyteller wove it all together and promised, if elected, to return with his beloved pooch. True to his promise the first thing the newly elected mayor did was return to Carillo, his pup in tow. “They loved him!”

Beneath Bob’s perpetually cheerful exterior is a strong sense of right and wrong.

Mayor Walkup was invited to speak at a conference of mayors from all over Russia in Almaty, Kazakhistan, one of Tucson’s six sister cities. Beth told him what she’d learned that morning at a domestic violence shelter about oppressive attitudes about women throughout the region.

Bob addressed the mayors. “We don’t have snow like you do.”

Laughter.

He then talked about what we do have in Tucson: compassion for the welfare of women and intolerance for domestic violence. No laughter. “I was not warmly received by the crowd.”

Bob was mayor when six Tucsonans were killed and 12 wounded by a man with a Glock semi-automatic pistol on Jan. 8, 2011. Bob welcomed President Barack Obama to Tucson and watched him scribble his speech on the run. We Tucsonans gathered at McKale to hear the president.

“We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives,” Obama said. “Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children and our community, whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality.”

This next line is Bob’s favorite part.

“And we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth or status or power or fame, but rather how well we have loved and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.”

These words, this sentiment of service sums up Bob Walkup’s life.

“Beth and I want that on our tombstone.”