Samuel P. Goddard Interview -- Tucson Festival of the Arts

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PS = Pam Stevenson - Agave Productions

SG = Sam Goddard

PS (Interviewer): ...just to refresh your memory, let's go back at first to talk about when you first came to Tucson, tell me about what Tucson was like when you first arrived there.

SG (Goddard): It was a nifty little town and it used to be walled, you know. There was still a little bit of the wall left, which they had preserved. And, uh, Tucson was very different from Phoenix. It had sort of a microcosm of the arts. Uh, at one time we did quite a deal to put the arts in a festival, raise the limit of the winter season, which meant a lot to the merchants; if we couuld add a week to the winter season it was just incredibly important. So we pulled together a lot of the, uh, they had organizations for each type of art. I mean they had the watercolor painters and the oil painters, they had the dramam people and they had -- you name it, we had about twenty-six organizations.
And at one time, uh, do you remember Senator Douglas? Well, maybe not. He was from, guess where? Douglas, Arizona and uh, he and the editor of the Tucson Daily Star, Bill Matthews were having a luncheon across the street from where we had all these art people assembled and we thought it would be wonderful if we could have our festival with Mr. Douglas as the chair person. So I went across the street and asked him to come over and listen to the proposition that the art people were, were doing. I say art, I meant all: drama, the whole works. And, uh, he did. And I gave him the gavel and he pounded it and nobody paid any attention to him whatsoever. And they all talked just as loud as they did before and so he said (laughing) 'Sam this just isn't for me.' He laid down the gavel and left. So I had to be the, the chair of the Tucson Council of the Arts.