BONNIE HENRY: Devoted to community
COVER STORY

Dusenberrys have spent generations in service and are being honored for it

Katie Dusenberry has a reason to be proud. * Eleven years on the governing board of what is now the Tucson Unified School District, twice as its president.

* First woman on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

* First woman on the board of Tucson Electric Power.

* First woman on the board of the Tucson Airport Authority - and its first female president.

* Named Tucson's Woman of the Year for 1968.

she's even prouder of husband, Bruce E., and their four adult children for their community involvement.
On April 24, the Dusenberry family will be named as the 2010 honorees of the Arizona Daily Star's Generations of Commitment Award.
Presented by the Pima Council on Aging, the award honors a family who has given time and talent in promoting dignity and respect for the aging, as well as independence for them and their families.

"This award is important because it involves the whole family and what they've given the community," says Katie Dusenberry.

Husband Bruce, 87 and still CEO of the family business, Horizon Moving Systems, was a 2005 recipient of the Gene Anderson/United Excellence Award that goes to one person each year within the United Van Lines agency, comprising more than 450 companies nationwide.

"Dad is somewhat of a legend in the moving industry nationwide," says son Bruce L. Dusenberry, 60, now president of the family business and 2009 Man of the Year - the same honor his mom received more than 40 years earlier.

Daughter Ann Dusenberry, 57, is an actress who now directs community theater in Santa Barbara, Calif. She also volunteers in a women's recovery program.

Another daughter, Joan Marrs, 59, is director of Catalina Foothills Community Schools. She also works with youth groups at St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church and is on the board of Imago Dei Middle School, serving low-income students.

And youngest daughter, Janel Lloyd, 44, is a Tucson pediatrician who also serves on the board of Teen Outreach Pregnancy Services.

All four children, no doubt, took their cue from their mother and how she reached out to others.

Born in Phoenix, Katie - whose grandparents came to Arizona in 1892 - moved to Tucson when she was 10. After two years at the University of Arizona, she earned a degree in nutrition and hospital dietetics at Iowa State University.

"I didn't want to be a nurse or a teacher. I wanted to be in science. Hospital dietitian was as scientific as I could get," says Katie, 85, whose first choice was civil engineering - a course of study her father refused to fund.

Returning to Tucson, she worked two and a half years at Tucson Medical Center before marrying Bruce in 1948. "We met at Trinity Presbyterian Church. I'd known him since seventh grade."

Family came quickly. "I had three kids in two and a half years. I raised them like triplets," says Katie.
But it was also the kids who got her even more involved in the community - something she was already doing with Pueblo Junior Woman's Club. "They started Tucson Nursery School and did a lot of things."

When her kids started school, she joined the PTA, eventually serving on the state PTA board.

She ran for what was then the Tucson School District No. 1 board in 1963, partly, she says, to counteract one candidate who was too liberal, one who was too conservative. "I think I can do it," she told her husband. "They meet in the evening."

The Arizona Daily Star was not happy with her narrow victory, harrumphing in an editorial that she would become "just another rubber stamp" to superintendent Robert D. Morrow.

"And I was," she says, laughing. In 1967 and again in 1971, she was elected president of the school board.

By the time she declined another run for the board in the fall of '74, the district had been tagged by the federal government as racially unbalanced and ordered to eliminate minority-identifiable schools.

Later, she would serve on a desegregation committee. "I suggested magnet schools. It was voted down. Later on, it was adopted," says Katie.

Years past Katie's time on the school board, educators such as Mary Belle McCorkle would seek her advice.

"I would ask her if certain things were a good idea and she would be frank, tell me who to go to see," says McCorkle, who served on the TUSD board from 1992 to 2004. "She always stayed interested in TUSD."

In 1976, Katie successfully ran as a Republican for a seat on the Board of Supervisors against Democrat Ron Asta, elected four years earlier on what some saw as a no-growth platform.

"It was a close election. We finally pulled ahead when the Ajo vote came in," says Katie.

By then, she was also involved in helping run the family moving business. "I thought when I joined the Board of Supervisors, it would not be a 40-hour job." Turned out, it was a 60-hour job, says Katie, who wound up working weekends at the moving company.

"I've never run into anybody who could attend so many meetings and pay attention," says David Yetman, first elected to the Board of Supervisors the same year as Katie.

Although Yetman, a Democrat, often locked horns with Katie over growth - "I wanted more restrictions," he says - the two joined forces back in 1977 in a losing effort to continue elective abortions at Kino Community Hospital. That followed a Supreme Court ruling that government no longer had to pay for abortions.

"A woman has the right to decide for herself," Katie told the press in June of '77.

"Boy, did I ever feel a strong connection to her then," says Yetman.

All-male until Katie's election, the Board of Supervisors had no women's restrooms in its suite of offices. So she used the public restrooms by the elevators during her entire eight years in office. "I did not want to make a big deal about it. We had more important things to do."

Among them: transportation. "Nobody thought it was important," says Katie, who would later serve on the state Board of Transportation.

Transportation issues also proved to be her downfall, contributing to her 1984 primary loss to Iris Dewhirst after Katie heavily promoted the politically unpopular Rillito Parkway.

"It was a very difficult loss," says Katie. But she soon bounced back with an appointment by President Ronald Reagan to the Federal Council on the Aging.

While still on the Board of Supervisors, Katie got to know Marian Lupu, executive director of the Pima Council on Aging, who frequently appeared before the board with various requests.

Katie, who served on the PCOA board for more than 10 years, was able, says Lupu, to help her cut through the rhetoric and get to the core problems.

"She was always very skillful in giving me ways to show the needs," says Lupu, now retired. "She was straight as a penny. She would not tell you one thing and do another."

Though recovering from hip surgery, Katie remains active, serving on the boards of the conservation-minded Rincon Institute, and the Administration of Resources and Choices, which serves the elderly.

Last October, however, she chose not to run again for a seat on the board of University Medical Center. "I was on the board for 23 years," she says. "I just loved it. But they needed new blood."

But will there be new blood for the kind of commitment Katie and the rest of her family have practiced all their lives?

"I think we're losing that, society in general," she says. "There are a lot of single parents with no time. And a lot of businesses have cut their middle management. They're the ones who do the community stuff."

Bonnie Henry's column appears Sundays and Mondays. Reach her at 573-4179 or at bhenry@azstarnet.com or write to 4850 S. Park Ave. Tucson, AZ 85714.

1920s Madera Canyon trips led to moving firm

It began back in 1924 with one truck, one moving man. Today, still-family-owned Horizon Moving Systems has offices in five locations around the state, with 200 vehicles, 200 employees and more than 400,000 square feet of warehouse space.

C.R. Dusenberry was a railroad man who came to Tucson in 1913. Here, he married Catherine Moore. By the mid-1920s, the young couple, along with son Bruce E. and daughter, Lois, were living in Madera Canyon, where the family operated a lodge.

Twice a week, C.R. delivered groceries, ice and sometimes furniture to residents of the canyon, returning to Tucson with a truckload of firewood.

The children were homeschooled through the third grade, then came back to Tucson, where they attended what was then Roskruge Elementary School, just a block or two from the family's Tucson home.

"There was a man and wife and a kid there but they left after a few months," says Bruce E., whose father drove him and his sister to Tucson every Monday morning.

The children continued to stay in Tucson entirely on their own, getting themselves to school each day, then returning to Madera Canyon every weekend with their father.

But young Bruce suffered from asthma in the canyon, asthma so bad his parents sought help at the Mayo Clinic. "It was caused by horse and cow dander," he says.

And so his parents sold the lodge and moved back to Tucson in the mid-1930s. Here, C.R. Dusenberry got a certificate from the Arizona Corporation Commission to move freight and household goods for his business, soon dubbed City Transfer Company.

Catherine did the books on the dining room table at the family home, while C.R. made deliveries for Montgomery Ward and even hauled baggage from the train station. A two-car garage served as warehouse.

Their son also pitched in. "My father picked me up after high school every day," he says. In 1939 the company joined United Van Lines, and remains an agent today.

After the war, the Dusenberrys built a new office and warehouse. The name was also changed to City Van and Storage. In 1952, C.R. and Catherine sold the business to Bruce E. and his sister, Lois. Lois died in 2004.

The company continued to expand past its Tucson headquarters, locating in Sierra Vista, Yuma, Phoenix and Flagstaff.

In 1989, the company changed its name once more, this time to Horizon Moving Systems.

Third-generation family member Bruce L. Dusenberry, son of Katie and Bruce E., now serves as president of what is the largest household goods moving company in Arizona.

It's come a long way from one man, one truck.

Bonnie Henry

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