By Rob Johnson
Introduction: Since 1932, Bashas’ has donated more than $100 million to local charities. Thousands of Arizona schools, churches, and nonprofits have benefited from the generosity of the company, its members, and its customers. Bashas’ concentrates its charitable efforts on community causes that address education, hunger, family, and children. The Peak and the Greater Pinnacle Peak Association thank Bashas’ for its support over the years. This is the story of Bashas’ before the first store opened bearing that name. The photographs included with this article were provided courtesy of Bashas’. Editor
Najeeb & Najeeby Wedding
Let’s begin at the beginning: Lebanon, 1884. A young, newly married man named Tanuis Basha, a shoemaker, heard fabulous tales of a country where opportunities were limitless. He decided to go to New York, establish himself, and then send for his family. In New York, he began an import and export wholesale store. He enjoyed modest success and sent for his son. Najeeb, 16, joined his father in New York in 1886. Soon, the rest of the Basha family moved to America.
In New York, Najeeb met Najeeby Srour, the daughter of another Lebanese immigrant. They married in 1901. Both were industrious and resourceful, with a collective mind for business.
Najeeb learned the business from his father and gradually took over as his father’s health failed. Najeeby spent her childhood supplementing her family’s income by peddling wares (mainly lace) to wealthy New Yorkers such as the Vanderbilts, Tiffanys, and Wannamakers. As the business grew, many needy Lebanese went to Najeeb for unsecured loans. One tragic day, the business burned down. There was no insurance. With the loans he’d made and the loss of the business, Najeeb faced financial ruin.
Najeeby was tired of the business stress and the crowded house. She missed her parents (who had returned to Lebanon), and she started thinking about her only relative in America, a sister who had moved to Arizona and who wrote glowing letters to her about all the prosperity in the mining towns. The wide-open spaces of the American West called to her relentlessly, so she pleaded with Najeeb to move.
In 1910, Najeeb complied. He went alone to Congress Junction, Arizona, to join his wife’s sister and her husband and arrange a merger with their mercantile business. Shortly thereafter, Najeeby – with children in tow (including a young Ike) – made the five-day train trip west and joined him.
But Najeeb wasn’t happy with the business opportunities in Congress Junction, so only a few months after arriving in Arizona, he moved the whole family to Ray.
They lived in a small, three-room house rented from the Kennecott Mining Company. Eddie Sr. was born in that home.
One day, a man with a grudge against Kennecott dumped gasoline on a wooden walkway and set it on fire. As the town was built primarily of wood, the whole place went up in smoke, including the Basha family’s store. Again. And again, there was no insurance.
Facing poverty, Najeeby sold all the beautifully tailored clothes she’d brought from New York. Najeeb, feeling the weight of the business disaster, developed diabetes and gradually lost his health, forcing more of the family’s responsibilities on Najeeby.
One mile from Ray, in a little town called Sonora, were several Lebanese families. Najeeb moved his family there and built a large brick general merchandise store with borrowed money. There were bulk bins containing groceries, sugar bricks, cinnamon sticks, beans, and rice. They also sold ribbons, lace, shirts, dresses, shoes, and other clothing.
The family grew. Najeeb and Najeeby now had eight children, six girls and two boys. Edna, the oldest, became a great help to her parents and was the main reason the Basha family moved to the Valley. Edna begged her father to follow suit.
The decision was made when, almost unbelievably, a third fire destroyed most of the inventory in the Basha family’s Sonora store. Najeeb moved everyone to Chandler. He bought two pieces of property: one for a store and another for a large house that he surrounded with fruit trees. Both buildings were completed in 1920.
Although there was great damage at the Sonora store, it remained open and viable, so Najeeb spent much of his time there keeping it going, leaving the Chandler store for Najeeby to establish. It was tough on the family to be divided, but they made it work. In her husband’s absence, Najeeby found herself making more and more business decisions. She excelled at it, and the Chandler store thrived. Locals frequented the store, as did the area’s American Indians.
Najeeby dealt with Pima customers so often that she learned the language.
Curiously, Najeeby never learned to read or write. She devised her own method of bookkeeping, using symbols and numerals to keep track of customers and their credit balances. Ike would “clean up” the credit ledger after school.
In 1929, Najeeb sold the Sonora store. The family at last could live together full-time in Chandler, and an era of profound happiness for the entire family ensued. Friends would gather around the Chandler store’s pot-bellied stove in winter or under the ceiling fans in summer. The family enjoyed big meals together every evening after the store closed. Afterward, they read or listened to the radio.
At this stage, Eddie Sr. began to show his business savvy. On weekends, with his father’s permission, he would fill a wagon with fresh produce from the yard surrounding his home and sell it door-to-door in Chandler.
Unfortunately, this era was short-lived. Najeeb’s diabetes became worse, and on June 7, 1932, he died.
Najeeby, desperately sad at her husband’s passing, now carried the responsibility of running the family business. But she wasn’t alone; her children helped her. And the experience she’d gained running the store while Najeeb was in Sonora helped.
Yet again, the family faced grim financial news. The medical bills from Najeeb’s prolonged illness, combined with funeral expenses, were a real setback. Ike and Eddie, who’d now finished school, did their best to help. To augment sales, Ike and Najeeby would pack up the family car each Sunday with shoes, combs, and other merchandise and head out to the Pima and Yaqui reservations to sell goods to those who couldn’t find transportation to town. This Herculean effort didn’t bring in much extra income, but it did help pay the plentiful bills.
Life was hard. Najeeby missed her husband, and the boys missed his guidance.
Bashas’ market on Main Street in Mesa opened in 1936.
They realized, however, that it was up to them to take the reins and see to the well-being of their family. The boys learned that a man named J.G. Boswell had bought a large property five miles south of Chandler and had started a substantial cotton and farming company, employing hundreds. Boswell’s company had built a cluster of houses for the company’s directors, and they’d named the small community Goodyear. Boswell wanted someone to run a post office/general merchandise store where his employees could cash in the coupons they received as pay. Ike and Eddie investigated this opportunity and, relying on the business sense they’d seen demonstrated so effectively by their parents, decided that it held potential.
It turned out they were right.
And so we arrive at 1932 and the first store graced with the name “Bashas’.”
Rob Johnson is the director of public relations at Bashas’. He is also the company historian. Rob can be reached at (480) 883-6131 or rjohnson@bashas.com.
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