August 11, 2021
Thanks for the Images
By Les Conklin
Thank you very much to Images Arizona magazine for “A Persistent Passion for Preservation.” You will find a link to the online version at the bottom of this article.
Images Joseph Airdo, Managing Editor, Carl Schultz, Photographer, and Shelly Spence, Publisher, have done a terrific job. Reading the article, which was published in the August issue of Images, brought two floods of memorable images related to my involvement with the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive.
The first image rush included the faces of family, friends, neighbors, City of Scottsdale leaders and staff, and original drive founders who have helped over the decades. in fact, so many people come to mind that it’s best that I pause and write a separate article to include and thank them all and avoid the sin of omission.
A few days after reading the article I was at the Desert Foothills YMCA when I was surprised by a second rush of memories. I was waiting for my water aerobics class to begin when a fellow enthusiast said “Les, I saw the article about you in Imagers. Congratulations. We had all the Synergetics’ products at American Express.” He explained that he had been a chief information officer for American Express in the early 80s. The article mentioned that I and the president of Synergetics co-founded the early computer contract programming firm that had created and sold products to support the testing and documentation of computer programs.
It was during this conversation in the Y’s pool, that the second memory rush hit. In a flash I recalled images of large state-of-the-art American Express data centers in Phoenix and Florida, of office buildings of other customers and prospects, of airplanes, terminals, cabbies, rental cars, hotel and motel rooms. And most memorable of all, I saw the faces of my friends and colleagues that I worked with at Synergetics from 1968 through-1981, when the company was acquired by a division of Dun & Bradstreet.
The frequent business travel had made me an eyewitness to the insidious, relentless negative impact of urban sprawl. Unmanaged growth was rapidly diminishing America’s quality of life. That is why I developed a persistent passion for preservation and the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive. Persistent preservation is the only way to control sprawl. Anything else will fail.
Link Images Arizona Article: A Persistent Passion for Preservation
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