Robert ‘Bob’ Walker Moore
Waddell - Maricopa County
Inducted in 2015
"Go West, young man," said Horace Greeley and that was what Bob's father did in the late 1920s. Bob's life was varied; he was a Navy flyer in WWII and served as a reserve officer for the next 33 years. He and his wife, Mickey Holland, were partners in all they did.
In the early 20th Century, Waddell (Arizona) had little to offer. Water was limited, but that changed with the construction of the original Waddell Dam at Lake Pleasant. Farmers were able to cultivate the desert, and the West Valley became a Mecca for citrus, grapes, and other crops.
Robert W Moore's family came to Arizona from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, via California. His father, Howard, met a young lady named Ruth Jenkins while he was at Iowa State College. The couple married in 1920. Bob made his appearance in Cedar Rapids in 1923.
When his aunt. Lucille and her first husband migrated West, and Bob's mother and father went along, settling in California. The family became associated with Alexander Hirsh, a California developer. Eventually, Lucille and her husband split up, and she married Alexander. Around 1972, they moved their corporate function from marketing the land in California to Arizona and started a development in the West Valley called Ramola or Citrus Park.
In the late 1920s, Alexander was involved in the original development of Lake Pleasant. Lucille's sister, Lola, and her husband, Jim Taylor, purchased 40 acres along Cotton Lane and Peoria Avenue from the corporation and planted citrus and alfalfa. By the time Bob joined them, the Taylor's land was the only part of the development under cultivation.
Bob's dad had gone to work for the Hirsch Corporation, driving a truck in California. When Bob was seven years old, there was a highway accident, and his father was killed. In 1931, his mother remarried, but Bob and his stepfather did not get along. In 1937, when he was 16 years old, Bob moved to Arizona to live with his late father's sister, Lola, and her husband, Jim. Lola and Jim needed extra help, and Bob agreed to help them with the farm while he finished high school. After graduating from Peoria High School in 1938, he attended Phoenix Junior College, which later became Phoenix College. In 1941, his cousins, Lucille's boys, encouraged him to join them at CalTech in Pasadena. He was in his first semester of aeronautical engineering when the world was turned upside down. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
During that Christmas break home, he learned that Goodyear Aircraft was hiring. He applied and was hired. He stayed with the company for about six months. Knowing he would soon be drafted, he decided to enlist instead so he could choose the branch of service. He joined the Navy nine months after Pearl Harbor began. He became a flight instructor. During the last year of the war, he was assigned to Naval Air Transport, flying in the South Pacific. He was released from active duty Christmas in 1945 but continued as a reserve officer, accumulating 33 years of service by the time he retired.
In 1948, Bob's aunt and uncle and his wife-to-be, Velma "Mickey" Holland, acquired the north half of the section the Taylors were farming. The Boswell Company was the lending organization for most of the cotton farmers. Because of the depressed cotton prices, many could not repay their loans, and their land was foreclosed. Bob's wife, Mickey, a veteran of the Coast Guard, was also covered by the GI Bill, making them both eligible to get the financing they needed. They each had a quarter of a section, and his aunt and uncle expanded their 80 acres to a quarter of a section, giving them three-quarters of a section between them.
After his release from active duty, he returned to Arizona and went to the University of Arizona on the GI Bill. He graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Agricultural Engineering in 1948. While attending school at the University of Arizona, Bob would come up from Tucson and work on the land when he could escape. They planted alfalfa and fenced for cattle. Mickey stayed on the property to oversee the operation, which could have been better for a young couple in love. He and Mickey married in his third year of college and moved to Tucson. That September, their son Mike was born. After he graduated, Bob became a Navy recruiter for officer programs in Los Angeles.
When the government shut down the program he was working under and wanted him to take a nonflying job, he said no thanks and requested his orders be canceled. "That was the fastest set of orders I ever had," he laughs. "In about three days, I got a set of orders for me to go home. I've been a farmer ever since." When his uncle wanted to retire, Bob took over the job Jim had been doing. 'I immediately became more interested in what to do with our open land because it wasn't solid alfalfa. It was enough to remove a water allotment from the district pumps."
That first year, the cotton market came back. Bob and Mickey had planted 160 acres of cotton on their land, and the Taylors had planted alfalfa. It was a good year. "We were able to pay off our crop loan and get financed to expand our operation from 160 acres to 200," he remembers.
As often happens, two years later, the market bottomed out, and they had to refinance. When the lender refused to finance the number of acres they had, they joined forces with the Taylors, calling the partnership simply Moore and Taylor.
"Mickey kept the books for the partnership, and I did the farming. The Taylors rented their land to the partnership." Bob said, "They had 400 acres, and we had 160 by then." They grew cotton on their land for a few years. For the first six to eight years, they picked their fields by hand but switched to mechanical pickers in the 1960s. They started to branch out after they got into machine picking. To make the situation economically feasible, they had to finance the purchase of machinery. They partnered with another farmer and bought three two-row John Deere pickers. "We had to get the machinery to cultivate and do the stuff we had been doing with hand labor," said Bob. The partnership started branching out and renting other farms that had cotton allotments. They leased the cotton base and moved the base onto their land. In the 1990s, they grew organic green and brown cotton and various vegetables before settling on carrots, radishes, and parsnips, which they still grow.
Robert's family and the land are his two big loves - but there is another. He significantly supports the Open Arms Home for Children in South Africa. In recent years, he has become active with the children's home, financially supporting road construction and planting and harvesting vegetables for those with HIV and AIDS. Moore believes in the old proverb, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." Although the phrase has been attributed to various sources, it came in an altered form from a novel by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837-1919), Mrs. Dymond, published in 1885.
In his late 80s, Bob continues one of his favorite pastimes - flying. He is a role model for his three children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Affiliations
Kiwanis Club — Officer
Wigwam Country Club — Member
Maricopa Water District — Board Member
Dysarthria School Board — Member
Open Arms Home for Children in South Africa – Benefactor
