Author's Note

Ronald L. Ives was an intriguing person, one who over four decades contributed much to our knowledge of the Southwest, yet his life was mysterious and little known. By the time I met him in 1980, I could see that his personal information was perishable, so with encouragement from David Hoober, Don Bufkin, and Jim Byrkit, I set out to interview his family, friends, and acquaintances. This issue of Journal of the Southwest is the fruit of that work.

Those raw interviews were transcribed, edited, and organized into readable passages, with diligence to the original meaning, facts, and tone while sometimes adding transitions, reorganizing sentences, or clarifying points. In some cases the speakers reviewed their transcript.

With some sense of guilt, I finish only now, knowing that many of the people who would most have wanted to read this book—his brother, sister, and close friends like Julian Hayden—have themselves passed on. The late Jim Byrkit read an early draft and commented, "That's the man I knew."

The tapes and transcriptions of these interviews may become curated at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson with the Ronald L. Ives Collection.