De Grazia: The Man and the Myths

1: The Miner’s Son

11 1 The Miner’s Son You cannot start out lower than [working in the mines], in every sense of the word. —De Grazia1 afTer Ted de Grazia died in 1982, workers clearing out his cluttered home, workshop, and gallery in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson found thousands of dollars in cash secreted in Chivas Regal boxes in a storage room and in envelope boxes tucked under his bed. By some accounts, the amount ranged from $100,000 to $500,000. According to records kept by Ira Feldman, De Grazia’s accountant, the cache totaled $198,000.2 But DeGrazia Foundation Executive Director Lance Laber remains convinced it added up to a half million dollars. In addition to the cash, workers found seventy ounces of gold, worth as much as $1,794 an ounce; forty pounds of silver ingots, worth about $34.43 an ounce; and a cigar box full of gold twenty-peso coins, each coin worth about $704, all in 2013 dollars.3 De Grazia could have stored the gold and silver thinking he would eventually make jewelry from them. He once told TV personality Rita Davenport that he had shoe boxes full of gold under his bed. “He pulled out a shoe box when I was in his office one time,” Davenport said, “and it looked like gold nuggets.”4 No one knows for sure why De Grazia hoarded cash and precious metals, except that he didn’t like banks. “I bury my money,” he liked to say, even though he regularly did business with banks.5 Feldman chapTer 1 12 said De Grazia would cash paychecks of $2,000 a month from a special pension plan set up for him by the foundation, and then he would stash away any money he figured he didn’t need.6 He might even have planned to bury it eventually in the Superstition Mountains to keep it out of the hands of the “revenuers,” as he claimed he did with some of his paintings. Since the gallery had no cash register to record sales and didn’t take credit cards, a substantial portion of the money could have come from gift shop sales. Gallery clerks just threw whatever they collected from sales into a drawer, keeping no records such as receipts. In fact, before Feldman, De Grazia used a Taiwanese immigrant known as Colonel Chuk to keep track of finances with an abacus. “Money’s no good for anybody. It makes bums out of them. I think everyone should start from scratch.”7 After all, that’s what he did. The wealth De Grazia accumulated began with his dirt-poor upbringing in the troubled mining town of Morenci in what was then Arizona Territory. Morenci gave birth to his understanding of social and cultural differences, sparked his interest in music and art, and kindled his “innate creativity, his independent behavior, and his populist philosophy of life.”8 Despite his “bad birth,” meaning difficult, at home on June 14, 1909, De Grazia grew up a healthy, mischievous boy who looked much like his mother.9 He took delight in having been born in Arizona before it became a state because “it makes me sound better, like old whiskey.”10 Formally named Ettore De Grazia, Ted was the third child of Domenico and Lucia De Grazia, immigrants from Italy. His oldest brother, Greg, was followed by sister Roseanna. After Ted came Alice, Giselda, Frenck, and Virginia. De Grazia’s baptismal and birth certificates name him Ettorino, which means “Little Ettore” in Italian. Most of his life he signed legal documents as Ettore, which when translated into English means “Hector of Grace.” A Morenci teacher anglicized his name to Theodore because it was easier to spell, and eventually Theodore evolved into the nickname Ted.11 In the 1940s he became Ettore once again because it sounded European. Then in his fifties he went back to calling himself Ted. In his later years he preferred to be called simply De Grazia.12 The Miner’s Son 13 Both of De Grazia’s maternal and paternal grandparents have the same first names: Gregorio and Roseanna Gagliardi and Gregorio and Roseanna De Grazia. Those given names have been passed down through generations. De Grazia’s paternal grandparents and, later, his parents came to Morenci from Italy before statehood to carve out a living in the copper mines. Why they chose Morenci is unclear...