Diary: October 9, 2023: Ajo, Arizona
Carol and Tom Wingo, with chihuahua Daisy, at their house in Ajo, Arizona
The distinguishing feature of Ajo, Arizona, a flat-topped mountain of copper mine tailings, appears on the horizon twenty miles or so before I arrive there.
Ajo is 43 miles north of the US-Mexico border. This stretch of border is one of the hotspots in the border crisis. In the month of September, 2023 there were 48,754 apprehensions of migrants by Border Patrol in this area (the Tucson Sector) and the flow shows no sign of slowing.
Tomorrow I’ll work as a volunteer for Humane Borders, the mission of which is to prevent migrants from dying from thirst or heatstroke in their pursuit of the American Dream. For the next four nights, I’ll be staying with Tom and Carol Wingo who volunteer for the nonprofit aid organization and live in Ajo.
On approach, I see their house, a Spanish style bungalow with a spacious yard and a casita out back. I’ll be staying in the casita.
I’m greeted by Carol, who’s walking her chihuahua Daisy outside their walled compound. Carol is unassuming and smiles easily. Tom, who comes out to greet me once I park my Nissan, is tall and big, with a thick white mustache. Carol and Tom are retired schoolteachers. Tom and Carol originally met when she was 14 years old and Tom was her social studies teacher.
“It was his first-year teaching, and I was so obnoxious, he made arrangements for me to do ‘independent research’ all year in the library,” Carol tells me after I settle in. “He had an archaeology club and I went on a lot of digs in the LaGrange area, in Georgia, with him. In 2009 we got reacquainted via the Baker High School reunion website.”
They fell in love with each other and, eventually, with Ajo as well. Working as volunteers for Humane Borders and for the organization they helped found with other Ajo-area retirees, Samaritans without Borders, keeps them busy. (There’s also another group of volunteers based in Ajo called Ajo Samaritans with whom they also used to be associated but had a falling out but that’s another story.)
Their organization spends a lot of time stocking up and repairing shelters across the border in Sonoyta, Sonora which is how they came to know Daisy, their chihuahua.
“Daisy belonged to the migrant shelter manager Joaquin Samano at Casa San Pedro in Sonoyta, Sonora, Mexico,” Carol says. “I was there with a friend helping with groceries and saw her in the kitchen 'helping' unload the bags of food. She was skin and bones, with the biggest chihuahua ears I'd ever seen. I texted a picture of her to Tom who was in Sonoyta at the men's shelter. He came over and saw her later that day. We talked to the shelter manager and he agreed to let us have her. We found out later that she had a herniated diaphragm, and her organs were slipping one by one through the hole into her chest cavity. Her heart was so crowded it was pressed to the other side of her chest and one lung had collapsed. She was still running around! By that time we were smitten, so she had surgery to reposition her organs and repair the hole in her diaphragm. The vet had to remove her spleen and uterus because her waist had shrunk so much there wasn't room for them. Today you'd never know she nearly died. We named her Daisy.”
While holding Daisy in his lap, Tom tells me about growing up in the south as I sit with him in their living room that has an impressively large library framed by Carol’s skillfully-rendered and soulful paintings in various media. (Check out her paintings of dogs on her website.) Tom starts drawing something of a line, but more like a parabola, to the work he’s doing now, talking about growing up in Eufaula, Alabama, talking about the time the Freedom Riders came to town and his neighbors burned their bus. “So they all escaped and my mom and dad hid about 10 of them in our garage for three days. And one night about two o'clock in the morning somebody came to pick them up. So I had an interesting childhood.”
When Tom joined the Alabama National Guard it got even more interesting. That is, when Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium of the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963—in a symbolic attempt to prevent desegregation at the school—Tom was looking on as one of the National Guard troops sent there to keep order. (John F. Kennedy had federalized the Alabama National Guard the day before.)
This wasn’t the first time Tom had seen George Wallace up close. “My mom worked for him when he was a probate judge,” Tom explains. “He would come to our house before he was governor, and he had an ulcer and he wouldn't knock on the door. He just come on in, go to the refrigerator and get a glass of milk.”
The segregationist governor wasn’t the only famous acquaintance Tom came into contact with growing up. He met Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, when he was nine years old.
Before dinner, Carol tells me that her father was a refugee from the Holocaust, who escaped from Europe with his family when he was just a teenager. She also introduces me to The Bean Trees, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver, which intertwines the story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears with the history of the Sanctuary Movement in Tucson, Arizona.
Over a pan-fried chicken dinner, I share with them a bottle of red table wine I bought from Campo Creek Vineyards, the property of which borders the US Mexico border in California.
After dinner I take a walk and I can see the outlines of the man-made geographical feature that I saw on the drive south to Ajo, that both defines and curses the town: the mountain of tailings of the New Cornelia Mine, which was owned and operated by the Phelps Dodge Corporation. The closure of the mine in 1985 devastated Ajo’s economy. (The impact probably had something to do with the fact that the Wingos were able to purchase their home for $20,000.) I also take note of the vehicle in the car shelter out back: a ‘48 Ford Coupe that he acquired in 1958 from his brother when he was just 14 years old. In the following days, Tom will tell me all about his history with the vehicle, which is still functioning, but on none of the original engine parts. He also tells me the trouble he’s had with pack rats making their nest in the vehicle. Suffice to say, a book could probably be written about the various engines/engine parts/steering columns that Tom has cobbled together over the years to keep the vehicle roadworthy.
I come back into the casita and lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I have looked forward to this trip for months but I’m a little preoccupied by the news in Israel and Gaza. I already feel deeply conflicted about the situation. I’m angered and horrified by the atrocities committed by Hamas against the Israelis, but also dreading what is already shaping up to be an overwhelmingly disproportionate response. Before I nod off, I think briefly of my own family history, how my grandmother and her father (a rabbi) barely escaped a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement before migrating to the United States, rather than Palestine. If she’d made a different choice, the words on this page, the words in front of you, wouldn’t have been written.
