~~ History All Around Us ~~

Free Guest Speaker Series

10:00 AM

 St. Francis in the Valley Episcopal Church

600 S. La Cañada Drive 

Donations are welcome and encouraged to help support SCVHS programs.

  January ~ "Chinese-Run Grocery Stores From Yesterday:  

Continental Store & Right-Way Market"

• Dr. Howard J. Eng & Paul E. Tang

• Tuesday,  13 January 2026

• 2:00 PM

•      Before today’s supermarkets or convenience stores, Southern Arizona families shopped in mom and pop neighborhood grocery stores, most operated by Chinese merchants who emigrated or were descendants of immigrants from China.  From the early 1800s to 1991, the Tucson area housed 582 Chinese-owned stores, selling everything from butchered meats, fresh produce and over the counter drug items, to dry goods, cowboy hats and gasoline.  Learn how these family-owned businesses thrived in their respective communities before eventually going extinct. 

     Paul Tang’s dad and mom, who came from Toishan, China and Hong Kong, respectively, ran the Continental Store from 1958 to 1977.  Tang is a retired superior court judge and has an intimate perspective about growing up in the migrant farming community founded in the 1900s, located east of Green Valley. He helped build the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center (TCCC), which hosts events advancing the culture and history of Asians in Southern Arizona. 

     Dr. Howard Eng is author of “Pursuing the American Dream: Tucson Chinese-Owned Grocery Stores,” whose parents immigrated from Toishan and sold groceries in rural Arizona from two trucks, eventually acquiring Right-Way Market, which they ran for 27 years until retiring in 1987.  Dr. Eng is a retired UA associate professor emeritus and pharmacist who is a community historian at the TCCC, which contains an exhibition of story boards showcasing local Chinese Stores and the families that ran them. 

     After the talk, Dr. Eng will be available for a book signing, with copies of the text available for sale, the proceeds of which benefit the TCCC.  

 February ~ "Arizona's World War Two Airfields"

• Steve Hoza

• Tuesday, 10 February 2026

• Historian Steve Hoza spent more than a year flying over the state of Arizona photographing and documenting the fifty-plus airfields used for pilot, bombardier and gunnery training during World War Two.  Cadets from the United States, Great Britain and China came to the desert to prepare for battle on some of the country’s largest airfields.  Please join us on February 10th at 10:00 AM in the St. Francis in the Valley’s Episcopal Church auditorium. Steve will share stories, photographs and artifacts from his years of travel and research.  You won’t want to miss it. 

 March ~ "WWII Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs)"

• Jerry G. Bryant

• Tuesday, 10 March 2026

April ~ "Going Nuts:  The Santa Cruz Valley's Transition from Cotton to Pecans"

• Oscar Gomez

• Tuesday, 14 April 2026

September ~ "Adobe Structures in Arizona"

• Alex LaPierre

• Tuesday, 9 September 2025

• Join us for an engaging look at Arizona’s adobe architecture and the unique Sonoran Row House. This presentation by Borderlandia director Alex La Pierre introduces adobe's fascinating history and its role in shaping Arizona's unique look and feel. We'll explore how these earthen brick houses were built to thrive in the arid desert, connecting today's rare examples of existing row architecture with the Indigenous and Hispanic building roots of the borderlands region. Whether you're curious about adobe, historic preservation or just love learning about the Southwest, this presentation offers something for everyone. 

October ~ "Arizona's Prisoner of War Camps"

• Steve Hoza

• Tuesday, 14 October 2025

• Please come join us for a PowerPoint presentation by historian Steve Hoza on the history of German prisoner of war camps in Arizona during World War Two. Mr. Hoza has interviewed hundreds of former prisoners, guards, camp personnel and Arizona residents that worked with the POWs. There will be artifacts from the camps to see as well. A Phoenix native, Mr. Hoza has written extensively on the history of World War Two in Arizona and has appeared in numerous television documentaries.

    November ~ "Buffalo Soldiers in Bonita Canyon"

• Joyner-Green Valley Library, 601 N. La Cañada Drive

• Sharon A. Kennedy

• Thursday,  13 November 2025

• This is the story of two troops of the Tenth Cavalry, an all-black regiment, that arrived in Bonita Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains in 1885 to defend the use of the waterhole by Geronimo and his people, should they return from the mountains in Mexico.  During that time, the soldiers built a ten-foot stone monument honoring assassinated President James A. Garfield.