By Anne Groebner

Photos submitted

She was a young widow from Birmingham, Alabama. She was angry at her husband for dying and at everyone else for trying to tell her what to do. One night, she said “enough!” And she laid out a large map, closed her eyes, took her index finger and circled it round and round the hundreds of thousands of cities and towns in the entire United States, and when it landed, she opened her eyes and it pointed to Snowflake, Arizona. And that’s how we got Barbara Bruce. That’s how she ended up in our community. Now, she has decided to choose family and she is leaving us to be closer to her sister and to gain peace and quiet in the small peachy town of Clanton, Alabama, where she will finally settle down and write her book about her famous 203-pound Tibetan Mastiff — the Doggie Lama.

She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving except a friend, whose response was to ask her if she knew about the movie, “Fire in the Sky” — about Travis Walton and how he was abducted by aliens. She hadn’t, still she packed up her things and her St. Bernard, Zelda, and headed west. When she arrived in Snowflake she stayed at the newly renovated Cedar Inn Motel. The next morning she walked across the road to the Circle K and asked them if Travis Walton was there. “I just knew they thought, ‘oh no, another one of them…”

There was nothing to rent in Snowflake or anything in the surrounding areas and there were people lined up in front of Barbara that had been waiting. She and her 21-foot Ryder Truck migrated to Show Low and started staying at the Thunderhorse Motel, until the Harley Davidson Convention came to town and they kicked her out. So, with a pop-up tent that her brother had given her, she moved her things to Fool Hollow State Park Campground. “I am not a tent kind of gal,” she tells me and to make matters worse, she had to beg the ranger to let her stay because they weren’t open yet. He gave her 14 days. She was the only camper.

One day, Century 21 Realtor, Joel Dinchak told her there was a property coming up for rent at Fairway Park. It was a triple wide mobile home that butted up against the forest and it had a tree growing through the middle of it. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

That night at Fool Hollow, “I got wet in the night.” She tells me. “I didn’t know that you don’t touch the inside of a tent or you will break the seal.” She and her dog were soaking wet. That night she couldn’t stay in the tent, so she and Zelda found a large restroom with a hand dryer. She took a quilt from her truck, laid it out on the floor and slept all night while hitting the dryer. By the next morning she had dried out.

Joel stopped by and said “I have some bad news for you.” “Worse than this?” She asked him. “Yes.” The lady that was renting the triple-wide had just found out she couldn’t leave and had to stay three more months. 

Jody was a school teacher in Cibecue. She lived a simplistic life with a bike, a fork, a spoon, a knife, a skillet, a plate and a sleeping bag on the floor. “That’s all I knew about her because of what I saw during the walk through of the property.” Barbara tells me. So she packed up her things, drove the Ryder Truck over to Jody’s and knocked on the door and said, “Jody, my name is Barbara Bruce. I have a deposit on this place and I’m supposed to move in on June 6. Joel just told me that you’re not leaving for three more months. See that Ryder Truck? Everything I own is in it and it has an expiration date. If I don’t return it in time, I will be paying an unbelievable price! You need to move over, because I’m moving in with you.”

She finally had a real place with a real shower and it turned out that Jody was the nicest person ever.

Since those days, Barbara has held some of the most highly coveted and creative positions on the mountain. She helped start the Holiday Inn Express in Show Low but she couldn’t make enough money there, so she answered an ad for a court reporter for Judge Holiday in Holbrook. It required its applicants to be able to take shorthand at a rate of 80 words per minute. She could do 120. However, when she heard about the Navajo County Tobacco Prevention and Education Program, she just knew that she wanted that job! Her husband Sammy had died from smoking and she was a former smoker, so she had a lot of sympathy for it. 

The interview required a presentation to see how the applicants would present their message. She won the job with a cardboard cowboy poster that she found and borrowed from K-Mart, stuck an empty pack of Marlboro’s on one holster, and an empty pack of Kool’s on the other. During her presentation, she talked about self-esteem and smoking. Two days later she got the call…and the rest is history. 

Most people know Barbara because she had several talk shows on the radio. She talked Jack Jacobs into letting her host a “quit smoking” show at 101.7 KQAZ. She had no radio experience but built it into a show other radio stations wanted and she hosted it for 11 years. She was certified by the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, the Hazelden Betty Ford 12-Step Stop Smoking Program and she went to the world Tobacco conference and represented the program there. “It was a fun career.”

Then Tom Troland, who owned White Mountain Radio at the time, asked her to come write and cut radio commercials. “When I slid into that seat at KQAZ Country, I thought, I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. I would rather do this than eat.” And she loves to eat, she tells me.

When the Rodeo-Chediski Fire came along she did so many shows warning the community. She did radio day and night. People would call in and say “we had to leave and our horses are loose, can you help us?” Barbara would get on the air and say “Doctor Ole Alcumbrac, where are you right now?” And he would call in and they would get them help. “We were helping our community. It was gratifying and I knew then that I loved this community” 

Then Richard Watkins of Cellular One told her that she should apply for the Show Low Chamber Director’s position and she told him, “I don’t have any experience, and he said ‘you’re southern, you have experience in hospitality!” So she applied and got a call from Victoria McCarthy, who told her, “Barbara, you are our new Chamber Director, character has won out.” It was November 2, 2002 and she had a lot of work to do. The furniture was falling apart and so was the trailer at NPC where they had an office. She found out that nobody signed up for the Christmas parade and after the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, she felt they really needed to have that parade!

They moved the Chamber into the Old Reidhead Lumber Company building (where they are now), she gathered up all of the old members and gave them amnesty, spearheaded Show Low Days to make money for the Chamber, fast-tracked a program through the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute and Organizational Management and started the radio show called “Business Matters,” which turned into a TV show because Mel West with City 4, filmed it. She was on the Governors Council for Small Businesses and head of their finance department. When she walked away in 2007, they had 554 members.

Barbara went back to radio and did six shows a week. “I worked hard…it was the best of times and it was the worst of times.” She spent most of her time promoting businesses through her talk shows. Like the show I remember that was called “The Believe Show; The White Mountain Talk Show destined to empower you to believe you can do anything you set your mind to, if you just believe.” She helped Bob Zellmer at KVSLS develop the “Real Radio, for Real People.” And then she went to work for the White Mountain Independent Newspaper.

She got to write feature stories and when she got a call from ‘Movers and Shakers’ they let her write as much as she wanted until they got a new editor and he limited her to 900 words. “I don’t even get out of bed for 900 words.” She told me.

She wanted to be like Nellie Bly and write all the good news. However, she ended up doing a lot of investigative reporting on subjects such as a story she did in 2016 on a town attorney who was suspended and ultimately disbarred and in 2017 she investigated and wrote 34 stories about the marijuana controversy in Snowflake as well as articles on the Silver Creek Irrigation District Embezzlement. All of which she won awards through the Arizona Newspaper Association (ANA). She quit the Newspaper in 2022 and started freelancing. 

Many things happened during and after Covid that changed the world, and that changed Barbara. She had a 203-pound Tibetan Mastiff that had a herniated disc and they bruised his spine so he couldn’t walk. She had to teach him to walk using a hydraulic lift. “The Doggie Lama taught me more spiritual lessons in his seven years and he made me a better person — I loved him so much.” She says. But taking care of him took its toll on him and on her.

She works now for the White Mountain Nature Center as their media person but not for long. She has found a home in Clanton, Alabama. She sent word out into the Real Estate Universe and it answered her with her exact requirements. A small 1937 house, with charm, that is less than 1000 square feet, in a town that has a population less than 10,000 and it’s close to her sister.  

Barbara Bruce has never had a plan. She has always rolled with the flow. She told me, “We are all just people. I sat in places that looked important, they didn’t pay much, but they allowed me to do some things that helped all of us. I told everything on myself. I wanted all of the people to know that I was just like them. That I didn’t think I was all that and a bar of soap.”



She was and is one of us, and now she is leaving. But this won’t be the last time we hear about Barbara Bruce. She will write her book on the Doggie Lama and we will line up to read it. That is unless the fortunate people of Clanton, Alabama find out what an amazing, strong and smart woman she is and put her to work. Then maybe, just maybe, that magical index finger might point our way once more — at least for a visit. It won’t be like the first time though…the next time you venture this way, Barbara, we’ll leave the light on.