Mineral gazing
Judy Cook of Fountain Hills checks out a display of polished stones at the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum, housed in the Polly Rosenbaum building.

Staffers and volunteers at the Polly Rosenbaum Mining and Mineral Museum building remember their most energetic visitor. It was Polly Rosenbaum herself.
Mrs. Rosenbaum would lead groups of schoolchildren through the museum. They probably had hard time keeping up with a woman who would live to be 104. She served in the Arizona House well into her 90s.
Those who knew her say Mrs. Rosenbaum wanted the mineral museum to be an educational experience. She apparently got her wish. Of the 40,000 visitors the museum gets every year, more than half are school kids.
But what tour guide Alice Rosenfeld recalls most is the energy exhibited by a woman who refused to walk her age. Ms. Rosenfeld pointed to a staircase leading up from the main museum’s main floor.
“She’d run up the stairs,” Ms. Rosenfeld said. “We used to tell her, we were going to give her a ticket.”
The 18,000 square-foot building once housed El Zaribah Shrine auditorium. But working with then-Gov. Rose Mofford in 1990, Ms. Rosenfeld said, the Legislature appropriated money to buy the place, at Mrs. Rosenbaum’s insistence.
It didn’t hurt that Mrs. Mofford and Mrs. Rosenbaum were good friends.
Mrs. Mofford donated her own collection of kachina dolls, minerals and other items to the museum. They fill an exhibit room off the main gallery.
If the museum is ever closed, Mrs. Mofford said: “Then I’m going to have my lawyer divvy all that stuff to the rural museums of Arizona.”
On this day, the museum was very much open. But it would be a week or so before busloads of school groups began showing up. Just a few visitors strolled about the displays of colorful minerals.
A Chandler mother had her three youngsters in tow. They were on a field trip as part of their home-schooling. They had not heard of Polly Rosenbaum, explaining they were new to the Valley.
Norm and Judy Cook of Fountain Hills had not heard of her either. But they enjoyed the displays just the same.
Some two miles northeast stands another building named after a state stalwart — the 280,000 square-foot Burton Barr Central Phoenix Library. People coming and going had heard the name before, but couldn’t quite place the man.
“The name sounds familiar,” said Jill Bingshea of Phoenix. She couldn’t offer any more than that, but she added: “You got to realize I’m 20 years old.”
Good point. She was only 11 when Mr. Barr died. He was a long-time majority leader of the Arizona House. During his tenure, he — not the speaker — ran the show.
Another library patron, 73-year-old Richard Proulx, paused outside the entrance. Asked about Mr. Barr, he said: “He was a politician. Was he was a governor?”
That was a pretty good guess. Mr. Barr ran for governor but lost to Evan Mecham in the 1986 Republican primary.
Mr. Mecham won the general election, but was later impeached and ousted. So far no public buildings have been named after him.