EDITOR'S LETTER

LIKE FINDING A FOUR-LEAF CLOVER OR BEING HIT with debris from a weather satellite, seeing Katie's comment was a long shot. I'm not sure why it caught my eye. I try to read everything everyone writes in response to the photographs I post on Instagram, but it's hard to keep up. Maybe it was the sincerity in her simple message. "Thanks for highlighting one of my grandpa's photos," she said. I wrote back right away.

"Your grandfather was one of our A-List photographers," I said. "I'm writing a book about the history of the magazine, and I'm hoping to learn a little more about him. I'd love to talk to you or one of your parents."

"How fun," Katie replied. "My grandma is still alive. I just visited with her yesterday. She's 94 and completely with it! She lives in St. Johns." I was dubious, but hopeful, and jumped at the warm invita-tion that came the following day.

"I talked to my grandma," Katie said. "She doesn't have any plans for travel and would love for you to come visit. My parents live about 30 miles away and would love to host you! They have a big empty house. Also, I've let my aunt know, so, hopefully, a bunch of my dad's siblings will be there, too. They all have stories."

Boy, did they ever.

ESTHER DAVIS DID MOST OF THE TALKING — KATIE WAS right, her grandma is completely with it. It helped, I suppose, that we were talking about her favorite subject, a good man who must have been looking down that day with a big smile.

Wayne Davis, Esther's late husband and one of our most prolific midcentury photographers, was a fourth-generation Arizonan. His family history dates back to 1879, when his greatgrandparents arrived in the Territory in a covered wagon. Like most of the other big families in St. Johns, the Davis family owned and operated a cattle ranch. The son, however, never wanted to be a rancher. "I guess I lost the glamour of cowboying kind of early in life," he said.

But he didn't wander off too far. Instead of roping cattle, he went on to have a 30-year career as a county manager for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He enjoyed his work — "I think we're doing a lot of good," he said — but he was passionate about photography, which he started learning at the age of 12 with a beat-up Brownie, a $7.95 processing kit and a 15-cent booklet titled The Complete Guide to Photography.

"He always loved it," Mrs. Davis said to me from her well-worn easy chair — we were seated side-by-side in front of an old wood stove in her 1950s living room. "Wayne had a neighbor that took pictures for the town, and he asked her to teach him how to develop film. Somehow, he got his mother to let him use the bathroom as a makeshift darkroom. In high school, his photographs filled the yearbook. Then, he followed his four-color dreams to UCLA, where he studied photography. But, like a polar bear on a Vespa, Los Angeles wasn't a good fit. So, he came home, and in July 1948, made his debut in Arizona Highways. His first photo for us was a shot of Show Low from back when it was a quarter-mile dirt road lined with a handful of telephone poles and at least as many watering holes. He was only 19.

"My dad was a highway commissioner," Mrs. Davis said, "and he took Wayne over to Arizona Highways to meet Raymond Carlson, the editor. He introduced him as 'a young photographer just out of school.' I'm not sure if Wayne showed Raymond some of his work, but he managed to get that first photo published."

"Being a native of Arizona," Mr. Davis said, "I can't remember a time when I didn't know about Arizona Highways. I grew up with it in my life, and I think it's played a key role in my becoming a better photographer."

Another key was a tutor named Ansel Adams.

"Ansel and Raymond were good buddies," Mrs. Davis said. "In 1957, Raymond paid the way for Wayne to go up to Yosemite and study under Ansel Adams. It was a wonderful opportunity."

"There were only 19 in the class," Mr. Davis said. "We went camping in the mountains with him, at Yosemite."

The student learned a lot about light and shadows from the grand master. "In my work," Mr. Davis said, "I try to achieve an expression of nature by using the best angle, lighting, time of day and season of the year. I'm a straightforward sort of person, and I try to make my photos beautiful and not load them with hidden meanings."

The formula worked, and Wayne Davis quickly became one of Mr. Carlson's regulars, shooting all over Eastern Arizona, from Navajoland to the White Mountains. By the 1970s, 347 of his photographs had appeared in 67 different issues. His favorite was a photo from December 1953.

"This is just a note to toot my own horn," he wrote to Mr. Carlson, "and also to give credit to Arizona Highways for