Family ties to Yuma

The Yuma area has a long and storied history, filled with many colorful characters and events, but you can't tell that story without telling a big part of Karen Johnson's family history, since they arrived here in the early 1950s.

In a recent interview, Johnson, whose maiden name was Kottenbrook, reminisced about her family, which is forever linked to education in Yuma, and her love of the community where she has spent her entire life. She currently works for Yuma School District 1 as the director of its child nutrition program.

“We always say there is no place like Yuma,” Johnson said. “I think our family fell instantly in love with the place because our father's energy about it was just so positive. We felt like we were on an adventure, so when Dad said, ‘Let's go,' I was excited.”

Johnson said her father, while growing up, used come to Somerton to visit his uncle, John Frank Ham, who had moved here in the 1920s from Somerset, Ky., and had become a business owner and farmer. It was partly due to those fond memories that Johnson's father decided to move his family to Yuma from Cincinnati in 1955.

“He fell in love with the Yuma area as a young boy and always wanted to come back,” Johnson said. “He came out here in a station wagon with a wife, three kids, a dog, a cat and no air conditioning. We think we had a pretty good childhood out here.”

Both Johnson and her brother, Jeff Kottenbrook, still live in Yuma, while their sister, Carol Kottenbrook, who lives in Flagstaff and is a movie producer, is still closely connected to Yuma. Carol even brought one her movies, “A Climate for the Killing,” back to Yuma for a showing in the early 1990s.

In 1926, Johnson said, her father's uncle married a lady named Faye Cox, who was a longtime librarian for Yuma Elementary School District 1. That same year, Faye's sister, Gwyneth Cox-Ham, married Logan Ham, a cousin, and went on to become a longtime teacher and school superintendant here. Unfortunately for the family, Gwyneth Ham Elementary School, the Yuma school that bears her name, will officially close following the 2011-2012 school year.

“She was a very neat lady,” Johnson said of Gwyneth Cox-Ham.

Gwyneth's son, Benjamin was a longtime veterinarian in Yuma and probably the only one for many years. He later partnered with Leo Land, who currently owns Chapparal Veterinary Clinic.

Johnson said she remembers her father working for General Electric while they were living in Cincinnati, and how her father used to talk about how all the cactus he has seen while in Yuma had intrigued him. Once in Yuma, Johnson's father found work at the newspaper in its advertising department, while her mother went to work for the school district.

“I think the city life just kept closing in on him,” Johnson recalled of her father. “I think he remembered the open spaces he saw here.”

Yuma was a much smaller place back then, according to Johnson, who said she thinks the city had a population of about 11,000 at the time. Although she has seen many changes over the years, Johnson fondly recalls her early years here, saying they were simpler times.

“Dirt roads have become paved roads. I have seen Yuma grow from a downtown main street where you always saw people you knew, to a place that is growing and changing and keeps attracting people.” She recalls an instance growing up when her father told the family that they were going to go to a drive-in to eat, and she was confused because she thought they were going to get food at a picture show.

Kofa High School was built about that time and Johnson attended it the first year it had classes for freshmen and sophomores. While she is glad she did and is proud to be a graduate, Johnson remembers initially being devastated and not wanting to go.

“My brother went to Yuma High School and I wanted to go there also. I tell that 16th Street may have well had a fence 50 feet tall, because if you lived on the south side of it you went to Kofa, and if you lived on the north side, you went to Yuma, and there were no ands, ifs or buts about it.”

As much as Yuma has grown over the years, Johnson said, at least to her, the city still has that small-town feeling and to it, and she hopes it always will.

“I can still go out and see many people I have known all my life.”

James Gilbert can be reached at jgilbert@yumasun.com or 539-6854. Find him on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/YSJamesGilbert or on Twitter @YSJamesGilbert.