By Mike Butler | East Valley Tribune
As Dr. A.J. Chandler neared his 80th birthday in 1939 – with the city that bore his name gleaming like an emerald in the desert – a writer for Arizona Highways magazine approached the magnate and asked him to reflect on his beginnings in Arizona.
Ever the opportunist, Chandler saw the interview as a way to shape his legacy.
With florid prose worthy of the best dime novels of the late 19th century, writer Blanche K. Murray, in an article titled “Empire Builder,” described a bewildered “blue-eyed, boyish looking chap” from up North alighting from the train in the dead of a hot August night at Seligman.
