Rosemary Summers Shearer

Rosemary Summers Shearer was born on March 1, 1938, in Malvern, Iowa. The Dust Bowl and Great Depression ended, and her parents, Frank N Summers and Rose Storm Summers, left their large family farmstead to move to town due to her father’s ill health. Her father, aged 47, and mother, 38, added Rosemary to the family, along with her brother, Richard, 12, and sister, Phyllis, 10, as their father began a new career in farm management and the family settled in Ames, Iowa, in 1943. Rosemary attended Roosevelt grade school and Ames High, graduating in 1956. She married Larry L. Shearer in 1956, and they raised three children, Steven, Megan, and Katy in Ames and Des Moines. Rosemary later became active in Republican politics at the city, county, state, and presidential level. She joined national and state environmental organizations, Planned Parenthood, and local ecology organizations both in Iowa and later in Arizona. She was the first woman to be named to an Iowa Department of Environmental Quality Commission by Republican Governor Bob Ray. She also served as the Iowa state co-chair for Presidential hopeful Howard Baker in 1978 while she lived in Des Moines and Windsor Heights. Her political and environmental activity continued until Larry retired from the Bell System in 1986. They moved to Kings Ranch in the Superstition Mountains east of Apache Junction, Arizona, where they built their long-dreamed-of home on family-owned property, deeded to the Summers’ family by Kings Ranch hoteliers, Julian and Lucy King. Lucy King’s dying wish was that Rosemary turn Julian King’s memoirs into an historical novel. Rosemary published “Sand In Our Shoes, Chasing the American Dream” in 2007. Upon moving to Arizona, she returned to college and graduated as a paralegal in 1994. As booming development spread throughout the East Valley, she became active in local land use concerns. She co-founded ADOBE in 1989, (Association for the development of A Better Environment, a local citizen’s group concerned with desert preservation and land use. The organization remains active in local issues in Gold Canyon, Arizona. She also co-founded the Superstition Area Land Trust (SALT) with artist Anne Coe in 1991. She was also a co-founding member of the Gold Canyon Arts Council. She put her legal skills to work with local, state, and federal governments. During those years she helped raise federal funds for the Lost Goldmine Trail, which runs from Apache Junction along the front of the Superstition National Forest to Peralta Road. Working with the City of Apache Junction Parks and Recreation, the popular Silly Mountain Park and hiking trail was constructed. When Toney Ranch, the first log cabin built in the Arizona territory, was about to be acquired by a local copper mining company which planned to destroy the property for its water rights she went to work with the SALT Land Trust to work with the federal government. This led to her testifying before U.S. Senator John McCain’s subcommittee in Washington, D.C. The Land Trust now owns Toney Ranch. Saving public land and wildlife preservation were her primary public interests. She remained involved in politics, managing local elections and raising funds. Larry and Rosemary were married for 68 years. Their children, Steven Shearer, his wife, Anne and son, Alex; Megan Shearer Morris and husband Jon, and Katy Washburne, eventually moved to the Phoenix area where they still remain. Rosemary was 87 years old.