Meeting Mrs. Shirley Christy in old-time Phoenix


Mrs. Shirley Christy was the founder of the Arizona School of Music, which was on Central just north of Van Buren in Phoenix, Arizona. I've found a lot of information on her, and her husband, both of whom were prominent members of Phoenix society. But the name started to puzzle me, and it still does, because her name wasn't Shirley, Shirley was her husband's name.

Time-travel with me back to 1914, or anytime here in the USA before the 1970s, when it was typical for a woman to take not only her husband's last name, but his first. Things started changing when I was a kid (in the 1970s, not in 1914!) and I remember it distinctly. 

When my parents married, in 1950, my mom changed her last name to Hall, which was my dad's name. And it just seemed logical to me, until I saw one of the return address stickers that she used to put on envelopes that she mailed - there wasn't a trace of her name, she was Mrs. George Hall. Of course her friends called her by her first name, but if an article were to be published in the paper (not that that was likely) they wouldn't have used to her name at all, she would have been referred to only by her husband's name, with "Mrs." in front of it. And here's where it got confusing for me as a kid.

Sometime in the mid-seventies, I noticed that the return address stickers that she had ordered no longer simply said "Mrs. George Hall", they had her real first name. And since that's how she signed her checks, that's what I saw.

If you're following me here, it just seemed logical to me that the woman who ran the Arizona School of Music was named Shirley. I pictured her having tea with her society friends, who would call her that - but that would be a mistake. Her name was Abelina and her husband's was named Shirley.

And if someone had said to him, "Surely you jest!" he wouldn't have had to say, "Don't call me Shirley."


Shirley and Abelina Christy out for a ride.

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