Click On Pictures Below

Pictures taken in Pinetop, Arizona July 18, 1998

The following is how the newspaper article read from the Mountain Daily Record on Monday, July 20, 1998:

The descendents of John Washington Adair gathered at the Pinetop Cemetery Saturday morning to pay homage to their patriarch by placing a monument on the family plot bearing the family name.

The activity was part of the Adair family reunion, an event that brought more than 150 family members from as far away as Manassa, Virginia and ranging in age from eight months old to 77 years old.

One of the organizers of the event, Delbert W. Adair Jr., contacted family members in the area and around the country to raise the cost of the $1,900 memorial. Excess funds raised went towards defraying the expenses of feeding the large crowd that did show up.

"We're having every member send us a family group record so we can put it together in a book," Delbert W. Adair Jr. said. "The book is going to include pictures of the family reunion."

In gathering his family from around the country, Delbert W. Adair Jr. had an advantage his great grandfather didn't have- modern technology and e-mail. It enabled him to plan the whole reunion from his Gilbert home.

"We were able to keep in touch and exchange information," Delbert W. Adair Jr. said. "I kept people up on how much we had raised for the monument and I was able to get a good count on who was able to be here."

The John Washington Adair story is not unlike many other Arizona Pioneer stories.

Sometime around 1895, John Washington Adair was among the early settlers of Pinetop in the Arizona Territory. He owned about 75 acres of land in town and 90 acres of ranch land outside of town.

John Washington Adair lived in the Pinetop-Lakeside area for more than 50 years. He was described as a "friend, leader, organizer, rancher and Navajo County Deputy."

John and his wife, Cynthia Jane Penrod, raised a large family with twelve children. Descendents of the twelve children that lived to raise families of their own were represented at the reunion by different color t-shirts. John and Cynthia have 17 grandchildren and about 100 great grandchildren living. Life for the Adairs was not easy. Eleven of his twelve children died before John did and the house he bulit for his family was destroyed by fire.

Bobbie Stephens Adair remembers her grandfather and what he thought about the Pinetop area.

"He said to me once "Ya know, when I rode into this town, I spent the night and I was gonna pull out the next morning and I've been here 35 years," Bobbie Stephens Adair recalled. "I think he was about 70 when he was telling me that. I thought that was neat and wish now I'd talked to more to him."

The oldest living member of the Adair family is Show Low resident Kenneth Adair. One of the 17 grandchildren of John Washington Adair and the unofficial patriarch of the family, he was genuinely touched by all the members of his family that came to the White Mountains for the affair. He was one of about 30 members of the Adair clan still living in the area.

"This is really nice," Kenneth Adair said. "This is really good."

Delbert W. Adair Jr. said that in addition to the family album, he plans to put together a family history and asked that anyone with any stories about the Adair family contact him either through the Internet at dtadair@att.net or write to him in Gilbert at 108 E. Elm Circle, Gilbert, Arizona 85234-4533.

Please feel free to contact Delbert Adair Jr. at the following address: dtadair@att.net
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