---

Gene's son Danny kindly sent me this article about his Dad. It's very cool.

July 2, 2007
Section: NEWS
Page: A1

Mysterious anti-war sign's painter discovered
JOSH BRODESKY, ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Gene Vinik had to do something about the Vietnam War.

With the nation being fed battle images at dinnertime, Vinik's distress with the seemingly never-ending violence and the scandal of Richard Nixon's presidency overcame him.

And so the young father, who retired to Tucson in his 30s after making a fortune selling mutual funds overseas, unleashed his frustrations with a passion, not to mention eccentricity and creativity.

Vinik painted a massive peach on the back of the Pima Savings Building Downtown and emblazoned on it the words, "Impeach the President."

The peach sign, long since gone, is the unlikely root to another sign Vinik painted on the back of the building - one wrapped in mystery - that the city's Department of Transportation is preserving.

"Help End The War By Dec. 31, 1971. Join Common Cause," still adorns the wall in faded black letters that cling to the old savings and loan building at North Stone Avenue and Alameda Street.

Its sudden appearance caught Common Cause's Tucson founders by surprise. No one knew who painted it, they just knew they hadn't authorized it. And it sparked a debate within the Southern Arizona chapter on whether to have it covered.

Ultimately, they decided it was a message they backed and, even better, gave them free advertising. So the sign stayed for at least a few years until it was eventually blotted out with black paint.

But with time, the black paint faded, the letters re-emerged and the message now has historic value. The Department of Transportation, which is renovating the building for offices, has said it will remain.

Vinik was, at that time, the owner of the savings and loan building, having bought it in 1968. The sign angered the management at Pima Savings, who thought it would offend and drive away customers.

To give the peach sign a sense of legitimacy and save a tenant, Vinik decided to put up the Common Cause sign, giving the appearance of the anti-war message coming from a third party, said his son Danny Vinik, who lives in Tucson and runs a Web development company.

"My recollection was he went with the Common Cause message as a way of kind of legitimizing it a little bit," Danny Vinik said.

It worked. Pima Savings, although not happy with the messages, stopped complaining and stayed as a tenant.

The signs were just one wrinkle to a man who, by nearly all accounts, lived a life that defied convention and died of heart-ache.

Vinik was born in 1928. Despite suffering from polio as a child, he became a side-horse champion in gymnastics in college. He began his career in advertising in Chicago, where he met his future wife, Joanne, while writing ads.

"My mom was his copy editor, and they had a mutual friend," said their daughter Amy, a physician's assistant who lives in Tucson. "I think my father was pretty hesitant because, first of all, my mom was taller than him, and second of all, she was his boss."

Vinik made his fortune through a friendship with Bernie Cornfield, an international financier who founded the infamous company Investors Overseas Services. The company sold U.S. mutual funds abroad, but it would later become roiled in scandal, which Vinik had nothing to do with.

Vinik took a job with the company when it was starting up, moving his family to Spain and leaving the company before scandal hit.

The Viniks chose Tucson as a retirement home in part because the climate reminded them of Spain, although Amy swears it was because her brother Danny wanted to be a cowboy.

In the Old Pueblo, Gene and Joanne Vinik quickly made names for themselves among Southern Arizona's liberal elite. They were active in the press club and the civil-rights movement and were close friends with U.S. Rep. Morris K. "Mo" Udall.

"He was a guy who was really a very moral guy who was troubled by the way the world was going," said Bob Hirsh, chief deputy of the Pima County Public Defender's Office, who became close friends with the Viniks through the press club.

He was also something of a character, smoking two packs of cigarettes a day while constantly reading. He dreamed of striking it rich, or richer, through prospecting and mining (he never did), and he kept a metal detector in his car's trunk, daughter Amy said.

In his later years, Vinik dabbled in the arts, making sculptures and paintings while also dealing in rare books. He also invented the official tooth-fairy bag because he found it very hard to find his children's teeth beneath their pillows, Amy said. He sold the bags for $2 through mail order.

"He was a wonderful man," said Morgan Maxwell Jr., who became close to the Viniks through the civil-rights movement and was part of a weekly lunch group with Vinik.

After his wife, Joanne, died in 1997, friends and family members say he was lost.

"He really needed my mother," Danny said.

Outwardly, he put on a strong appearance. But he worried that in his old age he would become infirm, and he was at a loss without his wife. A little more than a year after Joanne died, he committed suicide at the start of 1999.

"He was often surly, always argumentative, and much loved by many," his obituary said.

With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, friends and family members say the preservation of one of Vinik's signs is bittersweet. It's an honor and a great way to remember a man who was part of Tucson's history, but the sign's enduring relevance is also disheartening, they said.

"He would be rolling over in his grave if he were reading the papers today," said Hirsh, one of his closest friends.

"I think they'd be pretty excited about it," Amy said, describing how she thought her parents would feel about the sign's preservation. "I think they would be sort of also sad about it in a way, in that the sign has kind of the same meaning and sentiment because of the war going on."

/////

On StarNet: Find a link to the original story about the anti-war sign at azstarnet.com/dailystar

* Contact reporter Josh Brodesky at 807-7789 or jbrodesky@azstarnet.com.


Copyright 2007 The Arizona Daily Star