This week’s Fountain Hills history lesson is about the community’s first special event. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I did in writing it. It brought back some good memories for me.

When Lakeside, Ariz., resident Joe Gardner was crowned the Arizona State Chili Cook-off Champion, in a contest held in Fountain Park on October 28, 1972, it became the first special event held in Fountain Hills.

The “Great Bowls of Fire” Arizona State Chili Cook-off” (I am embarrassed to admit that I came up with that name.) I jokingly called it that when I was talking with C.V. Wood and people from McCulloch’s Los Angeles public relations firm prior to a press conference held at the Westward Ho Hotel in downtown Phoenix. Wood, master planner of Fountain Hills and the World Champion chili cooker, said in his Texas drawl, “I kind of like that.”

Wood used that name in the press conference but since the official press releases only had the Arizona State Chili Cook-off tag on them, that is how the name of the town’s first special event remained. Oh well, I was on the evening news on Channel 5 eating my bowl of chili that Wood had prepared. It was my first time on TV.

In his role of champion, Gardner hinted he might be better than Wood, who had earlier retired his championship after winning the world title five consecutive times. The International Chili Cooking Championship has been held each year in Terlingua, Texas, since 1967. Wood retired his title basically due to “a lack of competition.”

That comment by Wood didn’t faze the new Arizona champ. “Wood’s getting scared,” scoffed Gardner. “When you’re at the top, there is no place to go but down. I’ll teach him a lesson.”

As far as I know, the two never met in an actual competition. But I’ll tell you this, Joe’s chili was pretty darned good.

Wood’s brew was a secret but he did tell me the basic ingredients of his recipe in the conversation we had at the Westward Ho press conference. That was the last conversation I would ever have with Wood, who as a Disney executive, created the original master plan for Disneyland and then after being hired by McCulloch, conceived the designs for master plans for Lake Havasu City and Fountain Hills. He was also the driving force behind the purchase of the London Bridge and rebuilding it at Lake Havasu City and having the world’s tallest fountain in our community. He felt both attractions would give the new communities tourist-based economic engines until they could grow large enough to be self–supporting.

He said his brew is a compound of beef, pork, chicken broth and green chilies that takes a minimum of four hours to prepare from a recipe filling a single-spaced page.

The formula, he claimed, is 125 years old, handed down from an old Gold Rush miner.

Wood was the emcee for the event. He was joined on stage by his wife, Hollywood actress Joanne Dru, movie and TV western personalities Chill Wills and Pat Buttram, race car designer Carroll Shelby and International Chili Society founder Frank X. Tolbert.

The champion qualified for the international competition. On the chili showdown, they take their chili very seriously in Texas.

One rule must be followed by all competitors and that is NO BEANS are to be used in cooking the chili.

As our Fountain Hills history lessons continue next time, we’ll take a look through the years of more special events in our community.