LIFE IS A TAPESTRY

Couple interweaves lives, interests to create beauty

MILES STERN
Editorial Intern

And the analogy has proven true for the shutter-bugging couple, who have interwoven their lives and their common interest in documenting history to create a life together filled with beautiful memories, and a relationship that continues to grow, along with their business and the Valley they call home.

The 70-something couple reminisced about Krohn's comparison recently while relaxing in Bob's comfortable office.

"About 60,000 people were living in the Valley when we arrived," Bob Markow recalls. The Markows came to the Valley from the East. Their well-told tale of moving West is the interlaced narrative of two people who have artfully interwoven their destinies.

"Bob was stationed at Thunderbird Field in Glendale 53 years ago," Bea says. On an "extraordinarily hot" July in 1942, he had been sent to the extreme outskirts of the Valley to serve in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

In January of 1943, Bea, then a secretary to the publisher of Superman Comics in New York, rode a train some 3,000 miles to the Central Phoenix depot to marry Bob, to whom she had become engaged after a courtship in her native New York. "It was a three-day and two-night trip altogether to get married in Phoenix," Bea recalls.

Bea spent her first night in Phoenix at the Luhrs Hotel, she says, while Bob returned to the base. The next day, Bob, accompanied by an army buddy, Harold Mitchnick, met Bea in the hotel lobby. The three then boarded the Kenilworth Streetcar, a trolley that ran north along Third Avenue, to the home of Rabbi Abraham Lincoln Krohn, two blocks north of McDowell Road.

"It was a very nice area of town at the time," Bob recalls.

The two were married in a small, private ceremony at the rabbi's home, with Mitchnick standing up as best man and Rose Diamond, whose family owned Diamond's Department Store (now Dillard's), and the rabbi's wife serving as witnesses.

After the wedding, the newlyweds celebrated with dancing at the USO and dinner at the San Carlos Hotel, then spent a honeymoon night at the Luhrs. The next morning, they began their life together in a rented room near Thunderbird Field.

Prior to coming West, when Bea had worked for the New York publisher, part of her job was responding to fan mail written to Superman and Lois Lane. She jokes about having left Superman for her own super man.

Bob, meanwhile, was developing skills for what would become his lifelong profession, serving as base photographer and public relations manager for Thunderbird, a civilian contract school.

Although trained as a commercial artist, Bob handled all camera work at Thunderbird, including aerial photography.

To make extra cash, the couple spent weekends off the base photographing horse shows. Bob recalls getting jobs just by asking, and Bea wrote stories to accompany the photographs. Arizona Highways published one of their photo essays.

The $20-25 they earned in a weekend "was good money at the time," Bea says.

When Thunderbird Field was closed (now the site of the American Graduate School of International Management, the field was bought from the federal government for $1, Bob says), the Markows moved to the then-tiny town of Scottsdale, and Bob served out the rest of the war working at Williams Air Force Base in the far Southeast Valley.

When the war ended, the couple returned to New York for six weeks, then settled in Phoenix. "When you get out of the service at 28 with a wife and child, your skills don't improve. In New York, they were offering what I was worth as a 24-year-old commercial artist," Bob says.

He remembers Phoenix as "small but civilized" in those days.

The two bought a home near 16th Street and McDowell Road for $6,200, with $200 down, he says, and he converted one room into a darkroom for his business.

Once they set up their own studio, they slowly grew a base of clients.

In the early 1950s, Bob took photos for Phoenix Jewish News' founding publisher M.B. Goldman Jr. for $5 each. Bob remembers shuttling around the Valley arriving at Jewish community events in time to encourage participants to pose.

His photographs have appeared in numerous state and national publications. "Have Camera, Will Travel - that was our motto," he says.

By 1957, the couple moved their work into a studio at Seventh Street and McDowell Road in Phoenix.

Throughout their work-life together, Bob says, he took the pictures and Bea kept track of the business.

In the early 1970s, the couple moved the still-growing business into a building at 22nd Street and McDowell Road in Phoenix. There they built a photography studio, a color processing business they named Colormark, and a retail, commercial and industrial operation dubbed Photomark.

Bob stopped daily shooting in 1980, turning the work over to his staff of four professional photographers. While the couple still owns the building, they sold the studio and the Colormark business a decade ago, Bob says.

But the two are still very much involved in the day-to-day operations of Photomark. "I have a manager (Paul Taylor) who runs the (company), and I run him," Bob explains. They opened a fifth Photomark store earlier this year at Uptown Plaza in Phoenix.

Bea says she still does much of the administrative work, though a recent arm injury has temporarily limited her tasks.

In addition to building a successful, expanding photography mini-empire, Bob and Bea raised two daughters, Gayle and Terri, and a son, Paul. They are members of Beth El Congregation and supporters of Kivel Campus of Care, where both their parents were residents.

Son Paul assumed responsibility for part of the family business and now travels around the country doing commercial and advertising photography. Gayle, a nurse in San Francisco, recently photographed historically meaningful family sites in Crown Heights, N.Y., Bob says. Terri studied photography in college and is now married and living in California, says Bea.

Bob and Bea Markow, returning home from a Hawaiian vacation just a few days prior to Thanksgiving, welcomed all their children and grandchildren - Anna, 19, Erin 8, and Harrison, 5 - for a holiday dinner.

"How beautifully a rug turns out depends on how you weave it," Bea says, alluding back to Rabbi Krohn's advice to the then-young couple when he married them.

The beauty of the creation "reflects the way you interweave your lives," Bob adds.