Kingman’s Royal Pain : Arizona Town Finds Its Image Bruised by Links to Oklahoma Blast

Don Whittaker, a barber at the oldest barber shop in this historic mining town on Route 66, thinks the community he loves is getting a bad rap.

“Kingman is not some wild place where everybody is crazy or running from the law,” said Whittaker. “Sure, we’ve got a few rednecks, but Kingman is basically a good family town, despite what people are reading.”

Whittaker’s view is shared by many residents of this desert town about 300 miles east of Los Angeles and 160 miles northwest of Phoenix. They complain that Kingman has been maligned in the media just because accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, his Army buddy Michael Fortier and several fringe characters linked to them happened to live here.

“It’s not right for Kingman to be blamed just because some transient came off Interstate 40 and stayed a few months,” said June Schultz, owner of the Kingman Club bar.

“The media is portraying Kingman as some den of iniquity where everyone wears militia clothing and carries semiautomatic rifles,” said real estate agent Brian Berlemann. “It’s not true. We’re just regular small-town USA.”

Residents have gotten a crash course in the ways of the modern media and have winced at news stories suggesting that Kingman is a breeding ground for antisocial attitudes that resulted in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

“That reporter from Atlanta said we were just ‘a gritty band of trailer parks populated by people whose cars broke down on the way to California,’ ” said Alice Peterson, waiting for her father to get a $6 haircut at Williams Barber Shop. “That hurts.”

The flap may have started innocently enough with a few shorthand phrases used by deadline-besieged journalists to describe Kingman: Dusty, remote, culture-deprived, a freeway truck stop, dominated by warehouses, franchise eateries and motels, a comfy place for gun-lovers, etc.

What pushed local resentment over the top was a story in the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald with the headline: “Pro-gun, anti-Jew and full of hate. Welcome to Kingman, a town whose people believe the Oklahoma City bombing was a government setup.”

The story got faxed to Kingman--yes, there are fax machines here--and the local anger hit the fan, not just toward the Morning Herald, but toward the media in general and even toward Kingman residents who have been quoted knocking their own community.

The Standard, which is published in Kingman and bills itself as “Mohave County’s Most Complete Newspaper,” struck back with a front-page editorial defending Kingman.

“According to the national media . . . Kingman has suddenly become a hotbed of government-hating, gun-toting, bomb-tossing white trash. . . . The locals know better. The people here subscribe to the old-style values that may be close to extinction in the cities--values such as hard work and family.”

Kingman Police Chief Carroll Brown, attending a press conference along with the FBI agent in charge of the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, took pains to correct what he said were myths being spread by the media.

Among those myths, the chief said, are the notions that Kingman lacks indoor plumbing, that most babies in Kingman are born to unwed parents and that large numbers of Kingman residents wear camouflage while walking on downtown streets.

It should be noted, however, that Brown’s apparent pique with the media has not filtered down to his officers. One officer stopped a big-city newspaper reporter for making an illegal U-turn in front of the police station and issued the offender a written warning rather than a ticket. He added an admonition to write kindly of Kingman.

For the record: Kingman has 15,000 residents (30,000 if you include the surrounding unincorporated areas) and there is no evidence that they are any sleepier or conduct their lives at a slower pace than residents in larger communities.

Sprawling north and south of I-40, Kingman is a commercial and industrial hub for northwestern Arizona, with an economy tied to tourism, light manufacturing and government services. The weather is warm and dry, the politics conservative, and the top-rated radio station plays country-Western. A three-bedroom house sells for between $80,000 and $100,000.

Residents brag about good schools, safe streets and the pinkish-purplish glow of the Hualapai Mountains in the morning sunlight. Artists are attracted to the solitude of the desert and the deep blue sky.

Then again, law enforcement officials say Kingman, like a lot of isolated areas, is becoming a hot spot for the illicit production of methamphetamines; acquaintances say McVeigh may have been dealing. A police officer was shot last week, allegedly by a drug suspect.

The downtown area has been badly hurt economically by the arrival of outlying malls. The Beale Hotel, once the height of comfort for desert travelers, is closed and awaiting renovation.

A portion of the movie “Easy Rider” was shot here. So was a commercial for Early Times whiskey and part of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s movie “Universal Soldier.” The U.S. Army’s Camel Corps was once headquartered here.

An 18-hole golf course just opened next to I-40. The community theater is performing “Barefoot in the Park,” and the Air Force jazz band came to town last week for a concert of Glenn Miller music.

The town founder, Lewis Kingman, arrived in 1880 to survey for railroad tracks between Needles and Albuquerque. Kingman had its heyday in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, when it was a busy railroad stop and part of Route 66, then the nation’s major east-west corridor.

The Mohave County Historical Society is saving newspaper clippings involving Kingman and the Oklahoma City bombing and the hunt by reporters and FBI agents alike for information about McVeigh and the others.

“We are not a ‘dusty town.’ We are not ‘a road that goes nowhere,’ ” said Lora Freed, a library staff member for the historical society. “Kingman is a town with a rich heritage. A lot of people feel we’ve been treated badly.”

Still, as an amateur historian and former newspaper employee, Freed takes the long view of these things.

She recalls the biggest tragedy in Kingman history: July 5, 1973, when a propane tank on a railroad car exploded, killing 12 people, including 11 firefighters. Many of the firefighters, in the tradition of American small towns, were volunteers, including the high school principal.

The press coverage of that event stressed that Kingman was coping bravely with tragedy and that residents were grieving for the dead and also beginning the healing process, the kind of terms now used to describe Oklahoma City.

Mindful of the support that flowed to Kingman from throughout the nation after the propane disaster, the Chamber of Commerce has opened a relief fund for victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

And chamber employees, and others, are pleading with visiting reporters not to relay a distorted impression of Kingman to the outside world.

“We are not a bunch of ill-educated, paranoid, white trash,” said retired rancher Frank Davis. “Tell people not to believe what they hear. Kingman is a good town.”