Flour and fortitude: Granddaughter of Buckeye Bakery’s Tommy Lara sets record straight on hard childhood, legacy
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By David Kennard
Kim Ozment doesn’t remember anything about her grandfather, but she’s heard stories about the beloved Buckeye legend who was abandoned as a child, sleeping on flour sacks in the back of a Phoenix bakery before opening the Buckeye Bakery.
Still, Ozment said she wants to set the record straight.
“I’m here to honor my grandfather,” she said.
Ozment was in town with other family members on Jan. 24 to celebrate Buckeye Days, to watch the annual cattle drive through the center of town, but mostly to find a connection to her grandfather, Tommy Lara.
Lara died in 1970, not long after Buckeye Mayor Robert T. Bonnes declared Dec. 19, 1969, Thomas Lara Day.
“Tommy Lara came up the hard way... the real hard way,” reads a story in the Dec. 18, 1969, Buckeye Valley News. “He was born June 13, 1910, in Ft. Worth, Texas. He was left an orphan as a tiny tot. He attended grammar school in Phoenix and fended for himself much of the time while he was in school.”
Ozment said there is no truth to a popular story that her grandfather ran away from a Phoenix orphanage.
“There was no orphanage,” Ozment said. “I’ve done the research. It doesn’t exist.”
She says her grandfather left Texas when his father came to Phoenix with him and his brother, Henry.
Ozment said the two boys were later abandoned by their father, forcing them to care for themselves any way they could.
Seven-year-old Tommy sold newspapers on Phoenix street corners and worked as a handyman until age 11, taking shelter at night near the warm bread ovens of Log Cabin Bakery, then located at Taylor Street and Grand Avenue, according to a 1962 feature story in The Arizona Republic.
Ozment said despite his dire circumstances, her grandfather attended school as a child, finally finding a home when a school friend, Wilfred Ethridge, invited him in.
While never officially adopted, Tommy found a home in the Ethridge family.
“At the age of 11 being homeless, he became an apprentice, at a bakery, sleeping by the ovens at night,” his obituary reads.
“In the daytime he attended the Adams school,” the obituary continues. “One day a boy named Wilfred invited him home to lunch. From then on, Tommy had a loving family: Wilfred and his brother, Emest, and their parents, Aaron and Ethel Ethridge, accepted Tommy as brother and son.
“Much of his personality and wonderful traits of sharing, being considerate, understanding and love for fellowmen were influenced in Tommy’s life by the living example they set for him.
“On graduating from the eighth grade, baking became his profession.”
Ozment’s written history
In a written family history she compiled, Kim Ozment explains that her grandfather Tommy Lara rarely discussed his childhood with her parents. He told them he had been placed in an orphanage after being abandoned by his father, Carlos.
But Ozment says her own research, along with research her parents conducted years earlier, found no record of any orphanage in Phoenix at the time.
She located a 1920 census report showing Tommy living with his father Carlos and Carlos’ second wife, Frances. After that, she believes he was left to fend for himself on the streets of Phoenix.
According to Ozment’s account, Tommy found work and shelter with a man who owned a bakery. The baker allowed him to sleep on flour sacks and sent him to school. When he returned from classes, Tommy learned the trade.
“He told my parents this,” Ozment said.
She said while attending school, her grandfather befriended a boy who noticed he wore the same clothes each day. That boy asked his mother if Tommy could live with them.
“The name of the family was the Ethridges,” Ozment said. “Their son Ernest was the one that became friends with my grandfather.”
Ozment says the family treated him as one of their own.
“We are very grateful to her for her kindness to Grandpa,” Ozment said. “I have the 1930 census where Tommy was living with the Ethridges.”
Ozment said her grandfather and his brother Enrique, or Henry, did not remain together after they were abandoned.
“I wish they had,” she said.
There was a long-standing family story that Henry later hanged himself in a New Mexico jail cell. Ozment said she contacted court officials there, who conducted a records search. A newspaper article confirmed the account.
“That story was true,” she said.
“But we’re glad my grandfather survived growing up.”
Squaw bread
Nobody knows what Tommy Lara’s secret recipe was for his famous squaw bread, or if they do, nobody’s talking.
The closest anyone has come was published in a 1962 profile of Lara by The Arizona Republic.
It called for a “blend of wheat and rye flours, sugar, lecithin and calcium propionate.”
Add to the squaw bread mix of 12 pounds, 8 ounces, add water (3¾ quarts), yeast (12 ounces), salt (4½ ounces). Mix with a dough hook for 15 minutes.
“Scale off 1-pound, 2-ounce pieces. Make up into round loaves.” After letting the loaves rise, they should be baked on “sheet pans on corn meal.”
There’s a lot of detail missing there, and even for the newspaper story Tommy didn’t divulge more.
“Squaw bread is a Lara specialty, and a window to his way,” the story states. “It is a heavy, moist, wheat-colored bread that would keep a lumberjack fat. Usually all of Lara's squaw bread is sold by 11 a.m. Sometimes there are long lines of squaw bread customers.
“‘Tom,’ a friend once complained, ‘You've got something here that people crave. It sells out early every day. You ought to increase your production and get rich.’
“Lara studied on that, and said, ‘No, it just wouldn't work. When I begin at night, I’ve got a system. So much of this. So many of these. They've all got to start at a certain time, and they've all got to go through the oven on schedule. If I specialized on one thing, something else would suffer,’” the story states.
Regardless, the recipe was famous and in high demand by Buckeye residents who flocked to his bakery by the hundreds, according to Bonnes’ 1969 proclamation.
WHEREAS Tommy Lara has been forced to close his bakery business due to ill health, and
WHEREAS, during the many years he was in business here, he served the community well in many ways, and
WHEREAS, through his unique product, Squaw Bread, Buckeye became known as the Squaw Bread Capital of Arizona, gaining recognition from all parts of the state, and
WHEREAS the closing of the bakery has saddened residents in Buckeye and the entire Buckeye Valley,
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Robert T. Bonnes, mayor of Buckeye, do hereby proclaim Friday, Dec. 19, 1969, Tommy Lara Day, and ask all of his friends in the Buckeye area to express their best wishes to him on behalf of the community.”
Lara is buried in the Buckeye Cemetery on West Broadway Road.
It took some time for Ozment to find her grandfather’s headstone when she visited the cemetery in January; it had been 40 years since she was last there.
But when she did, emotion overwhelmed her. She collapsed on the green, well-groomed grass, throwing her arms around the sunken stone, then gently brushing debris from the marker.
“It’s right where I remember it,” she said. “A lot has changed, though.”
