by Mary Davis, Corrales Village Historian
Did you know that Rosie Targhetta, born and raised in Corrales, was “adopted as a surrogate daughter†by a woman who with her husband owned thousands of acres around Sedona, Arizona? The woman was Helen Varner Vanderbilt (from a first marriage) Frye; her second husband, Jack Frye, founded Trans World Airlines, the first transcontinental air service in America. Helen Frye was known for her encouragement of local artists and her love of animals, both wild and domestic. She virtually created Sedona as an art center and tourist mecca.
Rosie Targhetta met Helen Frye when Rosie was visiting her brother Joe who was managing one of the Frye ranches near Sedona. When Mrs. Frye broke her arm in a riding accident, she hired 17-year-old Rosie as a housekeeper. Rosie took over household chores and became an energetic and cheerful presence in the household. Over the years she grew to be a dear and trusted friend to the older woman, visiting her often and being at her bedside when Mrs. Frye died in 1979. A camera bug, Rosie took many photographs and videos of the Fryes’ life, even one recording the antics of Mrs. Frye’s pet skunk. Several of her videos are featured on the “Sedona Legend†website.
Rosie was more than a good friend to the glamorous wife of an aviation pioneer, however. Perhaps Rosie’s family side, remembered fondly by her daughter Elisa, accounts for Helen Frye’s love for her young friend. Elisa remembers her mother as loving to entertain and organize outings and events for her family and friends, so “every weekend was a party.†These would include trips to Elephant Butte for water skiing and swimming (the Armijos had a boat), winter snow skiing and tobogganing excursions, house-boating on Lake Powell, attending Lobo basketball games, and celebrating the holidays. Rosie’s amazing organizational skills (when she retired from the Internal Revenue Service, they needed two people to take on her work) made all these parties seem easy. A Christmas Eve dinner for 75 was no problem. Elisa recalled that one of Rosie’s organizing tactics was to make lists for everything, from the dishes to the ingredients to the needed cooking pots to the timetable for cooking and serving, and who was to perform what tasks.
I got to know Rosie as the inveterate—and highly organized—historian for her three families: her mother’s Alary family, her father’s Targhetta family, and her husband Frank Armijo’s family. She compiled detailed genealogies for all her ancestors. She shared her sister Anita’s Depression-era recipes (including how a beaver was prepared for roasting) and a delightful interview with her mother Roberta Alary Targhetta about Roberta’s years in the convent school in Bernallilo. She enriched the Corrales Historical Society archives not only with the recipes and the interview but with the loan of dozens of photographs, three of which are included here. Her wealth of photographs portrays the lives of her forebears—the Alary and Targhetta families, what it was like to grow up in Corrales when it was an isolated, thinly populated farming village, and how Rosie, her family, and the village changed as Corrales lost its isolation and became part of a bustling metropolitan area.
Rosie died in 2020 after a retirement filled with caring for her grandchildren, attending her grandson Isaiah’s basketball games, enjoying Caribbean cruises with her daughter, and giving fewer, but still well-organized and memorable, parties for family and friends.
Information provided by Corrales Historical Society (CHS) Archives Committee. Want to learn more?
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