In the beginning...
Before Valley freeways paved the way to a sprawling suburbia, narrow ribbons of asphalt connected communities through an expansive national highway network.
Travelers entered and exited the East Valley via these thoroughfares, which were crossroads to destinations within the state and across the nation.
Four major Federal Highways – U.S. 60, 70, 80 and 89 all came together to become Main Street in Mesa, which was the same road as Van Buren Street....in Phoenix.
After long stretches of open desert, travelers finally were on Main/VanBuren Streets which were lined with dazzling neon signs beckoning road-weary travelers to the home-comfort of a motel. During the heyday of roadside lodging, more than 150 Hotels Motels Lodges and Inns, Campgrounds and Rest Stations lined the highways that ran through the Valley....enticing tourists to stop and stay the night.
The Starlite Motel was unique because it had a pool.
It was built just west of Lindsay Road and Main Street in 1958 by Syracuse, Kansas transplants Elmo and Richard Kaesler.
Marta Kaesler-Maroon, who was four when her family moved to Mesa, recalls the early years of the Starlight–
“The owners, Elmo (Bud) Kaesler and Richard (Dick) Kaesler, with a little financial backing from their father Ed, constructed the Starlite and later the Stageland a block away. Customers called them the Kaesler brothers. They took turns sleeping at the motel every other week. The customers came from the East and stayed for months at a time, the same ones year after year. Our customers were very social and became good friends to our family and one another.”
In it's earliest days The Starlite welcomed visitors with a traditional neon sign (seen in the image below, directly behind the young lady. Images here can be clicked on and made larger to show more detail). That sign, at night, could be seen for a fair distance. It was created by master neon artist Paul Millett who started his sign company in Mesa in 1946.
In the late-50’s a pool was an expensive attraction for a motel to have. In a desert climate, a pool was a great "selling point". An excellent investment really in convincing people to stop at your Motel. As opposed to the pool-less others.
The Kaesler Brothers decided to "draw people's attention to this", the fact that they had a pool at their Motel. They were really unique and brave people, in hindsight, because they could have just put any old sign up saying that they had a POOL because they did....they had a pool already so....that gave them a distinct advantage over their competition, you know, other Motels. But the Kaesler Brothers were brave enough to take a chance, to invest in a sign that forever after would see a legendary piece of Neon Architecture and Artistry find her home on East Main Street......in Mesa Arizona.
Once again they called on Paul Millet. Working from a design created by artist Stanley Russon, Millet fabricated a 78-foot spectacle and a
masterpiece. 
Every night, since its installation in 1960, when the sun went down the neon pin-up beauty (some suggest Marilyn Monroe was the inspiration) leaped from the pinnacle of the sign in a three-panel animated sequence into a splash of neon water below.
The sign was so unique that it became known nationally and even worldwide as one of the best examples of historic roadside lodging signage. The Diving Lady's first day on the job was in 1960. For 50 years she served as a familiar beacon, a comforting sight for weary Dads and Moms, tired from driving and a stunning vision for kids that made them so amazed....
Faithfully leaping 6 times a minute, 360 jumps an hour – The Diving Lady made more than six million dives over half a century!!!
Her Final Dive...
On October 5, 2010, one of the most powerful storms on record wreaked havoc on the Valley.
The Diving Lady had survived hundreds of storms in her long life but this storm was unlike others, with hailstones the size and consistency of very large frozen Meatballs. Roarrrring winds and Ice plummeting violently from the sky an intense micro-burst lashed down upon her. The gale-force wind and pummeling hail caused a faulty joint from a late 1990s repair to fail
At her very BASE. There could have been no worse scenario.....no more "perfect" a storm....to send the Diving Lady crashing on a fatal plunge to the pavement below.
The noise was terrible and the damage was devastating – the Diving Lady was finished.
Vanquished. Fifty years Grand, she now was crushed and destroyed, broken, literally shattered into pieces on the ground. A full 69 feet of her 78 foot total heigth had crashed, thundering to the Earth. BOOM!!!
Not only was all her neon tubing destroyed, but she also lay mangled and crumpled. Twisted Metal and Broken Glass strewn all over the Starlite parking lot, it was amazing how far some of her pieces went, its as though...in her final moment she was trying to disperse herself to every part of the Earth with....a terrifying "Kaboom" then....finally....Silence. Except for the sound of the Hail that continued to plummet down upon her. The Diving Lady was done. :(
A half-century in the elements had caused considerable erosion....this on top of the devestation that the impact caused....it would be a major task to put all the pieces back together. "Humpty Dumpty".... reassembling HIM would be a "Walk in The Park" by comparison to this.
Looking down upon the devestated Diving Lady.....so many of those who stopped to take in and grasp her tragic devestation that day and in the days following the storm thought to themselves, some even saying out loud:
"She's gone."
Just like that....and just as Life itself can change so very dramatically so suddenly....one moment she was up as she'd been for more than 50 years and the next....she has crashed to the ground.
And so it was....
More than just a sign getting broken, this was the loss of a part of our history. To accept that she was finished, gone forever....was hard.
Word about the terrible accident spread quickly throughout Mesa, Phoenix, Arizona and even worldwide among those who are admirers of Neon Art....travelers who had seen her and Architects and Artsists who....would just generally appreciate such a unique and vintage work of Commercial Architecture.
People found it dificult to accept that she was gone...that she would never grace the high board again, leaving behind a such a void on Main Street where she had become so familiar and accustomed a sight to so many.
The loss was especially profound for Kaesler-Maroon – “I, too, would love to see the sign of the neon diving ladies restored,” she says. “It may be just a sign, but it signifies an era in Mesa when it was a small town that welcomed people of the North with a little relief from a cold, harsh winter.”
Soon "Save the Diving Lady!" became a rallying cry. Mesa Preservation Foundation – a non-profit formed by longtime devotees to the preservation of historic structures, objects and neighborhoods in Mesa and beyond – agreed.
Working with the owners of Starlite Motel, the Foundation began a campaign to raise the more than $80,000 that would prove to be necessary for her restoration.
WHAT’S AHEAD –
Nearly All who came to see her, as she lay crumpled on the ground, knew that she was done and that there was no hope. The massive erosion was visible, metal eaten away by one half of 100 years worth of diving beneath the blazing Arizona Sun.
One man who came to see what was left of the iconic Diving Lady sign was a pupil of Paul Millet, the Neon Artist who originally built the sign back in 1959 and he did not feel that she was necessarily "done".
Millet had taught him the art of Neon Fabrication and this student of Paul Millet's still had a Neon Shop in Mesa....had for years, in fact...Graham's Neon, on Country Club Road.
Mesa Preservation Foundation and local neon artist Larry Graham decided to unite to save the Diving Lady. Graham, having been mentored by the late Paul Millet, is still using some of the equipment that Millet might have used when he fabricated the Diving Lady over 50 years earlier so he was a great fit to restore this irreplaceable treasure.
Custom Handmade Neon is, to a large degree, a dying art-form, replaced by Mass Produced (each one like the next) LED signs. Shops like Graham's that continue to produce handcrafted Neon signs are much fewer in number than once they were and with Graham's connection to Paul Millet and with his Neon Sign shop being located right in Mesa? A perfect fit.
So hope was "returned", well...more accurately even found at all in regards to a return of the Historic Diving Lady sign which for so many years was such a beacon in the dark desert and so much of an identifying landmark for the Town of Mesa Arizona.
At this time, Diving Ladies, #1, #2 and 3 are fully restored and this of about 90% original materials that they were made of initially, which is amazing considering the erosion that existed and thus the need to cut, meld, mold and fashion small specifically shaped and curved pieces of metal then weld those onto her. Work is now being done to restore the Letters M-O-T-E-L of the sign, each over 6 feet tall and near 5 feet wide and the the wiring within the 72 foot tall sign.
There is a great deal of intricate work involved in this, much beyond "just" restoring the sign. A HUGE Matter is the pole. .......that such a massive animated sign will be mounted to. This is way way way beyond just pounding 2 peices of rebar into the ground to support a cardboard sign which...is hard enough in itself.
Hunt Construction, Able Steel, EJM Engineering, JB Trenching and FuZe Electric united and as result the Diving Lady's seven-story tall pole is finally installed!!!!
This mind-blowing assemblage of the best and most talented companies within thier chosen fields has also stepped up to assist with accomplishing the wiring/infrastructure that will be needed on-site at Lindsay & Main to power the sign for the rest of this century and beyond.
In this time when corporations are nickle-and-diming the citizenry (or threatening to), lets celebrate the generosity of these benevolent companies and the many others who have assisted in preserving this part of our past, N Glatz & Son, Sign Suppliers amongst these who donated more than $5000 worth of parts and supplies to the project and the many other companies that have also stepped up to help save our history. Please visit our Corporate Sponsors page. The logos are links to the websites of some of the companies that have assisted in saving this part of our community's past.
MPF and the Diving Lady Project are richly blessed to have the support of Hunt Construction and all of our supporters.
No amount of words will ever adequately express our gratitude.
When restoration is completed MPF will host a reinstallation and relighting ceremony.
The restoration of the Diving Lady can only be completed through the support of the many people who have enjoyed her nightly aquatics. No public money is being used on this project. The funds necessary to return this unique part of Mesa's History to our community will come from businesses and private citizens who have a passion for preserving irreplaceable parts of our community's History, original and unique connections with our town's past and/or one-of-a-kind art works such as she is. Please click on the image below of the Diving Lady sign to help us return this unique part of our town's history & connection to our past to where she stood for 50 years.
