Benefactress Charouleau lived a life of mystery

It is what she did in life, however, that remains a mystery.

Charouleau was the daughter of pioneering Tucson landowners. But some familiar with the family's history speculate Charouleau made her own money early on as the proprietress of a downtown bordello, "Number 12 House," in what was known in the late 1800s and early 1900s as Gay Alley.

Was the petite, 5-foot-3, 112 pound Charouleau a madam with a heart of gold? That may never be known since about 17 years of her life, between 1906 and 1923, are unaccounted.

Betty Cook thinks Charouleau's reputation is unduly sullied. Cook, past president of the Docent Council at the Arizona Historical Society, has researched the family and found more questions than answers.

When Gay Alley was hopping, Charouleau was too young to have been a madam. And she didn't assume ownership of Number 12 House until after the death of her parents. She was sent to high school in Pasadena, Calif., and the gap in her employment history is book-ended by a job at the Los Angeles Public Library from 1904 to 1906, and working for Paris Confidential Service in Reno, Nev., doing "confidential investigation" for $5 a day plus expenses from 1928 to 1931.

In between, Charouleau traveled to Mexico a few times to visit her mother's relatives, and utility bills found in the personal papers Charouleau donated to the Arizona Historical Society, show she lived in San Francisco at some point.

Cook considered the possibility that Charouleau's great aunt, Ana Charouleau Woffenden, may have operated the brothel. After all, she owned the property before it was acquired by Charouleau's parents. But Cook said those dates don't fit either.

If Charouleau was a madam, it might have been from the ladies of the red-light district that she learned about civic responsibility.

"These gals that were all prostitutes apparently donated a lot of money to a lot of charities around Tucson, but they couldn't do it in their own names, so they would do it through" an upstanding lady in the community, Cook said. "These organizations didn't want any connection with money from prostitutes."

Born Dec. 23, 1883, Anna Charouleau's life was not without controversy.

When she returned to Tucson in 1930, she took an interest in boxing while in her 40s, promoting the sport in Tucson, organizing bouts and entering into a contract with at least one boxer, Johnny "Jack" Willis, a talented black fighter from Los Angeles.

Willis' mother, Cora, wrote to Charouleau with tales of woe, asking to borrow money against her son's future earnings so she could pay her bills. She also sought help in keeping her son out of trouble.

"Miss Charouleau, I wonder if you would talk to Jack for me and see if you can't persuade Jack not to run with this boy he's chumming with. You see, this boy isn't the type to run with," Cora Willis wrote in a letter.

Mother knew best. By 1935, Jack Willis was on the lam after his friends got him involved in a killing during an L.A. burglary gone bad. Charouleau tried to help Willis, hiring a lawyer and pleading with the young man to turn himself in, to no avail. Nothing in her personal papers indicates what happened to Willis.

By then, perhaps Charouleau had experienced enough excitement. Much of her work after that was centered on managing her parents' landholdings, flying around the globe on a whirlwind trip in 1948, staying active in civic affairs and donating money to local charities.

She was particularly interested in helping firefighters stage holiday parties for hospitalized children.

In a 1973 Arizona Daily Star article that accompanied her funeral notice, one firefighter remembered the never-married 89-year-old for her largess: "Somehow, Miss Charouleau would find out what each of the kids wanted from the Easter Bunny, then went to the (West) Coast and loaded the plane with gifts.

"She was always very sympathetic to anything the Fire Department advocated or wanted," the firefighter said. "She was simply wonderful."

On StarNet: Read more about Tucson history as gleaned from Arizona Daily Star files at Tales from the Morgue at go.azstarnet.com/ morguetales

To suggest someone for Life Stories, contact reporter Kimberly Matas at kmatas@azstarnet.com or at 573-4191.