Some may have seen him as the rough-and-tumble artist, lighting fire to his paintings with the same Chivas Regal he imbibed.
But to Lucia DeGrazia, her father, Ted, will always be "Daddy," a man so tenderhearted he refused to saddle up when taking his children horseback riding.
"He would get saddles for us but not for him. He felt sorry for the horse. He would go bareback," says Lucia, oldest of Ted DeGrazia's three children.
Only 8 when her parents divorced, Lucia, along with brother Nicholas and sister Kathie lived with their mother, Alexandra, a schoolteacher.
Busy as her father was, he always found time for them, says Lucia, who works as a PBX operator at Tucson's St. Joseph's Hospital. "He would pick us up at our house until we were grown. We would go to the movies or horseback riding. Afterward, we would go to Jerry's Ming House. He loved Chinese food."
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The children would often spend the night at DeGrazia's North Campbell Avenue studio, then so remote that a passing car was an event, says Lucia.
"Daddy would get my brother, Nick, to help him take the easels out to the street. The next morning, Daddy would say not one person stopped to ask about a painting. Not only that, they wouldn't even steal one. Now a little sketch goes for thousands of dollars."
When DeGrazia's Indian paintings became popular in the early '50s, Lucia would often accompany her father to the Buck and Leo Saunders Trading Post gallery in Scottsdale. "We would go in Daddy's convertible — he loved convertibles — and he and Buck would visit."
DeGrazia's generosity toward his children ranged from dollar bills for every "A" on a report card to new leather coats he bought for Lucia and Kathie in exchange for a painting.
"He took us to Kaibab Buckskin on Stone Avenue. He had sold them a painting, and instead of taking a check he said for each of us to take a leather coat," says Lucia, now 71.
But there was also friction between DeGrazia and his son, Nicholas, who as a child helped color the mass-produced cards his father created.
Also an artist, Nick was evicted from his father's studio apartment in 1980 and bitterly declared after his father's death in 1982 that he was going to become a professional boxer.
Although they hadn't spoken in years, Alexandra attended DeGrazia's funeral. She also visited him on his sick bed, greeting him with, "Ted, you old scamp. How are you?"
Lucia also met her half-brother, Domingo, during the time her father was sick. Born from a relationship her father had with Carol Locust, an Indian artist he had met in the late 1960s, Domingo was only 8 when his father died. "We were all at the funeral," says Lucia.
But dissension would arise in 1987 when Ted's wife, Marion DeGrazia, won the battle his daughter, Kathie Bushroe, had been waging to save her father's old studio shops on North Campbell Avenue.
A court order eventually allowed Marion DeGrazia to sell the property to make way for a gas station. Kathie Bushroe, who still lives in Tucson, declined to be interviewed.
Alexandra DeGrazia died in 1998 at age 83. Nicholas DeGrazia died in January of 2001. "He died of a heart attack," says Lucia.
While her father was generous with his children during his lifetime, says Lucia, he did not leave them a huge inheritance.
"Three days before he died, he told me, 'I'm not leaving you or your brothers or sister any money. I could leave you all a quarter-million, but you need to work, keep the brain going.' I said that was fine. We have our memories."
