ARIZONA DAILY STAR: Fri., April 20, 2007
KB veep started in education
By Tiana Velez
In the span of nearly 30 years, Art Flagg's career has taken him from the classroom to the boardroom. When the call of war took him away from a job as a schoolteacher, Flagg hardly envisioned living the life he now leads as a senior vice president at KB Home Tucson Inc.
But as the recently elected chairman of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, Flagg still manages to dedicate time to serving in education.
After graduating from Northern Arizona University in 1967, he landed his first job teaching second grade at Encanto Elementary School in Phoenix.
It was during the height of the Vietnam War, Flagg recalled, and "after one year I was drafted."
Four years and two tours later to Vietnam and Germany, he landed back in Arizona and back in the school system. For a year, Flagg worked as a guidance counselor in Sierra Vista before moving back to Tucson and the University of Arizona.
He had returned to get his Ph.D. in education to be a school counselor and was nearly finished, lacking only his final dissertation. Flagg had more pressing matters, however, having just run out of funding from his G.I. Bill for college and learning that his wife was pregnant.
"I tried to get jobs in the educational field, but they didn't want someone without an (advanced) degree," he said.
Unemployed, with a baby on the way, Flagg answered an ad for a customer-service position at Andrew Wright Homes. The year was 1978. Come September, Flagg will celebrate his 29th year working in the real estate development field.
In that time, he's been through five down cycles — "it's nothing new to me," he says — and sees nothing different with the current decline in activity. During these periods, "it's important to shore up your builders, encourage them to stay the course," Flagg noted.
It's that kind of experience and record that makes Flagg ideal for his second term as chairman of SAHBA, said Roger Yohem, spokesman for the association. His first term was in 1994. In a down market, "when you're in that type of situation, Art is a good fit. He has a very steady hand to guide things," he said.
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Art Flagg, a senior executive at KB Home and two-time chairman of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, helps with the judging at the SAHBA home show. The military draft helped move him out of teaching and into the construction industry. |
FULL STORY: http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/179250