Dr. George Van Saun (1888- 1953) A past Iowa and Arizona doctor who wandered and walked the areas he lived.
Two extensive journals (from 1946) were discovered at the local Good Will store in Flagstaff, Arizona. These books reveal the strange and bizarre world of an old (Anglo) doctor named Dr. George Van Saun who migrated from Iowa in the wintertime to live in both Phoenix and Tuba City, Arizona. Both journals speak little of Van Saun's actual practice of being a medical doctor in both Iowa and Arizona but seem to center themselves more on his lifelong obsession of taking meaningless walks in towns surrounding his homes. He seemed to have liked the town of Flagstaff, Arizona most and would spend a considerable amount of time there just aimlessly wandering with no apparent purpose other than to take walks. He indicated that he was once arrested at Hotel Monte Vista in Flagstaff for vagrancy and obsessive drinking in the cocktail lounge. Thorpe was found dead in 1953 at a local park in Phoenix with scribbled notes in his pockets about the danger of Native children spending too much time on park swings and not enough time actually learning and socially interacting in the classroom.
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