Fred McCaffrey

Honored May, 2000

Fred McCaffrey

Fred McCaffrey’s parents left Alabama for New Mexico in the early 20th century, hoping that the high-desert climate would help cure his mother’s tuberculosis. She got well, and Fred was born in Albuquerque in 1922. Growing up Catholic, he wanted to become a Jesuit priest, and spent 13 years in a seminary studying for that role. But just before was to be ordained, he changed his mind. Later he told friends he could not give up women--and because of his impish sense of humor they did not know if he was joking.

Returning to Albuquerque in the mid-1950s, Fred worked as assistant production manager at a television station, and also hosted a children’s show on which he talked and drew cartoons at the same time. His program was immensely popular, with an estimated 60,000 viewers, and Fred became a local celebrity. He started his own advertising agency and also edited a Catholic newspaper. But inexorably he was attracted to politics.