Earl Zarbin, Phoenix, Arizona, is a former newspaper reporter and editor for The Arizona Republic, taking early retirement at the end of 1988 (he began his reporting career for The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, in 1953, while attending the University of Arizona, graduating in May 1954, with a BA in history). He served two years in the U.S. Army, enlisting in May 1948 and discharged honorably in May 1950.
Zarbin is the author of six Arizona history books, four of them about water, including Roosevelt Dam: A History To 1911 (1984), and has contributed articles to The Journal of Arizona History. After leaving The Republic, he wrote under contract the newspaper's history, All the Time a Newspaper: The First 100 Years of The Arizona Republic (1990). Following that, he worked part-time for the Central Arizona Project (CAP) for more than 15 years. The CAP delivers water from the Colorado River through a 336-mile long canal to Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties. Besides writing, he gave numerous talks and guided visitors on tours of CAP facilities. Today, he contributes a daily rhyme, "I think I am..." to liberty.me.
As a youth, he was influenced politically by a unionist grandfather. Zarbin did not become aware of the freedom philosophy until the early 1960s when, in age, he was in his early 30s. He was given The Freeman to read, and, later, a copy of Anything That's Peaceful by Leonard E. Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). On a Sunday afternoon in the summer 1968, Zarbin wrote his first essay and submitted it to The Freeman. The managing editor, Paul L. Poirot, soon sent a note saying that the short article, "Each On His Own White Charger," would be published in October 1968. In more ways than he could imagine, the freedom philosophy was life-changing.
