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.

benjie sanders / arizona daily star

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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.

Just last year, KB Home Tucson, the 225th-largest employer in Southern Arizona, reported $250 million in sales.

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.

Flagg has plenty of work to guide — keeping SAHBA members actively engaged, retaining builders' confidence in the current economy and continuing his involvement with the Literacy Education And Resource Network (LEARN) Center at Catalina High Magnet School.

Working with other SAHBA members and educators at Catalina, Flagg is helping organize the remodeling of a portion of the school, as well as developing a vocational training program in the fundamentals of construction, including some on-the-job skills training.

"Art has been the one who really spearheaded everything," said Marge Gould, teacher/coordinator at the LEARN Center.

"They're a wonderful group," Gould said of Flagg and other SAHBA mentors. "They (students) call them all by their first names."

On May 3, Flagg will be honored by the LEARN program as one of three People of the Year for his contribution to Catalina and the community.

From his office, where family photos occupy equal real estate alongside company documents, Flagg commands a clear view of Midtown facing east.

He admits to missing teaching but doesn't dwell on what might have been since he has another group to look out for.

The home-building industry "is an extremely important contributor to the community," he said. "If you don't have growth, you don't have progress. The absence of it is worse than dealing with the issues that growth creates."