Saturday, December 31, 2005

Passages 2005

SHERYL KORNMAN

Tucson Citizen

Ruth Booth, 91

Ruth Booth, a New York opera lover, moved to Tucson in 1957 with husband Alfred and brought the appreciation of opera with her.

Because of her, by 1950, Tucson had its own opera appreciation society - the Opera Guild of Southern Arizona.

The guild sponsored preliminary Metropolitan Opera auditions of opera singers here and held morning opera previews at members' homes.

It flourished in the 1960s, with her as witty mistress of ceremonies at opera guild events. She was president for 10 years.

Anthony Michael Roda, 73

A Tucsonan since 1952, Anthony Roda was assistant principal at two high schools: Tucson High and Catalina. He also was dean of boys and a football coach at Tucson High.

During WWII, he served in the U.S. Navy on PT-183, a torpedo boat, in the South Pacific.

Oscar Cameron Bell, 71

Oscar Bell was the son of a pioneer Tucson family. His parents were Hermina Sanora and Charlie Bell.

Oscar Bell fought in the South Pacific during WWII and leaves behind "the importance of family ties and roots," his family said. He has 22 great-grandchildren.

Melvin L. Schlobohm Sr., 86

Melvin Schlobohm served during WWII in the 345th Fighters Squadron and later in Korea.

While in the military, he helped build a Microwave communication system in Taiwan.

After settling in Tucson he helped build a Microwave communication system on Mount Lemmon. He retired from Burr Brown Corp.

James D. Carillo, 70

James Carillo, a retired postal worker, left 26 grandchildren.

He was a pitcher on the baseball team at Tucson High School and later at the University of Arizona.

Marcia F. Campbell, 86

Marcia Campbell was a speech pathologist at the University of Arizona.

Her husband, Bob, had a 35-year career at the Tucson Citizen.

Marcia Campbell moved to Tucson in 1959 and from 1966 to 1986, she taught speech on the faculty of the UA Speech Department. She was clinical director of the department's aphasia program.

Juliette Gonzales was a third-generation Tucsonan whose grandfather, Gregorio Esparza, died fighting for the Republic of Texas at the Alamo.

She was a member of Los Descendientes del Presidio de Tucson and with her husband, Frank, known as "Pancho," founded Pancho's restaurant in Tucson in 1947.

Her son, Frank, said his mother was at the restaurant greeting guests almost daily until it closed in 1988.

The restaurant on Grant Road featured "the world's largest dripping candle."

Patrick Kenneth Dwyer, 82

Patrick Dwyer was a flight engineer during World War II, serving in Burma and India.

He worked at Hughes Aircraft and later was supervisor of data processing for the city of Tucson. His family said he loved information technology.

He was also a Little League coach.

Mario De La Fuente, 96

Mario "Mike" De La Fuente was born in Mexico and went into exile with his family in Del Rio, Texas, during the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

He was a star baseball pitcher in high school and at the University of Texas in the 1920s.

He worked in the oil industry in Mexico and settled in Nogales, Son. A bullfighting aficionado, he owned the bullring in Nogales.

He was also a radio station owner and cable TV network owner. He was a founding member of the Arizona-Sonora Commission.

Park Dana, 80

Park Dana was one of the original Marlboro Men. His family said he acted in more than 400 TV commercials and was a stunt double for Marlon Brando in 1954 in the "Wild One."

He moved to Tucson in 1967. In the late 1980s, he helped his daughter, a nurse, create a private-duty non-Medicare nursing agency, CareGiver Connection of Arizona, which serves communities in southern Arizona.

Webster L. "Tex" Moody, 89

As a boy, Tex Moody traveled the world delivering mules with his father, his family said.

During WWII, he was a tail gunner on a B-17 "Flying Fortress," fighting in Sicily, Italy, and North Africa.

He settled in Tucson in 1950; owned Moody Auto Sales in South Tucson. He also sold campers and camper trailers in the late 1950s.

Tex Moody also showed quarter horses in Texas.

Patricia Lynn Publicover, 56

Patricia Publicover, a barber, and her husband, Bob, traveled on Pantano Christian Church missions to Kosovo, Albania, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Mexico, building homes and distributing food and clothing to the poor.

She died of breast cancer.

Gertrude Gelderman was a nurse who came to Tucson in 1927. Here, she married Dr. Frederick H. Gelderman, a physician. Her family said that at 100, she still maintained her own home and attended water aerobics classes twice a week.

Antonio Figueroa-Iturralde played trombone in the University of Arizona Marching Band, his family said. With his UA bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering, he went on to help design the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. He was born in Mexico's Sonora state and graduated from Douglas High School in Douglas, Ariz.

Francisco C. Rodriguez, 84

Francisco Rodriguez was known as "Pancho El Gordito," according to his family. He was a vocalist with the Nunez Orchestra in the 1950s and '60s here and sang in the church choir and with the mariachis of Santa Cruz Parish, where he was a eucharistic minister. He worked for the city of Tucson for 29 years, and then for Southern Pacific Railroad. He also was a TUSD school crossing guard.

James Henry Hall Jr., 73

James Hall, a WWII veteran, was senior choir president of Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church. He was an active member of the Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Paul D. Bozzo, 67

Dr. Bozzo was a dermatopathologist for more than 40 years in Tucson. He also taught pathology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. At the time of his death in November, Dr. Bozzo was training with his son-in-law to ride in the annual El Tour de Tucson bike race. He was medical director of TMCHE Laboratories for 28 years here.

Philip B. Vito, 90

Phil Vito's father died in Pennsylvania in the flu epidemic of 1918. His mother moved the family to Tucson and opened a grocery store at Helen Street and Sixth Avenue. In 1958, after he served in WWII, he and his mother opened Vito's Mexican and Italian Restaurant on East Speedway Boulevard. He played football at UA and was a president of the University of Arizona Alumni Club. He was active in many civic organizations through the years here.

Gregory J. Scott, 48

Known as "Bubba" to his friends, Gregory Scott was a Palo Verde High School graduate who went on to serve in the Air Force in Special Services from 1975 to 1980. He worked for US West and Sprint. His friends said they would always remember his smile and his generosity.

Charles Sarando was a member of the Deering (Maine) High School marching band that took part in President John F. Kennedy's inaugural parade in 1961. During the Vietnam War while in the U.S. Navy, he served on nuclear submarines based in San Diego. He lived in Tucson for 30 years and umpired Little League baseball and worked for Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.

Salvador Ortega, 83

Salvador Ortega was an intelligence officer for the 1st Army's 3rd Armored Division during WWII and took part in D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he worked at his family's shoe store in Douglas, then opened a shoe repair store at Fort Huachuca. In 1953, he opened Ortega's Shoe Repair in South Tucson and operated the shop with his wife Emma for more than 40 years.

Julius D. Cesare, 76

Julius Cesare joined the Navy at 15 in 1943, his family said. After WWII he worked as a meat cutter and later was a licensed contractor. His hand-made bows and arrows were shown in craft shows, and he had a passion for country-Western dancing.

Hugh Howard McFadyen, 88

Dr. McFadyen was a founding partner in Thomas-Davis Clinics, where he practiced medicine from 1949 until he retired.

Earlier, he married an Army nurse, Evelyn Powell, whom he met while serving in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit during his military service in the South Pacific during WWII.

Jean R. Humphrey, 85

Jean Humphrey had a master's degree in library science and worked at the University of Arizona College of Law library from 1959 until she retired in 1984. Jean Humphrey made "exquisite" cookies, her friends said, and looked out for others in her neighborhood, her family said.

Vita P. Solomon, 88

Vita P. Solomon was a portrait painter.

Her 1968 oil painting of author Pearl Buck is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. It was a gift to the museum of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation in 1973.

Vita Solomon's paintings in a variety of media were exhibited throughout the world.

She taught art at the Tucson Museum of Art and in Tubac into the late 1990s.

Louis J. Yslas Jr., 78

Louis Yslas was a descendant of relatives who lived in the Tucson Presidio in the 1700s.

As a teen in Tucson, he was an usher at the Fox Theatre downtown on Congress Street. He enlisted in the Navy during WWII and served in the South Pacific. After his discharge, he returned to high school and graduated from Tucson High in 1947.

April Peck, 88

April Peck survived the Coconut Grove nightclub fire in Boston in 1942. About 1,000 people were in the club, which had a capacity for 600. A total of 492 people died after exits were blocked by stampeding patrons.

The fire spurred the development of national fire safety standards in public venues.

Before she moved to Tucson, her family said she was a beautician in Hollywood and her clients included "Tarzan," Johnny Weissmuller, and Jackie Gleason.

Jesus Madrid Cardenas, 78

Jesus Cardenas worked for Pacific Fruit Express Co., a refrigerated rail car business, for 45 years. His family said he was most proud of his audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1996.

Enriqueta D. Madril, 98

Eriqueta Madril was a homemaker, and had seven children, 30 grandchildren and 63 great-grandchildren when she died in September.

Reynaldo Basurto, 92

Reynaldo Basurto's wife of 67 years, Reina, survives him.

He was a member of Plumber and Steamfitters Local 741 in Tucson for 63 years. His family said he was a proud South Tucson volunteer firefighter. He and his wife first opened their home to foster children 47 years ago.

Mozela Thornton, 88

Mozela Thornton was one of 16 children. After raising her own children, she worked for the Model Cities program in Tucson and was a charter member of Gideon Missionary Baptist Church here.

Richard Lucas Martinez, 67

Richard Martinez sold the evening newspaper on the street downtown as a boy in Tucson. He also worked as a bus boy, grocery bagger and a caddie. He played trumpet in the Tucson High marching band.

And for nearly 30 years, after his military service and earning bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees from UA, he taught at TUSD schools. He was on the board of Pio Decimo Center and served on the Pima County Employee Merit Commission.

John Douglas McCullen, 73

John McCullen taught physics at UA for 38 years. His family said he loved science and he loved teaching just as much.

Cecilia "Sally" Cristo, 66

Sally Cristo, a former nun, was a clerk in the Tucson Citizen library for 18 years until her retirement.

John J. Heidel Sr., 86

John Heidel was a pipefitter who worked for the Navy and Army, his family said, on ships sunk in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He was a building supervisor for Pima County for 25 years and a hunter and fisherman who enjoyed the outdoors, his family said. He was a member of Tucson's Elk Lodge No. 385 for more than 60 years.

Among those who died in Tucson this year are the longtime curator of small mammals at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and a New Yorker who brought opera appreciation to Tucson, a former school teacher who started an award-winning, tap dance troupe for women 50 and older and the matriarch of the Gonzales family, which in 1947 opened "Pancho's" restaurant, at one time one of the city's most popular Mexican restaurants. Here are some of those who left us in 2005.

Jean Johnson, 72

Jean Johnson worked in California as an elementary school teacher but kicked up her heels in Tucson after leaving her job at IBM in 1991.

She used her own money to rent a dance studio and create a troupe of female tap dancers 50 and older that she named The Hot Flashes.

The glamorous women, some in their 70s and older, performed on cruise ships and on television and won gold medals in North American dance competitions.

Jean Johnson, who danced with the 40-some Hot Flashes and directed the dance team, retired the group's name when she retired because of ill health in November 2004.

She is memorialized at the University of Arizona's Women's Plaza of Honor, unveiled this year, for her volunteer work and achievement in music and visual arts.

Merritt S. Keasey, 70

Merritt Keasey was not only curator of small mammals at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum for 20 years in its early years, he also wrote or co-wrote several books about cactus and small mammals and explored remote islands off Baja California.

He gave talks on his explorations for the Audubon Society, and in later years was a hiking guide at Canyon Ranch, the fitness and health resort.

Higgie Higginbotham had a 20-year career in the U.S. Air Force, which ended at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. He worked for the Tucson Parks & Recreation Department and as a sports official at hundreds of high school and college games.

Committed to making Tucson a better place, he served on the Pro Neighborhoods board, helping direct small grants to needy neighborhoods.

As a Senior Olympian, he won more than 125 medals, according to his family.

The city of Tucson established a memorial fund in his name: Higgie Gym Fund.

The City Council named the gymnasium at Northwest Neighborhood Center, 2160 N. Sixth Ave., "Higgie Gym" in his honor.

Six members of the military services with connections to Tucson died this year while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. They are:

U.S. Army Pvt 1st Class Sam Williams Huff, 18: April 17, when the Humvee she was driving was hit by a roadside bomb near Baghdad. Assigned to 170th Military Police Company, 504th Military Police Battalion, 42nd Military Police Brigade, based in Fort Lewis, Wash. Mountain View High Class of 2004.

Related article: Our Opinion: Pfc. Sam Huff

Obituary: '04 Mountain View grad dies in Iraq

U.S. Army Pfc. Seferino J. Reyna, 20: First Tohono O'odham killed in the war in Iraq, on Aug. 7, when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle near Taji, Iraq. Combat engineer in Company A, 70th Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan. Registered member of Tohono O'odham's San Lucy District , but grew up in Maricopa and Kingman. A 2002 graduate of Pass Alternative High School in Kingman.

Obituary: Bomb kills O'odham soldier in Iraq

U.S. Marine Corps Master Sgt. Kenneth E. Hunt Jr., 40: Oct. 12 in Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, from injuries received July 24 when the armored Humvee he was in was hit by an anti-tank mine in Al Taqaddum, Al-Anbar province west of Baghdad. Assigned to Marine Wing Support Group 37, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, I Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma. Santa Rita High Class of 1983.

Obituary: Blast in Iraq kills ex-Tucsonan

U.S. Army Spc. Thomas H. Byrd, 21: Oct. 15 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when a roadside bomb detonated near the M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle he was in during combat operations. Assigned to 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, based in Fort Benning, Ga. Santa Rita High Class of 2003.

Obituary: 2 Santa Rita grads die in Iraq in Oct.

U.S. Army Sgt. Kenneth G. Ross, 24: Sept. 24 in helicopter crash in Afghanistan's Deh Chopan district, 180 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul. Assigned to 7th Battalion, 159th Aviation Regiment based in Giebelstadt, Germany. Mountain View High School Class of 1999.

Obituary: Services set for soldier killed in Afghanistan

U.S. Army Spc. Scott Mullen, 22: Oct. 14 in Makati City, The Republic of the Philippines, from fall injuries the day before while on leave in the country. Stationed in the Philippines with the 5th Battalion, 4th Psychological Operations Group, U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command based in Fort Bragg, N.C. Catalina Foothills High Class of 2002.

Obituary: Fall kills GI, a Catalina High grad

Other deaths of note that the Citizen marked:

Helen Miller Poore, 91: longtime southern Arizonan who served as national president of the American Legion Auxiliary in the 1950s. Died Jan. 25.

Obituary: Helen Poore led American Legion Auxiliary

Saul Tobin, 76: prominent home builder and philanthropist. Feb. 8.

Obituary: A builder of homes, futures

Astronomer Keith Pierce, 86: chose Kitt Peak west of Tucson for the national solar observatory. March 11.

Obituary: Scientist Pierce pinpointed Kitt Peak as astronomy site

Lalo Guerrero, 88: "Father of Chicano Music" March 17.

Obituary: Lalo Guerrero - Father of Chicano Music - Dead at 88

Jackie Stopani, 64: first Arizonan to get a kidney from a donor she met on a commercial Web site. March 18.

Obituary: Woman who got kidney through Web site dies

Alice Paul, 74: first Tohono O'odham tribal member to receive a doctorate. May 2.

Obituary: Dynamo of education dies at age 74

Sister Mary Estell Shaffer, 89: nun at the Benedictine Monastery, 800 N. Country Club Road, who made her reputation handing out egg sandwiches to the homeless for 15 years. June 29.

Obituary: Nun who was 'Egg Lady' to needy dies at age 89

William Benjamin Moody Jr., 73: retired banker and former president of the Tucson Children's Museum board. Aug. 12.

Obituary: Moody headed children's museum

Shawntinice Polk, 22: top women's rebounder in University of Arizona history and a preseason All-America candidate. Sept. 26 of a blood clot in her lung.

Related story: Our Opinion - 'Polkey' leaves legacy of love, exuberance

Funeral service coverage: Friends bid Polkey final goodbye

Daniel Preston, 53: served a dozen years as vice chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation's San Xavier District. Oct. 18 from complications from a lifelong battle with diabetes.

Obituary: O'odham leader valued nation's culture

Howard J. Beaver, 79: name has been synonymous with music in the Old Pueblo since he founded Beaver's Band Box and the Tucson Concert Band four decades ago. Oct. 3.

Obituary: Founder of Concert Band, Beaver's Band Box dies at 79

Wally Burg, 62: Tucson International Airport chief executive officer and visionary leader who built TIA into what it is today, Nov. 9.

Related story: Our Opinion - Walter A. Burg

Obituary: Walter A. Burg, ex-TIA CEO

Lew Murpyhy, 72: Tucson mayor 1971 to 1987, longer than anyone else, Dec. 1

Related stories:

Revere: His honor nurtured high-tech

Our Opinion: Mourning Mr. Murphy - top mayor

Obituary: Visionary ex-Tucson Mayor Lew Murphy dead at 72

John Gabusi, 64: primary architect of Morris K. Udall's presidential campaign, a presidential appointee in the Carter administration, voracious reader, champion of education and most recently vice chancellor for economic development at Pima Community College. Dec. 8.

Obituary: Man who ran Udall's campaigns dies at 64

Sam Levitz, 91: owner of Sam Levitz Furniture, pioneered the direct-to-you-warehouse concept in furniture sales. Dec. 17.

Our Opinion: Furniture genius

Albert Soto, 51: a Tucson actor, community activist and an administrator with the Tucson Pima Arts Council, died Nov. 26 , two days after a stroke Nov. 24 - Thanksgiving Day. Furniture sales magnate, innovator Sam Levitz, 91

Albert Soto, 51: a Tucson actor, community activist and an administrator with the Tucson Pima Arts Council, died Nov. 26 , two days after a stroke Nov. 24 - Thanksgiving Day.

On the net: http://www.celebrandoalbert.net/

Obituary: Soto funeral arrangements

- Tucson Citizen archives