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UA athlete Frederick Stofft
A memorial service is tomorrow in Phoenix for the longtime business executive.
A memorial service will be held tomorrow for Frederick R. Stofft, a World War II lieutenant general who became a business executive in Tucson and Phoenix and was a member of the University of Arizona Athletic Hall of Fame.
Mr. Stofft, who lived in Paradise Valley, died Friday. He was 91.
The 10 a.m. service will be held in Phoenix at the All Saints Episcopal Church, 6300 N. Central Ave.
He was a 1930 UA graduate in geology. Mr. Stofft played fullback for the Wildcat football team under coach J.F. ”Pop” McKale and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1972.
After graduation, he worked at a Tucson sporting goods company and at Porter’s Western Store, before joining PBSW Supply, a statewide business supply and office equipment firm, in 1934.
In 1935, he became a partner in the firm’s Tucson division, which was operated as Edward & Stofft on East Pennington Street.
During World War II, he commanded the 127th Infantry Regiment of the 32nd Division, a unit in the Pacific that had the longest record of combat of any American unit, according to Mr. Stofft’s résumé.
After the war, he became commander of the Arizona National Guard.
He also served as president of the Tucson Chamber of Commerce, the Tucson Airport Authority and the Tucson Kiwanis Club.
In 1960, he was awarded a citation for outstanding citizenship by the Civitan Club of Tucson.
Some 275 people turned out for his farewell luncheon in December 1962, when Mr. Stofft left Tucson to become vice president of PBSW in Phoenix. He became president in 1964 and retired in 1970.
Active in Democratic politics, he contemplated a run for governor in 1966 but decided against it.
He was active on numerous civic and charity boards, including the Phoenix Centennial, Goodwill, the Red Cross and the Boy Scouts.
Mr. Stofft is survived by his wife, Bette; daughters, Katherine Hawley and Suzanne Nystrom; stepdaughter Barbara Young; six grandchildren; and nine greatgrandchildren.
Family members suggest donations be made to the University of Arizona Cancer Center, 1515 N. Campbell Ave., Tucson, AZ 85724; or to the American Red Cross, 6135 N. Black Canyon Highway, Phoenix, Ariz. 85015.
(Dated Jan 02, 1997)
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Theodore Ash, retired major
Interment for the ceremonial cavalry troop’s co-founder will be at the Fort Huachuca Post Cemetery on Monday.
Theodore S. Ash, a retired Army major and cofounder of Fort Huachuca’s ceremonial horse-mounted unit – B Troop, 4th Regiment, U.S. Cavalry (Memorial) – has died after a long bout with cancer.
Mr. Ash, 59, who retired in Tucson in 1978 after a 20-year Army career, died Dec. 27.
He helped to establish the memorial cavalry unit – which marched in this year’s Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif. – on July 4, 1973. Fellow retired officer and friend Ray Robberson formed the troop with Mr. Ash.
The all-volunteer unit re-enacts the maneuvers of a late-1800s-era cavalry troop and takes part in public events in the Southwest.
Mr. Ash was born in Muncie, Ind., but grew up in Douglas. He attended Douglas High School and the University of Arizona.
His service career included combat tours in South Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and 101st Airborne Division.
Survivors include his wife of 37 years, Merlyn; three daughters; and three grandsons.
Interment is scheduled at the Fort Huachuca Post Cemetery on Monday.
(Dated Jan 03, 1997)
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Environmentalist James Webb
James D. Webb, an attorney long active in Florida and other environmental projects who also had held Arizona and federal legal posts, died yesterday at his Washington, D.C., home of complications related to brain cancer. He was 60.
Most recently he had been general counsel for the Wilderness Society.
”Jim understood that you cannot improve on nature,” said Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, a colleague at the Washington, D.C.based society. ”He took seriously the duty we have to pass on our natural assets to future generations. We miss him already.”
Webb served as chief examiner and assistant director of utilities for the Arizona Corporation Commission in 1965, helping draft the state’s first comprehensive regulations for finance and operation of domestic water utilities.
He was assistant Tucson city attorney in 1968 and became a member of the Tucson City Council in 1969. In 1974 he became Tucson’s city attorney.
In 1977 he began four years of service with the U.S. Interior Department, rising to assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks. He returned to Tucson to practice law in 1980.
In joining the Wilderness Society in 1986, he worked toward rectifying environmental damage in connection with the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project, leading toward a project to restore the Everglades. He became general counsel for the society in 1995.
Webb held degrees from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona Law School.
Survivors include three sisters, Verola Howell of San Leandro, Calif.; Glenna Morgan of Walnut Creek, Calif.; and Ethna Larson of Salt Lake City.
Services were pending.
(Dated Jan 03, 1997)
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Pilot Stanley Kwader had high-flying career
A memorial service will be held tonight for Stanley J. Kwader, a retired Air National Guard lieutenant colonel.
His flying career ranged from piloting helicopters in Vietnam to flying commercial airliners to instructing others to fly A-7 and F-16 fighters.
Mr. Kwader, whose call-sign was ”Darth,” died Saturday at age 49, following an extended illness.
The service is scheduled at 7 p.m. today at St. Joseph Catholic Church, 215 S. Craycroft Road.
After graduation from Seton Hall Preparatory High School in South Orange, N.J., Mr. Kwader was drafted into the Army in 1968.
He piloted ”Chinook” helicopters for the 101st Airborne Division out of Phu Bia, Vietnam, attaining the rank of chief warrant officer II.
He later earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology and guidance counseling from Troy State University and Northern Colorado University.
In 1972, he transferred from the Army to the Air Force, and two years later served at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, working as an instructor pilot for the A-7D ”Corsair II” aircraft.
From 1979 to ’81, he flew commercial aircraft for Continental Airlines, returning thereafter to Tucson where he joined the Air National Guard as a full-time A-7 instructor pilot, and later as an F-16 instructor pilot.
He retired from the Air National Guard in 1994.
Mr. Kwader was awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and Distinguished Flying Cross, among many medals he earned in the military.
Donations may be sent to St. Joseph School Education Foundation Fund, 215 S. Craycroft, Tucson, Ariz. 85711.
Survivors include his wife, Ellie; two daughters, Dawn Walker of Mesa and Tiffany Kwader of Central America; his mother, Patricia Gorman, and stepfather, Charles Gorman, of New Jersey; and a granddaughter.
(Dated Jan 08, 1997)
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Smoke shop owner Michael Cosenza
The gregarious businessman was a well-known downtown character.
Michael Constantine Cosenza, whose thick Brooklyn-Italian accent filled the small Crescent Smoke Shop in downtown Tucson for 32 years, died Monday after a long illness. He was 83.
Some customers would simply drive up to the curb and beep, and Mr. Cosenza – who owned the old-fashioned, open-front newsstand until 1980 – would run out with what they wanted, said his daughter Venera Crawford.
He opened the shop at 216 E. Congress St. shortly before 5 a.m. and closed late at night, 365 days a year, through ”rain, snow and sleet,” Crawford said.
The shop, measuring about 600 square feet, survived the decay of downtown and the birth of monster shopping malls.
Mr. Cosenza sold candy, gum, cigars, cigarettes, pipes, snuff, shaving cream, razors – and, before the era of the mega-bookstores, perhaps the most extensive selection of magazines and newspapers around. The choices ranged from The New York Times to ”Soviet Life” to ”Ladies in Bondage.”
”I never question who buys what,” Mr. Cosenza said in a 1978 interview. ”We don’t insult nobody. I don’t call nobody a name that’s not right and I don’t ask no questions.”
Current owners Barbara and David Cantrell – a mother-and-son team – encourage customers to browse but not loiter.
Under Mr. Cosenza, the shop was a place where customers could hang out, flip through magazines, play a game of pinball and watch a movie on the television.
The walls of his shop were papered with yellowing newspaper clippings, articles about hometown heroes from athletes to astronauts.
A cross-section of Tucson passed in and out, from judges and businessmen to junkies and other riff-raff.
The shop was described as a place where one felt as much like a guest as a customer.
The Crescent Smoke Shop, which has passed through numerous hands since it was established in the early 1900s, was purchased by the Cantrells four years ago.
Now named the Crescent Tobacco Shop and Newsstand, it still offers lots of magazines and newspapers, a variety of tobacco products and snacks.
David Cantrell said if he even brings out a can of paint, the old regulars, some of whom still remember Mr. Cosenza, beg him not to change a thing.
Crawford, one of Mr. Cosenza’s three children, said that as a child she occasionally was allowed to help out at the shop on weekends, making change. But her father didn’t think a smoke shop was an appropriate place for a young girl.
Born in Brooklyn on Oct. 1, 1913, Mr. Cosenza brought his family to Tucson in the late 1940s to cure his asthma and allergies. Crawford said he was vibrant and loving, with a strong sense of what was important.
”He had a tight rein on us as a family,” she said.
Mr. Cosenza is survived by his wife of 51 years, Joan, as well as three children and their spouses: Donald and Venera Crawford of Tucson; Leslie and Vincenza Green of San Gabriel, Calif.; and Salvatore and Kimberly Cosenza of Danbury, Conn. There are four grandchildren.
Visitation is from 4 to 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Abbey Funeral Chapel, 3435 N. 1st Ave. Services will take place at 10:30 a.m. Friday at Saints Peter & Paul Catholic Church, 1946 E. Lee St.
(Dated Jan 08, 1997)
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