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Mrs. Wong, longtime resident of Marana
Lan Ying Wong was the widow of noted farmer and landowner Bing K. Wong.
Memorial services for Lan Ying Wong, widow of prominent Marana farmer Bing K. Wong, will be held Monday in Tucson.
Mrs. Wong, 78, died Thursday night.
Mr. Wong, who died in 1994, immigrated to Tucson from China in 1920. He worked in the family grocery business at North Stone Avenue and Fifth Street, delivering groceries to the Tohono O’odham Reservation and Marana.
The couple married in 1938.
In 1942, they started farming in Marana, living in a tent with their first two children while Mr. Wong cleared land to build a home. Soon the family had acquired 12 sections of land, and wells were drilled to utilize it for agriculture.
Mr. Wong later founded the successful B.K.W. Farms in Marana.
Burial services for Mrs. Wong will be Monday 11 a.m. at Evergreen Mortuary, 3015 N. Oracle Road, with Pastor David Chan officiating.
Friends of the family may pay their respects tomorrow, from 4 to 8 p.m., at Evergreen.
Survivors include four sons, Ralph Wong, Bing K. Wong Jr., and David Wong, all of Marana, and Ronald Wong of Tucson; three daughters, Frances Tom of Lakeside, Helen Dick of Los Alamos, N.M., and Margaret Gee of Saratoga, Calif.; 16 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
(Dated Jan 18, 1997)
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Longtime S&L exec Driggs, 95
PARADISE VALLEY – Douglas H. Driggs, one of the founders of the former Western Savings and Loan, died Saturday. He was 95.
As chief executive of Western Savings for more than 39 years, Driggs molded the thrift into what was the largest source of financing for housing and community development in Arizona.
Driggs began his banking career at the Traders Bank of Wickenburg. He was a teller, secretary and bookkeeper who slept in the bank with a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson under his pillow to guard the assets.
Driggs, his four brothers and their father started Western Savings in 1929.
The company went public in 1968 with the Driggs family still at the helm. Driggs stepped down as chief executive in 1972. His sons, Gary and John, a former Phoenix mayor, took over control of the business with their father serving as chairman emeritus until the thrift failed in 1989 along with much of the Arizona savings and loan industry.
Survivors include his two sons; daughters Lois Aldrin and Ann Driggs Christensen; 16 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. A visitation will be held from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at John Driggs’ home with services set for 10 a.m. Saturday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Scottsdale Camelback Stake in Phoenix.
(Dated Jan 27, 1997)
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Former Bonanno bodyguard Peter Notaro dies at age 81
The widow of Peter Joseph Notaro said she hopes people will remember the Tucsonan as a ”good man who worked hard” – not as the longtime bodyguard for Joseph Bonanno, a former Mafia crime family head who lives here.
Notaro, 81, died Sunday of complications from double pneumonia and a hole in one of his lungs, said Marie Notaro. He suffered a stroke before Christmas, she said.
Marie Notaro said her husband had broken ties with the Bonanno family ”many years ago.”
”We want to forget about that,” she said. ”If I never see him (Bonanno) again, I’ll be happy.”
Tucsonans knew little about ”Pete” Notaro before his arrival here in the late 1960s, though newspaper accounts showed he was arrested with five other alleged gangland figures in Montreal in November 1966. He pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm and served two days in jail.
The Tucson arrival of Bonanno and another alleged Mafia figure – Peter Licavoli – in the late 1960s prompted local police figures to be on guard. Bonanno reportedly moved here to distance himself from a gangland war in New York for control of his crime family.
Notaro arrived at Tucson International Airport April 4, 1968, met by Bonanno.
In what Notaro’s lawyer called harassment, Notaro was stopped by police at least twice in 1968, once for allegedly driving 43 mph in a 35 mph zone. Another time, he was arrested for ”giving false information” during a stop – a charge of which he later was acquitted.
All three figures – Notaro, Bonanno and Licavoli – were victimized in mysterious bombings in July and August of 1968, apparently aimed at persuading the organized crime figures to leave town.
Notaro’s home on North Rosemont Boulevard was damaged in an Aug. 16, 1968, bombing. His wife and daughter, Wanda, were home, but were uninjured.
No one was injured in the Bonanno and Licavoli bombings, either.
In 1969, Notaro was convicted, along with Salvatore ”Bill” Bonanno, son of Joseph Bonanno, for illegal use of a credit card. Federal prosecutors in New York proved that Notaro and the younger Bonanno had used a stolen Diner’s Club card on a cross-country trip from New York to Tucson.
Notaro told the court that he had used the card only once, to purchase five airline tickets, on the younger Bonanno’s orders. Notaro was sentenced to a year in prison, and the younger Bonanno was sentenced to four years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Also in the late 1960s, Notaro, the elder Bonanno and Charles J. ”Batts” Battaglia were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice in an alleged plan to provide false testimony to free Battaglia from prison, where he had been sent for a 1967 extortion conviction. In March 1970, the three were acquitted.
Notaro was born Oct. 15, 1915, in New York City. He started his own trucking business at age 14.
”He was a good man who worked hard,” Marie Notaro said.
The couple had been married for 48 years, she said.
Friends may call 6 to 8 tonight at East Lawn Palms Mortuary, 5801 E. Grant Road. Services will be held at East Lawn at 3 p.m. tomorrow. Entombment will be at East Lawn Palms Cemetery. Survivors include his wife, Marie ”Rusty”; and his daughter, Wanda Bentley.
(Dated Jan 29, 1997)
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CIA’s Shaw served around world
He was with the Clandestine Services branch of the U.S. intelligence agency.
Funeral services will he held tomorrow for Robert Tyler Shaw, who graduated from the University of Arizona in 1947 and went on to a long career with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Shaw, who served on repeated assignments all over the world with the intelligence agency, died Sunday at age 71.
Mr. Shaw died of injuries he suffered Jan. 22 in a traffic crash at East Speedway Boulevard and North Houghton Road, after another driver failed to stop for a red light, police said
He was born in Washington, D.C., on June 18, 1925, son of Maj. Gen. Franklin Prague Shaw and the former Mary Inez Skees.
His childhood was spent in Virginia, Kansas, China and Ohio, and he served in the U.S. Army as a photo-intelligence analyst during World War II.
He worked briefly for Procter and Gamble before joining the CIA early in 1948, soon after its inception. He went on to serve more than three decades in the Clandestine Services branch of the agency.
His work took him to assignments at six locations in Latin America, and he traveled extensively in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
He was chief of four CIA installations overseas.
Mr. Shaw retired in 1980, when he established a security firm to provide training on how to anticipate and counter terrorist attacks. He and his wife moved to Tucson in 1990.
Here, he was active in the Tucson Committee on Foreign Relations, Foreign Service Retirees of Southern Arizona, Central Intelligence Retirees Association, Association of Former Intelligence Officers and Tucson Rod and Gun Club.
His many hobbies included flying, amateur radio, gun collecting and shooting, antique car restoration and animal welfare issues.
Survivors include his wife, the former Janet Lee Ruggles; a daughter, Barbara Lee Hurt of San Antonio, Texas; two sons, Richard Wilson Shaw of Washington, D.C., and Thomas Ruggles Shaw of San Diego, Calif.; two brothers, Franklin Prague Shaw Jr. of Santa Fe, N.M., and Harry James Shaw of Easton, Md.; and four grandchildren.
Visitation is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. today at Evergreen Mortuary, 3015 N. Oracle Road. Services will be at 1 p.m. tomorrow at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 2450 E. Fort Lowell Road, with William F. Dean officiating. Burial will follow at Evergreen Cemetery.
(Dated Jan 30, 1997)
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Dr. Morton Fuchs, educator, at 73
The internist helped trained many doctors here and was an expert in diuretics.
Dr. Morton Fuchs, 73, a prominent Tucson physician who helped train many local doctors, died yesterday after a long illness.
Since November 1972, three years after moving to Tucson from Philadelphia, Dr. Fuchs was director of internal medicine at Tucson Hospitals Medical Education Program, which coordinates the training of interns and residents in local hospitals, primarily at Tucson Medical Center and Kino Community Hospital.
Dr. Fuchs practiced internal medicine privately for 38 years, both in Philadelphia and Tucson.
He was the first to work on a class of diuretic medicines now used widely throughout the world, and he was a world-renowned expert on hypertension and diuretics, according to his son Michael Fuchs, 39, who is also a physician in Tucson.
”He felt that his relationship with his patients was the most important thing to him aside from his family. He devoted a great deal of time and energy to . . . getting students into private practices” and providing them experience with patients, said Michael Fuchs.
Dr. Fuchs was president of the Pima County Medical Society in 1981, and served as governor of the 700-member Arizona Chapter of the American College of Physicians from 1994 until his death. The college, which has 75,000 members nationally, dedicates itself to upgrading medical care, teaching and research.
He was also a member of the American Medical Association, the Arizona Medical Association and the Arizona Chapter of the American Society of Internal Medicine.
”He was a very devoted father who spent a great deal of time with his children and grandchildren, despite having two full-time jobs and various extracurricular activities,” said Michael Fuchs.
Dr. Fuchs retired from his private practice in 1994, but continued to head the internal medicine program at the Medical Education Program, and devoted much of his time to the governorship of the American College of Physicians.
Before moving to Tucson in 1969, Dr. Fuchs was a clinical professor of internal medicine and director of the diuretic research laboratory at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia.
”He was well-respected in his work, in academic matters as well as his own private practice,” said Michael Fuchs.
Dr. Fuchs is also survived by his wife, Harriet; another son, John; two daughters, Robyn Martin and Lyn Umles; a sister, Irene Singer; his mother-in-law, Estelle Kissileff; and nine grandchildren.
Services will be held tomorrow at 11 a.m. at Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Road.
Contributions will be accepted in Dr. Fuchs’ memory at the Arizona Chapter of the American College of Physicians, Education Fund, c/o THMEP, P.O. Box 42195, Tucson, Ariz. 85733.
(Dated Jan 30, 1997)
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