Huge Marriages Search Engine!
UA fund honors Gen. John McPherson
The retired three-star general, a UA graduate, spent his early years in Bisbee.
A funeral service for John B. McPherson, who grew up in Bisbee and became a three-star general in the Air Force, is scheduled Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Mr. McPherson died June 23 in Sterling, Va., at age 79.
A scholarship fund has been set up at the University of Arizona in his memory.
Born Oct. 4, 1917, at Virginia, Minn., he moved with his family to Warren, near Bisbee, the same year. He graduated from Bisbee High School in 1934, worked for Phelps Dodge Corp. for a year, then attended UA, graduating with a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering in 1940.
An ROTC honor graduate, Mr. McPherson entered the Army as a second lieutenant and moved to the Air Force when it became a separate branch of the military. He spent more than three decades in the Air Force before his retirement in 1973.
After retirement, he served on a Central Intelligence Agency advisory panel until 1992.
He was a member of numerous service organizations and received UA’s Military Service Award in 1967.
Survivors include his wife, Irene, of Sterling, Va.; a son, Kenneth R. McPherson of Nashua, N.H.; three daughters, Sue M. Cain of Paradise Valley; Shirley M. Curs of Kingwood, Texas, and Robin M. Rohrback of Vienna, Va.; 11 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Donations may be made to the Lt. Gen. John B. McPherson Memorial Scholarship Fund, University of Arizona Scholarship Office, Swede Johnson Building, 1111 Cherry Ave., Tucson, Ariz. 85721.
(Dated Jul 01, 1997)
=======
Robert Smith founded children’s clinic
Memorial services will be held tomorrow morning at East Lawn Palms Chapel.
A memorial service will be held tomorrow for Robert S. Smith, who helped start the Square & Compass Children’s Clinic here in 1950.
Mr. Smith, 82, died Sunday of chronic lung problems.
Mr. Smith, with Ted Walker, Frank Minarik and Fred Goodell, all Masons, formed a corporation in 1950 to build the clinic at 3100 E. Fort Lowell Road.
The clinic, now at 2600 N. Wyatt Drive, provides physical and occupational therapy, medical and social services and other services to disabled children in southern Arizona.
Before the clinic opened, Tucson children in some cases had to be taken to Phoenix for such care.
Mr. Smith was born Aug. 3, 1914, in Logansport, Ind. He grew up in Indiana towns before moving to Tucson in 1940 because of lung problems.
He worked as an industrial tool salesman for the AwecoSupply and Industrial Tool Supply companies.
Mr. Smith was a Mason for more than 50 years, acting as secretary for Tucson Lodge No. 4, 1944 E. Allen Road, for most of that time.
He is survived by his wife, Sallie J. Smith; daughters Suzie Webster and Nancy Dodson and son Jeffry Rau; brother James J. Smith; and five grandchildren.
Memorial services will be held at East Lawn Palms Chapel, 5801 E. Grant Road, at 11 a.m.
Donations to the Arizona Lung Association, 2819 E. Broadway, Tucson, Ariz. 85716, are suggested.
(Dated Jul 01, 1997)
=======
Mitchum: Good-natured, gracious actor
The death of ”tough-guy” movie actor Robert Mitchum – who filmed three movies at Old Tucson Studios – marks ”the end of a golden era,” one of his longtime Arizona friends said yesterday.
”He’ll be missed,” Sonoita resident Snuff Garrett said.
”I’m sorry he’s gone. Everybody should be; he was a good guy.”
Mitchum, 79, died yesterday of lung cancer at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Not only did Mitchum have an Arizona home, near Scottsdale, but he also was a frequent visitor to Tucson over the years.
His mother, Ann Morris, lived here, as did his sister, Julie Sater. Morris died in 1990. Sater has since moved.
Long before that, though, Mitchum worked at Old Tucson on ”El Dorado” and ”The Way West,” films released in 1967, and the 1968 movie ”Young Billy Young.”
Robert Shelton, former Old Tucson president and actor, called Mitchum a ”very professional” actor who seemed like an ordinary guy on the set of ”El Dorado,” which also featured John Wayne.
”(Mitchum) was extremely friendly,” Shelton said. ”He was considerate of people around him. He was a guy who liked to hang out with the other guys, the wranglers in the corral, rather than be with the big wigs.
”He was one of the guys I worked with over the years that I really admired. He was a man’s man. But the ladies liked him, too, to say the least.”
Former Western star Rex Allen Sr. also mourned Mitchum.
”He was one hell of a guy,” Allen said yesterday. ”He was a man’s man. He was a great guy to be around, a good friend. We’re going to miss him.”
Mitchum and Allen never appeared in a film together, but met through Garrett, a former neighbor of Allen’s in Sonoita and Mitchum’s in Bel Air, Calif.
Allen also ran into Mitchum at the Sonoita horse races, where each had an interest in the ponies.
Mitchum, whose movie career spanned six decades, loved to tell stories, which contributed to his reputation as a carouser.
”Some of his stories, I won’t tell ya. You couldn’t print them in a family paper,” Allen said, laughing.
Mitchum was excited about moving to Arizona, Allen said.
”He talked a lot about that, about moving out from Santa Barbara to Scottsdale, where he wanted to spend the rest of his life.”
Allen last saw Mitchum about a year ago in Sonoita, when Mitchum was visiting Garrett.
”He was doing fine, I thought,” Allen said. ”I didn’t know he had lung cancer, but he did.”
Of Mitchum’s career, Allen said, ”He left his mark.
”He had a great career. He made over 100 pictures in his life. He started out playing heavies in the Hopalong Cassidy movies.”
Garrett was noticeably shaken at Mitchum’s passing.
”I always liked him,” he said softly. ”We always had a good time when he was around. It was great.”
Those who didn’t know Mitchum might be surprised to learn he was ”very bright, very well read,” Garrett added.
”You usually wouldn’t expect that of a matinee idol-type of guy. He was his own man.”
Mitchum never discussed show business, Garrett said.
”It was just work to him, like going to work in the morning. It was all a business with him. He had lots of interests besides that.”
Shelton also remembered Mitchum as a fun-loving, easygoing, down-to-earth person. He once rented a house for Mitchum in Tucson’s El Encanto neighborhood, where Shelton also lived.
Shelton last saw Mitchum in the late 1970s in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
”I walked over to him and stuck out my hand and said, ‘I’m Bob Shelton from Tucson.’ He said, ‘I know who the hell you are. You don’t have to say that.’
”He was very gracious,” Shelton added. ”Most everybody I know who’d spent any time around him would say that.”
Mitchum’s death came one week after the suicide of actor Brian Keith in California.
”He was a good pal of mine, too. Now here’s Bob’s turn this week,” Shelton said. ”It’s kind of scary.
”Bob, in my book, was in the Clark Gable, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Jimmy Stewart category,” Shelton said. ”We’ve lost one of the great Western ‘he man’ hero types. We’ve lost a lot of ‘em lately. There’s not many left.
”I hope everyone understands what a nice man (Mitchum) was,” he added, ”because he was.”
(Dated Jul 02, 1997)
=======
Ex-state lawmaker Hal Runyan dies
PHOENIX – S.H. ”Hal” Runyan, a former state Senate majority leader, has died of cancer at age 80.
Runyan, who died Wednesday at St. Luke’s Hospital, was elected to the Arizona House in 1970 and to the Senate in 1972, serving there through 1988. He was Republican majority leader from 1979 through 1982.
Survivors include his wife, Valeria; and a sister, Martha Jo Rinne.
Services were to be held today at Luke Air Force Base Chapel.
(Dated Jul 15, 1997)
=======
Joseph Stedino, the ‘wiseguy’ in AzScam
Joseph Stedino, the man at the heart of a 1991 undercover political corruption investigation in Phoenix that came to be known as AzScam, has died at his home in Sparks, Nev. He was 59.
Stedino, who died last week of cancer, played the role of mob-connected bagman ”Tony Vincent” in promising Arizona lawmakers money in exchange for their vote for legalizing casino gambling in Arizona.
Twenty lawmakers and lobbyists were indicted, and seven legislators were convicted on criminal charges.
Stedino, who became well known in Arizona, was brought to Phoenix initially to help with investigation of alleged crime in social gambling parlors, but the probe expanded.
Dary Matera of Chandler, who helped write Stedino’s memoir, described him as ”a bad guy in the Hollywood tradition of bad guys . . . a movie star Mafia guy.”
”Good heart . . . a good human being . . . but you had to always be aware of what he was: a gangster,” Matera said.
Murray Miller, a Phoenix attorney who defended then-state Sen. Carolyn Walker in her conspiracy and bribery trial, characterized Stedino as ”a first-class con in the ugliest sense. His motivation was power and greed.”
Stedino himself didn’t hide his background.
”I was a longtime ex-con wiseguy with three felony raps and a lifetime of running with the mob,” he said in his book, ”What’s In It for Me.”
(Dated Jul 23, 1997)
=======
