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Redo knew U.S. presidents
Mexican rancher-socialite Diego Redo Vidal Soler, whose friends included former President Reagan, died Saturday in Hermosillo, Son., of a heart attack brought on by pneumonia.
He was 75.
Though owner and general manager of the hotel San Alberto in the Sonoran capital, Redo devoted much of his attention to developing Rancho Cerro Colorado as a wildlife refuge.
El Imparcial, a Hermosillo newspaper, said Redo’s friends included Reagan, former President Eisenhower and movie star John Wayne. He worked in some of Reagan’s films as an extra and helped tame horses at Reagan’s ranch.
Reagan in turn was a frequent visitor to Redo’s ranch near Cananea, Son., south of Bisbee, and enjoyed riding horseback through its oak and juniper forest.
Reagan was thrown from a horse while vacationing at the ranch with his wife, Nancy, in July 1989. Reagan was only slightly injured and joked afterward that the incident had been ”my own private rodeo.”
Relatives told El Imparcial that Redo’s body would be cremated and his ashes scattered at the ranch, as he requested.
Redo was the son of Diego Redo de la Vega, the last governor of the Mexico state of Sinaloa under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.
Born in Spain, Redo had lived in Mexico since infancy. As a young man in Mexico City, he became friends with stars of Mexico’s recording and film industry, including Pedro Infante, Luis Aguilar, Lola Beltran and Dolores del Rio.
Redo and his wife, Norma, daughter of Sonoran brewing magnate Alberto Hoeffer, had three children.
(Dated Jan 09, 1998)
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Memorial service tomorrow for pool builder Bernard
A memorial service for Frederick C. ”Fritz” Bernard, who operated a swimming pool construction company in Tucson from 1979 until his retirement in 1986, is scheduled tomorrow.
Mr. Bernard died of a heart attack Monday in Tucson Medical Center.
The 2 p.m. service will be held at St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church, 4440 N. Campbell Ave.
Mr. Bernard was born in 1921 in Ponce, Puerto Rico. The family had moved there during the height of the Mexican Revolution, leaving the Guaymas area, where his father, Allan C. Bernard Jr., was an agricultural adviser in the Mexican sugarcane industry.
The family moved to Tucson in 1927, and Bernard attended school at Miles, Roskruge and Tucson High. He attended the University of Arizona, where he played football, and was an Army pilot during World War II.
Before founding his pool company in 1979, he worked 30 years as Whitaker Pools’ superintendent.
His grandfather, Allan C. Bernard, moved to Arizona in 1876 and served as a territorial legislator and councilman and vice mayor of Tucson from 1915-19.
Survivors include his wife, Suzanne; sons Frederick C. Jr. and William A. Bernard, both of Tucson, and Charles E. Bernard of Chatsworth, Calif.; daughters Mary C. Morales and Madelyn Bernard of Tucson; sister Harriet Dyer of Tucson; eight grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
(Dated Feb 04, 1998)
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Services set for ex-grocer Daisy Woon
Funeral services will be held Saturday for Daisy Woon, who started the first grocery store chain in Tucson with her husband.
Mrs. Woon died Sunday in the Los Angeles area. She was 86.
Mrs. Woon, who was born in Canton, China, came to the United States in 1939 to join her husband, David Woon, who was a clerk in a Chandler grocery store.
The couple moved to Tucson in 1945 and opened Farmer’s Market at 1333 N. Miracle Mile, next to the Tucson House apartment building.
”In those days it was the biggest market in Tucson,” said Joe Yee, Mrs. Woon’s brother.
Within the next three years, the Woons opened two more Farmer’s Markets, at East Broadway and Sixth Avenue and at South Sixth Avenue and East Irvington Road, Yee said.
The Woons sold their stores to Goodman’s supermarket chain in the early 1950s, Yee said.
The Goodman’s stores later were sold to Lucky Supermarkets, which in turn was acquired by the ABCO chain.
After the sale, the Woons continued to own and operate a liquor store next to the Miracle Mile market, Yee said.
When her husband died in 1959, Mrs. Woon was left to raise their five children alone.
”She brought up those five kids by herself and sent every one of them through college,” Yee said. ”She didn’t have a chance to go to school, but she was able, in her own way, meticulously and inconspicuously, to make her presence felt and make a difference.”
Mrs. Woon continued to work at the liquor store until she retired about five years ago, he said.
He said she moved to Los Angeles about ayear ago to live with one of her daughters.
Mrs. Woon is survived by daughters Jenny Young of Hillsborough, Calif., and Jeanne Wong of Cerritos, Calif.; sons Danny Woon of Milwaukee and Gene and David Woon of Tucson; and eight grandchildren.
Mrs. Woon, the oldest of 12 children, also is survived by seven sisters and her brother.
Visitation will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. tomorrow at Evergreen Mortuary Chapel, 3015 N. Oracle Road. Funeral services will be at the chapel Saturday at 11 a.m.
(Dated Feb 05, 1998)
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Civic leader Martha Vito fought for equal pay
Civic leader Martha Ann Hermes Vito, credited with bringing the notion of equal pay for equal work to Tucson’s attention in the early 1980s, has died at age 81.
Mrs. Vito, who spent six years as director of the city’s Convention & Visitors Bureau, died Wednesday at her home in Green Valley after a brief illness.
”I always look at her as a reluctant feminist,” said her daughter, Melissa Vito, dean of students at the University of Arizona. ”She did Junior League, and she just wasn’t the image you think of as the feminists in the 1960s and 70s.
”She was always very gracious. But she did end up suing the city because of a pay issue. She got a settlement and it was one of the earliest suits in this area.”
In 1982, Mrs. Vito received a $55,000 out-of-court settlement from the city of Tucson in an agreement that she drop her sex discrimination suit filed against the city in U.S. District Court.
She filed the suit in 1980 after the city hired her replacement, a man, at a salary that was 56 percent higher than she was earning after six years of directing the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Mrs. Vito’s legal action cited the federal Equal Pay act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office, after a nine-month investigation, said the city of Tucson had engaged in ”unlawful employment practice.”
The Attorney General’s Office said that allegations brought by Mrs. Vito were ”substantiated and that she was discriminated against on the basis of her sex, female.”
Both Tucson daily newspapers gave Mrs. Vito’s case extensive attention, particularly after another woman won a similar sex-discrimination suit against the city in 1982.
Mrs. Vito had been promoting conventions in Tucson since 1967. She started as head of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce’s convention department.
In 1973, when the chamber turned over convention promotion work to the city, Mrs. Vito became a city employee.
”She was very creative and advanced in her willingness to accept new ideas,” said Earl Wettstein, whose advertising agency Wettstein/Bolchalk Marketing, spent 10 years working for the Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Wettstein worked with Mrs. Vito on the ”I’d rather be in Tucson,” campaign that aired in markets nationwide during the mid-1970s.
Wettstein was the emcee at a double retirement party for Mrs. Vito and her husband.
The party was held in June 1979 at the Tucson Community Center, and among the guests were then-Mayor Lew Murphy and Vice Mayor Cheri Cross.
”It was a full house at the Community Center that night,” Wettstein said.
Her husband Phil Vito was executive director of the Tucson Trade Bureau when he retired.
The couple met when they were seniors at Tucson High School. Mrs. Vito had transferred to Tucson High from St. Joseph’s Academy that year after the death of her father, Ferdinand J. Hermes, a prominent Tucson banker.
”For me she was a huge role model, a real strong woman, a really wonderful mother and a great friend and wife,” Melissa Vito said. ”She and my dad had a wonderful, fun marriage.”
Mrs. Vito attended business school and the University of Arizona, where she was a business administration major.
She began her business career during her college days when she worked as a typist for 35 cents an hour.
During World War II, Mrs. Vito worked as a secretary at Consolidated Aircraft, which was assembling airplanes for the war effort. Mrs. Vito also worked as a secretary for a local law firm and for City Treasurer Charles C. Irvin.
Mrs. Vito did not begin her career in tourism and marketing until she was 50, but quickly became involved in the industry, and served a term as director of the International Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus.
She is survived by her husband Phil of Green Valley; daughter Melissa Vito and son-in-law Charles Bollong of Tucson, and grandsons Anthony and Zachary of Tucson.
VITO SERVICES
• Visitation for Martha Ann Hermes Vito is scheduled from 5 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Bring Funeral Home Inc., 6910 E. Broadway, with a vigil at 7 p.m.
• Mass for Mrs. Vito will be celebrated at 9 a.m. Monday at Saints Peter & Paul Catholic Church, 1946 E. Lee St., the same church where she and her husband were married in 1937.
• Burial will follow Monday at Holy Hope Cemetery, 3555 N. Oracle Road.
(Dated Feb 06, 1998)
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UA professor of animal sciences William Hale
William Harris Hale, a University of Arizona scientist credited with revolutionizing the cattle industry in the West, died Sunday night after a long battle with heart problems. He was 77.
”Dr. Hale was instrumental in developing techniques that resulted in great economic value to ranchers, in Arizona and throughout all of the western U.S.,” said longtime colleague C. Brent Theurer, UA professor emeritus of animal sciences.
”He was an effective research scientist who put his science to work for the ranchers, a quiet man who made a big difference.”
At home with family members last night, one of his daughters, Ellen, described her father as ”the fairest person I know.
”He was always true to himself. He never tried to be anything other than who he was,” she said. ”His sense of fairness – I never heard him say an untrue word. He was always honest, sometimes brutally so. In this day and age, that is a rare and good thing.”
Hale was born in Kentucky, the son of a farmer. He graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1946. He earned his doctorate degree in biochemistry and animal nutrition at the University of Wisconsin in 1950.
A combat veteran of World War II, Hale joined the U.S. Army as a lieutenant in 1941 and fought in Europe with the 36th Infantry Division. While Hale was in the 36th, the division fought in two invasions and five campaigns.
After returning from the war and marrying Margaret Smiley in 1945, Hale launched his teaching career at the University of Illinois in 1950 as assistant professor of animal sciences. He moved to Iowa State University in 1952. While there, he served for three years on the Gilbert (Iowa) City Council.
Five years later, his career turned toward research when he was named chief of large animal nutrition research for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company in Terre Haute, Ind.
In 1960, he moved his family to Tucson to join the University of Arizona as a full professor of animal sciences and nutrition in the College of Agriculture. He taught and conducted nationally recognized research in cattle nutrition until his retirement in 1985.
It was at the UA that Hale developed a major breakthrough credited with saving cattle ranchers millions of dollars in feeding costs.
In the late 1960s, he devised a steam-processing and flaking technique for grain that significantly increased the value of the grain purchased by ranchers, cutting animal feeding costs by as much as 15 percent.
”It was a very revolutionary development – it changed the way grain had been processed for most of the first half of this century,” said Theurer. ”It became very widely used in the West, especially at the larger and more efficient cattle operations and feedlots.
”Dr. Hale was very well known in the Arizona cattle industry – he worked closely with them, giving advice and information on nutrition needs that proved very valuable.
”He was a scientist, a researcher, but also a practical man who did very good work in developing the nutritional requirements, including the role of Vitamin A, for feedlot cattle – requirements still used in the industry.”
Theurer described Hale as ”a great colleague” and a ”leader” for younger faculty members.
”He was a good teacher who trained a lot of students who went on to become key figures in the industry,” he said.
Another colleague, UA animal sciences professor Marvin Selke, said one of Hale’s ”deepest interests” was keeping track of his students ”long after they left the university.”
”Always, he would follow their progress and want to know where they were and how they were doing. He never stopped caring about them,” Selke said.
One of the many who used Hale’s research in the field was Carl Stevenson, owner of Red Rock Feeding Co., north of Tucson. Stevenson called Hale ”an outstanding researcher who was known all over the world.
”What he did in his experimental work I used in my commercial operation and it was very successful,” Stevenson said. ”It was a tremendous accomplishment, really quite a feat.
”I enjoyed working with him. I’ll miss him.”
Hale was also noted for his work in developing alternatives to harmful hormones in cattle feed and for producing beef in the 1970s that was lower in saturated fats when health concerns about beef were first beginning to surface.
In 1984, Hale won the fellow award of the American Society of Animal Science, for ”research on cattle feeding applied internationally.”
In 1987, the National Cattlemen’s Association awarded him its Research Award in Cattle Beef Production.
Hale authored more than 60 scientific articles in the field of ruminant nutrition research, and numerous articles in popular industry publications.
He was a member of the National Research Council’s committee on animal nutrition from 1972 to 1975, and was an editor of the Journal of Animal Science.
Hale is survived by his wife of 52 years, Margaret, of Tucson; a brother, Alva, of Jackson Ohio; five daughters, Ann Hale Lamb of Tubac, Ellen Hale of White Plains, N.Y., Jane Hale Knox of Safford and Barbara Hale and Karen Hale Raffel, both of Tucson; also three grandchildren; and one great granddaughter.
The Hale family is planning a tribute, to be held in Tucson. But for now, they will do what he requested.
”We’re going to L’il Abner’s,” said his daughter, Ellen, a former reporter for the Tucson Citizen.
”He always told us, take my credit card and go have a good time. So we will.
”That would make him laugh.”
(Dated Feb 10, 1998)
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