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Superior Court judge Alice Truman, 77
• First woman to hold county post held truth as her guide, in and out of the courtroom.
Memorial services will be held Sunday for Alice Truman, the first woman Pima County Superior Court judge.
Mrs. Truman died Friday at the age of 77.
She had an extensive courtroom career, starting as a justice of the peace when she moved to Tucson from Aurora, Colo.
In January 1963, Mrs. Truman was elected by a popular vote to become a judge in superior court.
The truth guided the judge throughout her career and life, said her daughter, Susan Truman.
The judge often told her daughter that the name Alice meant ”truth.”
”She’d always say, ‘Susie, Alice means truth and you could never tell a lie if you wanted to – I pass that to you,’ ” Susan Truman recalled.
Mrs. Truman, who was born Dec. 24, 1922, in Waggoner, Ill., earned her law degree at the University of Illinois and worked as a judge in juvenile court.
She finished her career as a probate judge when she retired at age 70.
Lillian Fisher, a retired county superior court judge, had lunch with Truman every week for 40 years. They vacationed together, and Fisher watched Mrs. Truman’s children grow up.
Fisher said she clings to the memories of her friend, especially the fun getaways they shared in places such as Mexico.
”She’ll be missed by everybody,” Fisher said. ”She was a credit to the judiciary and a credit to the law profession, and I’ll miss her terribly.”
While she worked as a probate judge, Mrs. Truman was active in setting up programs to help people who could not care for themselves.
She was a founding member of the National Association of Women Judges and a founder of the Arizona Women Judges. She also was a past president of the Arizona Judges Association and was honored as woman of the year by the Tucson Business and Professional Women’s Club.
In addition, the Southern Arizona chapter of the Arizona Women Lawyers Association in December began awarding the annual Alice Truman Award for Excellence in Leadership.
But to her son, Robert Nihan, Mrs. Truman’s finest quality was that ”she was a judge and a mother both.”
”Being a judge is a tough deal,” Nihan said. ”But once she was off the bench, you couldn’t tell she was a judge. She was a mother and she took care of the family.”
Nihan said his mother was so much more than a serious judge in a black robe.
”She had a real good sense of humor and had a real positive outlook. She didn’t like to hear negative stuff,” Nihan said.
Susan Truman recalled a funny yet embarrassing moment many years ago when she visited her mother in the courtroom one afternoon.
”I didn’t notice she came in the room because I was talking to someone else,” she said. ”I was the only one who didn’t stand and she banged the gavel and yelled, ‘The court will please rise!’ ”
Fisher said she hopes Judge Truman is still banging that gavel in heaven.
”I like to think of her sitting on a bench in heaven telling the angels how to behave,” Fisher said.
Mrs. Truman is survived by her husband, Ed Truman; sister Shirley Brown; daughter Susan Truman; and son Robert Nihan, all from Tucson.
She also is survived by a granddaughter, Milissa Jukes, and a great-grandson, Shane Jukes, both of Indiana.
A public memorial service is scheduled Sunday at 5 p.m. at the East Lawn Palms Mortuary and Cemetery, 5801 E. Grant Road.
(Dated Feb 01, 2000)
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Kleindienst, Watergate figure, dies
• The former Tucsonan, who was Nixon’s attorney general during the scandal, was 76.
A boy from the northern Arizona town of Winslow, Richard Kleindienst grew up to be the attorney general of the United States. Swept out of Washington in the wake of the Watergate scandal, he returned to his native state and practiced law in Tucson for 15 years.
Mr. Kleindienst died yesterday at his home in Prescott after a four-year battle with lung cancer. He was 76.
”He was a man of integrity and a gentleman,” said Tom Chandler, a Tucson lawyer and friend of Mr. Kleindienst’s for 60 years. ”He came out of a little Arizona town with some stars in his eyes. He wanted to be a good lawyer, be in politics, and do something that he thought was worthwhile.”
Mr. Kleindienst spent a year at the University of Arizona before World War II erupted. He was a navigator in the 15th Air Force during the war, serving in Italy. After the war, he earned bachelor’s and law degrees from Harvard.
Mr. Kleindienst rose through the Republican Party, becoming an Arizona legislator in 1953, head of the Arizona Young Republican League in 1955 and the Republican candidate for governor in 1964.
When he lost that race to Democrat Sam Goddard, Mr. Kleindienst joked, ”’You know, I was the only viable candidate that that guy could have defeated,’ ” Chandler recalled.
But it was his brief tenure during the unfolding Watergate scandal that left the longest shadow, despite the fact that Mr. Kleindienst was not accused of any Watergate-related crimes. He became attorney general for Richard Nixon in 1972, five days before the Watergate break-in. He resigned in 1973 as the Watergate scandal engulfed Nixon and his top staff.
In 1974, Mr. Kleindienst pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for providing misleading answers at his confirmation hearing. He had failed to disclose he had received a call from Nixon ordering him to drop an appeal of an antitrust case involving the International Telephone and Telegraph Co.
Mr. Kleindienst was fined $100 and received a 30-day suspended sentence.
”The way he was treated in Washington was shameful, absolutely shameful,” Chandler recalled. ”He had a lot of tough breaks in life that he didn’t have coming, and he handled them all with a great deal of dignity and courage.”
Mr. Kleindienst resettled in Tucson in 1979, joining a downtown law practice.
”He had a notable career,” said Henry Zipf, a Tucson lawyer who shared an office with Mr. Kleindienst. ”He was a great friend and a good guy.”
In 1981, a Phoenix jury acquitted Mr. Kleindienst of perjury for his role in representing a client who was convicted on bribery conspiracy charges. The following year, the Arizona Supreme Court suspended Mr. Kleindienst from practicing law for a year for lying under oath in a state bar probe of the incident.
In 1985, when Mr. Kleindienst published his autobiography, Watergate was still on his mind.
”The public has an image of me as a Watergate figure who is a perjurer,” he told a Tucson newspaper after his memoirs were published. ”That’s the reason I wrote this book, to tell these events from my point of view.”
Mr. Kleindienst also showed a keen interest in the greatest White House scandal since Nixon’s.
As the fallout from the affair between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky played out in the halls of Congress, Mr. Kleindienst told the Tucson Citizen that Clinton should resign.
When it became apparent that the House of Representatives favored impeaching Clinton, which would put the president on trial in the Senate, Mr. Kleindienst said ”somebody’s going to go up to (Clinton) from that Senate, and tell him, ‘Look, you’re going to be impeached, and you should resign.’ That’s what Nixon did, and it was the right thing to do.”
In 1993, Mr. Kleindienst moved to Prescott, where he lived in semi-retirement.
He is survived by his widow, Margaret, two sons and two daughters. His son Wallace is a federal prosecutor in Tucson.
Services will begin at 1 p.m. Monday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Phoenix.
(Dated Feb 04, 2000)
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Retired UA professor Naomi Reich, 73, dies
Naomi Reich, a consummate professional who retired from the University of Arizona after a long career as a professor of family and consumer resources, died Sunday. She was 73.
Before retiring in 1993, Mrs. Reich focused much of her research on clothing for people with special needs and the elderly. Her most recent work was on a study developed to improve the sizing standards for women’s clothing pattern and garment manufacturing.
”She was an excellent researcher. She was a very fine person and a very good role model,” said Pat Otten, a retired University of Arizona research specialist who worked with Mrs. Reich for 17 years.
Mrs. Reich was extremely dedicated to her work, but she made time to live life to its fullest, Otten said.
”I used to call her my friend, my macadamia nut, because she was so wonderful with her feelings about life,” Otten said.
Mrs. Reich was born in Greytown, Republic of South Africa, in 1926. There, she earned a degree in home economic education at the University of Pretoria.
She later earned a doctorate in manenvironment relations at Pennsylvania State University.
Mrs. Reich and her husband, Brian, moved to America with their children in 1964 when she accepted a position at UA.
Mrs. Reich served on various committees, including the Arthritis Foundation and the International Symposium on Design for Disabled People.
She received the Arizona Mortar Board citation in 1983 for ”her selfless devotion in meeting the needs of the physically handicapped,” Otten said.
Mrs. Reich loved to travel and ventured to every continent except Antarctica.
Her daughter, Gail Reich, 43, said one of her mother’s favorite trips was when she took two friends to South Africa in 1983.
”She was the tour guide showing everybody around,” Gail Reich said. ”It was a very elating experience, and for her, it was a thrill to show her friends her country.”
Mrs. Reich is survived by her sons: Albert of Tucson and Simon of Phoenix. She is also survived by her daughter, Gail, and son-inlaw David Holter of Fridley, Minn.
Mrs. Reich’s husband died five years ago.
A memorial in Mrs. Reich’s honor has been established at UA’s School of Family and Consumer Resources. The family requests that donations be sent to the memorial fund at the school.
Donations can also be made to the Southern Arizona Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation or the Alzheimer’s Association.
Friends will be welcome at Mrs. Reich’s home tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m.
(Dated Feb 15, 2000)
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Fourth Avenue’s Shanty owner, Donna Rae Nugent, 83
Over a lifetime, few things on North Fourth Avenue have been constant.
The trends and economics of Tucson’s history have played out along the street east of the University of Arizona. But after six decades, The Shanty stands like a watchtower over the avenue, at East Ninth Street.
And for nearly 35 years, Donna Rae Nugent was its keeper. Mrs. Nugent died last week of pancreatic cancer. She was 83.
”I don’t think that she thought it was going to last this long,” Bill Nugent, Mrs. Nugent’s son and the bar’s owner, said.
A memorial service for the nightspot’s longtime owner was scheduled for 1 p.m. today.
After her husband died in 1947, Mrs. Nugent took over the fledgling bar and, without any formal business education, built a nightspot that has survived for more than half a century, Bill Nugent said.
As Fourth Avenue morphed from the city’s main drag into an avenue of empty shops and then into an artisans’ boulevard, Mrs. Nugent thought it was important The Shanty retain its word-of-mouth roots and eclectic crowd rather than focus on drawing a specific type of clientele, Bill Nugent said.
”She liked looking around the bar and seeing such an interesting group of people,” her son recalled.
As a business owner, Mrs. Nugent understood the need for downtown redevelopment and for preservation, said Bruce Wheeler, a former Tucson city councilman.
”She struck the perfect balance between both interests,” said Wheeler, who knew her through his work on the council.
Like many bars along Fourth Avenue, The Shanty is filled with college students on weekends. It is also known for its large imported beer menu.
Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, domestic draughts were the staple, and Mrs. Nugent was known for making a perfect martini, Bill Nugent said. However, he added, ”She wouldn’t have drunk a martini if her life depended on it.”
The bar’s trademark popcorn was her idea, he said.
”She really felt like it was a long time from lunch when they came in after work, and they needed something in their stomachs,” he added.
Mrs. Nugent was a pioneer for businesswomen in Tucson, Wheeler said.
”When she came to Tucson there weren’t only glass ceilings, there were brick ceilings,” he noted.
When she took over the bar, then at the northwestern corner of Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street, Mrs. Nugent later said, a close associate tried to swindle her out of the business. When she moved The Shanty to its present location on the intersection’s northeast corner, she couldn’t get a loan for renovations, so she spent long nights painting and varnishing after the bar closed, her son said.
”I thought she was a really independent person for that age and time,” Janice Postillion, a neighbor, said. ”She ran her own business, which was unusual. Most women would stay at home but she ran a business. She was pretty feisty.”
Mrs. Nugent didn’t see herself as a pioneer, Bill Nugent said, and never complained about double shifts of hard work.
”Like that generation, I think she just had to keep going,” he said.
Mrs. Nugent was born in Nebraska in 1916 and moved to Arizona in 1933.
As a child, Garrett Raetzman, Mrs. Nugent’s grandson, had the run of the copper-toned bar, where his grandmother was the center of the action, a magnet for people.
”She was a great buddy, an expert fisherman. She was a great advice giver, and she could even talk baseball if you wanted.” Raetzman said. ”She could do it all.”
It was Mrs. Nugent who persuaded him to enter the family business 16 years ago, said Raetzman, who today manages The Shanty. He said he marveled at her work ethic.
”It wasn’t the type of thing that was handed to her with thousands of dollars,” Raetzman said.
Mrs. Nugent is survived by her son, Bill Nugent; daughter Judy Raetzman; and grandson Garrett Raetzman.
Services for Donna Rae Nugent were scheduled for 1 p.m. today at Evergreen Mortuary and Cemetery, 3015 N. Oracle Road, following an 11 a.m. viewing.
(Dated Feb 15, 2000)
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