Theodore C. "Ted" TURPIN

TURPIN, Theodore C. "Ted" passed away on December 5, 2016 from Alzheimer's related ailments at age 84. A Memorial Service will be held at the Elks Club at 615 S. Pantano Rd. at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 17, 2016. A Celebration of his life with music and dancing will immediately follow his service. Ted moved to Tucson in October 1964, just in time to vote for Barry Goldwater during the Arizona senators run for the presidency. Prior to arriving in the Old Pueblo at age 35, Turpin had been a reporter for the Wall Street Journal --first in Chicago and later in Cleveland. Living in Arizona he learned to love the Southwest and felt it had a lot in common with the Nebraska Sandhills cattle country where he grew up. Once settled in Tucson, he waded eagerly into his duties as political writer, legislative reporter and columnist for the Tucson Daily Citizen. He later became that newspapers first Business and Financial Editor. Turpin continued to moonlight for the Wall Street Journal as its Arizona correspondent and wrote stories for both publications on Tucson's gradual emergence from a tough economic recession in the mid-sixties: its high unemployment rate, hundreds of vacant houses, a local phase-out of the Martin Marietta missile silo program, and the failure of several major Tucson builders. Those bankruptcies included the original developer of Green Valley. Turpin resigned from the Citizen staff in 1967 to launch two private business ventures. He bought the then tiny Green Valley News Weekly with partner Steve Emerine, a fellow newsman at the afternoon daily. With a different partner, H.K. Douthit, a Sandusky, Ohio printer and publisher, he launched several new "Homes Illustrated" real estate magazines in several states. These provided the Turpin bread-and-butter for nearly 40 years. His writings won many state and local journalism awards including one of the nation's top prizes for his Oro Valley Voice, a small weekly newspaper that he launched to help fight--successfully--for incorporation of the Town of Oro Valley where he lived. He served 11 years as Arizona's state director for the National Newspaper Association. Before moving to Arizona, Turpin attended high school and college at Nebraska (Chadron) State where he was editor of the campus newspaper and also took honors in theater, student leadership and vocal music. In 1983 he returned there as its commencement speaker, receiving the school's Outstanding Alumni award. After graduating, Turpin taught and coached sports at Nebraska high schools for two years. Then in the late fifties, he became a prize-winning newspaper reporter and editor of the North Platte daily newspaper at age 27 and was elected president of the Nebraska association of managing editors. In 1961 Turpin left Nebraska for a year to serve as Administrative Assistant in Washington D.C. for Nebraska Congressman Dave Martin. While there he attended the historic John F. Kennedy inauguration and later witnessed first-hand Capitol Hills' reaction to the failed U.S. incursion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. After returning briefly to Nebraska, he moved back eastward to work as a Midwest agricultural writer for the Wall Street Journal in Chicago and Cleveland. Missing living in the western states, he and his wife Kathleen moved to Arizona and settled in what is now Oro Valley. They have two children: daughter, Shannon Turpin-Collins of Tucson and son, Craig, a school psychologist in Albuquerque. Both graduated from the University of Arizona with master's degrees. They have two granddaughters, Hannah and Alexandra Turpin and a grandson, Isaac C. Collins. Ted and Kathleen divorced in the early nineties and he later married Flora Findeisen of Tucson. Ted and "Fifi" (as he affectionately called her) enjoyed ballroom dancing and traveling. They traveled extensively during their 13 year marriage to all six continents and always eyed the possibility of "some day" going to the Antarctic. Flora preceded him in death in 2010. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Alzheimer's Association in his memory.