Neal Terwilliger Simonson

Neal Terwilliger Simonson, a Tucson resident since 1972 and a founder of property developer Fairfield Communities Inc., died Thursday, September 28, 2023, at his home. He was 92 years old.

He is survived by his devoted and deeply loving wife, Jean Tworkowski Simonson; his children, John and Sharon Simonson, and their spouses, Becca Simonson and Jesús Nava; four grandchildren, Neal Simonson Albright and his wife, Kelly; Theodore Simonson and his wife, Miranda; John Joseph Simonson and Juan Pablo Nava; and four great-grandchildren.

Born in 1931 in Montclair, N.J., Neal was the youngest son of Walter Burr Simonson, a railroad company administrator, and Carol Mather Simonson, a homemaker. When Neal was nine years old, Walter Simonson died of tuberculosis, after having been institutionalized for a number of years. His mother took a job, and Neal lived with his older sister, Joan Simonson Howe, and his paternal grandparents, Halsey and Helen "Bird" Simonson, for a number of years. His first jobs were as an adolescent working as a caddy at a local golf course and setting up pins in a bowling alley. He spent his summers on the New Jersey seashore and gained a love of the ocean and sailing that never left him.

He attended college at Rutgers University and was not drafted into fighting in the Korean War, a conflict that devastated the generation of men who graduated with him from Caldwell High School. He later served as an Air Force fighter pilot in Okinawa, Japan, and in the Air Force reserve, spending in total nearly a decade flying advanced fighter jets on behalf of the U.S. government. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in business from Rutgers in 1958.

Neal loved dogs and cats and appreciated the sincerity of children. He was an accomplished watercolorist and read widely including a particular love for stories of the sea including Moby-Dick and classical history. He read and re-read volumes of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Neal said any success he enjoyed he owed at least some to good luck but also to hard work and frugal living.

Neal brought a deep appreciation for the natural beauty of landscape to his housing developments and helped lead some of Tucson's and Southern Arizona's most distinct and environmentally progressive land management and use. He is perhaps best known in Tucson for development of Fairfield in the Foothills, Fairfield Sunrise, and Fairfield Green Valley. He pioneered "cluster housing" in the region, which allowed the addition of hundreds of new homes while leaving large portions of the delicate Sonoran Desert undisturbed. At Fairfield in the Foothills, he built more than 1,800 homes but left 75 percent of its 1,600 acres as open space. The homes are nestled on the hills' ridges, with stunning Catalina Mountain and city views.

After leaving Fairfield in the mid-1980s, Neal and four other investors including Tucson clothier Albert E. Touché and his brother, insurance titan Carlos G. Touché, purchased the J-Six and Empirita ranches east of Tucson. The partnership, led by Neal, at one time owned more than 8,000 acres of Sonoran Desert, making it the largest private property owner in Southern Arizona. As a result of Neal's management, which focused on land conservation and the preservation of native plants and animals, thousands of acres have gone on to be set aside permanently as public open space.

He co-founded Fairfield Communities Inc. in the early 1960s along with his childhood friend George "Jake" Jacobus and lawyer Randolph Warner. He was integral to the company's success in its first development, Fairfield Bay, on Greers Ferry Lake in north central Arkansas. Fairfield Bay is now an incorporated city with nearly a thousand households. He also led the creation and development of Fairfield Glade on the Cumberland Plateau outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

He was married to Marie Borkowski Simonson for forty-three years. She died in 2001.