Rick Tuttle
Rick Tuttle | |
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Laura N. Chick | |
Personal details | |
Born | New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. | January 5, 1940
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse(s) | Muff Singer (1976–2005) Rebecca Rona-Tuttle (2008–present) |
Children | Sarah Tuttle-Singer |
Parent(s) | Frederick Burton and Mary Emily Tuttle |
Residence | Culver City, California |
Alma mater | Wesleyan University, University of California, Los Angeles |
Rick Tuttle (born January 5, 1940) is an American politician, university administrator and educator from Los Angeles, California.
Early life
Rick Tuttle was born in
In civilian life, Frederick, Tuttle's father, was a
Education
Tuttle received a
While an undergraduate at Wesleyan, Tuttle was a member of the university's Civil Rights Committee. Raised as an Episcopalian and Methodist, he served as president of its Alpha Chi Rho chapter and led a campaign to end what was then the fraternity's official policy of restricting membership to Christians.[1]
Civil rights era activism
While a graduate student at UCLA, Tuttle participated in the Freedom Rides in 1961 and was recruited to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1963. He went to Greenwood, Mississippi to work on voter registration drives and also briefly spied on white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan meetings.
After being driven out of Mississippi by threats, he joined the Chatham County Crusade for Voters in Savannah, Georgia, where he was arrested, without a proper warrant, for disturbing the peace and jailed for six weeks.[1] Tuttle called Medgar Evers from jail to solicit his assistance a few hours before Evers was killed.[3] He was ultimately released by a local judge after a prominent Savannah physician offered his property as bond in exchange for Tuttle's agreement to leave the county.[1]
Public service
Tuttle was elected to four four-year terms in
By the end of his first term he had earned a reputation for fiscal responsibility.
In a 1989 editorial endorsing his first re-election bid, The Los Angeles Times stated:
Tuttle seems to us the kind of public servant you would like to see in every government office. He gets his basic work done, checking expense accounts, auditing the city's books and meeting its payroll. Then, in his spare time, he quietly finds other ways to make himself useful. He has modernized the city's payroll operation. His office will soon be able to do cost-accounting, an efficiency that could save the city millions of dollars in the future.[5]
And when he retired from public service, a Times columnist wrote:
Like a government paycheck, Tuttle's headlines have always been modest but steady. He embraced the
Tuttle is a member of the
He had briefly considered returning to elected office in 2009 by running for the open
Tuttle also served as a director of the
Academic career
A former associate dean of student activities at
After completing the statutory maximum of four terms as city controller, he returned to UCLA as executive director of the
Tuttle has also been a member of the board of directors of UCLA's University Religious Conference and a board member of the UCLA Alumni Association.[9]
Awards
Tuttle is a recipient of the Equal Justice in Government Award of the
Personal life
Tuttle met his first wife, Muff Singer (February 14, 1942 – January 16, 2005), while both were working on
In 2008 Tuttle married Rebecca Rona, a professional writer and social, environmental and political activist. She founded the grassroots organization Together, which for a decade promoted human relations and understanding; worked to end fracking and oil extraction in the Inglewood Oil Field, and has been the driving force behind an effort to convince Culver City to form the Culver City Equity and Human Relations Committee. In 2018, she was honored by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party with the Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt Award as Democrat of the Year for her Assembly District. Currently she serves as communications director of South Los Angeles Health Projects.
In his spare time Tuttle is an avid basketball fan and, by 2002, was the second-oldest full-court basketball player in Los Angeles.[12]
References
- ^ a b c d "Civil Rights History Project Interview" (PDF). April 11, 2013. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
- ^ "Rick Tuttle". Retrieved January 6, 2016.
- ^ a b Morrison, Patt (June 13, 2001). "Wachs, Tuttle Have Earned Their Gold Watches". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
- ^ "ElectionsInfo.net - An Internet archive of election results and analysis". Retrieved January 10, 2016.
- ^ "Reelect Rick Tuttle and James K. Hahn". The Los Angeles Times. April 7, 1989. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
- ^ "Rick Tuttle oral history interview conducted by David P. Cline in Culver City, California". Library of Congress. April 11, 2013. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
- ^ a b c "Honoring Rick Tuttle". February 3, 1998. Retrieved January 6, 2015.
- ^ Roderick, Kevin (February 19, 2009). "Rick Tuttle endorses in 5th council race". LA Observed. Retrieved January 10, 2016.
- ^ a b "Rick Tuttle M.A. '64, Ph.D '75". Retrieved January 7, 2015.
- ^ "In Memory of Muff Singer". February 15, 2005. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
- ^ "Muff Singer, 62; Wrote Books for Children". Los Angeles Times. January 19, 2005. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
- ^ "Undergraduate Students Association Council Minutes" (PDF). November 12, 2002. Retrieved January 15, 2016.