By UA News Services
October 15, 2004

Contact Information
Soyeon Shim
520-621-7147
shim@ag.arizona.edu
Family and Consumer Sciences Web site
http://ag.arizona.edu/fcs/

The School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson will be named in honor of UA alumni John and Doris Norton at an Oct. 29 ceremony. The school is a part of the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The event will begin at 10:30 a.m. at the construction site for the school's new building, located across the street from the Park Student Union on the corner of Park Avenue and Fourth Street. The Nortons have committed $4 million toward the building and the John and Doris Norton Fathers, Parenting and Families Endowed Chair they established in 2000. A national search is under way for a faculty member to fill the chair.

"With the completion of the John and Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences' new facility we will have the space we desperately need in order to broaden and deepen our important research and outreach programs and effectively educate an increasing number of top-flight students," said Soyeon Shim, a professor and director of the Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences.

The Nortons live in Phoenix. John Norton is a third-generation Arizonan who graduated from the UA in 1950 with a bachelor's degree in agriculture, also the year he and Doris were married. In 1955, he founded the J.R. Norton Company, which engages in diversified agricultural production in Arizona and California. The company is involved in the year-round production of lettuce and seasonal production of strawberries, cantaloupes, honeydews, citrus, asparagus, cotton, wheat, alfalfa and other crops.

President Ronald Reagan named him deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1985. There, Norton was instrumental in shaping national policy supporting production agriculture and ranching.

During the years John Norton served in Reagan's cabinet, Doris Norton worked in Nancy Reagan's office in the White House, collecting and collating news articles about the president and first lady. The Nortons visited more than 70 countries during their years in Washington.

Doris Norton also serves as a co-chair for Campaign Cornerstones, the Norton School's capital campaign and is a member of the Women's Board of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix.