Calista Verne Leonard's Obituary
Calista Verne Wright Leonard died peacefully, last Sunday night at home. Her last years were comfortable in the home of her son, Jon and his wife Nadine. She would have been 97 this August on the 18th. Services will be held at 2:00 PM this Saturday, April 16, 2016, in the Chapel of Evergreen Mortuary located on the grounds of Evergreen Cemetery at 3015 North Oracle Rd., Tucson, Arizona.
Calista’s father, Roy Joline Wright was a hard rock miner from Colorado doing that same work in the mining communities of Northern Arizona. In 1916 in Chloride, Arizona Roy met Calista’s mother Anna Harris an artist from Dallas, Texas who was visiting her father, Sandy Harris who had left Dallas to prospect for gold in the Mojave County area around Chloride.
It was love at first sight. Roy and Anna married in 1916 and followed the mining activity around Arizona, producing three children along the way, Calista and her two brothers, Ben a year older than Calista, and Barton two years younger. During the golden years of Arizona mining, Roy was a foreman at the Copper Queen Mine in Bisbee, Arizona, and he and Anna bought and lived with their children on a small ranch in Naco, Arizona a few miles South of Bisbee and a few blocks North of the Mexican border.
When the metal markets collapsed in Arizona in 1930, the Wright family was forced to sell their ranch and split up, with Calista being sent to Dallas to live with her uncle Datus Harris, her mother Anna going to Ojai, California to live with grandmother Minnie Harris and seek work there, and her father Roy and her brothers going back to Chloride to seek work.
Calista’s proudest life moment came as result of the family split. After 6 months in Dallas and missing her family desperately, at age 11 Calista found a way to hitch a ride to Albuquerque and from there to take a bus to Kingman, Arizona near Chloride. A family in Kingman fed her, put her up for the night and called her father Roy who drove from Chloride to pick her up early the next morning. Calista told her son Jon “It was the happiest moment of my life. I was so happy to be back with my family that I laughed for days. I just couldn’t stop laughing. When my mother learned I was in Chloride she rejoined us, and the family was back together again.”
Calista and her brothers attended high school in nearby Kingman, where in 1935 at age 15 she graduated with highest honors from Kingman High School. As the fastest typist in Arizona, Calista was hired by the Mohave County Assessor where she worked until enrolling in 1936 in the University of Arizona. There she met and in 1937 married the love of her life, Ernest Leonard the editor of the Arizona Wildcat and also the offspring of a hard rock miner and a graduate of Kingman High School. Calista and Ernie soon left the U of A to earn a living and raise a family.
In 1955 when her youngest son was 12 Calista went back to the U of A with a vengeance, graduating in 1958 with distinction with a simultaneous Bachelor and Master’s degree in psychology (Phi Beta Kappa/Phi Kappa Phi) and continuing on at the University of Southern California earning a PhD in Clinical Psychology in 1964.
Calista was never idle, writing about, speaking on, teaching about and practicing her profession at UCLA, the Veterans Administration in Santa Monica, the Neuro Psychiatric Institute in Westwood and in private practice with families of the illuminati in Hollywood.
Calista was also intensely interested in her family’s ancestry, researching and producing a dozen published volumes on her family’s ancestry. While Calista’s life was a whirlwind of accomplishment and achievement her intense focus in life was her immediate family. Her husband Ernest preceded her in death in 2003. She is survived by her three sons, Ernest Leonard Jr. of Keller Texas, Jon Leonard of Tucson Arizona and Leo Leonard of Phoenix Arizona, three of her five loving Daughters in Law, Nadine, Sarah and Mary; eleven grandchildren, eight step-grandchildren and many great grandchildren. We will miss you Mom. We already miss the focus you have always brought to our family.
What’s your fondest memory of Calista?
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Share a story where Calista's kindness touched your heart.
Describe a day with Calista you’ll never forget.
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