Family honors late LV teacher with scholarship

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 1999 | 10:12 a.m.

After her mother's death earlier this year Kitty Umbraco wanted to honor her memory.

So it was only fitting that Umbraco and her husband established a scholarship in the name of Judith Warner, whose Las Vegas teaching career spanned 50 years.

The first scholarship recipient was Brian Beard of Cheyenne High School. Umbraco hopes the award will be given annually to a Clark County high school student who will attend UNLV.

Umbraco, who resides in California, says her mother's love of teaching began when she was a student at Oregon State College. Whenever Warner faced a difficult test or class, she would recall the times when she picked hops in the dry, dusty fields during the Depression. It took her about a day to pick enough for one bag, and for that she received a whopping 25 cents. Those memories, Umbraco says, were an incentive for her mother to pass her college courses.

After teaching for three years in Oregon, Warner and her husband, George, moved to Las Vegas in 1945. Warner read in the newspaper that the business teacher at Basic High School in Henderson had died, and there was an opening. The school was a long commute from where she lived in Las Vegas, and Warner didn't know how to drive. But that didn't deter her from applying.

"She learned to drive," Umbraco says. "Luckily, there were not many commuters to Henderson on the Boulder Highway."

The new business teacher asked her students to sell ice cream bars at lunchtime so they could learn about business, merchandising and bookkeeping. They'd take the profits at the end of the year and go to the then-popular Green Shack Restaurant on Boulder Highway. On one of their outings, the students saw a handsome man in white enter the restaurant. It turned out to be Liberace, who graciously signed autographs for them.

In 1957 Warner transferred to Rancho High School. The following year she became the sophomore girls' counselor and for two years traveled between Las Vegas and Reno, where she obtained her master's degree at the University of Nevada, Reno. That spurred Warner to advocate a university branch in Las Vegas.

Warner retired from Rancho in 1994. The Air Force ROTC rifle team was named in her honor.

Warner loved to sing. She performed with church choirs and concert and opera groups. When she sold her home and moved to a retirement complex, her only regret was that there was no piano in the rec room. Ironically, one was delivered there the day of her funeral.

Warner was a member of the American Association of Retired Persons and was its Southern Nevada representative at the Legislature. She was no stranger to politics. She counted many well-known leaders among her students, including R. Guild Gray, Sen. Harry Reid, Alan Bible and former Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, now executive editor of the Sun.

Although retired, Warner was active in many local organizations. She was teaching a creative writing class just before she died on Jan. 14.

"Once a teacher, always a teacher," Umbraco says of her mother. "That was her life."