Services set for journalist Ralya

Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2000 | 9:41 a.m.

A memorial service for former Sun city editor and reporter Jerry Ralya is set for 2 p.m. on Oct. 28 at Palm Mortuary-Eastern.

Gerald Ingraham Ralya, who covered District Court for the Sun in the late 1970s -- including the infamous Howard Hughes Mormon Will trial -- died Nov. 5 of a dissected aorta at Desert Springs Hospital. He was 77.

Ralya survived two brain surgeries in the last year. He worked for the Sun from March 15, 1977, to July 23, 1992, serving in the 1980s as assistant city editor and city editor. He had covered courts for the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a decade before joining the Sun.

In 1978 Ralya covered every day of the Mormon Will trial in which young gas station owner Melvin Dummar, then of Gabbs, stood to earn one-sixteenth of the estate of late reclusive billionaire Hughes. Although the will was ruled a fake, it became the subject of the 1980 film "Melvin and Howard."

Born Oct. 18, 1922, in Beloit, Wis., Ralya was one of three children of Lynn Ralya and the former Ethel Meeker. He had a law degree from Detroit College of Law, but he never took the bar exam.

Ralya is survived by a son, Gerald A. Ralya of New York; a daughter, Rosana Ralya of San Francisco; a sister Lynette Brown of Bloomfield, Mich; and a grandson, Martin Ralya. He was preceded in death by his wife, international figure skater Suzanne Park, and a brother, Dick Ralya.