Rettig — television host, educator, artist — dies

Tuesday, April 23, 2002 | 8:21 a.m.

Heinz Rettig, a former educator, longtime local television talk show moderator and artist who late in life found a market for his maverick abstract works, has died. He was 82.

Rettig, a Las Vegas resident of 40 years and a career human relations consultant and lecturer, died Sunday at a local hospital of heart failure. He underwent heart bypass surgery two years ago.

At his request there will be no services, his family said.

Rettig, who lived in Las Vegas from 1960 to 1998 and 2000 to 2002 and in La Jolla, Calif., in 1998 and 1999, was the host of "Think," a weekly community affairs television show for 17 years. He often grilled his guests on national and local topics.

"He was very bright, very interested in a lot of things and he didn't pull any punches," said Rettig's wife of 41 years, Mary Polk Dubose Rettig.

Heinz Rettig also taught communications at UNLV and Community College of Southern Nevada, where he was communications director in the 1970s.

In the late 1980s and '90s he turned a retirement pastime of creating unusual art -- swirls of oil paint, pieces of glass and mirrors on canvas and Indian pottery -- into award-winning works.

His art was displayed at the pyramid-shaped commercial building on Rettigdale Way, one of two streets named for him at the southern edge of the Las Vegas Valley. Rettig Avenue is the other.

Rettig's paintings also were shown at the Boulder City Art Guild and at the Jaycee State Fair, where he won a first prize. Rettig served on the board of the Las Vegas Art Museum, where his works also were displayed.

Rettig fondly referred to his abstract works as "Heinz 57 Varieties," and in recent years donated most of them to charity.

"An artist should paint for himself," Rettig said in a 1990 Sun story. "If you paint for the commercial market, you are working. I do it as a way to relax and be creative.

"I believe many other retired people should take to the easel and paint. If they feel they can't paint beautiful pictures, they should paint what they want ... As long as it makes them happy, they should paint."

Rettig also was active in politics, serving as a delegate to the Democratic State Convention and a member of the 1972 Democratic Central Committee's legislator/candidates program. In 1974 he made an unsuccessful bid for the state Senate.

Born March 22, 1920, in a village in Germany's Rhineland, Rettig came to the United States with his family when he was 4 and settled in Massachusetts. As a teenager he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and boxed in the amateur ranks.

Rettig was a graduate of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., and earned a master's in education from Boston University and doctorate from Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Rettig came to Las Vegas in 1960. His community affairs TV show debuted in 1964 on KORK Channel 3, now KVBC. It ran there until 1973, when Rettig jumped to KSHO Channel 13, now KTNV. "Think" was last broadcast in 1981.

Rettig was a Sun Youth Forum moderator and a member of Clark County Civil Defense, the Miss Rodeo America Pageant Committee and the Organic Garden Club.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Heinz Noel Rettig of Worcester and Larry Rettig of West Boylston, Mass.; a daughter, Holly Rettig Barton of Holden, Mass.; and four grandchildren.

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