Longtime Sun reporter, columnist Carlos dies at 67

Thursday, Sept. 4, 2003 | 9:31 a.m.

A series of unusual jobs that offered unique challenges helped prepare Judy Carlos for her career as a newspaperwoman.

Long before she filed her first award-winning stories for the Las Vegas Sun, Carlos sold sandwiches aboard the Delta Queen Mississippi riverboat, was a receptionist in a convent library and worked as a practical nurse in the violent patients ward of the Illinois State Mental Hospital.

"Working at the mental hospital forever changed her life," said Carlos' husband of 33 years, Bill Carlos, a retired Las Vegas probation officer. "It made Judy determined to do whatever she could to help change the lives of the less fortunate. She always helped the underdog."

Judy Carlos, who during 24 years at the Las Vegas Sun covered the county and labor beats and long penned the "File 13" column that promoted community activities, died Wednesday of heart failure at Progressive Hospice in Las Vegas. She was 67.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 40 years will be 11 a.m. Saturday at Desert Memorial Cremation and Burial Society, 1111 Las Vegas Blvd. North.

Carlos' earliest Sun bylines were under her maiden name of Judy Edsall.

"Judy had a heart that had room for everybody," said former Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, chairman of the Sun. "The most downtrodden people always had more of her time than the powerful and wealthy.

"Judy's column had the attention of Southern Nevadans seeking new information and good humor. Her sources were unlimited and her writing skills kept readers interested. We were fortunate to know and work with Judy."

Carlos came to the Sun in October 1963 as a general assignment reporter. Thirty days later, the newspaper's plant, then on Main Street, was destroyed by fire.

Carlos, who was known for her self-deprecating humor, said disasters followed her. She was working at a newspaper in Evansville, Ind., in the late 1950s when the city was hit by the worst blizzard in 30 years. She was at a newspaper in Lebanon, Ore., in the early 1960s, when the town had its first hurricane.

The name Carlos chose for her column, File 13, is a term for a trash can.

Carlos covered the labor beat in the late 1960s, writing about the early days of collective bargaining in the casino industry and other Las Vegas entities. She also covered the Atomic Energy Commission and court cases.

Carlos won the 1964 Nevada Press Association's State Bar Award for her series on the first black attorneys admitted to practice in Nevada. The citation reads: "For articles contributing to a better understanding of the administration of justice."

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Carlos helped coordinate the Sun's coverage of the racial turmoil that followed locally -- coverage that won the paper the state press association's Public Service Award.

In the 1970s and '80s, Carlos was the Sun's county reporter. Her multi-part series on senior care centers of that time revealed shoddy treatment of the elderly and led to changes in regulations. Another Carlos series dealt with the lack of employment opportunities for Southern Nevada blacks in the 1970s.

Born April 6, 1936, in Alton, Ill., Carlos was the daughter of bookie Webster Edsall and his wife, Eleanor. Judy graduated from Alton High School in 1954. She was class president and co-editor of the school newspaper.

Carlos graduated from the University of Missouri in 1958, earning a bachelor's degree with a double major in journalism and English literature and a minor in political science.

While working for her college newspaper, Carlos won the Best Editorial Award from Sigma Delta Chi and the editorial board of the Missourian newspaper.

In 1959, Carlos worked for the Evansville (Ind.) Courier-Press as a feature writer in what was then called the women's section. In 1960 she became women's editor for the Lebanon (Ore.) Express, a bi-weekly newspaper. A year later she was promoted to news editor, a position she held until coming to the Sun.

Carlos for a while edited Scene magazine, a longtime Sun Sunday supplement. She left the Sun in April 1987.

In addition to her husband, Carlos is survived by a brother, Tom Edsall of Las Vegas; a son, Brian Carlos and his wife, Robin of Little Rock, Ark.; and a grandson, Eric Babcock of Bellingham, Wash.