LV educator, civic leader Fleming dies

Friday, May 6, 2005 | 10:04 a.m.

As a longtime teacher and Clark County School District official, Charles Fleming believed in treating students as individuals and not as a collective group made to follow just the rigid policies of the system.

"If we are going to talk about individualizing instruction and meeting the needs of each child, let's mean it," he told voters during his unsuccessful run for the state Board of Education in 1972.

Fleming also motivated young people. While serving as student council adviser at Western High School in the early 1960s, he encouraged students to raise the $35,000 that landscaped the facility and built Warrior Field.

Charles A. Fleming, who served as School District information director in the 1970s and Greater Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce manager in the early 1980s, died Sunday. He was 69.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 44 years will be 4 p.m. Monday at the Westminister Presbyterian Church, 4801 W. Lake Mead Blvd.

Fleming also served two terms as Las Vegas Press Club president, was a Bankruptcy Court trustee and taught social studies at Western and Eldorado high schools.

Born in 1935, in Broadview, N.M., Fleming served four years in the Navy as a military journalist.

In 1961 he graduated from Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, where he received his bachelor's degree in education. Later that year, Fleming moved to Las Vegas were he got a job teaching social studies at Western and became chairman of that department at the school.

In 1965 Fleming became president of the Clark County Classroom Teachers Association but left that post after three months to become assistant executive secretary of the Nevada State Education Association.

Fleming also served as editor of the Clark County Educators Newsletter and Nevada Education Journal.

In 1968 Fleming earned his master's degree in education from UNLV and returned to the School District as a teacher consultant in the Professional Growth Services Department. A year later, Fleming became the School District's spokesman, a post he held until 1978.

In the mid-to-late 1970s, Fleming also worked part time for the federal Bankruptcy Court as a trustee, liquidating assets of failed businesses to minimize court administration costs and boost estates for creditors.

The cases he oversaw included one in which he had to find buyers for 14 lions, five tigers, two dolphins and other exotic animals from the defunct Nevada Wild Animal Preserve.

In 1978 Fleming left the district's spokesman post to become a teacher at Eldorado. Two years later he was named the Chamber of Commerce's manager, a post he held for three years.

As a civic leader, Fleming served as chairman of the annual Clark County Easter Seals Telethon in 1978, 1980 and 1981.Fleming also served as a deacon at the Westminister Presbyterian Church.

He is survived by a son, Michael Fleming; a daughter, Tobi Ferguson; and a granddaughter, Adrianna Fleming.

The family said donations can be made in Fleming's memory to the Westminister Presbyterian Church.