Craig Walton: 1934 - 2007

Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

Craig Walton, UNLV's emeritus ethics professor and president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, praised Secretary of State Ross Miller's decision in March to learn more about a legal defense fund set up for Gov. Jim Gibbons.

The governor had failed to report $169,000 the fund collected last year on his Jan. 16 financial disclosure, and Miller wanted to know why.

"It ought to be wide open and out in the public view," Walton said. "Everybody is well served by an open process, including the governor."

Walton thought ethics courses at all levels of education could help people end corruption among public officials, whether it was county commissioners trading votes for money or judges seeming to play favorites in the courtroom.

Walton, 72, died Monday from complications of surgery at a local hospital, his family said.

Jim Rogers, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education and Walton's longtime friend, said Walton was the voice of ethics in Nevada.

"He was a stickler for what was right and wrong. He was concerned about his community," Rogers said.

In October 1984 Walton began planning the Institute for Ethics and Policy Studies at UNLV, which opened two years later.

Before his retirement in 2004, he pushed to incorporate ethics throughout UNLV's curriculum and continued to work on developing a training program for K-12 teachers to help them address ethics in the classroom.

An international scholar on the philosophy of David Hume and Thomas Hobbes, Walton taught at UNLV for 33 years.

He stridently opposed the use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump and championed public lands for public use.

Walton, who was born on Dec. 6, 1934, in Los Angeles and was an Air Force navigator, earned his doctorate in philosophy at Claremont (Calif.) Graduate University in 1965. He taught philosophy at the University of Southern California and Northern Illinois University before arriving at UNLV in 1976. In 1988 UNLV awarded him the Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award.

Walton used his own hands to build a home in Las Vegas and a cabin in southwestern Utah.

A memorial service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Oct. 27 at Lamb of God Lutheran Church, 6220 N. Jones Blvd. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Davis Funeral Home and Memorial Park on Eastern Avenue.

Walton is survived by his wife, Vera; children Matthew Andersen of Flagstaff, Ariz., and Ruth Devlin, Peter Andersen, Richard Walton, Ben Andersen and Kerry Livengood, all of Las Vegas; and nine grandchildren.