Carolyn Sugiyama Classen, a life long Democrat, was born & raised in the State of Hawaii, was a Legislative Aide for U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye on Capitol Hill, and practiced law for a while. In Tucson she worked as a tribal staff attorney for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and later was the Interim Executive Director of the now defunct Domestic Violence Commission. In 2008 she became a “My Tucson” guest columnist for the Tucson Citizen newspaper, then continued blogging for Tucsoncitizen.com for over four and a half years. Her blogsite was entitled “Carolyn’s Community” about community events and some political news, until Gannett Publishing shut down the site on January 31, 2014. She started with Blog for Arizona on Feb. 11, 2014.
Part time she has been sitting as a Hearing Officer in Pima County Consolidated Justice Courts Small Claims Division since April, 2005. She is married to University of Arizona Distinguished Professor Albrecht Classen, a native of Germany. They have one son, who lives in Seattle, WA with his wife and daughter.
She is also the Editor of the Southern Arizona Japanese Cultural Coalition website, www.southernazjapan.org (since Jan. 2013).
About 35 people at this film showing today to listen to actress Francesca Jarvis relate her memories of the filming of this movie here in Tucson, about Sid Poitier (breakfast egg scene), and going to the Berlin Film Fest in celebration. Poitier won Best Actor at the 1963 Oscars for his role as Homer Smith. Then Dave Ashcraft spoke about the location of the film (Tanque Verde wash area), and he was a 5th grader when his father managed the old Santa Rita Hotel, where some of the filming occurred. Watching the film again after decades brought to light race relations, freedom of religion, cultural differences, and strong belief in faith. My Native German husband enjoyed that a group of East German nuns seemed to have no racial prejudice, along with the Mexican Catholic community in working with Smith to build a chapel in the desert.
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