Barbara Ridge, who dreamed up ASU West campus, dies at 78

Jen Fifield | The Republic

Barbara Ridge, an original visionary of Arizona State University’s West campus and a longtime community advocate and business owner in Glendale, died Wednesday after a six-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Ridge, 78, was instrumental in mounting support in the early 1970s for the creation of the ASU West campus and was an early champion, fundraiser and leader for the campus that grew into the sprawling 3,700-student 278-acre campus it is today.

Ridge would have wanted to be remembered first as a great mother, said her son, Jamie Ridge, the second of her four children. But her contributions stretched far beyond her family.

For more than a decade in the 1970s and 1980s, she and other activists worked to convince ASU officials and state lawmakers that the growing West Valley needed a campus where community college students in Glendale could obtain a four-year degree.

Ridge also owned a few local businesses: Mother Nature’s Plants, which was in Valley West Mall, and, later, Silver Mountain Trading Company, which was in downtown Glendale.

“She was just a real dynamo,” said Jamie Ridge, of Downingtown, Pennsylvania.

Barbara Ridge was the widow of former Glendale Mayor and state Rep. Sterling Ridge. The two were married for 53 years until Sterling Ridge’s death in 2012. Their partnership, many say, is what made the ASU West campus possible.

Her vision for ASU West, and her quiet but powerful leadership, was the guiding force that brought funding, scholarships and students to the campus in the early days, said Bobbi Magdaleno, an ASU spokeswoman who worked with Ridge at ASU West.

“She had a way to bring things together, because of who she was,” Magdaleno said.

‘Here was Barbara Ridge, a housewife’

Ridge was born in Arkansas in 1939. Her family moved to Phoenix in the late 1940s, and she graduated from Washington High School in 1956. She and Sterling Ridge married in 1959 and moved to Glendale in 1969.

They had four children: three daughters and a son. In an era when many women didn’t think of going to college, Barbara Ridge was determined to get as much education as she could. In an interview with The Arizona Republic in 1973, she talked about balancing her duties as a mom and a student at Glendale Community College.

“Sometimes I get up early, about 5 a.m., to study when I’m freshest,” she said at the time. “When I’m studying, the kids know that I’m not to be disturbed.”

She planned to major in sociology, she said at the time, and get a master’s, perhaps even a doctoral degree. But, then, she hit a roadblock. To continue on to a four-year degree, she would need to leave her young children and drive to ASU’s main campus in Tempe. “The time wasn’t there, and the money wasn’t there at that point,” Jamie Ridge said.

That’s when she became an advocate.

People had been talking about the idea of an ASU campus in the West Valley since the 1960s, Jamie Ridge said, but it wasn’t until his mother became involved that a movement began.

She was in a social psychology class at the community college at the time, so she began the initiative as a class project. It extended years after the class ended.

In 1972, she helped form the Westside Citizens Committee for Higher Education, a grass-roots group that advocated for the West campus.

In a 1989 interview with The Republic, Barbara Ridge recalled the moment she went to see the ASU president to advocate for the West campus. “'Here was Barbara Ridge, a housewife,” she told the paper at the time, “going to see the president of Arizona State University representing about 3,000 students and telling him there were people on the west side who needed some way to finish their degrees.''

‘She was the head coach’

During all of this advocacy work, her home was also the center of her neighborhood. She made cookies and hosted football games for her son and his friends, and was always there to lend a hand to a friend, said Jessica Koory, of Glendale, a longtime friend.

“She always kind of sensed when you needed extra help with something,” Koory said.

If all of her duties were overwhelming, she never showed it, her son said. She would enlist her children to help with her business and advocacy work — Jamie Ridge remembers passing out petitions and fliers and going to meetings. Even as a teen, he said, he didn’t mind helping his mother.

“She was such a great encourager,” he said. “You just wanted to be a part of it.”

When the Legislature didn’t jump on the idea for a West campus, Barbara Ridge convinced her husband to run for the Legislature to see the project through, Jamie Ridge said. So he did, and he won, and he made the campus happen.

“He was the public face of the whole effort,” Jamie Ridge said, talking about his father. “She was the head coach.”

In 1984, Sterling Ridge sponsored and helped push through legislation that authorized the West campus. In 1985, the Legislature appropriated $9.5 million for the design and initial site preparation on the 300 acres at 43rd Avenue and Thunderbird Road.

A quiet leader

Barbara Ridge’s work for ASU and Glendale continued long after the campus broke ground.

In the mid-1980s, she became director of development for ASU West, before moving on to the same role at Glendale Community College.

Using her well-established connections, she secured two large donors — the Sands and Fletcher families — who gave the money for the first building, the Fletcher Library, which opened in 1988, and the first classroom, the Sands classroom, which opened in 1989.

She brought on Magdaleno to fundraise and help build connections with West Valley alumni.

“I was so proud of working for her, knowing the work she was doing to bring her vision to reality,” she said. She took a leadership style that was more behind the scenes — connecting people, but not taking credit. “Just a very gracious, beautiful person,” Magdaleno said.

Sandra Day O’Connor mentioned Barbara and Sterling Ridge in her September 1991 speech dedicating the ASU West campus. She said she remembered when the couple began talking about a West Valley campus in the early 1970s. “Even good ideas need time to germinate,” she said. “Looking around this evening at this handsome campus and the enthusiastic students and friends of this new university, it is clear that the wait has been rewarded.”

A celebration of Barbara Ridge’s life will be held at 11 a.m. Monday, June 18, at First United Methodist Church of Glendale.

The family is collecting contributions to the Barbara and Sterling Ridge Memorial Scholarship, which will go to college scholarships for Glendale High School students. Checks can be made out to the Glendale Union High School District at 7650 N. 43rd Ave., Glendale, AZ, 85301, ATTN: Tina Charette. Please write the scholarship name on the check.

The hope is, Jamie Ridge said, that the fund will benefit students going to ASU West.

Reach the reporter at jen.fifield@azcentral.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JenAFifield.

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