Janet Nicholas, former Sonoma County supervisor, dies at 78

Janet Nicholas, the former county supervisor from Sonoma Valley, whose decades in local and statewide leadership earned her respect for the tough questions, high standards, intelligence and humanity she brought to public service, has died.

“She had a sense of humor, a sense of what was happening and a huge sense of right and wrong,” said her husband, Bob Nicholas.

Said friend Gaye LeBaron, the Sonoma County history writer and former Press Democrat columnist, “Janet was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met … and, course, from supervisor she went on to so many bigger things.”

A force in Republican Party politics across California and beyond, Nicholas was appointed by former Gov. Pete Wilson to the state Board of Prison Terms and then the state Board of Education.

She died Friday morning as she was setting off for Costco from her and her husband’s longtime country home outside of Sonoma. Bob Nicholas said she called to him, “Is there anything you need?” as she walked toward her car.

Her family believes she was stricken by cardiac arrest or a stroke shortly after she pulled onto the road. Her Nissan Rogue drifted down an embankment and rolled.

Nicholas died at the scene. She was 78.

Born in 1946 in Denver, the former Janet Gross grew up in the Los Angeles area. She was just 16 when she enrolled at UCLA with a triple major.

While in college she met law student Bob Nicholas, whose parents, George and Eileen “Johnnie” Nicholas, founded near Petaluma in 1938 what would become a major, international turkey breeding operation. They moved it a short while later to Sonoma Valley.

Janet Nicholas had launched her career and helped to plan Florida’s Disney World when she and Bob settled in Sonoma Valley not long after their marriage in 1969. They raised two daughters and in 1981 the couple founded Nicholas Vineyards.

Janet Nicholas had served on the Sonoma County Planning Commission, when, in 1984, she ran against and defeated incumbent 1st District Supervisor Bob Adams, a former deputy sheriff. Among the supervisors who welcomed her to the board was Ernie Carpenter, a west county liberal.

“She was a conservative and a Republican,” Carpenter said, “but she was old-school and she really cared about people. She wasn’t an ideologue of any kind.”

Carpenter recalled that he and Nicholas worked well together on a General Plan that protected agriculture, which was important to her, and also open space, which was important to him.

It became soon evident that Nicholas was creative and driven, and also funny.

Her daughter Laura Havlek, also of Sonoma Valley, remembers her hosting members of the state Transportation Commission at a Chinese restaurant. The commissioners finished up, then discovered Nicholas had placed the exact same message in each of their fortune cookies:

“Happiness comes to those who fund 1st District roads.”

Her district received the funding.

Paul Ingalls covered the Board of Supervisors for The Press Democrat in the 1980s.

“Janet was gracious, funny and always self-effacing, but she was also scary smart and a force to be reckoned with,” he said. “I remember one hearing before the Board of Supervisors at which she responded to a speaker by telling him, ‘I’ve heard your comments and my reaction is, ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’”

The former reporter and editor added that Nicholas, whom he befriended following his retirement, “always had some new intellectual concept or endeavor that she was excited about, but she was also deeply interested in you and what you were doing, and she spent more time asking you questions than she did talking about herself.”

Voters in Sonoma County’s 1st District re-elected Nicholas to a second four-year term in 1988. Also that year, Tim Smith was elected to represent the county’s central 3rd District, a seat he would occupy for the next two decades.

“Janet was nothing but very kind to me when I came on the board,” Smith said.

“She was very smart, a very classy person,” he said. “She was much more conservative than I was, but it didn’t matter. Most of the issues around the county don’t have much to do with liberal and conservative, but with getting things done for people.”

Nicholas, Smith said, “knew how to connect the dots and get things done.”

Midway through Nicholas’ second term as supervisor, tragedy struck her family and prompted her to switch her professional focus.

In 1990, Pierre Creager, a delusional, 24-year-old man whose father had worked for the Nicholases for decades, attacked and killed 74-year-old Eileen Nicholas in her home. The murder of her mother-in-law fired in Janet Nicholas a desire to act to protect Californians from such crimes.

She resigned from the Board of Supervisors in 1991 to accept an appointment by Gov. Wilson to the state Board of Prison Terms. For about a year, she participated in hearings to determine if an inmate eligible for parole should be set free or required to spend more time incarcerated.

Said Bob Nicholas, “Out of all the cases she heard, she thought there was only one (inmate) who truly felt remorse for what he did.”

Don Novey, a former prison guard who became president of the California Correctional Officers Association, said of Janet Nicholas, “She was one of the smartest and most exceptional people I’ve ever met … Actually, the three greatest people I’ve known in my life are my father, Ronald Reagan and Janet.”

Subsequent to serving on parole boards, Nicholas worked on the state Council on Criminal Justice, and she chaired Gov. Wilson’s Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency. Wilson twice made her a delegate to the Republican National Convention.

Said journalist Ingalls, “There was hardly a prominent Republican in the country who she hadn’t had some personal interaction with.”

In 1992, Nicholas attempted a return to elected office by running for an Assembly seat vacated by a fellow Republican, Bev Hansen. Nicholas and a Peace and Freedom Party candidate, Irv Sutley, lost to Democrat Valerie Brown.

Throughout her life, Nicholas was passionate about what she saw as the necessity to equip all public school students with a solid foundation in mathematics and reading. Her resolve to become an advocate was fortified when in the early and late 1990s, educational progress reports found that only a small share of California’s fourth graders were proficient in math.

Early in 1996, Wilson appointed Nicholas to the state Board of Education. There she championed reforms she believed would improve students’ prospects for success by providing them solid foundations in math and reading.

She drew both praise and criticism by asking professionals from across the nation to review and comment on the quality of state math textbooks, and for including outside players in California’s debate over school reform.

A 1997 story in the Los Angeles Times reported: “Nicholas said she wanted to open up the framework process to people whose voices had not been previously heard. Among those she added were three university mathematicians, a statistician, a school board member and a software engineer. Her move angered leading math educators, who objected that many of the appointees were biased against their methods and were not classroom teachers.”

Daughter Havlek said there was a simple reason her mother pushed for far greater math and reading proficiency among California’s children. “She felt it was key to equal opportunity.”

Nicholas was virtually always active.

“She wasn’t a big sleeper,” her husband said. “She was someone who always wanted to be doing.”

The former supervisor for decades found contemplative refuge in art. Said Bob Nicholas, “She would paint, and think.”

Among her favorite subjects were images from her gardens and from the city of Sonoma, both of which she loved. “She really was fascinated with the play of light on surfaces,” daughter Havlek said.

Color also delighted Nicholas. Havlek said she and her sister grew up simply assuming that “everybody’s mom repainted the whole interior of the home every few years.”

Cerena Wong, a retired Sonoma County judge, said “Having conversations with Janet meant time-spanning world views, delving into history, and imagining a better world for future generations.”

Nicholas’ family said an autopsy will determine what if any medical event preceded the car crash about 10:30 a.m. Friday.

Nicholas evidently drove her Nissan Rogue from her home and onto Hale Road, then she turned north onto Norrbom Road. She hadn’t gone far when the car left the pavement, careened down a dirt embankment and upon hitting bottom rolled onto the driver’s side.

The CHP said Nicholas was declared dead at 11:17 a.m.

In addition to her husband and daughter in Sonoma Valley, Nicholas is survived by daughter Kimberly Nicholas of Sweden, sister Judy Gross Glock of Fountain Hills, Arizona; brother Clark Gross of Los Angeles and two grandsons.

The family will make plans for a memorial service.

Chris Smith is a retired Press Democrat reporter and columnist. You can contact him at csmith54@sonic.net.