21 Facts About Rick Tuttle

Rick Tuttle was born in New Haven, Connecticut, one of four children of Frederick Burton Tuttle and his wife, Mary Emily.

Rick Tuttle's father was a descendant of a longtime New England family that originally settled in New Haven in 1638.

Rick Tuttle was a member of the NAACP, and his involvement in civic affairs made a strong impression on his son.

Rick Tuttle worked his way through college by working on various jobs, including at construction sites and as a farm hand.

Rick Tuttle went to Greenwood, Mississippi to work on voter registration drives and briefly spied on white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan meetings.

Rick Tuttle called Medgar Evers from jail to solicit his assistance a few hours before Evers was killed.

Rick Tuttle was ultimately released by a local judge after a prominent Savannah physician offered his property as bond in exchange for Tuttle's agreement to leave the county.

Rick Tuttle was elected to four four-year terms in non-partisan elections as Los Angeles City Controller, serving from 1985 to 2001.

Rick Tuttle seems to us the kind of public servant you would like to see in every government office.

Rick Tuttle gets his basic work done, checking expense accounts, auditing the city's books and meeting its payroll.

Rick Tuttle embraced the Watergate admonition to 'follow the money,' practicing activism with a pencil and calculator and audit power.

Rick Tuttle has cracked the City Council's knuckles over its favorite pork.

Rick Tuttle got mandatory audits written into the new City Charter, crafted civil rights rules forcing downtown private men's clubs to integrate, and refused to pay for lavish dinner tabs, yoga classes and a $2,800 chartered jet flight to Sacramento by a former DWP chief, the last 'the worst [official] extravagance I've ever seen.

Rick Tuttle had briefly considered returning to elected office in 2009 by running for the open Los Angeles City Council District 5 seat to replace the retiring Jack Weiss, but threw his support to Ron Galperin instead.

Rick Tuttle served as a director of the Los Angeles West Chamber of Commerce and an interviewee of the Fellows Program at Coro of Southern California.

Rick Tuttle has been a member of the board of directors of UCLA's University Religious Conference and a board member of the UCLA Alumni Association.

Rick Tuttle is a recipient of the Equal Justice in Government Award of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Distinguished Public Service Award of the Pacific Southwest Region of the Anti-Defamation League, the Lifetime Membership Award of the Los Angeles Business Council, the UCLA Alumni Public Service Award, and the Distinguished Leadership Award for 1996 presented by the Association of Government Accountants.

Rick Tuttle received the Los Angeles Employee of the Year Award in 1997 from the All City Employees Benefits Service Association.

Rick Tuttle left government service to pursue a career as a successful writer of children's books.

In 2008 Rick Tuttle married Rebecca Rona, a professional writer and social, environmental and political activist.

Rick Tuttle founded the grassroots organization Together, which for a decade promoted human relations and understanding; worked to end fracking and oil extraction in the Inglewood Oil Field, and has been the driving force behind an effort to convince Culver City to form the Culver City Equity and Human Relations Committee.