Obituary: UCLA alumnus, journalist remembered for activism

Leland L. Nichols, a UCLA alumnus, former journalist and gay rights activist who acted as a mentor to many, died Dec. 14 in San Pablo from congestive heart failur. He was 85.

Nichols graduated from UCLA in 1952 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and went on to serve as an instructor in the army. He later received his master’s degree in journalism from UCLA in 1956 and pursued a long career in journalism and advocacy.

While his career gave him the opportunity to know figures like former “NBC Nightly News” anchor John Chancellor and interview Martin Luther King Jr., Nichols was proudest of his family and his identity as a gay man and advocate, said Laurie Hensley, his eldest daughter.

Nichols curated an encyclopedic knowledge from his ability to remember everything he read, said Frank laRosa, his former student, co-worker and business partner. The simultaneous nuance and breadth of Nichols’ knowledge eventually led to laRosa coining the nickname “Google Analog” for him.

Another of Nichols’ former students and teaching assistants, Connie Fanos, called Nichols a “social engineer” because of his ability to recognize talent in people and create connections between them.

Nichols worked as a communication studies professor at California State University, Sacramento for 20 years, but his first teaching job was in the army, Hensley said.

Hensley retold her father’s stories, remembering how his excitement to begin basic training prompted him to jump off a train platform, injuring his knee and preventing him from participating in training.

He became a typing instructor after it became clear he couldn’t perform the physical activity required for soldiers, she said.

laRosa said Nichols was a man full of stories, many of which were so grand that his audience doubted they were entirely true until they saw photos or met the characters.

The stories Nichols was most excited to tell were those about giving someone encouragement and learning they had succeeded, Hensley added.

Nichols mentored many students at CSU Sacramento, where he taught an introductory communication studies class, said former student Bob Higgins.

Fanos was Nichols’ student when she met him, studying at CSU Sacramento as a single mother without child support.

She said Nichols found her crying by a filing cabinet one evening and asked her what was wrong. After she shared with him how tired and discouraged she was, he offered his help and introduced her to someone from Sacramento’s Community Services Planning Council.

The council hired Fanos to work with it and immediately treated her as an equal, she said. She added that she thinks the opportunity shaped her future career as a legislative liaison.

“From that day forward, I had a sense of myself. I’m not sure if I ever would have gained one if not for Lee,” Fanos said.

Higgins said he thinks Nichols taught students not merely how to communicate effectively, but how to communicate effectively to accomplish their goals.

“He was very happy for other people’s success. He didn’t need to have the success,” laRosa said.

Nichols began publicly identifying as gay and advocating for gay rights in 1984. He had previously been active in Democratic politics, Hensley said.

Fanos said she remembers visiting a gay friend in Sacramento one holiday and accompanying him to meet someone he said was well loved and respected in Sacramento’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

She said she was not surprised when she learned her friend was taking her to meet Nichols.

“In the ’70s in Sacramento, you couldn’t swing a dead cat and not come across a person who didn’t know Lee Nichols,” she said.

Nichols was still active in the last 15 years of his life after he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, Hensley said. After being given a pacemaker for his heart, he was able to continue working at his own leisure in retirement, sometimes choosing to act as an editor at a local magazine and always writing every day, she added.

Of his many accomplishments as a journalist, she said she thought her father was proudest of interviewing Martin Luther King Jr. during the Jim Crow protests in 1960, when protesters crowded outside a meeting of the Republican National Convention.

Nichols’ career as a journalist primarily existed in radio, but he also had experience in broadcast television at Sacramento-based stations, Hensley said. She added that he was a prolific writer and that one of her strongest memories as a child was her father’s habit of spending every weekend sitting, writing and listening to opera in his study.

“I think he was proudest of having had an influence on other people’s lives,” she said. “It was something he loved to talk about.”