SLATALLA, JR., Alex J.

Today's News-Herald, Lake Havasu City, AZ - Posted: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - Alex J. Slatalla Jr., 78, died at his home in Lake Havasu City last week. He was preceded in death last month by his wife of nearly 54 years, Joan. Slatalla, a pharmacist who for many years was a familiar face behind the counter at Lake Havasu City drugstores, was a self-described “desert rat” who came to Arizona from the Midwest 30 years ago. He took great pleasure in having left behind his winter galoshes. Born in Green Bay, Wis., he grew up in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst and graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He worked his way through college at a Rexall drugstore, where in 1959 he met his future wife at the lunch counter. He asked her, “Why did you drop egg salad on my shoe?” She said, “On you it looks good.” They married soon after. A man of many hobbies, Slatalla was a builder of model railroads; a gardener who loved moss roses and tulips; a stamp collector; a coin collector; a duplicate bridge player; a body builder and an amateur genealogist who traced his immigrant grandparents to their hometown in Objezierze, Poland, where Antonius Szota∏a and Antonina Masza∏ were married in their local Catholic parish in 1884. Slatalla is survived by four children, Michelle (Josh), Alex J. III (Cheryl), Joe (Dana) and Dan (Linda); his sister, Vicki Kubacki (Ted) and ten grandchildren.