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Paradise Valley philanthropists John and Doris Norton's $1 million gift will create an endowed chair for prostate cancer research at the UA.

By University Communications
May 16, 2008

Phoenix philanthropists John and Doris Norton endow $1 million chair for prostate cancer research at the Arizona Cancer Center

University of Arizona alumni John R. and Doris S. Norton have established the John Norton Endowed Chair for Prostate Cancer Research at the Arizona Cancer Center. The $1 million gift was recently made to the UA Foundation.

Arizona Cancer Center Director Dr. David S. Alberts has appointed oncologist Dr. Frederick “Rick” Ahmann, a UA professor of medicine and surgery, to fill the chair. “Virtually no other oncologist in the U.S. has devoted his or her career to preventing and treating prostate cancer more than Rick Ahmann,” said Alberts. “There is no more deserving physician scientist to receive a named prostate cancer chair.”

“We are on the threshold of new and better ways to treat prostate cancer,” said John Norton, a prostate cancer survivor since 1991. “We must financially support people with the qualities and abilities of Ahmann so that they are able to concentrate on research that will further our knowledge and provide better treatment of this disease.”

In 1955, John Norton founded the J.R. Norton Company, a diversified agricultural production business in Arizona and California.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed Norton as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While serving in this capacity, Norton worked closely with farmers, ranchers and agribusiness companies to improve their economic viability, and was instrumental in shaping national policy that supports production agriculture and ranching.

After Norton’s prostate cancer returned several years ago, his physician in Phoenix recommended the UA’s Ahmann as “the best oncologist in the southwestern United States.”

“I would like to make sure there is a wider and more in-depth recognition of the Arizona Cancer Center so that more people in Maricopa County will not only take advantage of it and use it, but support it financially,” Norton said.

The Nortons also have been extraordinarily generous to the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. They funded the John R. and Doris S. Norton Endowed Chair for Fathers, Parenting, and Families in 2000 in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences. Their $4 million gift in 2004 led the college the name the John and Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences in their honor.

John Norton also served as campaign chair of the successful effort to raise $1.5 million for the Bartley P. Cardon Endowed Chair in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.