Ande Engleman, Nevada journalist and press advocate, dies at 79

CARSON CITY — Andrea “Ande” Engleman, a former newswoman and longtime fixture in Nevada media who, as executive director of Nevada Press Association, was a strong advocate for open government and press freedom in the state, died of cancer at her home in Carson City on June 12. She was 79.

Engleman was still working in communications when she took ill. Her work in Nevada media dates to the 1980s, mostly covering politics and the Legislature, including stints for Reuters and TV network affiliates in Reno. She did political analysis for the “Nevada NewsMakers” show on the Reno station KRNV and also worked for the ABC affiliate in Reno, KOLO, opening a Carson City bureau in 1999. She started in broadcasting at the former WTOP (now WUSA) in Washington, D.C.

But it was her work for the Nevada Press Association from the mid-1980s to late 1990s where Engleman made lasting contributions to the state’s media landscape, lobbying the Legislature for improved open meeting and public records laws and greater access to public information. She served as secretary-manager of the group in 1983-84, when the position was part time, and later served as full-time executive director for more than a decade.

“She was just amazing,” said Don Ham, a retired Review-Journal editor and the editor of the Nevada Appeal in Carson City from 1984-95. “She was extremely aggressive and she knew everybody in the Legislature. She was a very strong lobbyist for open government and freedom of the press, just extremely strong.”

From 1984-87 she served under Gov. (and later U.S. Sen.) Richard Bryan as executive director of the state Occupational Information Coordinating Committee before returning to head the press association in 1987. In 1998, she became public information officer for then-Secretary of State Dean Heller. She later headed her own management consulting and communications firm and consulted for Republican candidates, including current Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei.

In 2013, she was named by Carson City’s mayor to head the city’s Ethics Ordinance Review Committee, to review how the city’s ethics ordinances matched up with state ethics law.

Describing herself in a press association bio as a fourth-generation Californian, she was born in Los Angeles May 3, 1940, to S. Keith and Alice Linden. Her father worked in politics and she was raised in both California and Washington, D.C., graduating from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in 1958. She earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Maryland but had long lived in Nevada’s capital city after coming to Reno in the early 1980s.

“I think she loved Carson City, and she loved Nevada, and she loved its people,” said her daughter, Pam Egner, of Arlington, Virginia. “She was very passionate about her community.”

Another daughter, Laura Lohmeyer, of Stafford, Virginia, said her mother remarked that her happiest years were spent in Carson City.

She is also survived by another daughter, Karen Munson, of Doha, Qatar; a sister in Juno Beach, Florida; a brother in Bucks County, Pennsylvania; and four grandchildren.

Ms. Engleman’s husband, Lee Adler, a longtime Nevada newsman, died in 2002.

Contact Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-0661. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter.