Although saying he shared many of their values, Goldwater declared that "their groups have little or nothing to do with conservative or liberal politics" and called them "a divisive element that could tear apart the very spirit of our representative system if they gain sufficient strength."
Seven years later, in retirement, he was still railing: "The New Right--just like FDR had his New Left--they're nuts. . . . They expect from conservatism some things that no political philosophy could or should deliver."
Goldwater was born in Phoenix on Jan. 1, 1909, before Arizona became a state. His father, Baron, was the son of Michael Goldwasser, who fled from his Polish homeland at age 14 to avoid being conscripted into the army of Russia's czar.
The grandfather, whose name was eventually anglicized to Goldwater, migrated with a brother, Joe, to California's Mother Lode country during the Gold Rush, and they opened a saloon. They later moved to Arizona and went into the mercantile business, the beginning of the family fortune.
"My father made the Phoenix Goldwater store the leading fashion center of the territory," Goldwater said in his memoirs.
Goldwater, the eldest of three children, took a lifelong interest in the well-being of the Southwest's Native Americans. He said the Navajos gave him the nickname ChaLee, meaning "curly hair." He called his home "Be-Nun-I-Kun," which in Navajo means "house on the hilltop."
Had he been around when the Army was wiping out Indians, the crusty Westerner said, "I would have been on the Indians' side. The white man really--pardon the expression--screwed the Indians."
He often said he inherited his love of Arizona's open spaces and his religion, Episcopalianism, from his mother.
"It's frequently been said that our first Jewish president would be an Episcopalian," Goldwater used to tell campaign audiences in 1964.
A lifelong pilot, he chafed at the restrictions imposed by health problems. When he asked his doctor after hip replacement surgery if he would ever be "normal" again, the doctor asked how he defined the term.
" 'Oh,' I said, 'if the last windstorm moved my TV antenna, normal would be getting a ladder, going up and fixing it.' He said, 'You're never gonna be normal.' "
Goldwater was married in 1934 to Margaret "Peggy" Johnson of Muncie, Ind., and they had two sons and two daughters: Barry Goldwater Jr., a former California Republican congressman who became a Phoenix investment counselor; construction executive Michael Goldwater; and businesswomen Joanne Goldwater and Peggy Goldwater Clay. There are 10 grandchildren.
Peggy Goldwater died Dec. 11, 1985. More than six years later, shortly after his 83rd birthday, Goldwater married health care executive Susan Shaffer Wechsler, more than three decades his junior.
"The only thing I want them to remember me by," the long-retired Goldwater told a Times reporter, "is, I was honest. . . . I have no regrets of my service. I did everything I could, and some of it was damn good and some of it wasn't."
Times staff writer Patt Morrison contributed to this story.
