Daniel Emerson Nastro

The Honorable Daniel Emerson Nastro - Judge, Dad, Dan, Danny Boy, Papie Dan, in the words of his favorite songster Sinatra, faced the final curtain and left us his way on August 22, 2026, narrowly avoiding having to blow out 93 birthday candles. His effervescent spirit is carried on by his four children, Diane Elizabeth, Deborah Ann “Deb” (twin grandsons Luke and Romain Nastro Idee), his identical twin sons Ronald Newton and Richard Joseph (granddaughter Monique Danielle Lozoya (Israel), and great-granddaughters Selah and Shiloh. He is also survived by his brother Charles Paul (Margaret Ellen) and his many nieces, nephews, in-laws, and friends, all of whom he unforgettably touched with his magnanimous heart, affectionate presence, and lovable quirks.

He was a family man - a devoted dad, son, sibling, and uncle; an effusively loyal New York sports fan, a renaissance man, a champion of education and the underdog, and a major charitable and scholarship benefactor.

Born and bred in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, he played stickball, adored the Brooklyn Dodgers, and proudly came of age during the era of Marlon Brando and James Dean and exuded their Big Apple good looks. It didn’t matter that he lived in Arizona longer than New York. His beloved identity was his New York Italian heritage, replete with his charismatic ever-present New York accent and everyman’s warmth and approachability.

However, it is hard to get very far in speaking about Dan’s life without first paying tribute to his immense and far-reaching legal career achievements. He was a Judicial Giant. There were judges and then there was Judge Dan Nastro.

By the time he fully retired at close to 80 years old, from both public service as a Maricopa County Superior Court judge and as a private mediator, he had settled well over 2500 cases. It is no exaggeration to say that in each case, he profoundly and distinctively impacted the hearts and minds of every party and attorney, by being a judge who patiently listened, compassionately held space for all emotions, and then worked tirelessly, often well into the night, to chip away at cemented positions to construct an agreement that they all could live with.

His judicial chambers where he worked his settlement magic became legendary in their own right, commanding even more interest to get on Judge Nastro’s calendar. There were examples of Brooklyn with the Dan Nastro branded combo of sports memorabilia and classical music. His chamber walls were filled with vintage photos of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, the Brooklyn Dodgers legendary ‘Boys of Summer,’ visibly explosive action shots of boxers like Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston, indomitable posters of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and other stars as reminders of the challenges to make it through the hard battles. He complemented this by routinely filling the background with the calming symphonies of the great composers.

It was his extraordinary capacity to imagine a way to resolve the dual problem of the court’s congestion with the lengthy, emotional toll that a trial inflicted on the parties that led him to, in his own words, “introduce settlement conferences into Arizona.” A format that he masterminded as his own trailblazing alternative dispute resolutions (ADR), including binding summary jury trials, interactive and adversary summary juries over which he presided with attorneys presenting a mini case to a mini jury. Next, they talked to the mini jury to glean and discuss the case’s weaknesses. He used this procedure to help broker a settlement deal to the highly praised satisfaction of all involved. He taught other judges his settlement techniques and his pioneering work led to the court’s implementation of a mandatory settlement conference rule and the widespread use of his ADR practices throughout Arizona.

His popularity only rose after his 1999 retirement from the bench so he founded Dispute Resolutions as a private mediator, bringing peace and agreement where others had failed. He was in such high demand that he was booked out for months, even cramming mediations into the weekends to accommodate everyone. While he settled many high profile, famous cases, he never shied away from working on the less heralded, common cases. He believed that all participants deserve dignity, and he drew boundless energy and unwavering purpose from this. While he was a role model for many things, it was that he was a man who absolutely loved his job and gave it his all that stands out.

In his heyday, it was hard to go anywhere in the Phoenix, area without meeting someone who knew him and shared their effusive admiration or a story of how he single-handedly made the stress of a lawsuit easier to bear in negotiating a settlement. Such praise was not limited to the parties; he was showered with countless awards from both lawyers and judges alike, including Jurist of the Year, the Honorable Harry Stevens Award, the American Board of Trial Advocates Appreciation for Outstanding Service award, and was recognized in the book, Burning Shield: The Jason Schechterle Story, for his inimitable work settling Officer Schechterle’s tragic patrol car explosion case.

His impressive, outstanding judicial career is also an incredible success story in that he never gave up on his lifelong dream of being a fully appointed judge. He first diligently worked as a pro tem Maricopa County Superior Court Judge and a City of Phoenix trial judge gaining firsthand judicial expertise and earning the respect and support of the legal community and court personnel. In March of 1985, at the age of 51, with 15 years of judicial experience, he was appointed by then-Governor Bruce Babbitt.

Dan was born in Brooklyn, NY on Halloween, October 31, 1933, the eldest son to the late Irene (Moschillo) and Joseph Ralph Nastro. He was pre-deceased by his two sisters, Therese Marie, Mary Ann (Papagni), and his youngest brother Joseph “Joey” Gerard, who was sadly disabled from birth and died at a young age. Along with his surviving brother Charles, the family lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, but it was large in love. His dad, Joe, was a linotypist for the New York Daily News and was Dan’s eternal hero. Dan regularly reminisced to his own children about how his dad, a little guy at not much over 5 feet tall, worked nights and had a huge magnetic personality, telling jokes and instilling in Dan his strong work ethic and devotion to family.

Young Dan was a standout pupil at school. His parents were always told that Danny Boy was smart and should go to college, but their humble income did not provide the means. But with the help of the family’s church, Dan attended St. Peter’s College in New Jersey, studying tirelessly on the long subway commute from Brooklyn and graduated cum laude in 1955. He proceeded to graduate at the top of his class from Fordham Law in 1959 and later completed half of the credits for a Master of Law at Brooklyn College. He studied on the rooftop of his family’s apartment where he memorized poetry for school that he would always carry with him. He also enjoyed a summer dream job working for the New York Daily News, often from their dug-out at Ebbets Field, where he reveled in being in the presence of baseball greats like his beloved ‘The Boys of Summer’ and Jackie Robinson.

He met the late, long time Arizona resident Joan Arlene Cooper at a Columbia hosted weekend dance when Joan was working as a dietician at Columbia Hospital. They married in 1963 in New York and in 1965, they returned to her home state where his legal career took flight. As an associate at Snell & Wilmer, his legal talents and drive caught the eye of his mentor Mark Wilmer who encouraged and supported Dan in becoming a judge.

Together, Dan and Joan raised four children whom he greatly cherished. They divorced in the mid-90’s and remained amicable throughout the years with Dan doing much to uplift, comfort, and support her during her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment in the mid-2000’s.

During his children’s formative years, he regularly counseled them about the importance of education and sought to perhaps cultivate their character with TV shows like M*A*S*H, where somehow, he always cried, even during reruns, and characters such as Archie Bunker, Benny Hill and Barney Miller constantly caused him to chuckle and call us in to watch. He was a season ticket holder for the Phoenix Suns and rotated taking one of his kids to each home game, where he helped them get autographs and participate in half-time free throw competitions to win whatever ham or cleaning product was the prize for making it.

He was their greatest sports fan in attending all of his sons’ Pop Warner games and Deb’s high school basketball games, and later delighted in traveling back to New York for the NY Marathon, where he stood in front of his childhood apartment building and then rode the subway to other New York boroughs to cheer his daughter as she ran past. He cherished going to Italian restaurants and the local theatre productions with Diane and family, sharing stories with Deb about their legal work, watching sports with his sons, swapping weightlifting routines with them, and joyfully exchanging sports trivia.

He became legendary in the family as having 9 lives in that he somehow managed to escape many harrowing events and close calls; in his youth, he fell down a long hard cement subway stairwell, knocking out his front teeth; he later had a tooth removed with no novocain; he passed out right after daughter Deb’s birth, nearly toppling the gurney that mom and newborn were on; he suffered a heart attack; he laughingly nearly cut off all his toes after his first try using a weed eater; he managed to drive through rush hour traffic to safety after his brakes frighteningly failed; and he caused a plane flight emergency landing to get him emergency help for another near heart attack.

Maybe it was all those close calls or just his loving way that prompted him at every opportunity to tell his kids how much he loved them. He matched his words with action and was always there for us with unwavering, loving support during the tough times.

He wholeheartedly loved traveling back to NY to spend time with family, participating in family reunions, and speaking frequently with all his NY relatives on the phone. He was never quite the same after the deaths of his sisters, niece Donna Ann Kuminski, and his beloved brother-in-law, Thomas “Tommy” Papagni whom he considered his best friend. He reveled in pulling pranks on Tommy, and could never stop laughing until he cried, even after countless re-tellings of the pranks.

Dan lived modestly and with great generosity to family and others. In 2006, with his brother Charlie and his wife Maggie, Dan created the Irene and Joseph Nastro Memorial Scholarship Fund to support scholarships for students who otherwise would not be able to attend their alma mater grade school of Our Lady of Angels (now Holy Angels Catholic Academy in Bay Ridge).

With great fondness and over the top NY unbridled enthusiasm, he went to Super Bowl XLII in 2008 in Phoenix and playfully pointed out that he was the sole reason Eli Manning and the NY Giants defeated Tom Brady and the New England Patriot’s otherwise perfect winning season.

As the years progressed, he relished his role as Papie Dan/ Grandpa, visiting often and showing that Santa was no match in gift-giving. He regularly enjoyed streaming their piano recitals, sports games, and band and acting performances. While Papie Dan was an ever-zealous sports buff, he could never quite get why his grandsons played soccer, since he didn’t know a NY sports team for that.

In his later years, he filled his time annotating museum art books, listening to the Master Classes, attending theatre, opera, watching pro sports, and making friendly wagers with family and friends. He impressively filled volume after volume of crossword puzzle books. Now, these were no airport easy crossword books, but rather the most complex, Sunday Times style crosswords; he answered every clue, all on his own.

In his final years, with his memory and mind changing, he again did it his way and put his Nastro endearing brand by reciting many of the poems he memorized in his youth on his family’s apartment rooftop. He regularly would randomly yet winsomely recite every word of “She Walks in Beauty Like the Night,” or “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” and other famous poems. His most famous recitation was the apropos and unforgettable Jonathan Swift line “Everyone wants to live a long life, but no one wants to grow old.”

In the end, my Dad faced his mortality and death, just as he did with his life; resilient, living longer than expected even in his final days, and doing all he could do to say ‘I love you’ to his children. Truly, through it all, he stood tall and did it his way. (Special thanks to Frank Sinatra for the words so befitting to the magnitude of the man that was my Dad.)

What would make him happiest now is for you to never forget that the Dodgers were from Brooklyn, that you always wear shirts/hats for every NY sports team when you are not working and root for them no matter what (thank you Knicks for winning it for him this year), that you always try to settle any case that you are part of, that you think of him when you hear Sinatra’s My Way, that you memorize Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” and recite it well into your 90’s, and that you take every opportunity to tell your kids you love them.

He will be dearly missed.

A Vigil/Rosary and light reception in his honor will be held on Monday, September 14 from 5-7 pm at the Whitney Murphy Funeral Home in Phoenix, AZ. Holy Catholic Mass will be held on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, at 10:30 am at St. Bernadette Catholic Church, Scottsdale, AZ and burial to follow at Holy Redeemer Catholic Cemetery for Rite of Burial in Cave Creek/Deer Valley. To send a condolence or share a memory, visit https://www.whitneymurphyfuneralhome.com

Contributions in his memory would be appreciated to Hospice of the Valley or First Light Home Health of Scottsdale, AZ.