An Interview with Wendy M

An Interview with R. Ian Ross and Irmalee Anne Gray Ross

An Oral History Conducted by Claytee White

______The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project

Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas

©The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2012

Produced by:

The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editors: Barbara Tabach, Maggie Lopes Transcribers: Kristin Hicks Interviewers and Project Assistants: Barbara Tabach and Claytee D. White

The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the

generosity of Dr. Harold Boyer. The Oral History Research Center enables students and

staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person

narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that

allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish.

The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of

fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of

the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews.

The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the

auspices of the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project.

Claytee D. White, Project Director Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas

iii

Preface

R. Ian Ross, better known as Ross, and wife Irmalee have dedicated their lives to serving,

and improving, their community. Both Ross and Irmalee’s families moved to Las Vegas,

from Los Angeles and Reno respectively, drawn by the opportunities presenting themselves in the growing city.

While in college, Ross would spend his summers as busboy at the Sands hotel, where his mother worked as beauty consultant and salesperson. Ross attended law school, and soon after finishing, started a law firm with Jerry Snyder and Oscar Goodman. After a couple of years, Ross took a position with the City Attorney’s Office while also starting his own private firm. He later served as an assemblyman in 1977-78.

In addition to his work as an attorney, Ross has engaged in various real estate ventures over the years, largely in North Las Vegas. He served as the president of the North Las

Vegas Chamber of Commerce, and dedicated himself to developing this part of town.

During this time, Irmalee was an active member in various social organizations, including

Junior League, of which she still is a member.

Having lived in Las Vegas for over 50 years, from ‘mob days’ to the present, Ross and

Irmalee have accumulated unique experiences, and developed keen insights, about the growth, change and development of Las Vegas. Unlike others, they embrace the city’s continuing evolution as a community.

Table of Contents Interview with R. Ian Ross and Irmalee Anne Gray Ross March 28, 2012 & April 5, 2012 & April 6, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee White

SESSION 1:

Ross talks about his family; parents’ courtship; growing up in Detroit and moving to Los Angeles for grade school years, including Hebrew school. Family moves Las Vegas for economic opportunities. Recalls breaking neck in high school and deciding he wants to be a lawyer. Mentions childhood inspirations; Jewish youth organizations; meeting wife in high school; childhood neighborhood and neighbors in Las Vegas …………...... 1-6

Irmalee speaks about her family; parents meeting in Reno; father moving to Las Vegas. Family moves back to Reno, Yerington, then to California; father receives EDD from Stanford; moves to Las Vegas to lead school district consolidation. Recalls father leaving education for banking and public service; mother works as homemaker. Father chairs fundraising committee to purchase land for Nevada Southern ...... 7-13

Ross and Irmalee speak about Irmalee’s father’s self-published novel about Nevada; publishes book of poems and drawings as well. Mention elementary school named after her father. Ross remembers his mother’s work as a beauty consultant at the Sands hotel; working at busboy at Sands during college summer breaks. Recollects stories about Sinatra, Johnnie Rae, the Copa Room, segregation…………………………………14-20

SESSION 2:

Ross speaks about early growth of Las Vegas, from 1905 to building of Hoover Dam to liberalization of laws and development of Test Site. Mentions housing development booms and busts, driven by savings and loans institutions, speculation. Both talk about various residential areas in downtown Las Vegas, and their respective communities growing up; relationship between these areas and the Strip…………...... ….21-28

Ross talks about law school; first jobs after graduating, in Carson City and then Las Vegas; works at District Attorney’s Office. Discusses starting law firm with Jerry Snyder and Oscar Goodman; dissolving firm for each to pursue individual paths. Ross joins City Attorney’s Office; supplements by starting own private firm………………..……29-35

Ross recollects working with George Rudiak; more about working with Oscar Goodman. Recounts stories about real estate ventures with Goodman, driven by Howard Hughes’ business expansion; co-defending accused in murder retrial………………………..36-43

Irmalee discusses her job as a homemaker; raises two sons; actively participates in attorneys’ wives club; other social clubs and organizations. Both speak about spending time with Irmalee’s father and brother; taking their sons to hunt, fish……..………..44-46

Ross continues talking about working at City Attorney’s Office; pursues politics; becomes assemblyman in 1977. Meets Richard Tam and engage in real estate ventures together; buy 900 acres in North Las Vegas. Ross becomes president of North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. Discusses North Las Vegas’ growth plans………………...47-53

Ross discusses lengthy process of selling North Las Vegas lands; becomes Civil Service Board attorney; North Las Vegas Housing Authority attorney; manages this with private interests and law practice. Works on changing perception of North Las Vegas; prompting growth. Ross becomes Clark Country Health District’s attorney in 1988…………..54-57

Irmalee remembers going back to school and getting teaching certificate; teaches at Las Vegas Day School for 13 years. Mentions the role of Junior League in skills development. Ross discusses his unique method of getting know his clients; tells one more story about a real estate deal and the garbage company………………………..58-63

SESSION 3:

Irmalee recalls the Walking Box Ranch outside Searchlight; stories of the Weikels, the owners. Ross recounts defending friend in suit brought by Frank Rosenthal; real estate standoff Steve Wynn; “Perry Mason case” defending accused rapist…………...…...64-70

Ross discusses time as assemblyman; decisions on big issues like Equal Rights Amendment, Laetrile, constitutionality of capital punishment, smog testing regulations. Continues recalling legislation on the right to die; bill to allow Nevada Attorney General to live outside Carson City; governor’s desire for landlord-tenant bill….…………...71-76

Ross speaks about passing legislation to create medical school in Reno; costs and benefits of financing professional schools for medicine, dentistry and law. Mentions school busing; sales tax issues; losing re-election to assembly. Talks about interactions with Senator Gibson; political term limits…………………………………………………77-82

Irmalee and Ross discuss transformation of downtown Las Vegas. Ross discusses elimination of railroad yards; determinants of downtown development. Both speak about Smith Center; ideal developments to continue rejuvenation; compare Las Vegas community now to ‘mob days’; their love for Las Vegas……………………………83-91

Index………………………………………………………………………………….92-93

vi vii viii

This is Claytee White. Today I'm in the home of the Rosses. It is March 28th, 2012.

Mr. Ross, if you will start first by pronouncing your name correctly and

spelling your first name for me.

Mrs. Ross, if you would do exactly the same thing.

My legal name is R, period, Ian, I-A-N, Ross.

My name is Irmalee, I-R-M-A-L-E-E—that's one word—Anne, A-N-N-E, middle name;

maiden name Gray, G-R-A-Y; last name Ross, R-O-S-S.

Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Also, I prefer being called just Ross.

Oh, really? Thank you. I will.

Thank you.

That's easier for me because when I look at your name I want to say Ean

(pronouncing).

That's why I prefer being called Ross.

Good. Ross, if you will get started by telling me something about your early life.

My father's name was Samuel Rosenbaum. He was born in Canada and his family

ultimately moved to Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from high school, and through the

apprentice program, became a pharmacist, ultimately owning his own drugstore.

My mother's name was Ruth Schwartz and she was born in Chicago, Illinois.

There had been a marriage between the two families. My father's sister married my

mother's uncle. The matriarch of the family thought that Ruth and Sam would make a

good couple, and so they engaged in correspondence, and ultimately married and settled

in Detroit.

I have one living sister, Brenda, who lives in Southern California. She's seven years my senior. I had a brother, Barry, who died when he was about 29 years old.

I forgot to mention my mother's occupation; generally, she helped dad in the store. In Las Vegas, she first sold ladies' dresses and then ultimately sold cosmetics at the Sands hotel beauty shop.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan, on 12/12/38. We lived above my dad's drugstore. I grew up in Detroit until I was about seven years old. Then the family moved to Los Angeles, for a couple of reasons, primarily health-related; my mother and sister had severe hay fever and asthma, and the winters were tough. Also, my mother wanted to be closer to her mother who had already moved to California. So we moved to

California.

I went to the grammar school, which was right across the street from where we lived. We lived on one side of Olympic Boulevard, and grammar school was on the other. I would go to school by a tunnel under the street. When the bell rang and everybody went to line up to do “The Pledge of Allegiance,” I then went to school.

It was a typical childhood. When I was eight, my parents sent me to Hebrew school; that was three days a week. My mother gave me money to take the bus, but I hitchhiked and kept the money. When I was bar mitzvahed, I no longer went to Hebrew school, so I then got a job selling newspapers on the corner.

Could you imagine hitchhiking in L.A. today?

I can't imagine hitchhiking anywhere today.

Yes, true. When did the family move to L.A?

1946. It was an economic disaster for our family. My father couldn't get a license in

pharmacy in California because he wasn't a graduate of an accredited pharmacy college;

he had been trained through the apprentice program, and California required a college

education. So Dad opened a store that didn't have liquor and didn't have pharmacy, and

slowly went broke.

Thrifty Drugstore was opening two stores in Nevada, and Dad was able to get

license reciprocity. He chose Las Vegas because it didn't have a severe winter, though he

didn't know anything else about Las Vegas. We moved here in 1953.

My school year in Los Angeles went from February to February. So we moved

here in April when I was a freshman, and the following year I was still a freshman. I had

a choice of either going forward or going back, and I decided to go forward. I went to

summer school and graduated in '56. So I was a freshman in '53 and in '54, became a

junior the following year and then a senior; I was never an academic sophomore.

When we moved here, I got a job in Kline's Thrifty Market at Main and

Charleston, boxing groceries and filling the shelves.

I guess one of the most significant events in my life is I broke my neck when I

was 15. I was on vacation at the beach with my sister who lived at that time in

California. I dived into what I thought was the water and hit the bottom, sand. It was a

compressed fracture of the fifth cervical, which means it was a small break; it wasn't

really serious. But I thought it was serious. I decided what I wanted to become, and I

decided I wanted to be a lawyer.

My father, when he heard that I wanted to be a lawyer, got me a job as an office boy in a law firm, Zenoff, McIlbee and Manzone. I was an office boy there for a couple of years, and then I graduated high school. My brother took over that job.

Why the jump from being injured to being a lawyer?

I thought I would be limited in what I could do. I thought I would be physically limited.

For instance, with a broken neck, I wasn't involved in physical education any longer; I

didn't do physical education in college, and ultimately, it had some effect on my draft

status. So I thought it would have effect on my choices of employment. I actually never

had any kind of infirmity that I'm aware of, but it was a major event in my life. I guess I

just never deviated from that goal.

Who were some of the people who inspired you along the way, as a young man, as a boy?

Milton Green. I was very active in the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in Los Angeles.

Milton Green's son, Robert, was one of my classmates. Milton Green was our Cub scoutmaster and assistant scoutmaster and was very influential in my life. Tony Isaacs was our leader. He was a couple years older than we were, and I kind of looked up to him; he was a true-blue guy and nice. I did a lot of Boy Scout things—camping, hiking.

I went to the '53 Jamboree at Irvine Ranch.

In high school, I was involved with the Jewish youth organization, AZA, Aleph

Zadick Aleph. That was very big. We spent a lot of time together talking. We'd get together and dance with the BBG girls.

What is a BBG girl?

The Jewish girls youth organization. I don't know what BBG stands for. Maybe—B'nai

B'rith Girls.

Oh, yes.

Versonelle Abrilly was important to me in high school. We ate lunch together in high

school every day. We were friends. She ultimately arranged a date for Irmalee and I, which was significant.

Tell me about the correspondence between your parents. How long did they correspond before they finally met? Did they do a regular courtship?

No. It's very strange. My father was an introvert and he was very non-demonstrative. I hate to be a stereotype, but somewhat Canadian. My mother fell in love with his letters, and she also did what her mother told her to do and that was to marry him. They were not happily married. They ultimately were married for about 27 years, three children, and it was not a happy marriage. I did not understand all of this until I went off to college and my father wrote me letters. I suddenly saw he had an amazing ability to write and express himself. I could see why she fell in love with his letters.

Wow. Did you save those letters?

Of course not.

Did your mom save hers?

I doubt it.

Those are some of the things we do at the university. When we collect a family's papers and those kinds of letters that they will donate, people can learn all kinds of things from those kinds of donations. I love that.

Where did your family live when they first moved to Las Vegas?

My family bought a house. It was at 1051 Hassett, between Tenth and Eleventh. Hassett is two blocks south of Oakey and that was virtually the end of the town.

So was that considered John S. Park at that time, the neighborhood, was it called that?

Probably not. It was the Howard Hassett track, which consisted of two streets.

Wasn't the elementary school the John S. Park? That was where your brother went.

Yes. It was in the John S. Park area and if people called it that, it could be. But I always thought of it as the Howard Hassett track. My brother went to John S. Park. Behind us was another street that's escaping me right now and then there was Saint Louis. Then it was just desert. One of my favorite stories is watching my mother clean the sand out of the service porch with a shovel because we were virtually at the end of the desert, and the desert really blew.

We had a small two-bedroom, one-bath house, and there were four of us—my mom, Dad and my brother and I. By this time, my sister had married and she was no longer immediately in the family. It didn't have a carport; it didn't have a garage. It had a big yard because it was a small house. I used to ride my bicycle from there to Vegas

High.

Do you remember any of your neighbors?

Yes. Chaz Meyerson lived across the street. Chaz was a year or so ahead of me in high school. We weren't that close in high school, but we later became roommates at college for a year or two. He studied engineering, but he played the guitar and he liked playing the guitar, but he didn't like engineering that much. Later he actually became a professional guitarist, after about a year or two of engineering. We've had no contact since.

Then there was Cantor Kinnory, who lived two doors down from us. While I went to Hebrew school five years to get ready for the haftarah, my brother studied with

Cantor and memorized his in six months. Somehow that didn't seem fair to me, but that's

how it goes. He and his wife were refugees from Germany. I never asked the question,

but I've always wondered why were they wise enough and smart enough to leave

Germany when they did, because they survived and obviously numerous others did not.

Gertrude, after the Cantor died, became a client of mine. I did law work for her. They

were nice people.

Then one block south, about the same place in the middle of the block where I

lived, was Jim Grigsby. We were close. During the summers he could get construction jobs that paid a lot of money and I could only get busboy jobs, which didn't pay as well.

But we were friends and we would go out together. Jim later became a fireman, I think,

for Clark County and died young of Lou Gehrig's disease.

There was another boy who lived down the block, Arson I think his name was, but That's about all the neighbors I know.

Good. Thank you so much for those memories.

Irmalee, I'm going to do exactly the same thing.

Okay.

I'm going to ask about your early life. I have a little outline there just to help you remember some of the things that I'd like you to touch on.

All right. My mother's name was Irma, spelled with an I, Cordelia, Niles; Niles was her maiden name. She married my father and his legal name was Raymond Guild Gray, so obviously my mother became Irma Gray.

People called my father Guild, but his first name was actually Raymond. But there was an agreement in the family that he would be called Guild. There was a discrepancy between his parents as to what he should be named. His father had a friend

named Guild and wanted to name my father after his friend. They compromised and

called him Raymond Guild, but he was known to almost everybody as Guild Gray except

when he was in the Navy they went by his legal name.

My mother was a homemaker. She did have some college at UNR. I don't know

why she didn't finish. I don't know whether she married or whether she chose to do

something else.

My father primarily was an educator. My parents met at Lake Tahoe, but they

were both living in Reno, Nevada. My father moved there in 1913 from Illinois with his

family. I'm not sure what year my mother moved there. She moved there to stay with

some aunts. They met on a double date where they were each with other people, and

started dating and married. Anything else you want to know about them at this point?

Okay. I have one brother.

I think there's more to tell about your father.

There is a lot more to tell about him, but I don't know at what point you want me to—

Let's tell about him.

My father had a very full life. He was educated in Reno, for elementary school and high school. He graduated from high school at 16, went to work for a survey crew that surveyed central and eastern Nevada. He worked for them two or three years. Then, at the advice of his boss, he started college at UNR, and got a bachelor's and a master's.

Once out of college, he came to Las Vegas in 1938 and taught at Las Vegas High School.

Thirty-six.

I thought it was '38. Maybe he left in '38. Maybe he came in '36 and left in '38. You're correct because I wrote a couple of notes.

I can't be wrong all the time.

[All laughing]

**He was not in Las Vegas for very long at that point in time because his father had

passed away, who was living in Reno with his mother. He returned to Reno to help his

mother even though he had a sister that also lived in Reno.

From there, he was principal of Reno High School for some time. He did some

teaching at UNR. He had a state position in education. We moved to Yerington, Nevada for a year, and he was a combination of high school principal and superintendent of their school district. We were there only about a year before returning to Reno.

In 1943, he joined the Navy. When he left the Navy, he was the administrator of the Pacific Fleet Radar School. He left the Navy at the end of the war.

We eventually moved, probably about 1952, to Walnut Creek, California, because he decided to get an EDD, a doctorate in education, and he was accepted at Stanford.

He also had a job as curriculum coordinator for Contra Costa County, a little bit north.

That year he remodeled our home, he traveled to Stanford for his classes, and he had a full-time job. This was the kind of guy he was, which for a lot of people was quite amazing. He did very well at Stanford. He got A pluses. He was always high energy, very busy.

We were in Walnut Creek for about a year, and in Las Vegas, they wanted to consolidate the school district. He did his thesis at Stanford on that consolidation.

Somehow there was a connection between the educators in Las Vegas and Stanford; the

Stanford people recommended my father as this person to do the consolidation. So in

1953, we moved to Las Vegas. At that point in time I think it was called the Las Vegas

Unified School District. Two years later, it was the Clark County School District. I've

read two different things: most of what I have read says there were 14 separate districts

in Clark County; I’ve also read there were 13. He consolidated all of those into the

Clark County School District. There was tremendous growth in Las Vegas during that

time, so there were a lot of challenges. He held that position for about five years, and

then he left education and went to work for First Western Savings and Loan.

Do you remember what he did there, Ross? He was a vice president.

He did personnel. He did demographics. He also negotiated and located new branch

sites. The company was expanding, so they were opening new branches. He did that,

and he did all the hiring. He did all the kinds of things that weren't involved with

banking. So most of the savings and loan people there were money people, and he was

very non-money. He did the things that the other people couldn't do, and he did them all.

Did you take after your father?

I would say that no one in our family [laughing]. My brother and I probably have some of his characteristics, but this high-achieving person is pretty unique. They exist, of

course. We all know of people who have accomplished a lot in their lives. I would say

that except for possibly my 16-year-old granddaughter, maybe she will be more—

Too soon to tell.

Yeah.

Did your mom work outside the home?

She did not. She was a homemaker like during that period of time; that was more common than women that worked outside the home. She raised children. She was involved in community activities. She was a member of the Gray Ladies. The Gray

Ladies was an organization that went to Nellis and assisted people in medical need. She

was a member of the Mesquite Club. She was one of the founders of the Campfire Girls,

and she was a leader in Reno and in Las Vegas. She was a Daughter of the American

Colonists, so she traced her heritage back to the 1600s. She was pretty active in that

organization. I think that's about all. My father was a member of multiple organizations,

and so she would go with him to different events. She was mostly a supporting kind of a

person for his career.

Wonderful.

She left out a couple of things.

Okay, First Western Savings.

Yeah. Then while he was at First Western, he was a two-term assemblyman.

My goodness.

Yes. He ran for the assembly as a Republican and was there for two terms.

He was the one who sponsored the bill, creating the funding for the school district, the sales tax.

Yes.

They didn't have a method of paying for all the schooling, and the goal was to get a dedicated entitlement that couldn't be touched for other things. He was able to pull it off.

He did do that. At another point in time, he was city manager of Boulder City for a couple of years. He also worked for the county as—

Need to go back a step.

Yes.

He wanted to finish getting his pension, his 30 years in.

From?

PERB [Public Employees Retirement Board]

Okay.

He had all that time at the school district in Reno and here. They had an opening in

Boulder City for city manager and also had two other positions open at the same time.

They couldn't pay enough for him to be their city manager, but if he took all three jobs and got all three salaries, they could afford him. He committed to being there for three years.

And he did all three jobs.

He did all three jobs.

And did them well.

And did them fairly well.

Yes, he did them well.

He also worked for the county for a short time and did analysis—population analysis, economic analysis. In his last position, he worked for a company called Burrows, Smith and Company, which was a financial company working with municipal bonds. He traveled the state, and went to different municipalities.

Bottom line, I think you would call him a Nevadan and not a Las Vegan. He lived here a number of years and loved the community, but he had his affinity to the entire state because of his experiences and the people he knew from all the cow counties.

One thing that would be of interest is that the legislature provided financing for what they called Nevada Southern, the precursor to UNLV, but they said that the community had to find and buy the land for the university. My father was the chairman

of the fundraising committee so they could purchase land. He's very involved in the state of Nevada.

Do you know anything about that land purchase, how much money was raised?

I was either in high school or college, and one of my summer jobs I was to count the cash. I recently read something that he had written about the gaming people not supporting the university. But Benny Binion gave $5,000 of his personal money, and that was their biggest donation.

They had a certain amount of money and they wanted 40 acres of land. They just kept going further south until they bumped into someone who was willing to sell them 40 acres of land for that amount of money. There was a lot of negativity that they bought land so far out.

I know. That's amazing.

They obviously only bought 40 acres of land and the campus is substantially larger now.

The first building, Maude Frazier Hall, was built in '58. Prior to that Nevada Southern had classes at the high school auditorium and the Baptist church. I know that because I was a freshman at the Baptist church and in the high school, and a sophomore at Maude

Frazier Hall.

I guess the culmination of her father is that he received Distinguished Nevadan from the University of Nevada, Reno. He wrote a novel after he retired. He was in his

70s.

He did retire?

He did, three years after he said he was going to retire, and after his retirement party. I think he was afraid to retire. He didn't know what he was going to do with himself.

Obviously, he had a lot of interests. He did eventually retire.

What was the novel about?

Nevada.

Of course.

It was called The Treble V. He had a friend in the Nevada State Legislature, Norm

Glaser. The Glasers own a lot of ranches in Elko. When he and Norm were going around the land, they saw kind of a dugout, and Norm told him that that was a dugout

[where] somebody lived in the 1800s. That was the genesis of this novel. Norm's brother

was—

Arthur.

—Arthur. So he named his character Norman Arthur. It's a story of Norman Arthur and

his descendants, from about 1846 to 1925. There are things in the book about the

founding of Reno, Carson City, Winnemucca because his character travels, being a

rancher, to deliver his cattle and does things. Everything in the book is historically

accurate.

Do you still have a copy of the novel?

Yes.

That is great.

It's 900 pages.

But Nevada history.

Right. It's interesting. Ego is an amazing thing. My father-in-law was a near genius. He couldn't get the book published, so he published it himself. My father-in-law wasn't much of a salesman; he didn't believe in that. But he hustled that book all over the state.

He went to every library in the state of Nevada and had them buy a couple of copies. He would not give the book to anybody. He would give the book maybe to his daughter and his son, but he wouldn't give it to anybody.

Have you thought about having it reprinted and published?

No.

No. The point I'm getting at is even friends had to buy it.

I like it.

He ultimately broke even.

Okay, good.

He got all of his money back out of the book.

Yeah. I was reading something yesterday where he said he had sold 4,000 copies.

People wanted him to write another book, but he knew he couldn't write another book.

He had several hobbies. Photography was one hobby as well as poetry. He wrote poetry.

He decided to create a collection of his poems and photographs on the Great Basin. Then he just focused on writing poems. He'd think of a subject, a whole series of subjects, and then he'd write poems on it. He had the poems he had written, plus new poems, and he compiled them. Every poem he had a picture taken that depicted the poem. Like if he wrote about a dead tree, he'd have a picture of a dead tree. He called it Nature Sings and he published that.

That is wonderful. Was it published by a publishing company this time?

Guild Gray.

Yes, that one was published locally.

I can't remember his name, who published it. It was his friend.

It's on the tip of my tongue.

It will come to you.

The final thing is they named an elementary school after him. He enjoyed going

to the school and talking to the children. He would donate money to the school every

year, a couple thousand dollars here and there. The children were always amazed that

there was somebody called R. Guild Gray, that there really was a human being.

He would go in October around Nevada Day and talk to the fourth graders. He would

give them a little lecture, with a slide presentation, on the history of Nevada.

He also would go around giving talks and slide presentations to various civic

organizations. He was active in the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, and one

time delivered a talk to the chamber on why he wasn't rich. Of course, I knew why he

wasn't. But it was funny because he was intellectually honest and he explained how he

had a friend, George Early Harris, who was here in 1936-7 with him. Early was real

estate-oriented. He tried to convince Dad to go in with him to buy 40 acres of land for

$500 an acre and it's the land where the Desert Inn hotel got located. He talks about this and whatever. Then he ends the talk this way, which is typical and, I think, accurate,

“But I still wouldn't have been rich because as soon as the land was $550, I would have sold it.”

[Laughing] I love it.

That was my father-in-law.

That was wonderful.

I'm going to get back to your mother, Ross. You said something earlier

about the Sands.

Yes.

Tell me about your mother's work.

My mother was a salesperson. I don't know why she made the transition from dresses to

cosmetics, but she did. She had a line of cosmetics out of Beverly Hills called Aida

Gray.

I see.

She was their representative here and sold them at the Sands. She was not a

cosmetologist, but she would give facials and counseling. My mother kept doing this

work until she was in her 70s, and she had gorgeous skin. She would tell people that the

reason she had such great skin was because of Aida products.

[Laughing] I think that was great.

That wasn't true. My mother just had absolutely gorgeous skin.

But she sold a lot of the product.

She sold a lot. The Sands was owned by the mob at that time. Jack Entratter was a front

guy. It is my understanding that most of the pit bosses were part of the boys, and they

owned shares in the hotel and made up the ownership of the hotel, but, in fact, it was all

held by somebody in California who wasn't allowed to be present in the state of Nevada.

She would also do makeup for local people. People who were going to big affairs, they would come and my mother would do their eyes. She would actually do their makeup for them. It was a small community in those days, so a lot of the local people went to the

Sands Beauty Shop as opposed to going to a neighborhood beauty shop. I don't remember how many years she was there, but it was a long time. Through her contacts at

the hotel, I was able to get a job as a busboy there.

About what year did you work there?

I probably worked there the summer after my freshman year. I worked and carried a full

load my sophomore year. I also worked there the summer of my sophomore year, before

I went up to Reno.

Did I work after my junior year?

I don't remember.

Yes, I did, because you were working somewhere, and I would come see you after my

three-to-eleven shift at the Sands. I would come visit you at home. So I also worked

there at least the summer of my junior year, but not my senior year. Once I got to law

school I stopped doing that and started doing other things.

Did you see any of the early entertainers?

Oh, yes.

Tell me about that period and about the Sands during that time. It must have been

the heyday of the Sands.

It was.

Tell me what that was like.

It was incredible. At the time, it seemed so reasonable. Looking back now, it wasn't

reasonable. We're talking about the world famous Sands hotel with only 320-some-odd rooms. Now there are 5,000 here, 6,000 there. But nobody had thousands; everybody had hundreds. There was the main hotel where the common areas were—the restaurants, the showroom and the lobby. The rooms were in two-story buildings spread over the campus, so to speak, and they were some distance apart from each other. They were all

named after different racetracks around the country. There was Hialeah and Del Mar.

They were pretty straightforward buildings. They had suites on each end and just rooms

in the middle. I think virtually none of the rooms were connecting; some may have been

connecting. The suites you could make into some big rooms. A lot of lawn, a big

swimming pool.

I drove a little Cushman truck to pick up the dishes, slide them in. The hotel

primarily did its business in the summer, and primarily on the weekends. New Year's

Eve was big and that was about it.

But the winters were so mild.

They just didn't come. Winters were Miami, the falls were Tahoe, and the summers were

the Sands. They had their little circuit they did every year. So I was summer and that worked out fine. I wasn't replacing anybody because nobody was there in the winter.

My sophomore year, I don't know why they wanted me to do the whole year or if I wanted to or what, but I did. It had some effect on my grades.

The big man was Frank Sinatra. Tips were ordinary the week before he got there,

and tips skyrocketed the week or two he was there. He had a following. They followed

him all over the United States. These people came and gambled, and they were comped

and tipped big. Everybody knew the money was coming when Frank Sinatra came. He

stayed in a suite. Occasionally he didn't go on; he'd have throat trouble or something. He

would throw a party in his suite, and we would deliver the food. There was some guy on

the door and he just sat there. Everybody who came in to provide a service was given

two silver dollars. So what we did was—we probably could have delivered the food with

two guys, but we delivered it with the whole team. So instead of getting six dollars, we

got ten dollars.

What did you hear about the Copa Room?

The Copa Room was a big room and it fed people. It had a show and the girls were good

dancers, the Arden dancers. My favorite was Johnny Mathis. I just couldn't believe his

singing. It did then, does now. Johnnie Ray. A couple of times I would stand in the

wings, and I would hear Frank Sinatra sing. He sang extremely well. I really liked him.

Did you see the Rat Pack?

I never saw them outside of their venue. I saw Frank Sinatra in his room, and I thought

that was interesting. Here I am a freshman, sophomore in college, and he's on the

telephone talking to somebody. I could feel it; he was reaching for words. He was using

words that were beyond his vocabulary range. I thought that was very interesting. We

each have a level of vocabulary. Mine may be at B level, B-plus level. You're not going to hear too many D's and C's, and you're not going to hear many A's. For emphasis, sometimes I will say “ain't,” but just only for emphasis. And I do swear, but that's beside the point. I'm a work in progress. I'm not saying he had a low vocabulary, but you could just tell he was reaching for the words. I thought that was interesting because later he collected honorary doctorates from universities all over the country. While he was the king, and made a lot of money and people worshiped him—the stories about him were unbelievable, maybe most of them untrue—the man felt the lack of an education.

There were stories about how Carl Cohen, the casino manager, hit him. We went to school with Steve Cohen. Carl Cohen was a big man. There were stories about how bodyguards held other people while Frank Sinatra beat them up. All I saw was him entertaining Jack Entratter, and other people, in the hotel.

We had some things going on there that were terrible; people who could entertain

at the hotel, but couldn't stay at the hotel. There was a story about how Lena Horne's son

was swimming in the swimming pool one day, and somebody was screaming that this

young man who was a student at SC was polluting the swimming pool. So there was a

lot of that stuff going on.

Did you see that firsthand or was that legend?

The Lena Horne thing was legend.

Legend, okay.

I saw firsthand which entertainers stayed at the hotel and which entertainers didn't

because I delivered the food or picked up dirty dishes. One fascinating thing I learned

early as a busboy in room service, at other hotels I worked: people who serve are just

invisible. They're nonexistent. I worked at the Fremont hotel and some other hotels, and

there would be people having lunch together, talking about people I knew, because it was

a small town. They were talking business or talking stuff, and I'm pouring coffee and

doing this and that. They have no idea that I know who they're talking about, and I knew

what they're talking about. You knock on the door of Johnnie Ray and his boyfriend

opens the door for you, and there's the king-size bed and two guys.

Whatever people were doing at the time I knocked on the door to get the dishes they continued doing it. There was one cocktail waitress who was very haughty and nasty. One day I'm knocking on the door and the door opens, and she's making a mad dash for the bathroom, naked. The guy has me come in and clear off the dishes. I had a good laugh on that.

I'm sure. These are wonderful stories. I'd like to have more of them. What I'd like

to do is I'd like to stop here today, and I'd like to schedule our next appointment

starting where we are now and then getting more into your career and what

happens after this. I like the way we're doing this. I like the stories that you tell

along the way. This is what makes it so exciting and so interesting. So I really

appreciate this. Thank you so much for becoming a part of this.

You're welcome.

This is Claytee White again and I am with the Rosses in their home here in Las

Vegas. It is April 5th, 2012.

Thank you so much. When we stopped the last time, you had mentioned

something about the collapse of the early 1960s, and I want to know more about

that.

You have to go back a couple of steps. My recollection and knowledge of Las Vegas

before 1905 is not very good. In 1905, the railroad did the subdivision downtown, sold

off lots. That started a minor boom. People moved here and set up for the future. Then

there was a bust. Starting in the late 20s, the dam started another boom. Of course, when

the dam was completed, there was a bust. In '35 or '36, they extremely liberalized the

divorce laws, emphasizing a very short residency, and also the grounds so that it would

attract people to come to Nevada to get a divorce. They legalized what had been going

on uninterrupted, and that was gambling. The plan was those things would help the

economy, and they did. Then you had World War II with Nellis Air Force Base to a

certain extent, but the five basic plants out in Henderson being primary.

At the end of World War II, Las Vegas was designated as a test site for the development of the atomic bomb. The Test Site started around 60 miles north of Las

Vegas. It was very large. They perpetually had a conflict between housing people at the

Test Site and housing people in Las Vegas. People who lived in Las Vegas had a long ride out to the Test Site. Many of them left very early in the morning, and got home very late at night. But there was, in fact, continual employment growth during the 50s because of the Test Site.

Those days the savings and loan institutions were very entrepreneurial, and they made deals with the developers to do joint ventures where the savings and loan would put up the money to buy the land and build the houses, and the developers would build them.

These houses were generally built on spec in anticipation that because the growth was so strong, people would buy them. The developers would pay back the loans, pay the savings and loan interest, and actually pay them a percentage of the profits.

There reached a point when the Test Site stopped hiring people, at around the

10,000 jobs. But the savings and loans and the builders kept building, and there wasn't a market for those houses. Several things started happening at the same time. They're building houses; nobody's buying them. The construction jobs from houses are falling off, so people are moving out of the houses. We had a disaster in the homes and apartments; thousands of vacant houses, thousands of vacant apartments – probably as much as, or maybe even a greater percentage than, exists now. However, at the same time this is going on, other aspects of the economy were expanding. Schools were behind and they were growing. Hotels were expanding. Commercial was expanding. So while we had a housing market that was as bad as or worse as now, other segments of the economy were doing very well. That's why I call this situation in 2000 “The Perfect

Storm” because all aspects of the economy are failing at the same time and that

substantially makes it worse.

When you said the savings and loans got a percentage of the profits?

Yes.

Has that ever happened before or since?

Generally not. Eventually the savings and loans went bankrupt, and they were replaced with other mechanisms of borrowing money, which did not get percentages of the profits.

Thereafter, the philosophy was to build houses only as you got orders to buy houses, which was somewhat useful. But 25 percent of the people who signed up to buy a house didn't in fact buy a house. You have to do a minimum of a hundred houses to have a decent-sized tract. You're building ten houses at a time. So you do ten houses, and two and a half, three houses fall out. If the buyer comes in and wants a house right away, then they do have two or three houses. Other buyers come in and sign up, and then six months later or so, you get your house. With this 25 percent fallout, there's still enough people who are able to get a house right away.

What happened recently, which made it substantially worse or confusing, housing was going up in value so fast that investors were signing up to buy houses that they never had any intention of living in; many of those houses were actually sold in escrow before the sale was completed. You sell your right to buy the house. It got so good that employees of the subcontractors were buying the houses. Employees of the contractor were buying the houses. So the safeguard of not building a house unless there was a buyer for the house fell by the wayside and that made our boom more bust.

I want to talk about the residential areas of Las Vegas before I get into employment.

I want to know where you grew up, what parts of the city. This is for both of you.

Describe those communities for me, family-oriented, any way you want to describe those communities.

I lived at 1051 Hassett, which was two streets south of Oakey, between Tenth and

Eleventh, near Gorman High School. There were two streets south of us and then the desert. The Strip was a peninsula stuck out into the desert. The border of Las Vegas was

San Francisco, which later became Sahara. My house, as I mentioned before, was relatively modest, but typical of that general area. Just people lived there. The rich people lived—Rancho Circle was the richest. You mentioned John S. Park area, affluent people lived in that area, too. The housing was very nice in that area. Some of the housing was nice over at 15th Street, 17th Street, around Oakey. That was pretty nice.

Where did the casino owners live?

I don't know. Kozloffs lived—I remember Kozloff because I dated his niece for one night and took her home. He was on, I think, Sixth or Seventh Street near the John S.

Park area. Winger, which was the banking name in town, his house was at Sixth and

Charleston, again John S. Park. Across the street from him was Art Ham's house. He was a very prominent attorney and a property owner. Their family house was there also at Sixth and Charleston. The man I worked for as an office boy, David Zenoff, he was a prominent attorney and his house was in the John S. Park area. A friend of mine, Jeff

Minker's father, was a purchasing agent at the Stardust hotel, and he was connected. He lived in the John S. Park area. Some of my other friends lived more over the 16th, 17th area.

People who were in construction and were the basic people at the Test Site generally lived in North Las Vegas, a separate city, and they had virtually no paved

roads. It was all dirt roads.

Our ghetto, black community, was the Westside. It had no paved roads; it was all

dirt.

There were little islands of nice houses. I guess my area was called Huntridge. I

was kind of on the edge of it, but it was Huntridge. I'm trying to think of the

development over there at Decatur and Charleston.

Hyde Park.

Yes, Hyde Park. Hyde Park was an okay development. It was nice. It was modest but

nice, probably better than where I lived. There were just a lot of houses. People built

custom homes. Tracts weren't incredibly prevalent in the beginning. During the 30s and

40s, there weren't many tracts. The tracts came during the 50s, with the savings and loan

development.

Do you remember the Biltmore area?

I don't know what the Biltmore area is.

Okay.

Now I want to ask you the same question about the housing areas.

Okay. On 1953, when my family first came to Las Vegas, our first home was on Euclid

Avenue, which was at the east end of town. It was very modest, not very well-built house.

Ross talked last time about the desert coming coming in through the doors and the windows on windy days, and that was true in our house. On a windy day, the windowsills would be covered with sand. We were there a year or less.

Twin Lakes housing development, a development over by what is now called

Lorenzi Park, which used to be called Twin Lakes Park, was built, and we moved in to a

Twin Lakes home. I remember there was a period of growth at that time. Housing was in short supply, and it was very difficult to get a telephone. We had a telephone booth down the block. If we wanted to make a phone call, we had to go down to the telephone booth.

Sometimes there would be a line; you had to wait. If I remember correctly, the telephone booth was also on a party line so that sometimes other people would be on the phone from another location. Eventually, when my father was hired as superintendent of the school district, they thought he ought to have a phone, and eventually we got a phone.

We lived there about two or three years, until '56 when we moved into our home on Cashman Drive; I don't remember who the builder was. He built not a whole development, but a street of homes. It was just east of the Westleigh tract housing area.

These homes were a little bit larger and a little nicer, and more modern than the

Westleigh houses. There were middle-class families. Zel Lowman was a legislator and he was in real estate. He started out with the power company. He lived on that street.

It was people that were a little more than middle class.

It was?

Yes. They had an ophthalmologist on one side of you.

That's true.

They had contractors across the street.

I didn't think of them as being big fancy homes, but they were.

They were upper middle class.

Yeah. Vandenbergs across the street.

Naomi Boyer, he had a mortgage company. Then there was the other guy—

The Turners.

—Peccole.

The Peccoles were on that street.

He was married to a Lamb.

Yes. And Mr. Voss, I think he was in entertainment.

Yes. So it was upper middle class; it wasn't just middle class. They were ugly houses,

but they were well-built and a nice size.

Describe when you say “ugly.” Squared off or what do you mean?

All of the above. There was no curve to it. There was virtually no relief.

All of the houses on the block looked alike?

No.

No, they didn't, but they were all equally ugly. They were rectangles. I don't know if the

whole block was this way, but Irmalee's house was fairly unique in that it wasn't built on

a slab, and it was hardwood floors. That allowed a lot of nice things for remodeling and

repair work.

It was a nice neighborhood, and Ashby Avenue dead-ended into Cashman. On Ashby,

there were a lot of very large homes.

They were all on one-acre lots and doctors, very successful business people.

Was it Scotch 80's?

No.

Scotch 80 was further east. Ashby was a two-block street, but it was very long blocks.

Big elm trees.

Yes, lots of trees, swimming pools. They were on an acre of land and extremely nice houses.

Would all the children play together that lived in the same area?

Yes. I was in high school, so I didn't do a lot of neighborhood playing, but my brother had friends that were in the area, and played outside. Some of the families had swimming pools, so that was a big summer activity.

He also had a paper route. Mother and Father helped him with his paper route, so they knew everybody.

Great. They say that some of the most successful people had paper routes when they were young.

Oh, really?

Yes. Before I get to your careers, what was the relationship of the housing areas, like those you lived in, to the Strip? When we look at the Strip as one of our, at that time, evolving employers, probably one of the largest, I know that some of the workers probably lived in the area. Do you see any other connections?

I don't know of any workers that lived in our neighborhoods other than Mr. Voss, who was I think a musician. I don't remember knowing families other than at school, but not in the neighborhood. If they were there, I didn't meet them.

Maybe more in my neighborhood, nearer the Strip. A lot of apartments built up along

Sahara and Maryland Parkway, and I would think a lot of the people in those apartments worked on the Strip. Most of the Strip was seasonal. It wasn't a twelve-month year. I don't know anything about whether workers lived in Vegas a few months and then migrated. I know when I worked for the Sands the room service people did.

We were never connected to the Strip. Jeff Minker's father was a purchasing agent at the Stardust. There were a couple of dealers. My parents knew a couple of

dealers. They would try and plan things, and the husband couldn't go because he was working either the swing shift or the graveyard or something. But generally not.

Thank you for that. So I want to talk about your career, how you got involved after college, and what that involvement entailed in the beginning.

Starting after college?

Yes.

I went to law school. I applied to six law schools, and Stanford, strangely enough, turned out to be the least expensive school because they gave me scholarships and loans. It didn't occur to me until recently that maybe if I had applied for financial aid at the other schools I would have gotten it. But Stanford gave it to me without my even applying for it. Of all the schools, I emotionally really wanted to go to Stanford more than the others.

So I went to Stanford, and had summer employment while I was there, as we talked about that before.

There was a job opening in Carson City for law clerk for the Supreme Court. I applied for that. A former employer of mine, David Zenoff, was a district court judge by this time. His secretary helped me get a letter of recommendation from Judge Zenoff for the Supreme Court law clerk position. What really got me the job was one of the justices was a Stanford law graduate, and he thought that the Stanford law graduate with the writing program would be a good law clerk. It also helped that I was a Nevadan. There were three law clerks. We worked a pool system. Two of us were Nevadans and one was from New York.

We spent a year in Carson City with our baby and I worked at the Supreme Court, coming home every day for lunch. My responsibility was to write a memo a week. I was

assigned a case, and I wrote a memo of the case. The styles of the memos were in the

style of the judges writing an opinion. Quite a few of my memos ended up in the books,

somewhat modified, but not tremendously. That was common with all the law clerks.

That's how they wanted their memos. They did not supply us secretarial help. So

Irmalee had to type my memos.

That would not happen today.

[Laughing] So were you using a typewriter?

Yes.

That she had in college and in law school.

Selectric, with the correction tape?

No.

Okay. [Laughing]

After the year was up, there was a law firm in Las Vegas called Babcock and Sutton.

Howard Babcock was the prior U.S. Attorney for Nevada. He was a good Republican.

When Eisenhower left office and the new guy came in, they changed party, and so he formed a private law firm with his assistant, Babcock and Sutton. Howard Babcock had

been a next-door neighbor to the Grays in Twin Lakes. There was a family connection

and I applied and they hired me, for first a law clerk and then an associate. That lasted a

year. We had a meeting at the end of the year, and I'm not sure whether I quit or they

fired me or both happened at the same time. Babcock and Sutton were very different

people and they each wanted me to do something different. It was impossible.

After that I went to work for George Rudiak. George, which I wasn't aware of,

had gone through eleven associates within a year or two. It was impossible and that

lasted six months. He did all of the Teamster work himself, and I did his divorces.

People would come in for a divorce and he'd turn those over to me, generally. He did

most of the leases and contracts, and the trial work. I did some basic research for him.

He was a very self-contained machine and not really a “delegator.”

After that I went to work for the District Attorney's Office, if my memory serves

me right, after Rudiak. I wanted to be in the civil division, but they didn't have an

opening, and I went into the criminal division. It was the Who's Who in the criminal

division; they all became something else later. Santini was there, and he became a

congressman. Bryan had been there, and left when I came in to be a public defender.

That's Richard Bryan?

Yes. Jimmy Bilbray, Rex Bell Junior, and a few others; Earl Hawley—I don't think Earl

Hawley ever became infamous—and Spizzirri and his partner

Bucky Buchanan. My boss was Ted Marshall. During that time he ran for governor and beat up Grant Sawyer. He affected the outcome, but he didn't make it through the primary. Then George Franklin became District Attorney in the second six months.

During that year, I started out with misdemeanor trials, preliminary hearings, and then I got to be the guy who approved all the criminal complaints. I would read 30 police reports a day, and I would ask questions for more evidence or turn them down. Ted had an amazing work ethic. I would do what I wanted to do and stick them in a box for Ted, and Ted would take them home at night. The next morning, Edward George Marshall would approve my approval or he would criticize it. Ted did most of his work at home in a garage, so he wasn't generally available for telephone calls or people singing.

He developed a form file. Prior to Ted every single piece of paper was created

brand-new, typed up. Ted had standard complaints with blanks, and the secretaries just plugged in the blanks. That was good because most of them didn't know how to type.

At the end of the year, I left and joined with Jerry Snyder, who had worked for

Sam Lionel, and Oscar Goodman, who worked for Mort Galane, and we formed the

lawfirm Ross, Snyder and Goodman. All of us were in our twenties. It was wild. If you

walked in the door and you hired any one of us, you got all three of us. You didn't know

it, but you had. All three of us would do the research. We would do the writing together

and we would do the thinking it out. We were good lawyers with the three together.

Fabulous.

Oscar wanted to be the foremost criminal attorney in the state of Nevada, which

ultimately he became. Snyder didn't want to practice law at all and wanted to become a

multimillionaire, which ultimately he became. And whatever I wanted, I got. It worked

out for me. The second year we decided to expand further, and we brought in a guy by

the name of Richard Bryan. So it was Ross, Snyder, Goodman and Bryan. Richard

wanted to be governor and United States Senator, and he got that. We were together for

three years. It was interesting. It was exciting.

Why did you—because of all of the different goals, is that why—

We actually were incompatible. Oscar brought in most of the clients. Oscar did an awful

lot of work. Instead of dividing the money equally, we should have divided the money

based on some formula. I did a lot of the managing of the firm, and there wasn't any

credit given for that though it took a fair amount of time. I also worked on the real estate

investments of the firm. Ultimately, I made more money in the real estate for the firm

than anybody did practicing law. Again, there wasn't any credit for that. So we ended up seeing things differently. I left at the end of three years. We parted friends.

Bryan liked politics, but didn't like practicing law. Ultimately he left there, and

after that, was never a partner with anybody. He was a sole practitioner. Eventually

Oscar and Jerry broke up because business people didn't want to sit in the waiting room

to see a business lawyer, which was also the waiting room of the foremost criminal

attorney in the state of Nevada. We made a fundamental error bringing in Oscar. Jerry and I were compatible. We spent a couple of years working on developing our idea for a law firm, and at the last minute, we brought Oscar in. While he was wonderful and bright, hard-working and he made a lot of money for us, it was the seeds of destruction because Oscar belonged in a criminal law firm, which is ultimately what he was in. We should have been in a law firm more like Sam Lionel, which was just strictly providing services for business people. It was a dream that didn't work out, but we all got the foundation of what we all needed.

After that, I needed time to think about what I wanted to do. My former supervisor in the DA's Office, Earl Gripentrog, was now the city attorney of Las Vegas. I talked to Grip and he offered me a job for three months. He had a slot, and in July he would be getting two positions; he asked me if I would stay until that time to tide him over until he could get two more new lawyers. Usually you're right out of law school you do those kinds of jobs.

I went to see Howard Babcock, my former employer, to talk to him about it. By this time he was a judge. He gave me some good advice; that it would be good experience, wouldn't do any harm, and I was civil law and I would learn some things. I

did it and stayed there four years.

So you got one of those two positions?

I guess so.

Okay. [Laughing]

It was fantastic. I loved it. My primary responsibility was giving legal advice to the

mayor, the city commission, the city manager, Public Works, planning department,

personnel, and writing most of the ordinances and agreements. I didn't do licensing. I

had nothing to do with the police department. I didn't do any criminal stuff.

The city manager was the husband of the secretary who kind of adopted me. She

was the secretary for Zenoff, Macleby and Manzoni when I was an office boy. I was

kind of like her little brother. Art Trelease, who was the city manager, was an incredible

man, and he took care of me. We'd be in a staff meeting and a legal issue would come

up; he would ask the question of me in a way that had the answer in the question.

In my experience, the staff knew more law than the lawyers did in their own

specific areas. They may not have had the quality of the mind to do the analysis—and I

was trained to do that—but they all belonged to the various associations in their area— planning, Public Works. We kept them advised of what the latest legal opinions were in their areas of the issues. We worked as a team. The Dodge Act was relatively new, and we just started doing collective bargaining in the city. Gripentrog had me do that for the

City Attorney's Office. Over those four years, I became an expert in public sector negotiations.

It was fun. The money was good, and I was able to have a private practice as well. So I supplemented it to a certain extent. I had an office downtown at Third and

Fremont. I spent nine to five at City Hall, and five to seven, and maybe later, at my

private office; Saturdays also at my private office. I gave the city at least 40 hours a

week.

Do a lot of attorneys do that?

Not anymore because virtually all public entities do not allow their lawyers to have a

private practice. During the period of time I was at City Hall, it was very much abused by

some other people, and eventually it was eliminated.

It was a two-edge sword. I had a need to maintain my independence, so I had my

office outside. I maintained half a secretary and an a third of an office. I shared office

space and a secretary with my father-in-law, and I shared office space with another lawyer, Jim Ordowski. Most of what I learned in private practice went forward. If I had done the overhead in City Hall, which I was allowed to, I would have made more money, but I wasn't comfortable doing that.

Wonderful. I think that's a great idea that you didn't do it.

I want to go back to George Rudiak. George Rudiak was known for being

active with civil rights.

Yes.

Can you tell me anything you remember about George's interest in that, about his

workings with that?

No. George was a fascinating contradiction of things. When I worked for him around

'65, he was a multimillionaire and most people didn't realize that. He had offices upstairs

on Fremont Street and occupied almost a third of the building. He had two offices there

that just had boxes of files, which he used as his filing room. He had one office for

himself, one for his secretary, and one for me. They were large offices, but very old and

tattered. He had a picture up on the wall of the Rudiak Building. He owned the property

at Fifth and one of those streets; there is a wedding chapel there. He had somebody

design a building called the Rudiak Building. He always told his clients, “Well, we're

going to be moving to the Rudiak Building,” which he never did do.

Was it ever constructed?

It never was constructed. Ultimately, he ended up in a high-rise and he actually had a

law firm. He had several employees working for him. Somehow he figured out how to

do that, which he didn't know for many years. He did excellent work, worked very hard.

But he was extremely liberal. There's no question about that. He represented the

Teamsters and believed in it. I didn't see anything. Irmalee and I had dinner in his house

one night. It was a very interesting experience. It was a nice dinner. I'm guessing, but at

about that time, we were a little bit involved in Vietnam and had maybe 50,000 troops

there, but nothing on the horizon that it would be big. George said that within a year,

year and a half, there would be 500,000 troops in Vietnam. And he was right. He knew.

He was part of the Democratic organization. I don't know anything really about his civil

rights activities or anything like that.

All right. Give me a little more information about Goodman. I don't know exactly what I want to know. He is a figure now that's always been larger than life, being mayor for so long, and now owning a restaurant and all of that. What was he like in those young days? How would you describe him?

I was then, and still am, crazy in love with Oscar. We're talking about somebody who probably was about 25 years old at the time. He had worked as a law clerk for Arlen

Specter, who was the district attorney in Philadelphia. Oscar went to the University of

Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer. Oscar passionately believed in the Constitution of the United States. He believed that it was very necessary for everyone to get a complete and full criminal defense, and if we only defended people who were not guilty, we would be depriving people who appeared to be guilty but weren't of a defense. He also believed not to get too close to your clients in those days, and he did not do any trade-outs. He wouldn't do legal work in return for a suit of clothes. One of our clients gave a very expensive gift to one of our secretaries. I'm sure the man had nothing in mind other than going to bed with the secretary. Oscar made her give it back because he didn't want the firm to be in any way obligated to the client. So we charged money; we got paid. However, Oscar drank a lot and he drank a lot out on the Strip. He came in contact with a lot of people. That's how he brought business into the office, people he would meet out there. He was very, very good at getting business. And he was extremely good at spending money. His motto was that “income will rise to meet expenses.”

My income increased 50 percent each year of the three years we were together. It just kept going up. We started out with one secretary for the three of us, and ended up with X number of secretaries, another partner, an associate lawyer; we kept expanding our office space. That's part of what I did. Snyder had real estate broker clients, and I negotiated buying lands through these brokers. Oscar was very entrepreneurial. He wanted to make a lot of money. He was very supportive of the concept of his making the money in the practice of law, and our investing it and ultimately getting rich.

Oscar wanted to be rich. He wanted to be the next Harry Claiborne. He started

out wanting to do personal injury work and criminal work. But the personal injury work

didn't last very long; the criminal work took over.

How did the other partners feel about where the cases were coming from?

Nobody cared.

Okay.

I didn't care.

Because you believed in the Constitution.

Yes. Oscar was getting cases that were impossible to win on the merits. But a man by

the name of Richard Nixon had gone through a lot of wiretapping involvement and got a

lot of stuff like that. Oscar developed motions that were all technical things to suppress

evidence and stuff of this sort. He and Foley, who was the federal judge, enjoyed each

other's company, but Judge Foley turned down every single motion. Oscar knew they'd

all be turned down.

When it came to that technical legal argument, there was nobody that could do it

like Oscar. Then things shifted. Judges started realizing that if you didn't do it right you

had to suppress the evidence.

I left the firm at about that time, and so Oscar wasn't so called a mob lawyer when

he and I were law partners. Oscar generally didn't do many jury trials. When Oscar left

the firm and created his own firm, there were other lawyers in the firm that did the actual

trial work.

That's interesting. I want to—

One other thing. He loved a lifestyle. He bought himself a Rolls-Royce, and he had this

and that, and a big house in Scotch 80 eventually, out on Viking, for a long time. He

made a lot of investments over the decades; Oscar has bought a lot of land.

Here in the city?

Yes. He made some investments with me after we were no longer partners. While we were partners, he convinced his father to bring money here. This money came from

Philadelphia, from his father's friends, and we were going to invest it. I went out looking for land. Jerry had a cousin who worked in Culver City.

California.

California. He was designing a factory to be built in Southern Nevada by somebody by the name of Howard Hughes, and we knew where the factory was going to be put.

Howard Hughes was buying the North Las Vegas Airport to put the factory. He announced he was building a factory with 7,000 employees, and we knew where it was, from Jerry's cousin.

Oscar had the money coming from Philadelphia, and I went out shopping and bought a whole bunch of land up in the North Las Vegas area. Inadvertently, Vietnam wound down; and therefore, he didn't need a factory to do a lot of repair parts for helicopters. So he ended up buying North Las Vegas Airport and buying a lot of land around.

Including?

He offered to buy some of the land we had. But we, of course, were greedy and turned him down. I made a business mistake. We bought a piece of land across from the airport for $50,000 for ten acres. Immediately the Hughes organization came and offered us

$60,000 for it, and I turned them down. Then they came back a month or two later,

$85,000. I wanted 200, and I turned them down. It was stupid because if we had sold it

to them for 85, we would have made a ton of money for the investors, and they would have brought huge amounts of money from Philadelphia and all over, and we would have gotten rich. I still have that land.

[Laughing] That's a great story.

Anyway, that's Oscar.

Wonderful. That's a great look at Oscar, as this is public information. The university has boxes and boxes of Oscar's materials over the years, some of the legal files and all of that. Of course, it can't be touched for years and years to come because a lot of people are still alive and all of that. So that's one of the—

Let me tell you another Oscar story. This one is important, in my opinion. Oscar had a client. He was appointed with another lawyer to represent this man on murder charges.

The jury came back with first-degree murder, and gave the death penalty. Oscar was shattered because the lead counsel hadn't followed Oscar's recommendation of how the case should have been tried, and Oscar believed the man was not guilty. Oscar had me appointed as co-counsel on a motion for a new trial, and the other guy then didn't want any part of the case. We were able to get the man not only a new trial, but also a negotiated settlement with the District Attorney's Office. He did not, in fact, commit the murder.

How did you find out?

First of all, he was too smart to do it in the stupid way it was done. Number two is I did figure out who did the killing. Number three, the guy who was convicted of doing the killing passed a polygraph, and it was administered by a foremost polygraph operator in the United States.

He was picked out of a lineup. He had motive; the victim was going to testify against him, convict him of selling marijuana. His car was used as the getaway car. So you've got an eyewitness who identifies him, motive, car. It was an open-and-shut case.

Oh, my god.

But didn't somebody come forward and confess eventually?

No.

No?

It came forward.

My ex-boss, Gripentrog, offered second-degree murder. I begged Brown to take it, and he wouldn't do it. My ex-boss said—in those days everything was done on a handshake—he said, “Well, bring in a polygraph operator and if your client passes a polygraph, we'll let him walk. If he doesn't pass the polygraph, I'll still give him second degree murder.” I said, “Why are you doing that, Grip?” He says, “Because you think he's innocent, and I want to convince you that the son of a bitch is guilty.”

The polygraph operator came to town, and he passed. The polygraph operator said, “I'll risk my reputation; this man probably has killed somebody, but he didn't kill this guy and he wasn't at the scene of the crime.” Grip was up the creek without a paddle because his boss wouldn't honor the agreement.

Oscar and I went and had a talk with George Franklin, who was then the boss. I told George we were going to call a news conference and tell the world that, in fact, he was not guilty. The judge had already granted him a new trial, so there was going to be a trial. George said, “That's unethical; you can't do that because you'll prejudice the whole community.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I'll have you disbarred.” I said, “Yeah, but we

have to do it,” because there's no question he was going to get convicted again. There

was just no way.

And you were willing to be disbarred?

Yes. I was pretty young at the time.

[All laughing] Young and principled.

Oh, yes. You pick them up and you drop them by the wayside, but whatever. Then I

appealed to George's vanity. I said, “George, everybody knows that you're Mr. Law

Enforcement, tough on crime, but we all know this guy didn't do it. We all know that

now.”

At that point did George believe the guy did not do it?

I said he did. I said, “So if a crusading district attorney who fights crime has a possibility

of saving a man who is not guilty of a crime, I mean that could look good when you're running for governor, George.”

So George made a deal. He offered him an accessory after the fact, not before,

because the car is very important. My client had to lie and say that he had told the police

that he had had the car, and used the car, when he hadn't. The idea was that he had

diverted the police from looking for the real killer. That's an accessory after the crime,

five years. Now, he got out of two felony marijuana cases, which were ten years each,

and got out of first-degree murder, the electric chair. But he didn't do. The judge, who

had the case in front of him when we took the case down to him, or the deputy, said, “I

will not accept this; I want the district attorney himself to stand here and tell me this, not

a deputy.” The other judge who had granted the new trial and had 30 threatening phone

calls. This man who was killed was a sweet man. He was an informant who had

volunteered to help the police department clean up drugs in Westside and was

assassinated; lured to a vacant apartment and assassinated. You don't want to let that go

by.

George would have been saying the polygraph operator was drunk at the time, and

this and that. He came down and he said, “This was the foremost polygraph operator in

the United States who did the Kennedy assassinations and we are amazed, but it is true

that he didn't do it, but he did assist afterward.” Brown served five full years.

Will you give me the full name of Brown?

That was his nickname.

Okay. So I will never know.

I don't know.

Okay. I can go back and research that.

It was Lee Crockett; that was his name.

Thank you.

Virtually everything I'm telling you is in the public records. But everybody's dead.

Grip's dead. Franklin's dead. I don't know what happened to Brown. He was an amazing

man, smart. His jail overalls were always pressed. He had a maroon cravat, a

handkerchief.

That he wore with his overalls?

Yes.

We're talking about the bib?

Just tucked in, little kind of thing.

Yes.

There was a race riot in the jail. He was a trustee, and he put down the race riot himself.

Here you got a guy convicted of first-degree murder, and he's a trustee in the jail. He was

a pimp. He had maybe three girls working for him. They loved him just like a family.

He sold marijuana. I think not harder than marijuana. Never beat anybody. Didn't hurt

anybody. Girls were a way of earning a living. Different world.

Yes.

Oscar saved a man's life.

Wow. What a case.

Irmalee, are you ready?

I'm ready.

I want to talk about when he's doing all this—and we're probably up now to about

1975?

Yes. I ended my career at the City Attorney's Office in '74.

That was a good guess on my part.

Wonderful.

Tell me what you've been doing during that ten-year period.

I primarily was a homemaker, which was fairly typical of that era, and had two sons.

The same father by the way.

[Laughing] I wasn't going to ask.

I would go to school, and volunteer to help in the classroom and the library, and had Cub

Scouts. Other than that, I played a lot of tennis.

Wonderful. Tell me about your women's clubs. Any involvement in any of those

organizations?

Yes. I was a member at the time and I don't think it's in existence anymore, but there was an attorneys' wives organization. One year I was president.

Please tell me about that because no one has ever mentioned that organization to me.

Okay. Most attorneys' wives were the same; they were not employed. We had luncheons and daytime activities. We did some philanthropy.

Give me some examples.

We did some fundraising. We had open houses and home tours. If people wanted to see really expensive homes, they would pay a fee and participate in the home tour. There would be like five homes they could look at. One year, we donated the money raised to the mental health group on Charleston, the state organization.

The group was started before I became a member, and I can't tell you exactly when. The couple of names that come to my attention who were very involved are now deceased. Natalie Rittenhouse might have been in the organization, but Sandra Close, who was married to Mel Close, is deceased, and Romietta Hawkins is deceased. I could probably think of some others. I can't right offhand. I think Ion Gifford, which I think she's alive.

What happened to the papers of the organization?

I do not know. I would have had some papers at one time being I was a secretary and a president. I don't know what might have happened because I don't think the organization is in existence. I don't hear anything about it. My guess is that a lot of women then had careers, and also the community grew and there were so many attorneys. There may not have been the interest on the part of women to do that kind of activity.

The reason I ask is because I know a graduate student at the university right now who is working with women's organization. She did background investigations on the Mesquite Club, the German League, lots of other clubs, and a few that we don't hear about all the time. But I've never heard of this one. I'll have to tell her about it.

If I run across any materials—and what I might have are photographs that were in the newspaper advertising our fundraisers. I probably do have something like that.

That would be wonderful.

Later on, I think it was in the 80s, I joined Junior League. We did the Scouts and attorneys' wives. I was on the board of Planned Parenthood, but I think that was later.

We supported your mother in Campfire Girls.

Yes. I didn't really do very much with the Campfire Girls, but you did. You were the attorney.

Yes.

Someone forced you to do that. [Laughing] Okay.

I was asked by my mother-in-law to join the board. I didn't know I was joining the board as the attorney and giving them legal advice. If I had been told everything, I probably would have done it anyway.

Of course.

Our sons went to Wasden Elementary School.

You were active in PTA.

Yes. Mainly it was volunteering in the classroom and the library. We were in a Jewish organization. It was couples. That was primarily social.

So the primarily social organization, what kinds of activities?

They had a variety of things. Help me.

We'd get together at people's houses.

Yes. Parties, like holiday parties.

Was that most of your entertainment as a young married couple and as you grew in

years, is that—

Mostly it was family. Her married brother was in town. My in-laws. My father-in-law

worked for First Western Savings and picked out our house, which was a foreclosure in

1964. Out of thousands of houses he could only find this one house that was three or four blocks away from where he lived.

[Laughing] Where was the house located?

Burton. It was a McNeil. We got a very good deal.

Our sons did a lot of hunting and fishing because my father was a hunter/fisherman.

Hunting where?

In Nevada. Duck hunting at Sunnyside. Mostly bird hunting, not deer, but quail, ducks.

Some deer. Once in a while I'd go along, without a gun. But most of the time, they were with their grandfather and their uncle.

They also hunted in Elko County.

They'd go fishing in Lake Mead. Dad had a boat and would take his grandsons out fishing.

I think that's wonderful.

Now I'll get back to 1974. What happens after this?

Well, I'm the assistant city attorney and there is an election. It's the ’73 election and

Gripentrog is defeated. I did not support him for re-election, not that if I had he would have been re-elected. Carl Lovell, who had been the North Las Vegas City Attorney, appointed, ran for the city attorney in Las Vegas and was elected. We were together six months and decided to part company. I went back to my private office, sharing with my father-in-law and Jim Ordowski.

But you gave that up when you went to the City Attorney's Office?

No. I gave it up when Carl Lovell got elected. He didn't want any outside offices, so I thought that maybe this might be a long-term thing. I decided to do that. I said I will do it if I can bring my secretary, Helen, into City Hall. He said fine, she just had to pass the civil service test. I sweated that, but she did. That's kind of an interesting little story and

I'll tell you that.

I represented the personnel department, so I had close connections with everybody in personnel. Helen had to take shorthand at 120 words a minute. Helen wouldn’t take shorthand from me. She makes little notes to herself and that's about it. I figured sometime she had taken shorthand, but she hadn’t in the three years she’d been with me. So I asked Jean Davis, who is a good friend of mine, to personally give her the test, do everything she could to help her. The test is given, and I call Jean and I said,

“How fast can Helen take shorthand?” And she says, “I don't know.” I said, “Why don't you know?” She says, “Well, I'm dictating it at 120 words a minute and she's ahead of me all the time.”

[Laughing] So why wouldn't she take shorthand from you?

Because it was a waste of time. She told me to get a dictating machine and dictate it on the machine, which she trained me to do and I did.

So Helen came into City Hall with me and then we both went back to the office.

At that point in time, I'm now perceived as a person who knows something about

collective bargaining in the public sector. North Las Vegas Employees Association hires

me, and the Clark County Employees hire me, and I've gotten the political bug.

Everybody has their excuses of why they have the political bug. My excuse

always was I would see a job and recognize that I could do the job better than the people

who were interested in doing the job. That seems like a dumb reason to actually do it. I

wanted to be an assemblyman. My father-in-law had been an assemblyman and was an assemblyman while I was a law clerk at the Supreme Court. I would go over and visit with him in the bars and see how it worked. I figured I knew I could do a better job, not than he could, but these other guys. A friend talked Irmalee into giving me permission to run. So in '76, I ran for the assembly and served in the legislature in '77.

What really happened was Richard Tam. In 1972, while I was in the City

Attorney's Office, I met Richard Tam at the Stanford Alumni Association group here in

Las Vegas. Richard had graduated as an engineer in 1938, the year I was born. He's got a wife who is my age and he's over 20-some-odd years older than I. We're having dinners at the Stanford Club and interacting, and he asked me if I played bridge. I said I do. He wanted to play bridge with somebody that was his wife's age because she liked to play bridge.

So every month, was it?

I don't know if it was that often, but we—

Every month or two, we'd take turns. We would go to a restaurant where he could sign and then go to his condo, Regency Towers, and play bridge; or they would come to our

house and we would have dinner for them, and then play bridge. That's all the social

contact I think we had.

After I got out of the City Attorney's Office, Richard came to me and asked me if

I would be interested in being his lawyer. I couldn't have been his lawyer when I was in

the City Attorney's Office because conflict of interest; he was doing a lot of development

involved with the city. I didn't think of him ever as being a client, and he never said

anything until after I was out. I had to hire an associate to do his work full-time. He and

the associations, and some divorce work, was how I earned a living.

Around '77-78, we both saw a business opportunity at the same time. We had a

three-way conversation, and this person told us some information of Penney's [JCPenney]

coming to the city and opening up a two million square foot warehouse. He knew when

it was coming in and where it was going. Shades of Howard Hughes.

And you thought about that immediately.

Richard fell off his chair and I fell off my chair; we hit heads on the way down. Richard committed. He said I'll buy two million dollars in land and I'll put up $200,000; we'll have long escrows, and we'll sell the land while it's in escrow after the announcements are made.

I didn't know Richard very well at the time, but that was not the way he operated.

[Laughing] His philosophy was you sell the worst lands and keep the best and, of course, he would only pick the best. I got myself on a bit of a roller coaster ride.

We started buying land in North Las Vegas because that's where the warehouse was going. I discovered the same areas where I had been buying land in the 60s could be bought for the same prices in the late 70s. Lands hadn't gone up in ten years. There was

this area [with] no utilities and no development. Nobody cared about it, and everybody

wanted to sell. We went up there and started buying land; this was where Penney's was

going. Then Penney's kept moving, and wherever Penney's moved, we would buy up the land around it. When the smoke all cleared away, we had 900 acres of land all over the map in North Las Vegas; it was all over the North Valley.

I didn't know what the hell to do. I didn't have any money to invest. We weren't supposed to be buying it. He was going to give me a percentage of the profits. So we started bringing friends in. He started calling all his friends. He was a very gregarious investor. He said, “You generally have one opportunity of a lifetime.” His opportunity of a lifetime was West Sahara in the 50s, 60s. He bought from the Sahara hotel to Valley

View, 900 acres of land with a bunch of investors from San Francisco. There's Teddy

Drive, Tam Drive, Teddy Rich. His group owned the land that Bingo Palace sat on. It took 30 years to develop and sell that land off. He said, “That was my opportunity of a lifetime.”

We're putting this land together and Penney's now is not going to go up there.

They take an option up in North Las Vegas and an option up in Paradise Valley, and then decide not to go either place. Now here we are. He said, “This is my second opportunity of a lifetime.”

What a way to look at it.

Yes. He had bought a lot of stuff, and I had done a lot of work for him, and he had never used those words before. It took us 30 years to develop, sell, and promote that land. But he was right.

Wow.

And you did a lot of work in the chamber of commerce to—-

To make it happen.

—to promote North Las Vegas.

Was that insider information? Even though it didn't work out.

I don't know for this reason. I don't know what the relationship was with the third man

who is telling us all of this. I don't know how he knew, or if I ever knew. But Richard

and I had no relationship with Penney's, with North Las Vegas, or anybody that had anything involved with the land.

We got very long escrows. One of the best pieces we had were 320 acres. Across

the street is some industrial land owned by Bud Cleland, the mayor of North Las Vegas.

While we're in escrow, it is sold to the investment arm of the Vatican. They bought it for

something like 7,000 an acre. We are in escrow across the street at 3500 an acre. Do you

walk away from it? No.

Richard says this is your percentage of the profits; you have the right to buy that

much of the land. I said to Richard, “I can make the down payment, but I can't make the

payments thereafter; I don't know.” I said, “If I can't make the payment a year from now,

will you buy me out at the same price I paid for it?” Now, he doesn't have it. But if he

will, I'll go in. If he doesn’t, I can't. He said, “I will.” We wrote up a memo and we just

initialed it. I said, “This is not legally binding, but this is so neither of us will forget what

we agreed.” A year later, I was able to make my payments. But that was important to me

and he came through.

He got a phone call from Ellen Frehner, who was the executive director of the

North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. She asked Richard Tam to join the chamber of

commerce, and to come to their industrial meetings and be involved. He said, “No, but

I'll send Ian.”

I went down to the industrial meetings, and this committee and that committee. I

was there to promote our lands. It became clear there was no reason to promote our lands

because anything that was good for North Las Vegas was good for our lands because our

lands were everywhere in the new area. All I had to do was promote North Las Vegas.

I'm on committees and I'm chairman of committees, and then I'm on the board of

directors. Then in 1985, I'm president of the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce.

We decided to develop an industrial park, and I'm going to have my law office in

North Las Vegas. I did in Brookspark. Everyone saw me as a lawyer, and they couldn't

understand why a lawyer involved in the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. They

didn't see us as landowners. We weren't hiding it, but they just didn't see it. There wasn't

any reason to show everything. I really loved North Las Vegas and I respected the

council.

The city was virtually bankrupt. They had an industrial park that had defaulted in

their assessment district and was costing the city money they did not have. The insider

group, with Bud Cleland, did not want growth. If anybody came to look at an industrial

piece of property, they only saw the mayor's industrial piece of property. Of course, I

knew what was going on because I used to represent the North Las Vegas Association

and all these employees were friends now.

New people came in. Seastrand, who had been on the council but not a major player, became mayor, and some of his supporters came in. The plan was to make North

Las Vegas grow because the sales tax was collected countywide and divided among the

cities based on population. North Las Vegas was actually losing population while all the

other cities were growing, and they didn't have the money. North Las Vegas committed

itself to growth, which was a very radical thing for North Las Vegas. They had what is

now called the Golden Triangle, between Tonopah Highway and I-15. All that land up there was vacant, with no utilities. They took all their revenue-sharing money, their federal money. They extended the water lines and the sewer lines. They did all of the work that the developers typically did elsewhere because the developers wouldn't come to North Las Vegas. Thus, they made it less expensive and they did things to communicate that they were welcome. They had been treated badly under previous administrations. The builders started seeing that they were welcome. North Las Vegas took a thousand-acre future regional park, put it out to bid, and Pardee won the bid. So

Pardee developed that third development, Eldorado. All those lines were being used. It started in '89, and by 1995, there were over a hundred subdivisions being built in North

Las Vegas. And, gee whiz, we had land all over.

That is a wonderful story. That is amazing. To be that patient with your money; that really makes a difference.

I didn't have any choice.

There would have been a lot of people who would not have been able to do that, make those payments and be patient.

I didn't have much choice. That land; that 7,000 we bought for 3500?

Yes.

We got to the point where we could sell it for 10,000 an acre. Tripled our money. So I

said, “Richard, let's sell.” He said to me, “Ian, why would you sell that land today when

it'll be worth more next year?”

How did you feel about this, Irmalee?

Well, I'm not a risk taker.

[Laughing] He was sharing all of this information with you?

Oh, yes. Blow by blow.

It was really scary.

It had to be scary.

He didn't always have a lot of money. He had a lot of net worth, but he didn't always have a lot of cash. There were times I had to negotiate loans at the banks and it was hard to get because he showed an income stream.

I showed those lands to hundreds of people. People would come in from out of town, and he would take them around, buy them lunch, show them the lands. We would sell off some of the pieces. We had some very interesting negotiations, some interesting sales. He would hang on to the best corners.

I created partnerships within the partnership, sold them to friends and relatives of mine in order to raise money to survive. I got a fair amount of legal work from the City of North Las Vegas, people I didn't intend. I was there to develop an industrial park; I figured if a lawyer and an engineer were there, people would come. That kind of worked out.

I practiced law, and I became the attorney for the Civil Service Board of the City of North Las Vegas. George Franklin, who is now the city attorney of North Las Vegas, gave an opinion that the Civil Service Board and those kinds of things were separate, and there was no conflict of interest to deal with the city and represent units of the city. They

had a problem. The North Las Vegas Housing Authority was in bad shape, and they were hiring a new executive director. They wanted me to become the North Las Vegas attorney for the Housing Authority because George wouldn't take the job. He said there's a conflict between the city attorney and Housing Authority; you need an independent counsel. I'm representing these lands and I've got rezonings going; I've got all kinds of things going to increase the value of our lands. I can't afford to have that conflict.

George gives an opinion that it's not a conflict. Okay.

So now I'm the attorney for the North Las Vegas Housing Authority. The head of the North Las Vegas Housing Authority is the commission of the Housing Authority, which just happens to be the same five people that are the city council members. One day I'm asking them for rezonings, and the next day I'm there giving them legal advice. I did it with what I considered intellectual honesty. I gave the city manager a complete list of all the lands I had any interest in. I always made full disclosures. I never asked for anything that wasn't appropriate. I might have been a little bit ahead of the curve, but it wasn't inappropriate. I started representing clients who paid me money to do their lands.

You didn't get confused?

No. Lawyers have a keen sense of ethics. I can't entirely explain it to you. I'm a real estate broker and I take ethics classes, and I laugh my ass off because they don't get it.

They do not get it. They have to be taught how to do it ethically and that's wrong.

But with good attorneys, it's built in.

Good attorneys, it's just in you. One of the primary characteristics of it is clients come first and alone. A client is first. You don't have to decide whether you're first or the client's first; the client is first. You do what is in the best interest of your client within

ethical standards. It's nothing unique to me; it's just that's how it is. You're giving legal advice about Housing Authority matters. You just give them the best legal advice you know how. When you're standing in front of them and asking for rezonings, you tell them the truth and you explain to them why you think they should do this. You can't lie to them because if you lie to them they're not going to pay any attention to you next week.

By this time, I had the experience of being an assemblyman. Politicians like politicians. They feel more comfortable with other politicians than they feel with laymen. The council saw me as a politician, just as they were politicians. They also saw that I was invested in the city. I wasn't coming from my Las Vegas office to get rezonings. I was coming from my North Las Vegas office. When my matter was heard at 7:30 a.m. or a quarter to eight, I didn't get up and leave. I stayed for the rest of the meeting. I went to every single city council meeting. I went to every single planning commission meeting.

I'm convinced.

Part of that was I wrote the script for the tour, the North Las Vegas industrial tour. We spent 15 years in North Las Vegas, and our friends, our social world, was the North Las

Vegas Chamber of Commerce for over 15 years. We went on the retreats. We went to all those things.

And North Las Vegas is still growing and developing.

My philosophy was—I counted nine negativities about North Las Vegas. I can't remember what the nine are, but there were nine. None of them were valid, but North

Las Vegas had a bad reputation.

Exactly.

It wasn't earned. Much of the things that were hostile toward North Las Vegas were junkyards that were located in the county. Certain racial prejudices were in the city of

Las Vegas, not in North Las Vegas. They were perceived in North Las Vegas, but they were actually physically in Las Vegas. Crime was not significantly higher.

Our job in the chamber was to let the world know how it really was, and that's a lot easier than taking something that's really bad and trying to make it look good. My goal was to have North Las Vegas accepted with its warts and wrinkles, just like the other cities are accepted with their warts and wrinkles. And North Las Vegas has warts and wrinkles.

They've developed an area called Aliante and it's a very attractive area. Sometimes you still hear some of those prejudices. But when you see Aliante, you just forget about all of that.

We ultimately did a shopping center in North Las Vegas. That was part of our investment group, the joint venture. They did a market study of the housing broadly in the new triangle. I assumed that the people would be economically lower because houses were cheaper and smaller. They found that you could buy the same house in North Las

Vegas for 15, $20,000 less than you could in Las Vegas. They found the people’s incomes weren't that much lower than the Las Vegas people. Since they were getting their houses cheaper, they had more disposable income, and that the shopping center would actually have a better shot at success. I was happily surprised.

Yes.

Career-wise, to bring it around finally, in 1988, I had the opportunity to become the

attorney for the Clark County Health District. That was very big. The board was nine members and later eleven, representing the county, all the cities and laymen besides. I was chosen by the board, and worked with the staff. Doctor Ravenholt was the chief health officer. Staff was incredibly competent, dedicated and knowledgeable. The work was absolutely fascinating, and a check came in every month right after the bill went out.

That ended my economic instability to be dependent on land sales.

We were going to build a big office, development, mortgage, all kinds of things, under our Sterling Company. (Thayer) eventually convinced me, and Helen had been banging on my head for decades that smaller was better. We shrank and made more money. I was the attorney for the health district until 2000 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was absolutely entertained, fascinating work; I felt I was really doing something. My legal career ended in 2000.

That's wonderful. So '88 to 2000, you were very comfortable. You were less stressed?

A little bit less stressed. I didn't really get completely less stressed until about eleven years ago. [Laughing]

Before our youngest was in high school, Irmalee went back to school at UNLV and got a teaching certificate. She does some substitute teaching. About the time he was in high school I guess—

Yes, that's right. I started teaching full-time. I taught at a private school, Las Vegas Day

School.

Oh, yes.

Fourth grade.

And you taught for how long?

Approximately 13 years.

That's one of the oldest schools in the city.

Yes, it is an older school. It was built by the Daselers. When they first opened it up, they got used furniture from my father at the school district. It helped them financially with that school.

I interviewed Helen.

Oh, you did?

Yes. The family still runs the school. It was just amazing, amazing family. I enjoyed that so very much. That's great.

What was it like, then, to leave the house after all those years, and now be in the work world?

It was fine with me. I probably lacked a little self-confidence because I had not been in the work world. Probably because of my age, Neil Daseler thought I had experience. I had done some long-term subbing there. He felt like he knew me, and he hired me. Then he asked me, “Well now, how long have you been teaching full-time?” I said, “Well, I haven't.” [Laughing]

But you had the job. I love it.

It was a wonderful place to teach.

Which one of us put in the longest hours, Dear?

I did, yes.

I think that women forget all of the skills you developed over the years working for all those organizations. Women forget that those skills are transferable. We have

lots and lots of skills.

Yes, I think that's true. I had with the attorneys' wives and with Junior League. Junior

League considers itself a training organization, and they truly are. I held a board

position with Junior League. The idea is to train women to go into the community and

have responsible positions, whether they're volunteer positions or whatever. Yes, I think

that it does make a difference.

When we talked earlier you said that you had a unique way of getting to know

clients. Do you remember making that statement?

Yes.

What does that mean?

I had a lot of difficulty remembering my clients. So, I developed a technique of having

them write what I called ‘a narrative’. I would ask them to write out a very

comprehensive statement of their educational background, their employment background,

philosophy, where they lived, about their children, and then tell me about whatever it is

we're talking about. So if it was a divorce, I would ask the client to tell me about the

good times, how they their spouse, the good times, the bad times, why they wanted a

divorce? I started learning a lot about people; not only what they’d say, but what they

didn't say. I started seeing that people were in patterns.

It got to the point where I could foretell the future, especially in divorces. People would come in and say, “Oh, we're not going to have any trouble here at all,” but the pattern was trouble and, sure enough, there would be trouble. Sometimes people came in,

“There won't be any trouble; we'll work it out;” the pattern was that they would and generally they did. This helped me when the phone would ring and my secretary would

bring the file. I would always try to get a picture of them, and then I would always ask three questions, especially of the women. I would ask them early on their weight, height and age. This was to help me remember them. I discovered that it became an inkblot test. I was paying less attention to how old they said they were or their height or their weight, but paying attention to how they handled the question. People just answered frankly were frank people. People who were argumentative – why are you asking me these questions?; that's a personal thing; it's none of your business – I saw the writing on the wall. That person was going to be trouble and they were. It's hard to settle cases with people like that.

Then later when I'm working at night developing interrogatories or a deposition, all the information was there.

In the case against Rudiak, a child custody case, this clerk in a liquor store wrote an incredibly comprehensive narrative. It was like 90 pages. It was probably the most comprehensive narrative I've ever received; it covered everything. It was the blueprint for winning. We did win. Without her being involved and doing that, I couldn't have beat George. He was all over the place, but every move he made I had the answer because it was all there in the narrative.

Wow. Amazing.

Yes, it was amazing.

That's wonderful. I have several questions from the notes I took at lunch. We've been talking for about two hours. So I'm going to need another appointment for about a half-hour, 45 minutes, maybe an hour. Is that possible?

Sure.

Fantastic. I'm going to end this today. I appreciate the stories so much. A lot of

people don't know how to tell a good story. You can talk about a real estate deal

and I'm on the edge of my seat. I really, really appreciate this. And I love the fact

that you are talking more.

Okay.

I really appreciate that. So thank you so much.

I was looking at this, the Walking Box Ranch.

Yes.

I've been there. That was when the Weikels owned it. I don't know whether they bought

it from the Bell family.

Is that the mining company?

Not to my knowledge. Mr. Weikel had been a sea captain and bought the ranch, which

was always amazing to me that you would go—

The ranch was owned by Rex Bell and Clara Bow.

Yes. I interviewed Rex Bell.

He bought it from them.

He bought it directly from the Weikels.

Oh, he was the first owner.

Well, that I don't know.

Okay. That's interesting because—

Excuse me. I believe that's true, but I could be wrong.

I want you to talk about that.

I have just a couple of stories if you are interested in hearing those.

I'm very interested. I was able to interview Rex Bell Junior about a year before he passed away. We were at the process of having him edit his interview when he passed. We had gotten photographs together and everything. So we were able to get the family a book.

I want to tell you one teeny-weeny story. We hear that the garbage company wanted to have a piece of land in North Las Vegas.

Republic Service?

It was before that. It was the (Isolas). We knew what they were looking for. We had these two pieces of land that were under different ownerships, and we wanted to sell this one piece. So we priced the other piece extremely high to make the piece we wanted to sell look less expensive. The piece that we had priced extremely high had a 25-foot hill on it and they needed a 20-foot drop where their trucks could come and dump the garbage. We didn't know that. They bought the higher priced one at the price we quoted.

We bought this property for $85,000, this investment group Richard put together. We had it for two or three years, and we sold it to the (Isolas) for 635,000. We made $75,000.

I went to my father-in-law and I said, “I just sold this; I made $75,000. This will keep us going for three years.” He then said to me, “Well, what are you going to do after three years?”

[All laughing]

I said, “Well, we'll sell something.” We never did, and at the end of the three years, we were broke again.

That is great.

It is April 6th, 2012, and I'm with the Rosses for the last portion of the three-part

interview.

So how are you doing today?

Super.

Fine, thank you.

Wonderful. I'd like to start with you, Irmalee. I'd like for you to tell me anything

you know, or everything you know, about the Walking Box Ranch. Start by telling

me what that is.

The Walking Box Ranch was the ranch of Rex Bell and Clara Bow outside of Searchlight, in the middle of the desert. It seemed quite unusual to have this very large ranch house out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by Mojave Desert. I was there with my family because my parents knew Karl Weikel and his wife. Evidently at some point, the Weikels had invited my father to the ranch so he could hunt for quail, chuck or whatever. My father regularly went to the ranch, and he went with other male family members. At one point, I went along. My sons have been there several times. They were always invited into the ranch house.

What I remember about the ranch house was, first of all, it was large. I remember specifically the dining room: a large table, chairs set up for maybe 14, maybe more, and memorabilia all over the walls. The memorabilia would probably have been from the Weikels; Karl Weikel’s memorabilia, having been a sea captain, would be much different than Clara Bow and Rex Bell.

The story that sticks with me is that the Weikels lived with a snake. It was

probably a bullsnake; I'm not positive. My son also remembers this story. The snake

lived in the ranch house, and its purpose was to keep out rodents and rattlesnakes. My

son described to me that whichever variety of snake it was this particular kind would kill

a rattlesnake. The bullsnake was to keep the house free of desert critters. I don't know

how long they had the snake. However, my mother then told me that one day they no

longer had their snake because Mrs. Weikel had come down from upstairs dressed to go

someplace; she was in her high heels, stepped on the snake and it. That was a story that

I never forgot.

I understand it was a very large ranch and extended all the way to California.

How much the Weikels had of that, I don't know.

Wonderful. Thank you for that story about the snake because I saw the biggest snake when I was out there a couple of weeks ago.

Oh, really?

Yes. The ranch is now being managed by the BLM and UNLV jointly.

Oh.

UNLV will use it as research for all kinds of classes, K through 12, in addition to university classes and all kinds of things.

That's very interesting. Did the Weikels leave the ranch to UNLV?

I think it went through another ownership after the Weikels and somehow it has come back.

That's very interesting.

Before Rex passed away, Rex Junior was able to make sure that some of the furnishings got back to the ranch. That was just wonderful. Thank you so much for that story because they're looking for all kinds of stories.

So Ian, I want to start with you today talking about—and you may do this in

any order you like. I don't know chronologically. I wanted to ask you about three

different cases: the Steve Wynn case, the Rosenthal case, and the Perry Mason case.

The Rosenthal case was a federal case where Rosenthal sued a friend of mine who was an

attorney. My friend was defended by an insurance company primarily, but he wanted

someone who was his friend and cared about him to be there and give him advice that

was more objective, and more geared to him.

Mr. Rosenthal was fascinating. We took his deposition, and someone had given him a couple of key sentences that he needed to say in order to be effective in the lawsuit.

In this multi-hour deposition, he was able to get these two sentences out more times than

I have fingers or toes.

What was the most fascinating is the case reached a point where Mr. Rosenthal made a very specific offer of settlement, and he allocated how much each party would pay. The analysis was that the cost of going on to trial was greater than what his offer was, and the offer was so fair to everybody that regardless of the merits of the case, the case had to be settled. It was, for exactly the way Rosenthal had requested it; not one dollar was changed. I was impressed with his powers of analysis, and his ability to analyze that.

The Steve Wynn case wasn't exactly a case. Mr. Wynn wanted to develop his

Shadow Creek Golf Course and expand it into a focal point for the area. When he originally built it, it all looked inside; if you drove by it, all you would see would be external pine trees. It was all interior views, nothing looking out. He decided—I'm just surmising and this is my recollection as a result of his daughter being kidnapped—for

security reasons to have the home and stay in Shadow Creek. His family wasn't comfortable driving through the desert area and industrial area of North Las Vegas off

Craig Road getting to the golf course. So he wanted to make that whole area into some kind of a parkway, an attractive area.

At the same time, I was part of an investment group that owned 80 acres essentially kitty-corner from Shadow Creek, and we had entered into an option to sell the

80 acres to a developer who had a plan in mind of how to do it. His plan wasn't exactly the same way that Mr. Wynn's plan was.

We appeared before the city council of North Las Vegas, and I was representing our property and also our potential buyer. Mr. Wynn chose to represent himself. He was explaining in very eloquent phrases. Though he wasn't, in my opinion, a great public speaker, he was very effective in what he intended to do. He was criticizing us for buying our land recently, and taking advantage of the huge investment that he had made at Shadow Creek.

Unfortunately, Mr. Wynn hadn't done his research because we had owned the land from 1977, and Shadow Creek was built many, many years later. The city council, of course, was aware of who was who and they were very uncomfortable because our proposal was very reasonable and if our developer did actually do it, it would have been substantial increase in the quality of things in the area. They also strongly supported, commended and welcomed Mr. Wynn's development of Shadow Creek.

The mayor verbalized that here were two of the leading supporters of the city dealing against each other, and that he was not comfortable with it. He asked if we would agree to a 30-day continuance to give Mr. Wynn the opportunity to work

something out that would be mutually advantageous. He looked at me in such a way that

there was no question in my mind I had to say yes. We did, and we tried to work

something out, but we weren't able to.

The next time we went back in, Mr. Wynn stayed home and his lawyer was there.

The council did what we recommended.

The council did?

For our 80 acres, what we recommended.

Really?

Yes.

Did your plans interfere with what he had planned to do?

No. He was trying to control how we were using our land.

I see.

That just didn't seem appropriate to anybody but Mr. Wynn.

Wonderful. Was your buyer able to develop the property the way he wanted?

No. He wasn't able to complete the purchase. So it was all academic exercise.

I see. Interesting though. Tell me about your Perry Mason case.

That was glorious ignorance. I was probably admitted to practice law for less than a year,

and I had a client who was accused of a burglary and attempted rape. He supposedly

came through the window of an apartment near UNLV and found a woman sleeping on

the floor of her living room with nothing on but her slip up over her breasts. He decided,

so the allegation was, to rape her rather than just burglarize her.

We were going to the preliminary hearing, which is to determine whether a crime

has been committed and whether there's probable cause to believe that the defendant had

committed the crime. There really wasn't much question that there had been a crime; maybe somebody had come through the window illegally, and burglarized. He actually hadn't touched her or physically done anything, but he said what he was going to do. He had extensive conversation with her, telling her he was going to do this and they talked for quite awhile; him saying “Yes, I will,” and she said, “No, you won't,” and back and forth. Finally, it started to get light and she said, “You're in the wrong neighborhood and you should be leaving,” and he left. That was deemed to be an attempted rape rather than an actual rape. But clearly there was a burglary. Whoever he was had gone in with the intention to commit a crime.

My client came to my office the day of the hearing and he brought someone he knew. He introduced me to this person and told me that this gentleman was his alibi; that he wasn't the one that climbed in the window and that he wasn't there, and that he wanted this man to testify that he was with him. I explained that alibi witnesses don't really do any good in a preliminary hearing. They generally ignore anything about the defense; it's just what the prosecution is presenting. However, I was struck by their physical appearances; they were both of the same race, they were both very tall men, but one was very muscular and very burly and the other was rather slender. To maybe the uneducated eye, they might look alike even though they didn't look alike. Matter of fact, they looked substantially different.

So I decided to switch them and we went to court. The courtroom was empty.

My client sat in the back of the courtroom, and his friend sat with me at counsel table where normally the defendant would sit. We had a visiting justice of the peace who is not a lawyer, and he didn't make the usual record that is made at the beginning of a

hearing: let the record show that the district attorney is here, defendant is here with his counsel. He didn't do that, so there was no record as to who was there. We proceeded to have the hearing.

The deputy DA who had the case was a new lawyer to the office. As a matter of fact, we had gone to high school together. It was George Spizzirri. Because he was new to the office, they had a more experienced lawyer helping him. His name was Richard

Bryan, who I also had gone to high school with, as well as college. So the two of them were representing the state and I was representing the defendant.

This woman got on the stand and she described in detail what happened: that she was asleep and woke up and there he was; how he was going to rape her and she was afraid; and how she talked to him and was disgusted with him. At some point, she was asked the magic question: “Do you see in the courtroom today the man that was in your apartment?” She pointed to the man sitting next to me as that man. I could hear the deputy about to make the record, and say, Let the record reflect that she has identified the defendant. I jumped up and said, “Let the record reflect that she has identified the man sitting next to me at defense counsel table.” The judge said, “Let the record so show.”

Everybody was happy with that.

She got off the stand and I then put the man next to me on the witness stand and asked him his name. It wasn't the same name as the defendant, because obviously, he wasn't the defendant. Everybody was somewhat surprised, including the court reporter.

She had to redo her record because she had already plugged in the name. He explained who he was in my questioning.

I need to go back, actually; I left something out. I cross-examined her. I gave her

every opportunity to say that the man sitting next to me might not have been the one who

was in the room. Is it possible the light wasn't good enough and you didn't seem him

clearly? Oh, no, the light was very good, and I saw him fine. She described all kinds of

things about him including his genitals, which apparently he had exposed during the

course of this conversation with her. She was totally unequivocal that this was the man,

and she had no doubt whatsoever.

When I put him on the stand and he wasn't the defendant, it essentially destroyed

their case, especially in light of the fact that the defendant was sitting in the courtroom.

I'm not sure how many yards, miles away people heard the deputy DA screaming after this all came out. They were very angry. The justice of the peace dismissed the case.

Word came down that Ted Marshall, the district attorney, was furious, and they were researching the opportunity to disbar me. I went back and I started researching it. I was horrified to discover that what I did, if it had constituted a representation to the court that the man sitting next to me was, in fact, the defendant, that that would constitute a breach of my ethics and my responsibility to the court, and they could subject me to disciplinary action. In fact, there had not been any representation made that it was the defendant.

Richard, being my friend, was nice enough to tell me that they actually had my client's fingerprints at the apartment.

Oh, my.

I figured if he didn't learn something from that, they'll get him some other time. That was my Perry Mason case.

Wow. What a great case.

When you were in the assembly, do you remember any of the issues discussed? You were just there for one legislative session; is that correct?

Yes, 1977.

Do you remember any of the issues from that 1977 [legislative session]?

Yes.

Good. Could you talk about some of those you might remember?

The biggest issue was ERA. There were extensive hearings on it. I can't remember whether it passed or not in ‘75, but this was the last shot at it for Nevada. It was a very emotionally charged issue. I had committed to vote against it based on a poll I had taken in my assembly district, but I researched it and was surprised that women weren't in the

14th Amendment. A lot of people were upset with me because they felt, based on my background and skills, that I should be voting for it. However, I was voting against it based on representing my district.

The other issue that comes to mind was Laetrile. My recollection is Laetrile is made from apricot pits or something, and it was touted as a tremendous substance for fighting cancer, mostly in Mexico. It's controversial as to whether it was just a fraud, whether it was overstated, or whether it was a miracle.

I went to the lobbyist for the Clark County and the Nevada State Medical

Association, who also happened to be the lobbyist for Laetrile. I asked him, “What is the position of the medical association to this bill for Laetrile?” He told me they had no position; it was neutral.

From the testimony that I was aware of, it didn't seem it was doing any harm or hurting anybody, and if somebody wanted to try it and it actually helped some people that

was a matter of choice. So I voted for it.

Later on, the medical profession came at me really upset. I explained to them that

I had talked to their lobbyist and I named him. They were flabbergasted. They went

away and they never came back because I'm sure they verified that that was correct.

Wasn't the death penalty also under consideration?

Really?

Yes, the death penalty was under consideration. I guess that was interesting.

Thank you, Irmalee.

I was on the judiciary committee. The death penalty was presented in a forum because the old death penalty wasn't constitutionally acceptable; so there was a new statute. My recollection is that there were only two or three lawyers in the entire

40-personal assembly. The chairman of the judiciary committee was a lawyer, and I was put on the judiciary committee because I was a lawyer. I was also put on the conference committee where the bill was being considered by the senate and the assembly.

Today I am in favor of the death penalty under certain circumstances. But in that day I was opposed to it. My recollection is that there were six on the committee. I voted no, and there was a state senator who was the deciding vote. I highly respected her and I don't intend to name her. She was from a district that strongly supported the death penalty and she did not believe in the death penalty. She had a real conflict, which she shared with us, her colleagues.

She finally decided that the law was unconstitutional. She decided to vote for it to satisfy her constituency, which in a representative form of government is the proper way to vote. Later the Supreme Court of the State of Nevada upheld it, and it wasn't

unconstitutional.

I've never talked to her about it. I haven't seen her in decades and I've always wondered how she felt about that. But we all have our problems and issues that we deal with.

Do you want to talk about why you changed your mind over the years?

(Inaudible response)

Okay.

There were another couple of issues that were important to me. The smog test issue came up for the first time, and this was something that nobody wanted to touch. Do you have smog testing at all? Make people pay for this? Do you comply with federal law? Are you telling them what they could do with their law and a few other things? Do you have state-run inspection stations or do you have private enterprise? How do you do all this if you're going to do it at all? None of my colleagues wanted any part of it because it was a political suicide bill.

I was on the health and welfare committee that was processing that bill.

Somehow I became a committee of one to hold the hearings. I was a subcommittee, hearing all the testimony on this bill. It was fun. I enjoyed it. It was a kick in the head.

I had 50 people in the room; they were all testifying and I am sitting listening. I dictated the rules on how we were going to do this.

I got everybody to decide what they could agree on and what they couldn't agree on. That's all we did for a couple of days, identifying what was controversial and what wasn't controversial. Every vested interest was physically present and testified—the oil companies, the air quality people. We settled down and worked on the issues that were

controversial.

The governor did not want state-owned inspection stations; he wanted it to be private enterprise. So that's how the chairman of our subcommittee voted.

[Laughing] That's great.

There was a man there who represented the oil industry. He was quiet and said almost nothing; he was very bright. I liked him, but he made me nervous because he wasn't nervous at all. The assembly passed the bill and sent it over to the senate. The senate had made only one change that instead of it going into effect that July, it would go into effect two years from then, in July after the '79 legislative session. I wasn't in the '79 legislative session and they butchered it.

Oh, really?

He got it all changed to what the industry wanted.

So what we have now, today—

It is watered down from what was passed in '77. That may not entirely be correct because there may have been amendments made over the decades that have brought it back. Maybe I'm being a little melodramatic saying he butchered it, but he made substantial changes and made the industry, his clients, much more comfortable.

It's interesting to see how it really works.

There were two other things I did that were fun. I was assigned a clerk who worked as an intern. I had to think of something to do with him. I was curious about the right to die.

Good.

Nobody was interested in it, but I was curious about it so I had him go research it. He analyzed every state in the United States, whether there was a right to die or not, and

what the qualifications were. From that, I developed a feeling that there should be a right

to die. So the committee, health and welfare, introduced it. Matter of fact, I did not

introduce any bills whatsoever, none of the 1700 bills, but I read them all.

How was the right to die introduced, and by whom?

I can't remember whether it was the judiciary committee or the health and welfare

committee. I prepared his report, which I edited and rewrote. I handed it out to all my

colleagues, and they passed it in the '77 session when Nevada adopted the right to die.

Then there was the last one that I'll bore you with. This was a kick in the head.

Richard Bryan was a state senator at the time.

[Laughing] He's everywhere.

Richard wanted to be attorney general, but he didn't want to live in Carson City. He

wanted to live in Tahoe, I think.

That's close.

Yes. The attorney general was the only constitutional office that still required that you must live in Carson City. All the others had been allowed to be elsewhere; you could live wherever you wanted, you just had to do the job. Bonnie wanted to live elsewhere.

I got the government committee to introduce a bill allowing the attorney general

to live outside of Carson City. I don't remember how I got it on. I got them to introduce

it, but I had my gloves on and there were no fingerprints. There was the guy who was the

chairman of the ways and means committee whose name escapes me, and he tried to

control everything. He wanted to know whose bill it was because he wanted to trade. If this was going to pass, he wanted something in return for it. Nobody knew whose bill it was. Everybody kind of just looked around. I don't know whose bill it was. The

committee introduced it. It went through both houses and passed. He never did find out.

Did Richard Bryan ever forgive you from the Perry Mason case?

I don't know. He must have since we later became law partners.

Okay, good.

I don't know where he lived when he was attorney general. He may have lived in Carson

City.

Was there ever anything about tenant-landlord rights?

Yes. Let's go off the record for a moment.

I co-sponsored bills. If there was a bill that I thought was very good and should be passed, I would put my name on it. But I didn't primarily sponsor any bills. I wouldn't co-sponsor any bill that I hadn't read, and I wouldn't co-sponsor any bill that I

didn't believe that should be done.

The representative of the governor came to me one day and wanted me to co-sponsor a landlord-tenant bill. At this point in time there was no landlord-tenant bill.

This was big legislation. It was a really comprehensive bill. The governor wanted, according to his representative, it introduced today. I wanted to, but I couldn't because I hadn't read it. I told her that I would be happy to read it and consider it. She said it would be too late. So I accepted that and I did not read it that day.

Within a couple of days she returned and wanted me to co-sponsor another landlord-tenant bill. I said we just went through this before. She said there were a lot of mistakes in that one. [Laughing] This is the revised one and the governor would like you to co-sponsor it. I said I can't unless I read it. She says it's got to be done today. I never did co-sponsor the landlord-tenant bill.

Interesting. Was there talk of a medical school at about that time?

Yes, there was.

How did that play out?

As I recall, there was a federal grant for medical schools. It was like three million dollars, which was a lot of money. This was the last year the program was in effect, and it was take it or leave it. If you want the three million dollars, you have to have an approved medical school (indiscernible).

It was proposed to put a medical school in Reno. However, medical schools should go where the population bases are, so if you're going to have a medical school, it should be in Las Vegas. The reason given for Reno is that Reno had a better science program and better pre-med classes. As we all know, there is a medical school in Reno, which is all done in Las Vegas essentially, which is very inefficient.

I came to the conclusion the state of Nevada could not afford a medical school.

One of the winning arguments made to get this school was that the students would graduate from this medical school and practice medicine in the cow counties, in the rural areas. I didn't think that would happen, and to the best of my knowledge, it hasn't happened.

You didn't think after going to medical school that most doctors would want to live in those little towns?

I didn't think so. If there were scholarships and they had to live in the cow county for two years, I figured, at the end of two years, they'd be moving to somewhere. It just did not make sense. If my memory serves me right and probably doesn't, I was one of seven that voted no. It passed overwhelmingly in both houses. If I had the power today, I

would eliminate the medical school.

Completely or move it?

Completely. I would eliminate the medical school. I would eliminate the dental school.

We have a population in the state of Nevada the size of a city and we can't afford these

incredibly expensive graduate schools.

You think the dental school is too expensive as well?

Yes. I think they're both too expensive. We don't need them. We have an economy that

will attract good dentists and good medical people. I think we should take all current

medical and dental school students, pay their books, tuition, and room and board at some

other state school, and close them down.

Wow.

This is anecdotal. I have no idea what it costs.

I understand that.

I have no idea where the money comes from. I just believe these are very expensive schools.

I think you're right, even the equipment for both of those.

Yes. I feel the same way about the law school except for one minor detail.

And that is my next question.

I feel the same thing about law schools except law schools aren't expensive. Once you have the building and the library, all you have is salaries for professors. It wouldn't save

enough money to justify closing. But again, I think the same argument is valid for the

law school as it is for the medical school.

I think there is a balancing act between wanting to be a world-class university,

and what is required to be a top university and the practicalities of what it can afford.

Education is very, very important to me. It is a mistake to cut budgets in places that really hurt to pay for medical schools, dental schools and even law schools, in order to have the prestige of these kinds of schools.

I think we should eliminate bussing in the public schools, in K through 12. If it could be figured out how to do it, I would put the kids on the public buses.

I see.

Let them go to schools by public transportation.

Like they do in New York, probably.

Like they do in a lot of places. We have a huge fleet of school buses, and the maintenance and the bus drivers. We're spending millions and millions of dollars, which started out as an integration issue, and the community is essentially integrated. In areas where it's not, we'll bus; have buses for school trips or stuff like that, field trips. There are a lot of kids who are being bused around. When you drive around you see a lot of empty school buses driving all over this valley. I think that's about as much soapbox as you need from me.

I really appreciate that. I think there was something also about sales taxes when you were in the assembly.

Yes.

Would you like to chat about that for a minute?

When I ran for re-election, there was an area of the district, which was a development of senior citizens, retired schoolteachers. My mother lived nearby and had campaigned for me in that area. It really got these people worked up for me and they supported me when

I first ran.

I ran for re-election and I was oblivious to the issues that were important. Didn't do researching. Didn't do polling. I thought I'll hit them as I deal with them. So I'm giving a talk in front of all these seniors and the question comes up: What is your position on eliminating the sales tax on food and drugs?

I am a financial fiscal conservative. If you have to put other labels on me, I am a social liberal. So nobody likes me. People don't like me on one side because I am financially conservative, and other people don't like me because I'm socially liberal. I felt that if you had the sales tax base as wide as possible on food and on drugs that you could keep the rate low for everybody.

Seniors didn't see it that way. They were on fixed incomes. They did not have a lot of discretionary money for discretionary spending. They might be able to slightly control their food, but they could not control their drugs. So they were opposed to it.

I only lost by 400 votes. I suspect that 200 people over there shifted their votes, and understandably so. That was my experience with the sales tax.

Great. One of the stars of the Nevada politics for many, many years was Raggio.

Did you get to know him at all?

No. I knew his reputation.

It always amazed me that the power in the legislature was in the north when the population was in the south. I thought we in the south should treat the north just as nicely and kindly as they had treated us. That always used to upset the northern folks. If I needed balancing because I really was strongly anti-north and very pro-south, I'd go talk to my father-in-law because he was a Nevadan. He saw the big picture of the north and

the south.

They say nice things about Raggio, and he certainly was a very courageous district attorney.

Senator Gibson was the power in the state senate when I was in the assembly.

Nothing happened in the legislature that Senator Gibson didn't want to have happen. He was very bright. I remember watching him testify at a couple of hearings that I was in.

He would come in, sit down, and explain to the committee why the law was the way it was; how they had drafted it that way 20 years earlier, what the reasons were, and the reasons hadn't changed. And that was the end of any changes being made.

I remember voting against a bill. I had a question on the floor, and the people presenting the bill couldn't or didn’t answer the question, and I voted no. I was taken aside later and said, “You just voted 'no' on a Senator Gibson bill.” I went over to the senate and met with the senator. I said, “Gee whiz, I'm really sorry; I didn't know this was your bill. I really wasn't necessarily adamantly opposed to it, but I couldn't get a question answered that I was asking and so I couldn't vote for it.” And he said, “Oh, that's okay.”

He forgave gave you. [Laughing]

He was a very nice man. His criteria was what was in the best interest of the state of

Nevada. I really admired him. I remember going to lunch with him. He was explaining how he had this vice, that he had a great deal of difficulty controlling it and it really upset him, but he just could not resist desserts.

[Laughing] Was he fat?

He was larger than maybe he wanted to be.

I see.

He was a graduate of Annapolis. He was one of the owners of PEPCON. The Gibson family owned PEPCON.

PEPCON is that Henderson plant.

The last thing I wanted to ask about the assembly is if you discussed term limits while you were in the senate? I took that note someplace along the way.

No, but I definitely have an opinion on it.

Well, tell me what your opinion is.

I think they're a real big mistake. I understand that when somebody gets entrenched that creates all kinds of problems. Sometimes it's good; sometimes it's bad. If they get entrenched and we vote for them every four years, it's our problem, not theirs. If you have term limits the people who will have the power is the staff, not the elected official, because the staff have the historical institutional history. They know more about it. They know how it's done and why. By the time you've learned, if you're a reasonable legislator or reasonable governor or reasonable anybody, you're virtually on your way out. But the staff is there and these are people who are in the PERS retirement system. They're there for 30 years and they're invisible. It doesn't mean they're bad people. It doesn't mean they're not dedicated, and many of them may do a much better job than the people that are elected. But they're not elected to do the job and you're abdicating that responsibility; even though they're just recommenders, that recommendation carries a lot of weight because the officeholder just don't know what needs to be known. So I am very much opposed to term limits.

Great point. Did the two of you ever live in North Las Vegas?

No. I thought of myself as a North Las Vegan.

I know.

I had my office there. We developed an industrial park and ours was the first building,

which I shared with a civil engineering firm. I had my development office, my real estate

office and my law office there. We had a big party. We had balloons. The governor

came and cut the ribbon. It was very nice of Richard to do that.

[All laughing]

Yesterday and today we have both mentioned the Smith Center. I'd like to hear

both of you talk about downtown, how it's changing, especially that area right there

with the Smith Center, the Marketplace, the Lou Ruvo Center. You've been here

for a long time. I'd like to hear your thoughts about that and the whole gambling

corridor. A lot of those casinos are being renovated and revamped. I'd like to hear

both of you talk about that.

When we first moved here, downtown Fremont Street was our shopping area. That's

where we had a Woolworth's. We had The Dollar Store. We had Allen and Hansen for

men's clothes. We had Ronzone's, which became Dillard’s, for women's clothes, and a

couple of others.

Johnson's.

Yes, Johnson's for women's clothes.

Rex Bell.

Yes, there was Rex Bell cowboy-type retail.

Sears.

Yes, Sears. Penney's. That are was where we shopped.

It was our entertainment area.

So we were downtown a lot.

Fremont Theater, El Portal.

Yes. There were some casinos.

Yes.

There were a couple of movie theaters.

Except for the Huntridge; that was where we went to movies.

Right. It was really a downtown for us.

At the end of the block, there was a railroad station that was kind of in a park. The courthouse was off the main street, in a park.

**And the bus station was right there next to the railroad station, Greyhound Bus.

At some point a decision was made to eliminate the railroad yards. The yards were polluted with extensive amounts of diesel fuel. It's an interesting question of how do you deal with this. I wasn't involved, but what was decided is that you cook the dirt. You’re burning off the fuel and creating clouds of smoke, carbon monoxide and stuff. What could have been decided instead is to haul it off somewhere, and then have a huge pit. I have no idea how deep it would have been. But they cooked it in sections. They came to the conclusion that if they did it slowly, over a period of time, the amount of pollution being put into the air would be so low that that was the best way of doing it. It was extremely expensive, and the railroad paid for it. It took many years. Then you ended up with the real estate.

I had some personal knowledge of some of the stuff downtown. A client of mine

originally had the land where Main Street Station stands. He got the land from the railroad on very advantageous terms, and he wasn't able to convert that into a development. Through him I saw how the railroad worked, and how they processed their inventory. They owned a staggering amount of land all over the United States. They had headquarters somewhere, and had layers of people that did nothing but real estate. Part of their system was they had to declare it surplus and unneeded, and shift it to another department. They were very fair dealing. When he couldn't make the payments, he was gone. So that was downtown.

Part of downtown was Fifth Street School, which in Irmalee's father's time was converted to the administrative offices for the school district.

There was a point when nobody in the area was going to high school. Kids had to come a long distance to go to Vegas High.

Because of the location.

There weren't kids in that area. They could have made an opportunity to sell the land.

That's what should have been done, just as they created prime land in the railroad yards.

If they could've gotten the church to go along, they would have had 40 acres of prime downtown property that could have been used to better the downtown area. If they had done that, the areas of Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Street north of Fremont would have evolved, which it never has. Instead my peers, all graduates of Vegas High School, did not want to lose that. Ultimately they lost it anyway because Vegas High is now somewhere else and that old Vegas High is an academy now.

Historically preserved.

Yes. My peers don't have an emotional attachment.

But don't you have those big squares.

Yes.

I think that Richard Bryan wants to help preserve those squares.

Absolutely. We gave money to do that, too.

Not much, though. You asked about the Smith Center.

Any place in that downtown area.

Obviously, there is rejuvenation when you figure the Cleveland Clinic is there. I personally am hoping that the Cleveland Clinic can expand and provide us with an outstanding medical facility with professionals. The Smith Center is off to a grand start so far. The community has accepted it, amazingly so. Tonight we're going to eat downtown, which will be the first time we've dined downtown in many years.

Where are you going to go?

We're going to go to Oscar's.

That's great.

It will be the first time we've dined downtown in – well, we might have had lunch there.

We haven't dined downtown in decades.

Yes. Hopefully this will be helpful for that area.

I really want to know more about Oscar's. I've heard good things about it.

I don't know anything about it other than what I've seen in the paper. We're going to find out.

That's wonderful.

We've supported the Smith Center. The Richard Tam Foundation has supported the

Smith Center. The Tam family; Richard Tam’s family primarily is Judy Tam Sargent, his

daughter. Her mother, who is Richard's first wife, is married to Theodore Lee, Ted Lee, and they have substantially supported the Smith Center; they're one of the founders. To raise that kind of money in a bad economy is just mind boggling, and they've done a wonderful job.

The collapsing building—

Frank Gehry's.

Okay.

I'm sure it wasn't designed that way. I think in the process of being constructed it just collapsed.

He's downtown, and he hasn't been downtown in a very long time. He comes home and he said, “You know, there is a newly constructed building that is falling down.” And I knew which building he was talking about and I knew that it had not fallen down; this was a special design to bring attention to the brain center.

Yes. And it does bring attention.

Yes. But it's an empty shell. I mean there's nothing in the building. It's one big room.

Yes, but it has a purpose.

It would be very good to have a world-class medical clinic in Clark County. For many years we went to Scripps and now we go to Mayo. We would be delighted to not go anywhere and have it here.

Wonderful.

We think it can be supported, and regional people would come from long distances.

Whoever and whatever is standing in the way should be plowed down. They tried to come in before, and it wouldn't work. They're doing it a little step at the time. An

interaction is going to take place because Smith Center has an option on part of the land that the Cleveland Clinic's going to need to build its high-rise. I'm saying Cleveland

Clinic's going to build its high-rise. Cleveland Clinic isn't saying they're building their high-rise, but they can't put a world-class clinic in that location without a high-rise because there isn't enough land. The mall outlet was a mistake. It's too low level. It takes up too much ground. It doesn't add enough to the downtown area. Maybe somebody creative can figure out how to put a high-rise over the mall. That's another story.

We welcomed and are delighted to see the Clark County government building there. Architecturally, it's wonderful. As you can see from this house, we're big into red rocks and sandstone. I've spent much time for various governmental reasons at that building and I think it's a wonderful building. It looks like it's expensive, but it's not. It looks very creative and it is. It fits in very nicely with the theme of who we are.

When I was a busboy, many of the busboys lived downtown. They lived in flophouses. They lived in small rooms and they gambled much of their money away.

When I worked for the City of Las Vegas, I had offices at three different City

Halls: the original one, then we moved to the Reed Whipple, and then we moved back to the main building, which has now been sold.

Okay. The one that Zappos will move into.

Between the federal building, and what they've done at the courthouse, there's been a tremendous rejuvenation. They have a long way to go, but they're on the right track.

I don't agree with Oscar in wanting a stadium downtown because people go to a stadium, they watch the game, they have a hotdog, they have a beer, and then they go

somewhere else. Stadiums are destinations and should be somewhere else rather than creating traffic in our downtown.

What we need there is residential. We need a high-rise condo. We need a grocery store and some services there. The Cleveland Clinic will be there. Somebody's who's dedicated to the Cleveland Clinic can walk two blocks, and go up into his high-rise or his condo.

That's where I plan to live.

It would be a good place to live.

Yes.

If you're living there, maybe you should have a mall to go shopping.

Exactly. Trader Joe's grocery store.

With something above it. Maybe you'll live above the shopping mall.

I can do that.

Our peers generally are not happy.

About what part of this?

How much it's changed. They liked Vegas better when the county had 50,000 people.

I understand that.

We don't agree with that.

When I ask people about the mob days, they say it was better then. Everybody says that. So I understand exactly what you mean.

There's a difference. The mob was terrible. You cannot have an institution that big and powerful settle their disputes differently than anybody else settles their disputes. You cannot have that kind of an institution have such a huge influence on the elected officials

and, then, if there is a dispute, how they settle their disputes.

My peers don't talk about the mob days. What they talk about is the lack of

traffic, the crime, walking to school, just small town.

That's exactly what they are saying to me. They call it the mob days, but they say

there was no crime. They believed that the mob didn't allow the crime.

I don't agree with that.

Of course not. But they put it all together, and they see the changes when the

Corporate America came in—

Right.

—with Howard Hughes and the rest of them. So that's what they see as the

difference.

Many of them are choosing to move out. They're moving to other states, to towns or

cities with 50,000 people, which is similar to what Las Vegas was when they were kings.

We have lived here this whole time, and every stage of the way we have loved it. We

loved it in the 70s, we loved it in the 80s, we loved it in the 90s, and we love it now.

If my sons, who we sent off to Reno, were going to school today, I'd send them to

UNLV. But I'd have them live somewhere outside my home so that they would have some kind of a campus experience and independence experience. They could still come home, get a meal and do the laundry.

The weakness that exists today is the lack of jobs. We've always had jobs, but that's transitory and that's temporary. We will have jobs again. The other is medical care. Maybe we, because of our age, are much more conscious of medical care now than we were before. My father had some terrible experiences with the medical people in this

community. However, that was back then, and there are a lot of good doctors and

medical facilities here now. There are a lot of doctors that aren't that wonderful. We

need a clinic, but we like living in Las Vegas. It's been good to us, and we've enjoyed it.

Wonderful.

And still do.

Thank you so much. Any ending remarks?

No. This has been very delightful. You're delightful and ask good questions and respond

well to whatever we have to say.

I thank you so much.

Thank you.

Index

Franklin, George, 31, 41, 54 A Frehner, Ellen, 51 Fremont hotel, 20 Abrilly, Versonelle, 4 Aida Gray cosmetics, 16 G Gehry, Frank, 86 B Gibson [senator], 81 Babcock, Howard, 30, 33 Gifford, Ion, 44 Barry [brother], 2 Glaser, Norm, 13 Bell Jr., Rex, 31, 62, 63, 64, 83 Goodman, Oscar, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 86, Bilbray, Jimmy, 31 88 Bingo Palace hotel, 50 Gray Ladies, 10 Binion, Benny, 12 Gray, Raymond Guild [father], 7 Boulder City, Nevada, 11 Green, Milton, 4 Boyer, Naomi, 26 Grigsby, Jim, 7 Brenda [sister], 1 Gripentrog, Earl, 33, 34, 40, 47 Bryan, Richard, 31, 32, 69, 75, 76, 85 Buchanan, Bucky, 31 H C Ham, Art, 24 Harris, George Early, 15 California, 1, 2, 3, 9, 17, 38, 64 Hawkins, Romietta, 44 Canada, 1 Hawley, Earl, 31 Carson City, Nevada, 13, 29, 75, 76 Horne, Lena, 20 Chicago, Illinois, 1 Hughes, Howard, 38, 49, 90 City Attorney's Office, 34, 43, 47, 48, 49 Clark County School District, 9 I Cleland, Bud, 51, 52 Cleveland Clinic, 86, 87, 88 Isaacs, Tony, 4 Close, Mel, 44 Close, Sandra, 44 Cohen, Carl, 20 J Cohen, Steve, 20 J.C. Penney's, 49, 50, 51, 83 Copa Room, 19 John S. Park [area], 5, 6, 24 Crockett, Lee, 42 Junior League, 45, 59 Cub Scouts, 4, 44 K D Kinnory, Cantor, 6 Daseler, Neil, 59 Daughter of the American Colonists, 10 Davis, Jean, 47 L Desert Inn hotel, 16 Laetrile, 71 Detroit, Michigan, 1, 2 Lake Tahoe, Nevada, 8, 18, 75 District Attorney's Office, 31, 40 Las Vegas City Hall, 34, 35, 47, 48 Las Vegas Day School, 58 E Las Vegas High School, 6, 8, 85 Lee, Ted, 86 Entratter, Jack, 16, 20 Lee, Theodore, 86 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 71 Lionel, Sam, 32, 33 Los Angeles, California, 2, 3, 4 F Lovell, Carl, 47 Lowman, Zel, 26 First Western Savings and Loan, 9, 11, 46

M Schwartz, Ruth [mother], 1 Sinatra, Frank, 18, 19, 20 Main Street Station hotel, 84 Smith Center, 83, 85, 86, 87 Marshall, Edward George, 31 Snyder, Jerry, 31, 33, 38, 39 Marshall, Ted, 31, 70 Specter, Arlen, 36 Mathis, Johnny, 19 Spizzirri, George, 31, 69 Minker, Jeff, 24, 28 Stanford University, 9, 29, 48

N T Nellis Air Force Base, 21 Tam, Richard, 31, 32, 37, 48, 49, 51, 53, 63, 69, 70, Nevada Day, 15 75, 76, 83, 85, 86 Nevada Southern, 12, 13 Test Site, 22, 24 Nevada State Legislature, 13 The Treble V [novel], 13 Nevada Supreme Court, 29, 48, 73 Thrifty Drugstore, 3 Niles, Irma Cordelia, 7 Trelease, Art, 34 North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, 15, 51, 52, 56 U O United States Navy, 7, 9 University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), 12, 58, 65, Ordowski, Jim, 35, 47 68, 90 University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), 7, 8, 9 P V Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 36, 38, 39 Public Employees Retirement Board (PERB), 11 Vatican, 51

R W Raggio, William, 80, 81 Walking Box Ranch, 61, 63 Rat Pack, 19 Walnut Creek, California, 9 Ray, Johnnie, 19, 20 Weikels family, 61, 62, 64, 65 Reno, Nevada, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 17, 77, 90 World War II, 21, 22 Rittenhouse, Natalie, 44 Wynn, Steve, 65, 66, 67 Rosenbaum, Samuel [father], 1 Rosenthal, Frank, 65, 66 Ross, Snyder and Goodman [lawfirm], 32 Y Rudiak, George, 30, 31, 35, 61 Yerington, Nevada, 9

S Z San Francisco, California, 24, 50 Zenoff, David, 24, 29 Sands hotel, 2, 16, 17, 18, 28 Zenoff, McIlbee and Manzone [lawfirm], 3