August 16, 2000. This is an interview with Mr. Albert H. Purdue in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The following interview is with Mr. Albert "Bert" H. Purdue, a resident of Las Vegas since 1938. Mr. Purdue has been active in Banking and Trust Planning for many years. He joined the Las Vegas Rotary Club in 1965 and served as President in 1979-80. He is a Paul Harris Fellow.

This is Claytee White and I'm with Bert Purdue. It is Wednesday, August 16, 2000 and we are in the library at UNLV. So, how are you today?

Very well, thank you.

We're just going to start talking about your early life and I'm going to start by asking you about your family. Can you tell me about your mother and father, your brothers and sisters?

O.k., my mother was born in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1909. She and her family moved back to Southern California in 1918, 1920 because her father had died in the flu epidemic in 1918. My mother had a rheumatic heart from a disease she contracted as an infant. Her parents didn't think anything was wrong with her, just that she was a very good child. She didn't cry. Then, an old doctor came along and said that child is sick. They took her to San Bernardino and found that she was, indeed, sick; a disease that she carried for the rest of her life. My mother then spent either one or two years, 14th and 15th years, in bed in Los Angeles which was the only cure they knew or how to remedy such a condition. She subsequently attended and graduated from Los Angeles High School in Los Angeles, California and attended and graduated from Mills College with a degree in history. My father was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Both his parents were professors at the University of Arkansas. His mother, my grandmother, was a Phi Beta Kappa and a professor in English at the University of Arkansas. His father, for whom I was named, Albert Purdue was a professor of geology. He studied at Stanford University and knew and worked with future president Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover, of course, went on to become a famous mining engineer and wealthy in his own right. My grandfather chose to teach school and wasn't as wealthy. He later became State Geologist for the State of Tennessee. The family moved to Nashville where they resided until his death of, I believe, a kidney disease. What it is, I don't know specifically. My grandmother, my paternal grandmother, went to work for Southern Bell Tell (telephone) at which time she was able to amass 50 shares of AT & T. This is significant in that AT & T paid her expenses during the depression. AT & T paid $9.00 a share although they didn't earn it and sustained lots of widows and orphans. She had moved from Nashville to live with her brother or brothers. There was a brother, Troy Pace, that was a lawyer in Los Angeles. My father graduated from Vanderbilt University and then attended law school at the University of Southern California where he was in the same class with Charlie Paddock, who, at that time, was the world's fastest human, but that's beyond.

Give me their names, your mother and father.

My mother's name was Jean Nevada Fayle. Jean Nevada having been named for my grandmother, her mother, and so they named the infant girl Jean Nevada Fayle which is kind of cute. My father's name was Richard Howell Purdue. I had no brothers or sisters. My father had been in the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. He worked in the same office or for a man who was the foremost criminal lawyer in Los Angeles in the early 30s. At some point, 1937 or 1938, my mother and father separated. My mother and I moved back to Las Vegas to live with my grandmother and her husband, Clint Boggs, who had been Chief of Police in Las Vegas. My mother and I lived with Jean and Clint Boggs until my mother's remarriage in about 1940 or 1941. My mother then died of the heart condition in December of 1942. I went back to live with my grandmother and step-grandfather at my grandmother's house at 9th and Carson which is still in existence as we speak, but is a real mess. It was, as only my grandmother would do, a tudor style house located on the edge of the desert in Las Vegas.

How old were you at that point?

I was just eight years old when my mother died. In November of 1942, I was eight years old. My father, meanwhile, had moved to Washington, D.C. where he was an attorney for the Federal Power Commission. My father felt strongly that I should come to live with him. It caused great resentment by my grandmother, but there was nothing really that she could do about it. So, the school year 1943, 1944, I spent in Washington, D.C. It was interesting. The Second World War, of course, was raging. Washington was the headquarters for the armies of the free world. I can remember distinctly at the end of the third grade in June of 1944 the invasion of Normandy was announced. These kinds of things were happening. It was fun to be there, but an awful existence. My father and I were bachelors together in a one-bedroom apartment house located on Connecticut Avenue at the Rock Creek Park Bridge. The apartment house is still there. I went by to see it some eight or nine years ago.

Do you remember those early years in Las Vegas? Do you have memories of that?

It's very, very sparse. Let me try and answer that question and it will be somewhat halting because my memory is sketchy. In Las Vegas, I remember quite a bit of my life with my mother's husband Chris Rasmussen. Chris was a general contractor. He built the Christian Science Church at 6th and Bridger and the house that is now Harley Harmon Insurance on Charleston. Chris had a lot of jobs in what is now Henderson. BMI was just being built at that time and we would have a lot of fun roaring out in his pick-up truck out the Boulder Highway, which was being made into four lanes. The housing there, for the construction workers, was all temporary. Housing built for, I guess, married people and then a portion known as Carver Park. Carver Park was for the black workers. Las Vegas was very much of a Jim Crow town. It was quite segregated. I can also remember going out to jobs in Boulder City, which, in those days, Boulder City was an ideal place. It was built by the United States Government. It has curbs, gutters and streets, lots of which did not exist in Las Vegas at the time. Lots and lots of trees and bushes, big headquarters buildings and homes for the superintendents up on a hill. The hospital was quite new. It was state of the art for that period of time. An editorial comment, I don't think it has really changed much since 1940 or 1942. In the period of 1939 to 1944 and 1945, the economy and the life of the town was dominated by the railroad. Las Vegas was really a company town, that is, pretty much run by the Union Pacific Railroad Company. I got an interesting education in language by watching men off load hogs at the pens which were then on Charleston where Charleston crosses the track on the west side. It was interesting language.

What kind of language?

I'd rather not say that. There was one that I thought was really quite interesting. I've never quite figured it out. As they were unloading the hogs they referred to them as "you god dam democratic Irishmen". So, I guess by some, that would be a swear word. That kind of language went on, the reason being is that hogs and I guess cattle will not eat in a moving car, in a railroad car and trains could not travel fast enough between Salt Lake or Utah and the packing houses in Southern California. They would have to unload them to water them and to feed them. Now, if the wind blew in the wrong direction or a night you could smell the pens in Las Vegas. I can remember hearing switch engines work and you could just hear them all over town and for big fun in Las Vegas in those days, my grandmother would take me and perhaps one of my cousins that was in town, up to watch the trains being changed. That was fabulous.

So, would they actually put them on a turntable?

Yes, there was a turntable. I knew where it was. It would be just west of where the Union Plaza is at the present time. The Union Plaza was the site of two passenger stations. In those days, my uncle Leonard Fayle told me that seven trains came through Las Vegas going each way. In those days, that was the only way to get anywhere, as automobiles were arduous. As far as I know, roads going every which way out of Las Vegas were paved, but it still took a long time to get to Los Angeles or Salt Lake. It was always interesting to see the streamliners, the locomotives with their beautiful cars. That was a big deal. The streamliner that came through was called the City of Los Angeles and the Union Pacific had beautiful gold locomotives and gold cars. We would kind of go up and look at the locomotives. They were oil fired coming through here rather than coal fired steam locomotives. The streamliners were diesel electric, which was really something for that time and place. My stepfather, Chris Rasmussen, was a member of the Las Vegas Rotary Club. I can remember going to all Rotary type picnics out in Paradise Valley which was literally mesquite, some farms and was absolutely remote from Las Vegas as we know it.

Does the Rotary still have those picnics?

Yes, they have what we call a demotion party which used to be held at the Crockett Ranch and now is held at Joe and May McNamee's Silk Purse Ranch. That's at the end of June. They probably had more social functions then in the earlier days than they do now. People, just as an aside, I remember in the late 60s we were worried about how we would fill our leisure time as we were probably going to go to four day a week work days. Well, in the last 15 years, I've worked harder than I ever did before. I think this is true of society in the United States. (Break). Claytee has asked me to talk about my memories of the Railroad and this is through the eyes of a little boy. The first thing, I'll kind of throw this in, the greatest toy I had as a child was an American Flyer train set. The more popular at that time was Lionel, but every little boy that I knew wanted or had a train set. Trains, to us, represented power. They represented going to far away places. Las Vegas had people who did everything on the railroad. A friend of mine's father worked as a wrecker. In other words, the cars used to fall of the rails more often than they do now and they'd have to pick the car up and put it back on the rails. The only way you could get there was by rail itself, with a wrecker where now they can probably take a truck out to the rails. Thinking in concept of the railroad and its tracks which have to go level, therefore, have to follow the contours of the land and restricted to those tracks, it's just so much different than the huge earth movers we have today, huge trucks go out and go over land. Then, power was the railroad.

How did they pick the car up?

With a crane. I suppose you put a jack down from the car itself and lifted it up. In truth, I don't know. I've just seen pictures of a car being lifted back on the rail and there was always a wrecker, a car with a crane on it.

You had freight and passenger trains going through Las Vegas?

Yes. Several things about the railroad; it made the country move at the time. There were always trucks as long as I can remember, but virtually all freight and passengers moved on the rails. We used to sit beside the railroad tracks probably where Charleston and the railroad is now and I don't think there was an underpass. Anyway, we would watch and see if there were military goods. There were interesting things on flat cars that you could see. Are there tanks, big guns and that sort of thing being hauled to the port of Los Angeles to go to war? There was a tremendous amount of traffic caused by the war effort. In 1944, my grandmother came back with my cousin who had just graduated from high school. That was her great gift by my grandmother to go back to Washington to get me. My grandmother implied to my father that I was just coming out for the summer, but would be coming back. She didn't state it emphatically, but she wanted to get me back from Washington to Las Vegas and then worry about it. We were able to get reservations and actually rode in a Pullman car on the B & O Railroad, that's Baltimore and Ohio, from Washington to Chicago. We got to Chicago and there was all hell to pay. It's hard to describe to amount of men and people, soldiers and so forth, that were riding trains. Anyway, somehow, and I think my grandmother bribed the conductor, we got on a chair car. I think my grandmother bribed a porter to get three sit down seats so that we could ride the chair car from Chicago, Illinois to Las Vegas.

Who was the third person?

My cousin. Her name is Roberta Jean Fayle. Her father was my mother's brother and they lived in Delano, California. His name was George Arthur Fayle. My mother's other brother being Leonard Ray Fayle who lived in Las Vegas. He had lived in Delano, California, but moved to Las Vegas. He is covered extensively in other work. My cousin who had just graduated from high school in, probably, May of 1944 from Delano Union High School came out. I can remember riding back on a chair car with my grandmother who was then probably 60 years old. In those days, 60 was old. We, my grandmother and me, a nine-year-old little boy, stood in the aisles so that soldiers could sit down. My cousin never did and my grandmother almost slapped her face. She was so mad at her.

The soldiers didn't insist that the women sit down?

No, they were so tired. They were sleeping in towel and linen racks. They were sleeping on the floor and there was standing room only just to let the soldiers sit down so they could close their eyes. I say soldiers including all military men, airmen and such. I don't remember Navy uniforms. We stood.

How long was the trip?

Two to three days and I don't really remember because the trains would have moved more slowly because of the heavy traffic. Anyway, we got to Las Vegas and I was filthy. I hadn't had a bath or really washed my face. I remember having a big boil on my neck that had to be lanced when we got to Las Vegas. That was my experience with wartime travel.

Tell me about the food on the train.

We ate in the diner and I really don't remember. I've since then ridden a number of times back to Washington, D.C. and before that my mother and I had ridden back. We took the Challenger. First of all, that was my experience during the WWII riding on a chair car from Chicago to Las Vegas.

You've told me about the military presence in Washington, D.C., the train ride. What was the military presence like in Las Vegas?

There was the air force base that was called the gunnery school. It was built in 1940 and as I understand it, that's how J. A. Tiberti came to town; to help build the air force base. I think they called it a gunnery school because a friend of mine was a Captain in the Air Corp. We went out and I got to stand on a box and fire a 50-caliber machine gun at a moving target and I must have hit it because the airmen cheered when I stepped down. I had no idea why. You just shoot those big guns. I subsequently fired a 50-caliber machine gun on a quad pod and those things are tough to hold down. This was secured, as it would be, in a B-17 or a major bomber. They fired at a target that was on a flat car hauled back and forth. I can remember B-17 planes. I can remember watching them take off from what is now Nellis heading out to Sunrise Mountain and most of the time they cleared it. You could hear of accidents. I think these were pilots that had too much to drink in Las Vegas. They'd drive back to the airport and several times they would get killed in automobile accidents. At that time, pilots were all of 20 and 21-year-old boys and they were expected to do a man's job, which they sure did. Anyway, the presence all during that period was Air Corp. personnel, but in early 1942 or mid 1942, armored units came to Needles, California and were using the deserts of California and Nevada to train for North Africa. My uncle, Branner Purdue, my father's brother who had moved with his family to Nashville, as I related, when his father died, Branner was then in high school or just out, lost $200 shooting pool. This was huge, huge money and he was so ashamed, he ran away from home, joined the army and served in the army of occupation in Germany. He took the entrance exam to West Point and was accepted and spent the happiest years of his life at West Point. That gives you kind of an idea of what kind of man he was. Branner, my uncle, came out to the Las Vegas area to help train for what they called tank destroyers. I remember the patch they wore on their arm. It looked like a big cat chewing up a German tank. I guess it was a lightly armored track vehicle. It probably had a big gun. What size, I don't know. I've never really seen much reference to tank destroyers, but I can remember distinctly riding out to the camp outside of Needles and having mess for lunch at the mess tent. In those days, they gave you salt tablets. My cousin, Bill Purdue and I got sick because we couldn't stand the salt tablets. Bill, later, went to West Point and was an airborne officer and was on the football and track team at West Point, so he wasn't a sissy. We just couldn't take it. I'm going to backtrack a little bit. My uncle's wife, Carolyn Purdue and her two children, Bill and Lindsey, rode all over the country following Branner as he moved from coast to coast. Carolyn had a 45 pistol and a chow dog and roughly a 10-year-old boy and a 7-year-old boy. She went all over on thin tires and followed him. When they came to Las Vegas, my grandmother found them a rental in a duplex. We took furniture from our house and any place we could find so that they could have furniture in their house. They slept on army cots in Las Vegas when Branner was out at Needles, California.

Wasn't there rationing of tires and things? How did she get enough stamps to do the traveling?

She only told me that they were on very thin tires. If you drove 40 miles per hour, that would be a fast speed.

Gasoline was no problem?

Gasoline was rationed and I don't know what an "A" stood for, you put it on your windshield, what a civilian could have. I don't know the number of gallons per week, but maybe as a military dependant she could have had a priority. I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that she drove all over the country. You didn't fool with that lady. Her father had been a West Point graduate. Her husband was a West Pointer. I remember going out to the base, out in the middle of the desert, we had a flat tire and she stood out there and an army truck stopped and a big sergeant got out and she was an attractive lady and he was coming on to her, if that's the expression, and she said that's fine sergeant, I'll tell my husband Colonel Purdue how kind you've been. Well, he stood at attention and she didn't dress him down, but you had to have that kind of spunk to do what she did. She was a soldier's wife. Anyway, I can remember riding in the tank destroyer, my uncle driving the tank destroyer. I can remember my aunt, my grandmother and other ladies having to go into the latrines that the soldiers used. The guards kept the soldiers out. In those days, you just wouldn't look at a lady crosswise. But, they had to use the latrines.

Where was that?

Out in Needles, out at the base. It was primitive out there, awful. They ate in mess tents. They lived there. They lived out in the hot dusty desert before the invasion of North Africa. So, there were two groups of soldiers; the tough, hard soldiers that were tankers and combat trained and then the guys that took care of airplanes that weren't by nature as physically tough and I've heard that there were altercations in town between the two. I never witnessed it personally, but we always had Air Corp. personnel in Las Vegas.

So, walking down the street during the day you would see soldiers in uniform?

Yes. That was before WWII and all through it. Now, at the very end of the War, I saw my first jet. It was a fighter aircraft and it was exhibiting above Las Vegas and it climbed vertically. You could almost look up the pipe of the jet. It was just a phenomenal, you know, the ushering in of a new era. Nellis closed down, I guess, what became Nellis closed in 1946 and sent the town into a real depression. It was later reopened as Nellis Air Force Base and contributed very much to the economy of Las Vegas, especially when we were smaller.

Tell me about when you came back from Washington, D.C. Tell me what it was like to go grocery shopping for your grandmother, her friends, what was life like day to day?

In many ways, life was not that different than it is now. We had a Safeway Store. There was a Soule's Market on Fremont Street. Fremont Street served as, I can remember it being a residential area, the Las Vegas Age being printed on Fremont Street next to the Squires house. I've been in the Squires house a number of times. The depot stood at the head of Fremont Street at Fremont and Main. Cashman Cadillac and at that time it was Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, General Motors, you know, a power house was to the north of the depot. The Chevrolet agency, a great big garage, was on the east side of Main Street, south of the depot. Main Street itself was probably industrial. There was a big Ice House to the south of the depot along the railroad tracks. The Ice House was used to manufacture ice to be used in refrigeration cars for the Pacific Fruit Express that ran between California and the Mid-West and Eastern states.

The Fruit Express just carried produce?

Yes. It was owned by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Southern Pacific Railroad Companies. They iced the freight cars and the ice would be at each end of the car. When you interview Bill Bush, he worked, as a boy, in the Ice House. He knows a lot more about it than I do. So, we had automobile agencies. I can remember Pat Clark's Pontiac being on East Fremont Street and West Lake & Hogan and Chrysler Dodge at 9th and Fremont, just down from where my grandmother's house was. I can remember a Chrysler dealer, I think his name was McDaniel, being on North 2nd. We had cafes. The most prominent cafe where everyone ate was the Silver Cafe run by the Fong family. I guess you'd call it a restaurant. There were gambling halls and bars in that general area. I remember one called the Cinnabar right next to the Silver Cafe. The gambling establishments, I think, ran as far as 2nd Street. Gambling establishments were not allowed after that and it became retail and residential areas. I can remember the Squires' living there. I can remember the Beckley's living at 4th and Carson. The first champagne cork I ever saw popped was in Will Beckley's house. I was there with my grandmother and my step grandfather Clinton Gene Boggs. That's basically where people lived and some of those residences like the Beckley house are now out on the Boulder Highway. They continued into the early 60s. At this time, Mrs. Beckley either passed away or for some reason the house was moved. There were retail stores, the J. C. Penney Company had a store, this is where the clerks would put the money, people would pay in cash in those days, into trolleys. They would pull a cord and the money container would go up to the mezzanine where it would be counted and the money coming down. The sales slip would be made out. That was standard for J. C. Penney.

For each purchase?

If you went in and bought a nightgown, a pair of pants, some socks and it came to $5.00 or $4.50 you'd hand the clerk $5.00 and they would put it in, put the $5.00 and the sales slip in and it would go up a wire tram powered by a spring, I guess, go up to the mezzanine. The 50 cents change would be put in and the thing would come back down again. That's the J. C. Penney Company. Later, Sears was at 6th and Fremont, a big modern building, state of the art. It lasted into the 60s and Central Telephone later bought the building, but it was a concrete, big, two or three story building and you could buy refrigerators, clothes. I can remember buying shoes. The stores now are much nicer, but the basics were all there.

Churches?

The church that I mainly attended was the First Methodist Church on 3rd and Carson. St. Joan of Arc's Catholic was on South 2nd, south of Carson. It was the biggest church in town. The Mormon Church was a big English style building at 9th and Lewis, just catty corner from where the high school property was at 9th and Lewis. That was ‘the' Mormon Church and then, I guess, they broke it down to wards and the 1st and 2nd wards would meet at different times there. I think there was an Episcopal Church, but for some reason, although my mother was an Episcopalian, I think it was because they didn't have a Sunday school, for some reason I didn't go. But, there was an Episcopal Church because it refers to an Episcopal priest semi-officiating at my mother's funeral. Why they didn't send me there, I really don't know. There was a Christian Science Reading Room later, a beautiful Christian Science Church in the region of Las Vegas High School. Now when I say the high school, I refer to Las Vegas High School that was a big WPA project and really as nice a school as existed in the country. It was three stories high, had a hallway down the middle, classes on each side and stairs at the north and south end. My wife Cheryl or Jim Jones or Dave Wells can speak to Las Vegas High School.

Tell me about your school days. Where did you start? When you came here, you were already.?

I was three or four years old, something like that.

Where did you start school?

I started school at the Las Vegas Grammar School which later became 5th Street School. Both my uncles and my mother had gone to the same school building. It was a stucco building. There were three buildings comprising the High School. Starting with the north side was the kindergarten and 1st grade. Then, to the south of that was a two story building with a great big boiler in its midst and that's where I went to the 2nd grade, not the 3rd grade because I went to the 3rd grade in Washington, D. C. The 4th grade was right above the boiler and one of the great teachers in Las Vegas, Mrs. Florence Burrell was our teacher. Then, I graduated from the 5th grade into a smaller one-story building, the same size as the kindergarten and 1st grade and I think there were four classrooms in that. Now, on the same property, until 1932, Las Vegas High School had been there. Las Vegas High School burned. The big building that's still there is the Cultural Arts School. That became Las Vegas High School and they built the mission style buildings that are now county buildings. That was the 6th, 7th and 8th grades. It had a big gymnasium with bleachers and a stage. A wood shop had been there. It was really quite interesting. We had no air-conditioning. We would merely open the French doors in May for air. I think school let out the end of May. You can't tolerate what we were told that we had to tolerate. Being the mission style, it had breezeways and that's where we went to grammar school. Then high school was at Las Vegas High School which was the high school in town until Rancho came in 1956.

All the elementary schools, were those integrated or was that one integrated?

Yes, it was. There was also a grammar school that maybe went up to the 2nd or 4th grade or something over on the Westside. There was North 9th Street School and then John S. Park was built at the beginning of the war. We called it Huntridge because it was really, officially John S. Park, but we called it Huntridge because it was built in the Huntridge housing district that, I guess, McNeil built. Huntridge is still there. It was built for workers, the expanding population of Las Vegas. I can remember in the 1st grade one little black boy. His name was Leonard. I haven't seen him since, but I remember one time rubbing the top of his head because it was different. It irritated him so I didn't do it again. I didn't mean to be offensive. Then, a lot more people came up from the South to work at BMI. They lived on the Westside and they would walk back and forth from the Westside to 5th Street to the integrated schools. The schools were absolutely integrated.

So, they walked from H Street, over in that area, to 5th Street?

I don't know if this is politically correct, but I know that black kids had to walk or get somehow to practice at Clark High School, this is 20 years ago, so guess who gets stronger. You know when mommy drives him in her air-conditioned Cadillac or the black kid pedals from the Westside over to Clark. They could well have been bussed from high school back to the Westside. I'm not sure about that. I've gone to school with back kids at Las Vegas Grammar School from the beginning.

Do you remember Asians and Mexican Americans as well?

Yes. One of our best friends in the group of boys that we ran around with was John Inamoto. At that time, he claimed to be Korean. Somehow, they escaped not having to go into the camps. There was Andrew Zuna, who I later saw was a carpenter and head of the Carpenter's Apprentice Trust. I see Andy off and on. There was one kid and I forget his name, died a little while ago, was a lightweight or flyweight boxing champion. It was integrated. There was a very bright girl in our 4th grade class. In Las Vegas Grammar School, it was I think they called it A, B, C, D. This was A, being your top students, which would, in effect, be college prep. If you were not doing well you would go from A back to B. Lewis Richardson, we called him C Bone, I don't know why, tremendous personality, people loved him. This is a lesson in sensitivity. They said, "Now Lewis speak before the class". He said, "I don't want to." Why not? Well, he stuttered and they laughed at him. It wasn't because he was black, it was because he stuttered, but it sounded cute and then I thought, by god, that really bothers Lewis Richardson. Then, Milt Fox, a harder, tougher guy than Lewis, kind of bounced back between A and B. I can remember at a high school reunion, the only one I've attended, some of the black kids that went to Vegas High and grammar school came back and they were just classmates. That's kind of the way it was. I learned integration at 5th Street Grammar School.

Your mother was born here in 1909. Did she ever tell you early stories about that far back? Do you remember any of her stories?

I have pictures of her as a little girl. They moved the family back from what became Jean, Nevada up to Goodsprings. My grandfather drove team and picked up ore from the various mines and would get amounts of ore together from many small amounts into a large amount and get a much better price from the smelter to process the ore and he would take a portion of the profits. He also had a dry goods store in Goodsprings and he built the Hotel Fayle, which was the Goodsprings Hotel. It's a two-story building. When it was opened, it was a gala event. My mother talked about sleeping out on the porch on the second floor. My mother has talked about how she and her brothers rode burros around the hills of Goodsprings. It was literally a mining town. There were no paved streets, of course. I guess the toilets flushed and then they emptied in some ditch down stream from the town. There was a water supply there. They went to a one-room schoolhouse. Later they came into Las Vegas. I think they boarded with the Squires during the school year because it was 30 miles from Goodsprings to Las Vegas, which, by automobile, would be a day's drive. Tires would puncture. I think she had a restricted childhood because of her sickness. She was taken to San Bernardino and Los Angeles to doctors there and then, as I said, spent her 14th and 15th year flat on her back where she learned French and then could speak it. Now, also, I'm going to throw this in. My mother graduated from Mills College, which is one of the prestigious women's colleges on the West Coast in History and when she was divorced had to go back to Las Vegas High School to learn shorthand and typing so that she could get a job. She was then secretary for Roland Wiley who was the District Attorney of Clark County in 1940, roughly. She worked at the Apache Hotel, which became the Horseshoe. The Apache was a brick building, had an elevator and was very, very lovely. On Fremont Street they had gambling on the first floor, a restaurant and then an elevator. It may have been a three-story building.

Did they have rooms for rent?

Yes, hotel rooms. It was a hotel. The Sal Sagev at Main and Fremont, Las Vegas spelled backwards, I can remember that. That was a state of the art. I don't think they had air-conditioning, but they sure had big towers for evaporative cooling, water towers. There was the Overland Hotel on the north side of Fremont Street. I don't know much about it. A bus stopped there and it was the Overland Stage. So, there was bus riding in the early 40s, if not the 30s.

The busses would go where?

I guess to St. George and Salt Lake.

Are we talking about Trailways, Greyhound busses?

I think they called it the Overland Stage, but I don't remember when I first started seeing Greyhound busses or Trailways.

What about the movies?

There were two theaters early to late 30s, early 40s. The El Portal on Fremont Street owned by Ernie Cragin and the Palace Theater which later became the Guild Theater on 2nd Street. The El Portal was by far the more elegant. It had loges. Occasionally, we would get a loge and I would sit on the armrest as a little boy and watch [the show]. They were leather loges, beautiful loges. It had ersatz balconies along the wall. Movie theaters in the 30s and 40s were very, very grand. Palace was a little less grand. The first picture I remember seeing was "Stage Coach" with John Wayne. I'm confident that that was at the El Portal Theater. Then, I think, at the Palace Theater, "The Mikado" by Gilbert & Sullivan. I remember hearing "The Mikado" and I related to that. Those are just two that stuck in my mind. I can remember when "Gone With the Wind" came to Las Vegas. I can remember "Snow White." So, we had movies, the best movies. We had one radio station, KENO. I remember my mother saying, oh, that's Max Kelch and that's how I remember the name being presented. Las Vegas, other than that there were slot machines in the grocery stores and gambling establishments, we sort of knew they were there. Oh, one kind of a cute thing about how things were, my grandmother and grandfather when he was Clint Boggs' Chief of Police, they at that time had Donald the Scottie. Donald was probably born about 1930 or so and Clint Boggs swore that the dog could understand English. Something was said and he went over and bit a cat and killed it. My grandmother wanted to get dog bite insurance for the dog and the insurance agent came out and laughed and said, you want insurance for that dog. Well, Donald got up and walked over and bit him. So, she was able to get insurance. In the late 30s, we would go up to the Boulder Club and gamble. Donald would go up Fremont Street and would sleep on the sidewalk outside. Men would pass, good morning, Donald, hi Donald, and so forth. It was just that kind of a town. You know the ex-Chief of Police's dog. The dog died of old age in the spring of 1944, so he was 13 or 14 years old. He lived in Las Vegas during the depression.

So, gambling had no real impression or no real significance in your family?

Clint would gamble and evidently Leonard Fayle, his stepson, my uncle, said that Clint had a dealer who would go and let him give a sign as to when to take a hit and when to hold. I remember Clint saying he lost $50. or he won $50., but he did like to gamble. Now, whether his stories are true or not, Bill Ellis who ran Sloan and was my mother's second cousin, claimed that Clint got most of his cowboy stories out of dime novels. All I know is that my grandmother's stories had embellishments.

What kind of stories did Boggs ever tell you about when he was sheriff?

Chief of Police? What it was like. You had the dam being built, you had, along with that, bootleggers and then you had, you remember when some gangster from Chicago came through town, but supposedly they weren't advised of it until he came. He said he could have set up a road block on Highway 91, a two lane road of only about 15 feet, 30 feet wide at the most, no shoulder. So, it would be easy enough in theory to set up a roadblock. I don't remember the name of the gangster. He would tell stories of arrests. I would sit there and listen, but I can't remember entirely. He put the first radios in police cars in Las Vegas. You had a tough element; gamblers and bootleggers, construction workers and he claimed he was able to control them. I think he lost his job because of politics. He insisted on his brother being on the police force and the joke was among my part of the family that Frank Boggs knew where the body was buried. He'd sit and watch Clint work. Clink could work with his hands. He could do woodwork, just could do lots and lots of things. A man over six feet tall, weighed over 200 pounds, the men were corpulent in those days and a very powerful man who could shoot very, very well. He claimed to have been a cowboy. He probably was, but it is hard to say. He was a real western man.

What did he do after leaving that job in the police department?

Basically, retirement. Oh, I know, he built the Boggs Building whose tenant was the J. C. Penney Company that I talked about. He built it pretty much by himself with his brother Frank looking on. It was the Boggs Building, plural, Frank and Clint. Clint ran it. A name you'll run across, the manager of the Penney's store was Harv Perry. Joy Lynn Vandenberg's father Johnson who later had Johnson's store worked for Harv Perry at J. C. Penney Company, so there is a tie in there. He gambled and married my grandmother and they had assets of their own and that's kind of the way they lived. He lived in my grandmother's house at 9th and Carson, but he took care of it.

Tell me about your schooling once you finished high school.

With the exception of the 3rd grade, I started in kindergarten and went through to half of the 9th grade at Vegas High School. When my grandmother died, I then went down to preparatory school at Harvard School which was an experience. Here I was a hick from a railroad town of Las Vegas and going to school with the rich kids in Los Angeles. It was something else. I boarded there for three and one half years, which was worse than the army.

What was that experience like? How did you feel about it?

Well, not very good. It was a depressing time. The only thing that kept me out of trouble, kept me from smoking was that I found out that, I wasn't very strong and I had tremendous endurance and I could run and eventually became Southern California champion in the half mile and third in the State of California. That gave me peer recognition. I feel very strongly about intercollegiate sports and how good they are for boys. It gives them peer recognition. I've talked to black kids from the Westside and the coaches were their surrogate fathers. They had fathers, they had discipline and the same way for a white kid. All of a sudden, you put on a uniform, you put on a tracksuit and it doesn't matter. All that matters is who can get from the starting gun to the tape fastest.

So, you are building self-esteem.

Exactly, and strength.

Women are just getting into sports now. For years, we really didn't have that many sporting activities for women. Even if you ran track or you played basketball, you couldn't go on to college with it. Women have suffered from self-esteem problems. Do you think that maybe there is a correlation there?

I think that one of the great developments of the past, since the 1960s, is the development of women's interscholastic and intercollegiate sports. When I was in high school in Southern California, about the only sport that I saw was tennis and girls got to go to Ohi. They could play tennis. I really don't think except for intramural sports that there were really any other collegiate sports. They may have had swimming. California schools have swimming pools in the high schools, but I'm not really sure about that because I went to a boy's school. I do know that girls did play tennis. The first time I saw women in track and field, we were at the Modesto relays when I was at USC and I thought it was a joke. Later when I was in the army in Germany, Europe had track and field and I said, gosh, they're not lesbians, well they may be. They were very feminine. They ran, they did the shot. They did all these things. Wow, that's neat. Then, I began to think about it. Girls don't learn in school how to take a whipping. The best thing about intercollegiate sports is that you work so hard and still get beat. Guess what gang, you get up, you wipe your nose off and then you go on. Girls didn't learn that.

What does that do for a person once you become an adult?

First of all the discipline. You build your body. I believe very strongly, on a personal basis, in the YMCA idea of body, mind and spirit.

(End of tape)

We're talking about women's sports. I think it is one of the great developments of the latter part of the 20th century. For instance, my niece, Leonard Fayle's granddaughter has just finished competing in the track and field championships to form the team to go to Australia. She was number four and three, of course, go. It was a big disappointment because her first throw put her in first place, she couldn't exceed her first throw. She is 5' 11", roughly 175 pounds, powerful, but a very feminine woman and just lovely. She teaches English in high school in Stamford, Connecticut. She taught special English for a while and told the kids, if you don't behave, I'll sit on you. She has trained hard. I got to know some of the other hammer throwers just by talking to her. It's great. They are held in the same esteem that the men are and I really think it is a great development. Now, for instance, in my grandmother's day and before that, my grandmother slept on the cold ground when her husband had driven his team up. Women shared the same difficulties. They gave birth on the trail. If you were down South, chopping cotton, you gave birth in the corner of the field and swaddled the child and went back to work. Women have done hard work throughout the centuries. So, why can't they compete and build their bodies? They have to be stronger and better for it.

Was there a female component to Harvard School?

No, it was an Episcopal school. Our headmaster was a priest who came from the east and was, in effect, controlled by the Bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles. It also had an ROTC unit where you learned military tactics and so forth. We used 1903 Springfield rifles that the army had used. It was like the army. The first weekend I was there, I came in half way through the school year, I didn't make my bed on Sunday morning and I was told to bend over and I took a swat on the bottom with wide military belts. So, I learned how to make my bed on Sunday morning. We stood inspections on Saturday morning. It was just like the army. It was interesting.

Where did you go to school after Harvard?

To USC to run track. That was my big ambition. I found out, as my son later on did, that I was small but slow. I really didn't have it. The practice field at USC was like the CIF Championships. I used to crawl off the field ready to throw up or something else. We practiced. We worked out at USC with Mal Whitfield who had been Olympic champion in '48 and '52. He was from Jefferson High School and went to Ohio State. Nice guy and at that time, USC was entirely white as far as their athletes. It was not integrated. Later USC integrated [along] with the other schools, as did the rest of the country.

What was your major?

Finance.

When you finished, what did you do with that major?

I then went on and got married in 1960 and went to work for Eastman, Dillon Union Securities as a trainee which meant marking the board. Marking the board is taking the quotes off the tape and putting them on the chalkboard.

Is that in Los Angeles?

In Las Vegas. That was the only brokerage house in town and I became a stockbroker and later went on and went to what we call the [buy]side and became an investment manager and portfolio manager. Then, much later, [I] specialized in pension funds which we call tax-free, as opposed to managing money for taxable and rich folks. These were tax-free accounts in which it doesn't matter how you build up the account because tax is of no consideration. And, there are pension funds for retirement of Union men. They are called Union Funds, but they are not really. They are trust funds which are the deferred wages of workingmen. I learned a lot about organized labor during that time.

Who did you marry?

I married, first of all, Margaret McGrath in Los Angeles. We married in St. Brendan's Church in Los Angeles and then came up to Las Vegas. We were married for 25 years and divorced and I married Cheryl. I had three children, Jean, Donald and Douglas. Jean went to Our Lady of Las Vegas School then to Hyde Park and then to Clark High School. Don went to Our Lady of Las Vegas School, Hyde Park and then to Clark and Douglas went to West Charleston and Howard Wasden and then on to Clark High School.

So, no one went to boarding school?

No, we were considering sending my younger son to boarding school and I said, absolutely not. We won't do it. Jean went to University of California at San Diego, majored in chemistry, biology and sociology and is a chemist in Austin, Texas with two children. Don went to California Lutheran to try and play football there and, again, he found out he was small but slow and transferred to the University of Nevada at Reno and Douglas went into the Marine Corps after high school and, he is kind of my rebel, he is probably the most responsible now. Jean's a chemist, Don's in the construction industry and Douglas is a construction superintendent. Douglas has a way with men. He can build a house in two-thirds the time as the normal construction superintendent. It just happened. The Marine Corps did a lot for him.

I know that you are retired now. Tell me about your hobbies and hobbies that have been life long hobbies.

When I first got married, we used to play tennis out at the Las Vegas Racquet Club which was way out in the country then and a Professor Curitan that headed the physical education department at the University of Illinois came and spoke at the YMCA and spoke of conditioning. Now, in those days, in the early 60s, no one ran. Exercise was virtually unknown. He talked about it. He was a man in his 60s, big man, big chest and so forth, but ran every day. He gave us physical tests and I thought I was in pretty good shape. I was an absolute zero. I was a facade and so I began, instead of drinking after work, in those days, men would go drink after work and then stumble home. It just wasn't a good scene. I started going to the YMCA and began working out which became a hobby for me.

Did your male friends go with you?

Very, very few. Most of those guys went out and drank gin or stuff out at the hotels or bars and most of them got divorced much before I did. It was just a way of life that wasn't good. It was the day of a two or three martini lunch. Drinking was much more prevalent then. Smoking was. I started smoking when I was 21 or 22. I smoked for 20 years. We had no idea how bad it was. After I stopped smoking, finally when I quit for good, I put down a quarter of a pack of Winston's and every day for seven years I wanted a cigarette. They are insidious.

Do you think the tobacco companies are right to be sued today?

I think so, yes. I just wish that young people would wise up. But, that's another thing.

Tell me about other activities that you and your family got involved with; the kind of clubs that you joined, what kind of family activities did you participate in together?

We went on picnics. We took a house at the beach, when the kids were younger, for a week or a month, some such fare as that. We would make a trip to the Grand Canyon, a family outing, go down to Los Angeles where my wife's parents still lived and then they subsequently moved to North San Diego County. We would go and visit them. I played some tennis, but then really began running and exercising. Then, about 1970, I started helping coach Pop Warner Football and worked with youth. I coached youth basketball. I've coached baseball. One year, I coached football, basketball, baseball and then football again without an interruption. I got so sick and tired of listening to my own voice. One time, the Valley Times used to have the high school football games and they'd have the starting teams of Clark, Gorman, Western, Valley and so forth. I remember having kids that played for us on the Western, Gorman and Clark football teams. You know, it helped them besides strengthening them. The only trouble with that is that organized sports are so elitist. I don't know what the answer is.

Tell me about Pop Warner.

It's youth football. We coached the 10 through 12 year olds. Our team was basically from the residential area of Hyde Park. In Las Vegas, a portion of the Westside neighborhoods go to Clark, to Western, to Las Vegas High School, so we'd get the kids that would go to Las Vegas High School. One kid came over, Henry Thorne, you had to be 10 through 12 and had to have a birth certificate to prove that you were 12. Well, we couldn't quite get a birth certificate out of Henry and found out that he was just 13 years old. He was ashamed that he hadn't admitted it. It taught him a lesson, though. The head coach was Jack Casson, who was the Phillips 66 dealer, a real wealthy guy. I'm sure we could have figured out how to get Henry Thorne a birth certificate. He said, no, son, it isn't right. Well, to this day, Henry Thorne is a friend of mine. He's a friend of my kids. It was a good lesson. He went on to star at Clark High School and later played at UNLV. He's about 5' 5", 5' 6". When my son played in the same defensive backfield, the Valley team said, why don't you get some players we can see? But, he was just dynamite, but he became a very, very good friend because we taught him that you play fair and square.

Tell me about your civic organizations.

My first venture into civic was on the Board of Directors of the YMCA. I served on the Board of Directors of the American Red Cross. I joined the Las Vegas Rotary Club in 1965 which has been a tremendous influence on me. My uncle, Leonard Fayle, made me join the club. In those days, you did what your elders told you to. I thought, this is a joke. This is a big Babbitt organization. What am I doing here? It became a very good group.

How did it influence you? In what way?

Youth sports, coaching youth was a big thing. It's a service club, so you have community activities or international. We sent exchange students to foreign countries and brought them back here and at a Las Vegas Rotary Club meeting at any time you can have visitors from France, Israel, Germany, Mexico, it's an international organization. It expanded my scope.

Give me an example of an activity or project that you participated in with the Rotary that impressed you.

I think the biggest project that I can remember undertaking was the development of the Joe Shoong Park on East Charleston. Joe Shoong Park was for handicapped children and one of the things they have is like a clay pipe with sand in it that a kid in a wheelchair can play in the sand. I couldn't imagine, beforehand, a child not being able to play in the sand. To my idea, a handicapped child was a 5'8" half-miler like me or my son at 5'7" trying to play d-back. That was a handicap. I'm being facetious, but all of the swings and slides set up for the handicapped. The concept of sand in a clay pipe so that a child in a wheelchair can play in the sand. We got down there, a group of us, we cleared brush, we did physical work, and we had workdays. When I was president, it was just when we were winding that up. We needed $5,000. for equipment. Bang, bang, bang, the money was raised, just like that.

How do you do your fund raising for those kinds of activities?

We fine. We pay fines and a portion of the money goes into the trust fund with a tax number and so forth that's been set up and then we disburse money as needed. We prefer that it be a capital type object, thing, and that Rotary get some recognition for it. Boy Scouts, Boy's Club, and people like that come, and this has been historically true in Rotary.

When you say pay fines, is it more like paying a fee?

It's a fine, in other words, you have to stand up and if your name's been in the paper, if you've had a child, you have to stand up and explain it. It's a way of introducing you to the club and you try to be clever, the president does, on fining the member. Actually, you're assessed.

Give me an idea of how that's done.

Ok, if your name is in the paper, you've changed jobs, you've had a promotion, for instance, Tom Wiesner, a prominent guy in town attended the Republican Convention in Philadelphia. So, he stands up. Tom, I understand you were out of town the week of whatever date in July. Yes. Well, where were you. I was at the Republican Convention. Oh, what did you do there? I saw George Bush. That's very good Tom and would you mind paying $200. for that. This didn't really happen, but it could. This is a for instance.

A way of recognizing people and playfully fining them. At the beginning of the year you say, I'd be willing to contribute $100., $200.

Tell me about the organizations that your wife belonged to.

The biggest thing was the Service League which later became the Junior League. The biggest thing I can remember about the Junior League is that they had neat parties and everybody used to drink an awful lot. They, before my wife belonged to it, raised the money for the big park down by where Cashman Park is now. They had a locomotive there. There were very nice things that were done by the Service League. My wife now, Cheryl, has been working on the Whitehead House. A house that, I remember it as a convent over on North 7th Street, if I'm not mistaken. The house was built in 1929 and was called a mansion. It could well have been. The house was going to be razed. The Junior League wanted to set up and have the downtown area as a reconstruction. There are really some very nice houses that were built on 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Streets during the 30s and the neighborhoods have deteriorated to the point that they are now lawyer's offices. But, the Whitehouse house was going to be put on property that they bought at 9th and Bridger, just a block from where I was raised. The house was sitting on 10th and Carson and burned. So that was destroyed. They are trying to help restore downtown Las Vegas. Las Vegas doesn't remember its history. [If] it gets a little bit old, it's torn down.

Right, we see that not just in houses, but in the casinos and everything.

Yes, the Desert Inn, beautiful and it's going down. Tear it down and rebuild it bigger.

The library closes in about 15 minutes so we should probably stop right here.

(End of session)

Today is August 23, 2000 and it is the second session with Mr. Bert Purdue. So, how are you today?

Very well, thank you.

When I listened to the tape I realized that I didn't have your date of birth.

All right. That is November 12, 1934.

When you were growing up here, did you ever hear people talk about Dude Ranches or Guest Ranches?

Yes, for some reason I was never aware of the Kyle Ranch in North Las Vegas. I heard about it later. I don't know why. We were aware that there were ranches in Paradise Valley and it's hard to place them, where they were, relative to the way Paradise Valley is now. But, yes, I had heard of them.

We talked about gambling a bit and you told me about a friend of yours who would win sometimes and lose sometimes. I want to go to the 50s and talk about the infiltration of the mob into gambling here in Las Vegas. How did that, for a citizen growing up here and at this time you are an adult, how did you see that? What influence did they have in your life, in the community's life?

The only thing I saw, I was not really here in the 50s. I had left Las Vegas in January or February of 1950 to go to Harvard School, but would come back to Las Vegas High School and visit my friends, visit the high school, go to football games, that sort of thing. My strong impression is that Las Vegas had turned from a railroad town into a gambling town. By, roughly, 1953-55, I used to see high school kids with cars that were nicer than the rich kids at my prep school had. It had turned into, you may or may not know about Freckles and His Friends, the comic strip, but that's how Las Vegas High School was. It was a high school of 700 or 800 students, but it could have been picked up and put in any part of the country, primarily the mid-west. Las Vegas maintained the attitude of a small mid-western city until probably 10 or 15 years ago. I saw a definite change in the students, in the attitude of the student body of the high school from say 1950 to 1954-55. It just changed.

Tell me about that change. Describe that change.

More affluent, faster. Las Vegas sophisticated, again, I keep emphasizing that Las Vegas was a railroad town with gambling establishments, one or two, three hotels on the strip, most of the gambling done on Fremont Street and that changed. It stopped being a railroad town and it became a gambling community. It was a faster, more affluent student body. It didn't have, to me, the same virtues of little Las Vegas. It was in the process of changing.

When you first went to Harvard School, you told me that you felt like you were from a little hick town, sort of, and now you were going to a more sophisticated area. When you came back to visit here, did you feel as if your friends were becoming more sophisticated?

Not the friends I grew up with. You could see it a little bit. The change was in people that were, say, other folks that had come into Las Vegas, into Las Vegas High School, maybe two or three years younger. There was a different element. As a for instance, I used to ride a bus between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It used to go through Victorville, California. A year after I was in Los Angeles, I would say, my god, how could anyone live in Victorville, California? Now, it's changed into almost a bedroom community for Los Angeles, so it too has changed. My attitude changed appreciably.

Did you feel that Las Vegas became a safer community, physically? Did it become safer when the mob came into town?

I would say most definitely, until recently. For instance, 10, 15, 20 years ago there were instances of rape in hotel rooms, people being attacked in the parking lots. It never would have happened during the period of the mob. It would not have been done because I think, literally, they used to take people out in the desert and bury them or else put chains around them and dump them in Lake Mead. Weather that is actually true, I don't know, but it was sure known that you didn't, you or I could walk through the parking lot during the period when the mob ran it, whereas, 20 years ago you would be very worried if it were at night. I think that has changed with improved security, officers on bicycles, even horses. Security has been improved. Now, that is an impression and really subjective.

The reason I ask is because it's a question that I kind of ask everybody and it's amazing that almost everyone that I've ever interviewed, had the same impression. So, there must be something to it. At the end of WWII, we entered the Cold War period. Atomic bombs were being tested not that far from Las Vegas. How did the government alert the Las Vegas community that a test was about to happen?

I never actually saw a test. I was away. My wife Cheryl worked several summers at the Test Site, but there were pictures of people sitting on tall buildings watching the mushroom cloud. I know that soldiers were here within half mile of the detonation site and it was just part of the community. It was just something that happened. Las Vegas Rotary Club's logo used to be a mushroom cloud. When I was president in 1970, I said maybe we ought to change that and people said, why? So, it's only been maybe in the last 15 years or so that people are aware of the dangers, of being afraid of nuclear fallout.

You were away from which period of time?

1950 to 1960. I made visits to Las Vegas.

So, for that period you were in Harvard School and USC. When you came back, we were at the point of beginning the civil rights movement. In 1960, the strip was integrated.

Probably, yes.

How do you remember coming back in 1960? Do you remember any of the incidents of a civil rights movement?

My only direct recollection was in 1962, could have been 1963, I was elected to the Republican Central Committee for Clark County and the question of civil rights came up primarily related to integrating the clientele at the Sal Sagev or the various gambling spots and the Republican Party was almost overwhelmed, but not taken over, by the John Birch Society. My initial reaction when I heard of the John Birch Society was that, yeah, great, there are opposed to communism. I probably ought to be a John Bircher. So, I thought about it. I saw them in action and said, my gosh, these people have no sense of compromise whatsoever. They're zealots. This is not good. Our whole country is based on compromise. At the Central Committee's meeting, a man who later became a County Commissioner, Woodrow Wilson, stood up and said, this party is either going to endorse civil rights or not. Let's fish or cut bait. Let's get with it. I said, my gosh, that man has courage. I wouldn't have stood up in front of them. He did and I thought about it and thought, you know, he's absolutely right. There is no reason why a person cannot enter a casino, hotel or anything else. He is absolutely right. That's my personal introduction to it. Later, I got to know Woodrow Wilson fairly well, very decent man. I suspect a lot of people are the same way. But marches or something like that, I have no recollection. I just remember that Sammy Davis, Jr. could not stay at the hotel at which he was entertaining and then some 20 years later, he bought me a drink in the Las Vegas Country Club and he was an awfully nice guy. I think the whole country is progressing that way.

Was Woodrow Wilson the only African-American man in that room that day?

Could well have been. I mean, to this day there aren't many Afro-American Republicans and there would have been before the New Deal, before Roosevelt in 1932, but from the period of 1932 to the present……

(End of side one, tape two)

That's all of my awareness of the civil rights movement in Southern Nevada.

When you talked about the Republican Central Committee, were John Birchers in the audience that day?

John Birchers were members. There were John Birchers who were members of the Committee. When you're talking of the Committee, there were probably 100 people, men and women.

Earlier in the interview, last time you were here, you described Las Vegas as a Jim Crow town. Was it any different from Los Angeles? You spent a tiny bit of time in Washington, D.C. and you might not remember that because you were so young, but if you compare it with other cities at that time, maybe other cities in the Southwest that you visited as a young boy or young man, how would you have compared Las Vegas?

Las Vegas was almost like Washington, D.C. When I graduated from High School, I went back and spent the summer with my father and I worked for a magazine distributing company and an African-American and I were on the same truck. He was a little bit older. I had to go into the drug store to get him a coke. Now, I don't know if that was at the beginning of 1953, but it was right in that era. So, Washington, D.C. was a very segregated city. Las Vegas was a great deal like that. Afro-Americans could shop at Penney's or at Sears, they could not go into the casinos. In fact, something that had startled me because it was unusual, I was in the Sahara in that early 60 period and remember seeing a very nice looking man in uniform, an Air Force officer, an Afro-American, so he had just been allowed, an officer in the United States Armed Forces, to come into the hotel. I remember the image in my minds eye. It's hard to remember how segregated it was.

Give me the story behind Sammy Davis, Jr. buying a drink for you.

Oh, I was sitting at the bar at the Las Vegas Country Club and he was there and he bought three or four people a round of drinks. I said, thank you, tipped my glass and he acknowledged it, but you could just see, I mean the man radiated with personality. I just felt I was in the presence of a genuinely nice man.

Over the years, since the early 60s, how has race relations changed? Not just between black and white, but tell me about Asians in the community, Mexican-Americans, what changes do you see?

I think that the country as a whole, but in Las Vegas there is a willingness to accept people for their own sakes. This goes for, I think, right down the spectrum. Jewish people, Mexican-Americans, Afro-Americans, I think there is an ability to say, gee, Claytee is a very bright woman, she also happens to be black, but I think the whole thing comes in, her whole persona comes in and she is a very accomplished person, and I feel that this kind of thing is a matter of progress. Something that wouldn't have happened in 1960 is now, and will be, better.

When you got back, the mob had a hold on the city and then a person came along named Howard Hughes. Was there another shift? You just told me about shifting from a railroad town to a gambling town. Was there another shift when Howard Hughes came along?

More evolutionary. At first, I had the strong impression that his FBI men that he had, you know, his executives didn't know much about gaming. That is a talent in itself. When I was a stockbroker, I did quite a bit of business with perhaps the last, rear guard of the mob, Sidney Weiman, Bob Reisenot and Charlie Rich. I knew them and they ran the Dunes with an iron hand. They were just different. They were honorable men. If they handed you a wad of bills and said there was $150,000., it was $150.000. There was just no question about it.

Any stories you want to tell me about transactions with them?

I think I'd rather not because I don't know how much would be still in the era of confidence. But, they were fun to deal with. If they trusted you, then it was a handshake, but if they ever found out that you did not act in a trustworthy fashion there was a good chance that you would be physically abused.

Now, tell me about Howard Hughes days here.

This was quite a stir. Howard Hughes was coming to town. We didn't know if he was having, you know, Jean Peters, his wife then, was living at the hotel or where ever he was. It was just, what's Howard Hughes doing? I was asked that question in New York and it was the question everyone was asking themselves. Paul Laxalt was governor of the State at that time. I remember him making a speech to the Rotary Club that we, in Nevada, are accepting, so we must take Howard Hughes at face value until he proves otherwise. But, it took a while for Howard Hughes to make his presence felt the way the Summa Corporation has. Everyone always talked about the property he owned out near Red Rock. Well, it has since become Summerlin. But there was a looking forward, gee, Howard Hughes is here, it's going to be great. For instance, I think Mr. Tiberti was paid his lien on the Landmark because of Howard Hughes. You might ask him about that.

Then once he started buying all this property, the hotels, the Landmark, the Desert Inn, what was the talk in town about him?

It's just funny. He had someone, darn it, I'm trying to think of the man's name because he ran for congress, but he was in charge of buying properties throughout the State, lot of mining claims in Tonopah. They bought things and I think the expression is, "a pig in a poke." They sold him a lot of stuff that was not very good and my family has mining claims that we've had since WWI out in the Goodsprings area. I kept telling my uncle, we ought to get to these people to sell them this stuff and get out. We never did. We probably should have. There was a presence felt, but they bought the properties, but it seems to me that they didn't do a lot with them in the sense of capital development. They were feeling their way around and I don't think they were ever really comfortable owning gambling properties. This is purely an observation. I got that directly from one of their executives, oh, ten years ago. They got out of the Desert Inn because they didn't know what they were doing.

When you came back to the city in the early 60s, did you go to work as a stockbroker?

Yes, I went to work as a trainee. As a matter of fact, one of my duties was to mark the chalkboard. Three million shares was a big day on Wall Street and you could literally take the prices and then, Union Pacific is trading at 51 and the 51 l/8 and then back to 51 and you'd mark the progress and prices. It was marked on a chalkboard as it had since the time of the Buddenwood Agreement, I would suppose. Then, quote machines began to come in. Now, my own desk, as a portfolio manager, used to be able to ring up prices, news, any number of things. The revolution in technology was just absolutely amazing.

At what point did you become a member of civic organizations; the Rotary Club and other organizations?

During the 1960s. The first time I was on the Board of Directors was for the YMCA. That was an experience. My uncle made me join the Las Vegas Rotary Club in 1965, which I didn't have any idea what I was doing there and just really resented it. Later, it's become a very significant part of my life.

The American Red Cross as well?

That was later on.

So at first, it was the YMCA and the Rotary Club?

Yes. I later began coaching youth sports; Pop Warner Football and basketball and baseball.

But, the civic groups were the Rotary Club and the YMCA. Maybe the Rotary Club was the most influential?

Yes, by far because I've been a member more than half of my life.

What has that club meant to you and what has it meant to Las Vegas?

It's something where I've gotten to know people that I never would have any other way, people that have become very dear friends. Over a long period of time, it's allowed me to do different things for the community, for international relations and it's a way of putting back into the community.

At the same time that you are participating heavily in the Rotary Club, the city is growing rapidly. What role does the Rotary Club play in this development of the City?

It varies from year to year. I painted rooms down in Child Haven. I think we talked about the Park that was built for the Handicapped. The Las Vegas Rotary Club helped build huts for the Boy Scouts down where the Post Office is. The Rotary Club, during the WWII sponsored USO projects. We have done things like that over the years. Some Rotary fiscal years have done a great deal, others, we haven't done much at all. It just [varies] from administration to administration.

At one time, the NAACP Office here was integrated. Greenspun was a life member of the NAACP. Did you know people who were members of the NAACP at that time?

I don't think [so] personally. I met Mr. Greenspun when I used to work out at the YMCA. He came down there for about a five of six-month period. More than anything, we argued about the Vietnam War, or discussed it.

That's interesting. Was there any war protesting here?

I don't remember any.

Since Howard Hughes, how has the business climate changed in your estimation, the corporate structure?

Well, for instance, the Union Pacific Railroad used to be a very significant corporation relative to Las Vegas and now, you know, I used to know the person who was in charge of operations here. I don't even think about the Union Pacific Railroad any more even though they haul a lot of freight. It's just on a relative basis. The emergence of the airport, I can remember when it was just a little terminal out where McCarran is now. In fact, I can remember when it was at the side of Nellis Air Force Base. It was Western Air Express, I believe. My mother and my stepmother took me down. We flew to Burbank and I went down to see an eye doctor. I didn't have glasses until 20 years after that. In my lifetime, it's gone from a little terminal with about two gates into the huge airport that it is now. It's just absolutely incredible, but at the same time, the Union Pacific Railroad which had one of the most significant buildings in town, the new Art Deco streamliner depot, it was built in 1940 or 41, that's disappeared and it's become the Union Plaza Hotel, which probably should disappear. What a dump, but that's beside the point.

What does a businessman see as the pivotal points of change in this city? If you look at business changes, not just the Howard Hughes and the railroads, how do businessmen look at the cities business activities?

I think there was something like a 10 or 15-year period until roughly 1988 that a new hotel was built on the strip. Since that time, the building on the strip has just been fantastic. The clientele, fueled by large airplanes from 747's on down that could bring masses of people to town. The highway between here and Los Angeles can't handle any more now than they could 20 years ago and it's, in fact, less because there are so many people on them. But, the development of the airplane was a tremendously important one. The building of the new hotels and, then, Citibank became a big employer. The fact that, even through the Vietnamese war, Nellis Air Force Base served as a testing range and training area for Operation Red Flag. It's still a big contributor to the economy even though we don't see many uniforms the way we did before.

Do you think the city should continue to diversify?

Oh, yes it should, but it's awfully hard to diversity.

When you look at the city and where the power is today, do you see it as a government entity; city, county, state, or do you see it as in the business people on the strip?

I think it is a combination. There is city government, county government, state government, federal government, all of them in there, plus a very liaissez-faire business attitude. During the period of the late 80s and 90s, during the big recession in California, you couldn't get out of California fast enough, out of their regulations, to come to Las Vegas. I remember a talk given at Ford by an executive with Ford Aerospace given at the Las Vegas Rotary Club. He said, and I quote somewhat, "I was a person of some prominence in Eastern Pennsylvania. I never met my Congressman. Here, I come to Las Vegas and the two Senators are rolled out, the Congressman and the City Council and the County are at my disposal. What can we do for you?" That is the attitude of Las Vegas. There is a lack of California-like regulation and a liaissez-faire community. It is cheaper to live here than it is in California or in the East.

When other people that you know around the country look at Las Vegas, how do they see Las Vegas?

Well, this is 20 years ago, in Los Angeles, but I was asked, "Do you live in Las Vegas?" and a raised eyebrow and a credulous expression and I said, yes, and I go on to say, you know. Actually, living in Las Vegas, my cousin's husband coined this in the early 70s, Las Vegas is like a small mid-western city. Now, and intermediate to large mid-western city, but the attitudes [are] the same. Quite frankly, you have to be quite moral to live here. If you aren't, then you get in more trouble than you can handle. Primarily, gambling, but alcohol is served 24 hours a day and the other weaknesses of the flesh are available as they are any place else.

So, do you think that our image nationally is conducive to businesses coming here. Does that image prevent or help us?

I would say prevent, but once you get beneath the cloak of gambling and [the idea that] everyone lives on the strip, you know. People live in houses and go the schools and go out to dinner on Friday night, just like anywhere else.

Since you've been here in the early 60s as an adult, as a businessman, what would you say are the major changes in this city? It can be social, business, and any change that you want to talk about.

The availability of services. They are better. I find, for instance, that the doctor's here, medical care is excellent. Our hospitals are very good. I think that there are better hospitals in Salt Lake, but then, our hospitals are good. Medicine has become first-rate. Shopping. There are stores and restaurants that equal anyplace. Women would say that Nordstrom is about the only thing that we don't have. Shopping is just amazing. Transportation, for instance, the ability to get on an airplane and go anywhere in the world from Las Vegas. Communications. When I first went to work for Eastman, Dillon Union Securities, direct wire to New York, Yeah! Now everyone has a direct wire to New York. It's part of the technological change that happened throughout the country, but has especially happened here. We shopped on Fremont Street when I came back to town, still. Now, of course, there are shopping areas equal to anyplace in the world.

The last question and then we can talk about some things that you might want to say. What do you see as the future of this city? Again, it can be political, it can be business, it can be social. What do you see as the future?

I think, the only thing that would stop the growth of this city, well, two things, is if we run out of water and then, secondly, the quality of the air. Then, of course, the infrastructure, which includes sewer and water, but especially streets and roads, I'm almost under a state of siege in Spanish Oaks, where I live, because Sahara is being torn up. Pipes going up Sahara, the underpass at I-15 is being ripped up and that will take months to correct that. But, there seems to be an ability to deal with the huge population growth that I think is absolutely incredible. In the long term, the quality of our public schools and I think that is a national issue. I feel that if they decline in quality, then we are going to have trouble. It's something more than learning and different races getting to know each other. Just a little aside, my son at his 20th high school reunion, who did he talk to? Kids that he played with on the football team that he hadn't seen in five or 10 years. They are best of friends because they know what it's like to hit each other and knock each other down and you find out how good a guy he is. That's how people get to know each other, just by social intercourse provided by our public schools.

This is going to be transcribed and it's going to be a tape of your life and the way you see Las Vegas. Is there anything else you would like to add before we end this?

You know, Claytee, I'd like to think about that a little bit.

(End of tape 2, side 2)

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