Oral History Project
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Joseph Buckley Wing Fong Pat Goodall Harold Boyer Ty Hilbrecht Jim Jones |
Bert Purdue J.A. Tiberti David Welles Kenneth Miller Donald Aikin |
My name is Patrick Carlton. I am interviewing Mr. Donald L. Aikin, long time resident of Las Vegas and a member of the Las Vegas Rotary Club about his personal/professional life and his contributions to the community the past 40 or 50 years.
Mr. Aikin for the record would you please state your full name and where you live right now.
My full name is Donald L. Aikin, I live at 4673 Regalo
And that is part of the greater Las Vegas Community.
Correct.
Please start by talking a little bit about where you were born and how it was that you came to Las Vegas some time ago.
I was born in a little town called Loveland, Colorado, about 50 miles north of Denver in 1928. My parents were residents of Loveland and not really affluent people. My father worked at the Great Western Sugar Company as a bench analyst, a chemist and he worked as an electrician in the City of Loveland. In 1942 he had the opportunity to come to Basic Magnesium to work in the Magnesium Plant [BMI] producing magnesium for the war effort. We stayed here. I was a high school freshman at the time in 1942, the first year that Basic had a high school, the first year the town was in existence. We lived there for two years and then he had an opportunity to go to work for the Manhattan Project in Oakridge, TN and he went to Oakridge. I finished my high school education in Oakridge, TN graduating in 1946. I went in the service and while I was in the service my parents moved back here. He went to work for Stauffer Chemical in Henderson. I finished my service in the Navy, came back home and went to school in Reno for one year, 1948. Then I transferred to the University of Colorado and continued my education through 1953. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting.
How was it you decided that accounting was the field for you?
It was the process of elimination; I didn't want to be teacher and I didn't want to be an engineer and I went down the line for what was left and that's where I ended up. I had no specific ambitions in accounting at all; business was okay but I didn't really have any major in mind. At that time most of us who were in school were veterans just released. I was a freshman in 1948. We were just happy to be in school, period. We didn't care what we were doing after that.
I believe you said on your resume that you had served in the Navy?
I was in the Navy for two years, from 1946-48, and then I went back in the service during the Korean war. I was recalled between my junior and senior years at the University of Colorado and went back in service for a year and a half.
What kind of duties did you perform during that time?
I played basketball. When we were in the first time the two years after high school we had a group that got together in the gymnasium and we practiced and played basketball. We got to be pretty good and we ended up winning the old Navy Western Pacific tournament, one of five teams in the Navy at that time to go to the all-Navy tournament at the end of the year. This was like the NCAA now as far as service ball was concerned. Went to Jacksonville, Florida and participated in the all Navy tournament there representing the western pacific. Then I got discharged in Jacksonville and went back Oakridge and stayed for awhile before I came out here and went back to school. But all I did at the time was play basketball; but when I got recalled I was on a draft to go to a minesweeper called the Waxbill and the night before we left to go on that draft I ran into the commander that coached us in basketball the first time I was in. He suggested I stay there and play basketball and I told him 'I can't I am on a draft to go out the next morning.' The only way you could get off of draft at that time was medical so he said 'how are your teeth?' I said 'they are fine.' He said 'how are your teeth?' So he sent me to a dentist at 7:00 am the next morning and got me off the draft to go to the Waxbill. I stayed at Treasure Island [Naval Station] then and played football and basketball for a year and a half. Two months later the Waxbill was sunk off the coast of Korea.
Good fortune indeed. Now let's see you said you had been to Las Vegas, you went away and then you came back. Now following graduation from college what was your next step professionally and personally?
Jane and I got married my senior year and I took a job with Stanalin Oil Company in Casper, Wyoming as a staff accountant. Stayed there for two years and then I was contacted by a man by the name of Dave Malcolm who is a CPA in Henderson. He had been offered a job with the Nevada Gaming Control Board and he asked me if I wanted to come back to Las Vegas and work as an auditor for the Gaming Control Board. So I came back in September/October of 1955. The Gaming Control Act was passed in the 1955 legislature the first day of it's existence was actually July 1, 1955, so we were among the first staff people hired by the Gaming Control Board. I was one of two auditors at the time working for the state. I stayed there 15 years.
I imagine you saw some interesting things during that time.
I met everybody of the old school who was a licensee or a casino executive at that time. I ran into literally, physically all of them at one time or another. I audited all the casinos because there were only three or four of us at that time and I managed to get into every casino in the state except some up North, but every one in Las Vegas. Met all the owners, met all the old timers, all the connected people of the time. I had a lot of unique experiences with a lot of those people. I stayed there 15 years and then went out in the industry.
I believe it says in your record in 1976 you became self-employed, what was that?
I worked in the industry as a general manager of Circus Circus for two years and then at the Aladdin for two years and then I went out on my own and practiced public accounting. Got my CPA and was a member of a state wide accounting firm by the name of Chancelor, Barbiere and Dewitt. They had an office in Reno and wanted to open an office in Las Vegas. I opened that office for them; we later merged with a national firm of McLaddry Henriksen which today is McLaddry Pullan, one of the top CPA firms in the country. Did that for about 3-5 years, I can't remember the timing now. Then I went back into the industry as the general manager of the Hacienda at one time, worked at the Aladdin for a couple of years as a controller and general manager. Went to the Sands when the Sands took the property back from the Pratz. Hughes owned it and I went back in there as general manager with the Hughes organization for three years. I think that was in the 1970's.
Did you have any contact with Howard Hughes himself?
No
Your resume says you were responsible for day to day operations so I guess that must have been a major issue with all the money coming in and out of places like that. In 1985 you became the director of Risk Management for Clark County Nevada. What exactly is that and what were your responsibilities?
Following the time I was manager of the casinos I spent about a year and a half off and I had the opportunity to go to work for the county. The first function I had with the county was a liaison in the county manager's office and the sheriff in the operation of the jail. The state law requires that the county fund the operation of a jail. It also says in a different section of the law the sheriff will run the jail but it doesn't make the sheriff accountable financially for the operations. It gives him unlimited discretion; what he needs he gets, the county has to pay for it. So I went in there for about two years in that function to see if we could try to get the jail to operate more like a hotel, economize some of the expenses there and worked as a liaison between the county manager and the jail to try to make the financial affairs acceptable to the people funding it. That function ceased to exist when the deputy sheriff I was working with retired and the sheriff said 'that's the end of that story.' Then they appointed me as risk management director. That was the insurance, essentially what used to be called the insurance division. Responsible for all of the property, liability, workers compensation insurance all of the insurance practices and risk functions of operating a county. In that capacity I executed contract insurance coverage for all phases of the operation. We also at that time established a self-funded health plan. Up to that time we had been subscribing to HMO service and operations by medical providers and we started our own and did a self-funded plan which is still in existence. Saved the county a ton of money just on the self funded correction. I stayed there 5 years and then I retired. That was 1991 and that is when I got elected to become [District] Governor of Rotary.
Do you have children?
My wife and I had four children, two sons and two daughters with the oldest born in 1955. The two sons live in Reno and run a landscape management company and have for 25 years. They took it over after they finished school and worked for the guy at the time mowing lawns. So he wanted to sell out and they bought him out and they have been doing this landscape management business for 25 years. Two daughters live here. One of them was court reporter for awhile until her fingers gave out on her; she now is secretary to a gentleman who works for dental industry. He computerized and trains people in TMJ dentist worldwide. The other daughter is married to a local boy; They went to high school together; he is in the pool construction business. Between those four children we have 11 grandchildren. Just had our 11th one this last December. So I got them all the way from 24 years old down to 4 months old. It was split half boys and half girls until this last little boy arrived, now its 6 boys and 5 girls.
Let's talk a little bit about the Rotary Club now. This is the only club you've been active in?
Correct.
You joined in 1972?
1971 or 1972. There's a person you might want to talk to, the man who was president of the club when I came in. It was Mark Mielke. He hasn't been active in the club for quite some time but he is still in town. He was president the year I came in.
I was reading the club history check upon on your activities. It said that you were club treasurer for 4 years. You were the vice president for a single year. Talk a little bit about what was going on in the club at that time and what your responsibilities were and interesting projects that might have occurred.
I don't have much recollection about that at all. I got to be treasurer because I had an accounting background and they just passed it to me. A little later on they made me vice president and then elected me president of the club. What was actually going on at the time was that we changed location two or three times. We always had strip hotel meeting places. We met in the Landmark Hotel, Harrah's, Tropicana the year I came in. We always had meetings in the showrooms. Just recently we got away from that in the last 5 years or so. At that time the club membership was all the good old timers in town, Wiens, Cashman, Casey, all the old time businessmen who were the top people in the city at that time. We just rolled along. I can't remember much specifically. We just went along our merry way, raised some money for the foundation, contributed money to local charities and that kind of thing, nothing really fantastic or outstanding.
You get some credit here. It says that at the start of your presidential year you had 38 Paul Harris Fellows and 38 sustaining members. It looks as though you must have put some emphasis…
Yes I did, I got interested in the foundation at that time and I tried to draw the club's attention to the foundation. They were mostly local big time businessmen. They were all pretty much centered around local activities. I tried to make them more interested in the international aspect of it. We did make quite a bit of change in our fundraising policy for the rotary foundation. We did two annual parties; one of them was a formal dinner with speakers form rotary international. We ran auctions and that type of thing and we had a spring event every year which was a baseball/football trip to Southern California. We'd take a weekend and go down to a football game on a Saturday and a baseball game on a Sunday, stay overnight and come back. We raised money two or three times like that for the foundation. I did get their attention drawn to it and we did increase those contributions to the foundation substantially and it kind of started the ball rolling from there on.
It says here you raised over $14,000 during that year.
I think that was almost equal to what they raised in the prior years, close to it.
Here is another reference; it talks about erecting a barbeque pit by people from the 25 Club. So they had a 25 Club in 1972.
The 25 Club was started by Don Ashworth when he was president so it was in existence when I took over. We found out that we owned a piece of property on West Charleston, the corner of Charleston and Valley View. We really weren't quite aware that we had the property. We had it rented out and were getting a small rental for it every month but on that property was a vacant piece next to the fire station and the 25 Club wanted a project so we just decided to build a barbecue. The 25 Club did it. That piece of property, as it turns out there was another Rotarian from another club in town that had a business adjoining that property and he came to us and said we would like to buy that piece of property from you. Well the Rotary Club said what property? We really weren't aware that we had a significant piece of property there. He almost got away with it. He almost got us to sell it to him. I got a hold of Barry Becker at that time and I said we better take another look at this to see what the potential is for that property. Becker found out about it and he said there is no way we're giving that away. We still own it. It's a strip of property off of Charleston on Valley View and we have it rented out and we have gotten substantial revenue form it every year ever since that time. There are buildings, two or three properties there. But that is how we found out about it and stumbled into it almost as a result of that barbeque. That is one of our main sources of the Las Vegas Rotary Foundation revenues now, it's about $30,000 a year I think.
This 25 club-were you ever a member of that yourself?
No they started that after I was in.
During your year you were responsible for changing the format on the newsletter, The Wheel.
There was a mimeographed thing up until that time. John Beville who was a Review Journal editor suggested we get it printed so it was his idea. We just changed it from a mimeograph sheet to a printed full copy. That was one of the few in existence at that time in this district so that's why it got a district award. John Cahlan and Florence Cahlan were members at that time. Florence was a columnist for the Review Journal. She did a lot of history studies of Las Vegas in the old days. If you ever want to know anything about Las Vegas, go to the Review Journal or go to the library and find out Florence Cahlans columns on Las Vegas. She goes way back, clear back to the beginning. She is a great historian. Interviewer: In 1981-82 Marion Earl got the outstanding Rotarian of the Year Award. Who is he and what do you remember?
You never knew who Marion Earl was? Marion Earl was an attorney, he was a member of our club, a prominent attorney in town. He practiced law until he was in his 80's. He passed away probably 15 years ago now. He was a substantial member of the club and very well known in the community, a member of the LDS church. He had a lot of public support from everybody. He was a man of integrity, honesty and devotion to any cause he got involved with. At that time we were having an annual Rotarian of the Year nomination and award with all the clubs in the valley. Our club primarily instituted it and was instrumental with most of the things that happened, the other clubs didn't really ever grab hold and run [with it] Marian Earl was our nominee that year. He used to do our induction ceremony. He had a speech he gave whenever we had new members to induct. He gave his speech welcoming people as Rotarians. We stopped doing that some time back but I think we still have copies of his speech. I would kind of like to see us do that again. He was just a well known member of our club. Outstanding in service for all organizations.
It says you were followed as president by Joe Buckley and during his term of office you raised over $100,000 to assist with the summer employment for youth program.
I am not familiar with that at all; I don't even remember that.
I just picked it up from the history. How about this matter of purchasing a van for the senior meals on wheels project.
I remember that but we did a lot of things like that time for local service. I don't specifically remember that one either but then, I know that the original service project that this club did was for a young man in Overton who was out in the field with his father farming. The father was running a mowing machine and the boy got in the way and the mower cut his two feet off. We jumped into that, our club did; this was before I was a member. The club jumped into that, took that case over, funded the care and attention for that boy for a long time. That was probably one of the original service projects of this club.
That probably would have been what the 1920's or 1930's?
1930's.
Let's see, you became the District Governor in 1992-93. I wonder if you would talk about the plans you made and the programs that you provided direction for during that year. I guess by then it was District 5300; you had changed names.
Yes, they did it changed from 530 to 5300.
It would be helpful if you could talk about the nature of relationship between Nevada and Californians during that period.
Well I think we had a good relationship between Southern California and Nevada at that time. I am trying to think of the sequence of district governors from this area. Bill Southern, a member of our club, was nominated to be governor ahead of me, several years a head of me but he got nominated and before he could take office he had to give it up. He had some family problems and wasn't able to serve so I was the first district governor for Southern Nevada as I recall. Then Buckley then Ken Miller. I thought our relationships were good. I always had good relations with all the governors from down there. In my year they treated me very well in Southern California. We had a lot of joint projects that we put on between Southern California and Southern Nevada just to get the involvement of Rotarians from two areas. We had program that they had been in existence for a couple of years where they took USC dental students about 10-15 of them and they took 3-4 instructors at the USC dental school and we all went down to Ensenada [Mexico] and they set up a dental laboratory in a gymnasium with cardboard chairs and treated Mexican kids who had dental needs; a couple hundred of them in a weekend. A lot of them had never seen a doctor, a lot of them walked or came from 40-50 miles away to take advantage of this service. Parents would be sitting on the side of the gymnasium and have the kids over on this end; the kids would become afraid and start to cry; here would come the parents wanting to get them out of there It was interesting. They did that for several years and that was one of our projects. We also did a project down there with water, we put a water well and pipes into a Mexican community, we just went down and did it as a part of the matching grants program. Went down, access the well, put in a filtration system, put in water lines with access to the houses and it took us several months to get that done on weekends. So we did that during that time too. That was a combined effort between Southern California and Southern Nevada. Most of my involvement in the district at that time was either in just talking to individual clubs about day to day management things or doing projects for RI International. That took a lot of time. The president of international at that time was Cliff Dochterman. He was and still is a very charismatic person, probably one of the most popular international president's we've had, a good speaker, very entertaining, very funny. He is still a very dedicated and contributing Rotarian. We have annual get together of what they call the red coats because in his year the governors all wore red coats and we have red coat reunions every year in the western United States, zones 23 and 24. We will have 30 governors from that period at that reunion, all centered around him.
How large was the district in terms of number of clubs?
The club number was about 52-53 as I remember it, I don't remember exactly how many. We had 3000 members, close to that.
Could have been; that being the case it hasn't change much since then.
No.
Looking back over your 30+ years of Rotary membership I wish you would characterize the contributions the club has made to the development of the City of Las Vegas.
I don't know how to answer that other than that they just they were always the most politically active people and the most active people in the business world and they contributed' I guess, just by their management and growth to the industry and the business's in the city. I don't know how else to answer that.
I imagine there are a lot of good things that happened because folks know each other, just because of acquaintanceship.
We were the only club here for years and then we started the other clubs that filtered off of that. I think there are 12 or 13 clubs now. There were only one or two for a long time.
You have seen a lot of change since you arrived here; what is the effect of the arrival of the large corporations like Hilton and others on the business climate in the city and how people feel about Las Vegas?
I think they've added a lot of legitimacy in the minds of people in the country around the United States as to the level of competence in proper operations. The corporate philosophy and management of casinos really changed, totally changed the operations in the hotels. When they were individual ownerships in the old days everything was warm, informal and low key and always with top level quality entertainment, food, rooms, whatever. They were conscious of the fact that they needed to have paying customers to sustain their operations and they catered to the clientele, to the money they gathered from gaming. Hotel operations at that time were pretty much controlled by casino management. The hotel manager and the general manager in those old days were just somebody to keep things going the way the pit bosses wanted them to go, the way the casino manager wanted them to go. The old time operators like…. (End of side one)
Mr. Aikin this is tape one, side two, you were saying….
The old time operators catered to their clientele with the casino management being the top decision makers about what happened in the organization. They would give away food and beverage to get people in; they realized they were losing money in food and beverage but they kept track of what they won in the casino. When the corporate management came in' they wanted to departmentalize everything and make everybody accountable for their own operations. Food operations had to be a stand alone profitable operation, same with beverage, same with the hotel; and the casino had to sustain itself. If a casino wanted to give away a breakfast they had to give the food and beverage department x dollars in credit for every beverage that was given away so the food and beverage department would show its profit as it would ordinarily. That changed the whole nature of the operation of the establishment. In the old days the casino called all the shots and if they said 'we are going to give away free parking today,' they gave away free parking. If they said 'we are going to give a champagne party and give away champagne,' the food and beverage department would send over the champagne. That was the old philosophy of operating that changed entirely. Now each department has to accountable for its own [profits] and corporate management has the lead in it. This diminished the power and authority of the casino management or any other department in there. Totally made it a grind operation. Corporate grind. I recall one instance when my daughter turned 16 I was in the Sands Hotel as general manager and this were still some remnants of some old school there. The guy who was the food and beverage director at that time, his name was Looby Drescovitch and he'd been the food and beverage manager for the old school Texas group there for years. I said to Looby one day I want to have a little party for my daughter on her sixteenth birthday and I've got a suite of rooms here that I want to hold a little party for she and her friends. I want to get a barbeque out there so I can cook some hamburgers and hot dogs for them. That turned into a birthday out of this world. He said 'okay I'll take care of it.' I thought he was going to send out a barbecue where I could fix some hamburgers. He sent out a crew to set up barbeque with salads and deserts just like you would go to a buffet now out there. A big cooler sitting over there with all the soft drinks the kids would want, sixteen and under. There was a swimming pool at the site; he had people out there to help him with the pool, pool attendants. We had a first class operation for that girl's sixteenth birthday and it was just a throw back to the way they did things in the old days. There is another interesting story about that time when Ronald Reagan was President. He came to town and Looby was still in charge of food and beverage. Reagan wanted to have a dinner in his suite back in the hotel so they said 'fine we would be glad to set that up for you.' Looby arranged that and when they did that they always put china out. They had a gourmet room called the Regency Room and it always had an emblem on their china, a logo. We changed that china probably every four years because it got worn out or broken and they would have a new issue. So they went back and found an old issue [of china], brought them up and set them out in the suite for the president and when they showed up to have that dinner he thought the place had ordered in special china with the R/R on it; he was ecstatic. They gave him a whole set of 12 to take home with him. That is just the way they conducted operations and they just did things the way they wanted them don. The accountability was 'what is the bottom line when we are all done?' Corporate management changed all that and actually legitimized some of the feeling of the investors nationwide and the participants nationwide who were coming into town. Some of the old time people, the colorful people they used to be seen. The tourists loved to come in and see somebody of questionable background, the old mob boys or something like that. They got a thrill by knowing they were in a room with them. It doesn't happen anymore.
Did you have contact with any presidents other than Reagan during the years that you were active.
No. Reagan was the only one I ever met. He had a reception up in his suite and we all got to go up and shake hands, meet him and all that but he was the only one that came in that I can remember.
There are some people that would argue that Las Vegas is still in many ways a small town as opposed to a megalopolis.
No, not even close. When I came here there were maybe 15,000 people maybe in the whole area; you knew everybody, and when you walked down the street you made eye contact with people and said hello; or if you didn't say hello you at least made eye contact and nodded. Now you can't get anybody to make eye contact with you; they all look the other way, nobody wants to be friendly and it's just a different atmosphere totally. Not even close to being the same.
Local government has changed at the city and county levels since the 1970's for better or worse. I wonder if you would comment on your view about how things have evolved.
I don't know if there's a lot difference now. The atmosphere of cooperation between the old time casino owners and the sheriff's department, mayor or city, county boards was a lot more informal than it is now. A lot less pressure on the public officials. By the same token the public officials now I think are more susceptible to influence than they were then. Then it was working together, now it's not. I can remember a story about one of the old Desert Inn owners, Cornelius Jones. He was one of the Moe Dalitz group, the purple gang or whatever they called them from back east. We are sitting and having drink with him after work one evening, my partner and I. At that time there was an appointment of a member to the Gaming Control Board due to happen. We said 'boy I bet you'd like to have a pick of who that is.' He said 'oh no, no sirree, not on your life. I want the most honest, highest integrity, straight forward man you could find in that job. I don't want him compromised in any way shape or form. I just want him to listen to me when I want to ask him something or tell him something; then he can use his own best judgment about what I have to present; but I don't want to have to put anybody in there because if I can somebody else can buy him tomorrow for another dollar.' So he said 'I just want the best man you can find.' That's the way they operated and that's the way they felt. It isn't even close to that now. Now it's how much steam can you get, and how much influence can you get in appointing somebody who's going to have control over you. In those days they didn't want that.
What do you believe the future of Las Vegas is, if you were projecting 5-10 years down range.
I think it's got to stop, I really do. I don't think it can continue to go on like it has. I am totally amazed that they don't stop the expansion and demand on water when they know they haven't got enough water to do anything more than they have done. They haven't got enough to sustain what they have now, but they keep going and going. It's going to end some day in a severe crisis and when it does it will be a big bust because the bottom will fall out of everything and it will all happen at once and everybody will turn around and say 'gee how did we get in this position? Somebody should have thought about this a long time ago.' Well, nobody's thinking about it. I did notice in today's paper they said something about the current real estate housing market going down. That's in today's paper. It's got to stop some time. You just can't keep going like that. For them to go out to cow counties in Northern Nevada and try to take their resources to support us here, I think is unconscionable, it really is. Those people that are selling out up there are very short sighted I think.
Well, we are at the place where I ask you the final question. Despite my best efforts I probably have failed to ask you something important that I should have so…
Not that I can think of.
Well in that case I will thank you very much for spending the time with us. The Rotary Club and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas appreciate your participation.
I don't know how productive that's going to be for anybody but then that is the way it goes.
It's going to be helpful.
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Oral History Project |
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