Oral History Project
|
Joseph Buckley Wing Fong Pat Goodall Harold Boyer Ty Hilbrecht Jim Jones |
Bert Purdue J.A. Tiberti David Welles Kenneth Miller Donald Aikin |
The following interview is with Dr. Harold L. Boyer, a retired Dermatologist and well known member of the local medical profession. Dr. Boyer moved to Las Vegas in 1952 and joined the Rotary Club of Las Vegas in 1955. He served as club President in 1971-72, and is a Paul Harris Fellow. His was the vision that generated the Rotary Club Oral History project, and his generous contributions of personal time and treasure have brought it into being. Dr. Boyer died in 2002.
This is Claytee White and I’m with Dr. Harold Boyer. It is November 15, 2000. How are you today?
Just Fine, thank you.
Good. We’re going to get started, I want you to relax and we’re just going to talk about your early life. When and where were you born?
I was born May 22, 1916 in a small rural town in Arkansas, Hartman. That’s located 55 miles east of Fort Smith and four miles north of the Arkansas River and 120 miles west of Little Rock at the foothills of the Ozarks.
What was that community like?
It was a rural community that was founded in about 1875 and it was agricultural. There was also coal mining and the Missouri-Pacific railroad ran through the town.
Did you have brothers and sisters?
I have two brothers. I have one brother living and two brothers have died.
And their names?
My brother who is living is Bill N. Boyer and he lives in Dallas, Texas. My older brother died at the age of 10 in Arkansas of diarrhea and my younger brother, my second brother who was two years younger, was killed accidentally by a falling pillar at the age of 4 in Hartman, Arkansas.
Tell me, your mother worked in the home and was your father the town physician?
Yes. My father was the town physician, he was the president of the school board and he was active community leader and he was Mayor and I might add that he later became Mayor of two other towns in the following order; one was Fort Taos in Oklahoma where we moved in 1929 and he was also Mayor in Lincoln, Arkansas where he lived at the time of his death. He was a republican in democratic territory.
Now, he was as Mayor in Oklahoma at one point. When did the family live there?
We lived there from 1929 until February, 1946.
Tell me about growing up in Arkansas, going to school there.
Growing up in Arkansas was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. It was a small town, 600 population, and I want to school in a white two-story schoolhouse which only went up to the 8th grade. In school I carried a pen and a slate. I went to school in 1922 and I finished the first six grades there before moving to Oklahoma. It was a town in which it was only a short distance to fish in the stream. There were mountains to the north of me. I was a paperboy. I was known as the Hartman paperboy. At one time, I delivered five newspapers and I was always proud of that because my father started me out selling newspapers at the age of six and he ordered the newspaper, the weekly newspaper, from Pennsylvania and then I began to sell the Southwest American and then I sold the Fort Smith Times Record which was an evening paper of the Southwest American which, incidentally, was owned by the Reynolds Publishing Company. Then, I also sold the St. Louis Post Dispatch on Sundays and I also sold the Arkansas Democrat out of Little Rock. I had the monopoly on the newspaper in a town of about five or six hundred people.
From six years old, how much money were you earning?
Well, I would think about $6.00 a month.
I had a brother who sold a great newspaper as well in North Carolina. Tell me about, a town that small, how did you get around with your newspapers?
We walked. My father had one [of] the few automobiles in town. It was a T model Ford roadster. We had a telephone. We lived on a hill where there were about six or eight other homes and we were one of the two or three other homes who had telephones. Of course, the telephone was the wall type in which you are signaled by the number of rings and that was our communications system. We were also the community communication system because when anyone called Hartman to let someone know [of] a death in another state or another area, they called Dr. Boyer’s home because they knew he had a telephone and I was always the one who was delegated to call the people to the phone to let them know that there was a death message.
Was that traumatic, though, for a young boy to do that?
No, it was just a matter of living.
It sounds like such a joy to live like that. Tell me what the life was like for the wife of such a busy man in such a small town like that.
Well, it was a, all little towns had a social structure and the community mostly centered around the church and the school. Then, the big event of the week was on Sunday going down to the railway station after church in the afternoon and see the train come in. The train came in from Arkansas and it brought our ice cream from the Ward Ice Cream Company in Ft. Smith and the ice cream was kept in the town drug store. We had movies. My father also operated a movie theater. He actually changed the reels and cranked the machine and he also, since we had no radio and no newspaper to advertise the movies, he had a tin megaphone and he would have one of his partners, had his partner, drive his T model Ford and my father would take the megaphone and they would go up and down the little hills and streets in Hartman announcing the movies of the week which usually was a cowboy reel and he would tell the number of reels and the number of side attractions, so he’d say, there is a seven reel movie with Hoot Gibson, naming the movie as Somewhere West of the Sun and then if there was a newsreel, and then if it was a comedy, that was also announced by his megaphone. So, people generally knew what was going on in the way of movies and then in front of the movie theater, there were big sign boards in which there was pasted up the colored pictures showing the type of movie and what the name was and the names of all the actors. He also owned some real estate and he rented a building in which he had his drug store in which he had his office in the rear.
So now, the ice cream that came in, was that your personal family ice cream or did you sell it?
No, that was ice cream that was dispensed and sold through the drug store.
Getting back to those movies. That sounds so interesting. How often could you see a movie per week?
Well, we’d have a movie, generally, about one a week and usually on a Saturday night. People worked all the time and just didn’t go out at night except for a little social event. But, the movie was about once a week.
How much did you pay to go and see the movie?
I believe about ten and fifteen cents, ten for children and fifteen cents for adults.
Side attractions, were those newsreels?
Well, they could be newsreels which would tell the current events of the week and they were pretty up to date and the other would be the comedy. Sometimes the entire pictures were comedies such as the Harold Lloyd pictures. They were great things. Sometimes there was a comedy in addition to the regular feature. I remember very clearly one interesting thing in connection with movies was that we were a very religious town, as were all towns in Arkansas, small ones. We had a Methodist church, we had a Baptist church and we had a Holy Roller church and a picture came out called “The Life of Christ,” and there were a number of old ladies in town that would not go to the movies because it was a sin to go to a movie, but we did have a more educated minister, Rev. H. O. Bolin and he volunteered to comment, make comments on the movie as it was being shown because they were silent movies and there was a script which is shown below the film and people would read them and if a person couldn’t read the person next to them would read the script. But in this case, Rev. Bolin read the comments about the movie as it progressed. I must say that there were some people who weren’t there to see the movie even though the minister was there because it was considered sinful to go to a movie.
Why did your family leave Arkansas?
They had two things happen. Number one, my father’s building which he owned burned and, unfortunately, he had let the insurance expire and we had to pay that off. The second thing is, that was in 1929 and that’s when the depression hit, so he contacted through a pharmaceutical agent a little town in southeast Oklahoma where a physician had died. It was a sawmill town and very active and he went out to investigate this town. So, he left Hartman, but there was another older doctor left there, so the town was not left without a physician. But, about the time we got to Ft. Taos the depression hit there too. So, we had a, we went all through the depression with all the hardships that you would expect. That was another important feature of our lives in those times. We were the products of the greatest Americans of the depression era.
What do you mean ‘the greatest Americans?’
Well, you remember the book The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw. It’s about the people who were born before the depression, lived through the depression and, for example, our class went through the depression, we all had to work through our premed schooling, we had to work through medical school and when we graduated in 1941, had Pearl Harbor day, December 7th, so about 80% of our class, most of the men went in the military service for four years. Then from there we had to come out again, some of us were married by that time, we had children and we had to go through our training period. So, we spent three or four years of training after WWII, after we had graduated from medical school in 1941 and then, we settled down, we bought our G.I. houses and we set up our practices and we reared our families and then, in my own case, I was called back again in the Korean War. So, I had a little bit of disruption in my professional and my family life from the time the war was over until I was finally settled.
Tell me a little about the town in Oklahoma where you settled. Compare that with Hartman, Arkansas.
They were almost the same size except it was more agrarian and it also had a sawmill and that was one of the problems. The sawmill went out of business because they ran out of timber. In those days, they didn’t replant the trees and they just sawed all the wood in the countryside and then moved the sawmill to some other place. When we moved there the population was only about 600 and at one time it had been over 1000. So, like any other town that depended on one industry, when that industry left, the town went down.
But, your family stayed there until 1946.
We stayed in Ft. Taos from 1929 to 1946 and then my father established a practice in Lincoln, Arkansas and the chief reason for that was that my parents divorced then and he saw another town in which to practice and my mother remained in Ft. Taos from the time she got there in 1929 until she died in 1961. I claim three hometowns, Hartman, Ft. Taos and Las Vegas, Nevada.
After leaving Oklahoma to go to college, where did you go to college?
I completed high school in 1934 and went to the University of Oklahoma in Norman where I spent three years as a premedical student. In those days, the requirements for medical school were as little as two years, but most people went two three or four years and I went three years and then went into medical school from there. The medical school I went to the Oklahoma School of Medicine in Oklahoma City in 1937 and graduated there in 1941.
Then, 1941 of course, WWII.
I went to my internship first before going to serve and I went to New Rochelle, New York from 1941 to 1942 and when I was there the war was declared in December, 1941.
Now, New Rochelle, New York, that was quite a change.
Well, I chose to make that change because I had grown up in a small town and I wanted to see some other part of the country and secondly, The New Rochelle Hospital was a smaller hospital that paid a magnificent salary of $50.00 a month for interns after you had been there for six months. My first was $25.00 a month and then $50.00 a month for the second six months. By the way, some of the internships throughout the country paid nothing except room, board and furnishing uniforms. Ours was more, on the upper scale, but it was not a teaching hospital such as the University of Oklahoma or Yale or Harvard or Vanderbilt or Emery. When the war broke out I went down to 90 Church Street in New York and got commissioned as a Lieutenant, junior grade in the Navy, medical corps.
Why did you decide on the Navy?
Because I wanted to be a flight surgeon and because I didn’t want to walk. I wanted to be on a ship where I didn’t have to walk and as it turned out, after I got in the Navy, I finished my internship in June and I immediately went into military duty, went to the Naval Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. I applied for flight surgery training, which I didn’t get until much later. So then, after I was in the Navy for about six weeks in Corpus Christi, I received orders along with three other medical officers and we went to the Pacific Feet Marines Force. I didn’t know what that was, but it turned out that it was the Marines. I became a walking Marine instead of a walking soldier.
How did you switch from the Navy to the Marines?
Well, the Marines get all their medical officers from the Navy. See, the Navy is part of the Marine Corps and the Navy furnishes all the medical officers and the medical corpsmen and the chaplains and the engineers for the Marines. I went to Camp Elliott, California in San Diego and I was there until November and then I was shipped overseas to active duty in the pacific and went to Wellington. Was there for six weeks and then went to Guadalcanal and were there for about two months and then we came back from Guadalcanal to New Zealand and took on replacements and regrouped and retrained and then in November of 1943 we went to Tarawa which is another operation in the Pacific and we were there for five or six days and then after that we went to the Hawaiian Islands and we were stationed in Camp Tarawa, which was named after the battle, for a period of time and at that time I was with a tank battalion rather than the infantry and one day the commanding officer called me and said, I have orders for you and I came in and saw my orders. He said, you are being detached from the Marines and you are going to flight surgeon training school in Pensacola, Florida for training. I had forgotten about applying for it and so, as a result of that, my outfit moved out without me and they went on to Siapan and I went back to Pensacola and got my flight training.
What does that entail? Did you learn how to fly?
No, we were medical officers which were to take care of the naval aviators and the corps. We were sent out to such things as aircraft carriers as a flight surgeon, not to do surgery but as a medical officer on an aircraft carrier or we could have been detached to a Marine squadron or we could have gone to a Naval station or a Marine station.
Is the Show M*A*S*H, is there any reality?
Absolutely, except that at MASH they had nurses, in Guadalcanal and Tarawa we had no nurses. The Army had nurses, but the Navy and Marine Corp had no nurses in the combat areas. But, MASH was slower moving, but [a] very accurate depiction of the war.
When did you come to Las Vegas for the first time?
I like to preface that by saying, after being released from active duty in the Korean War where I was assigned as a dermatologist for the Navel Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, I went to Birmingham, Alabama and had a position with a coal mine as a coal mine physician and this was after I was already a certified dermatologist. So, when I was there, I just did coal mine practice with the dispensary, taking care of the dependants of the coal miners, taking care of injuries and delivering babies. When I was there for a period of about nine months, I used it as an operating base to seek another place in which to practice. Keep in mind, all places in the country were not easily, it was difficult to start a practice in some areas. We should also say that after completing my residency training in dermatology, I went to Oklahoma City and practiced with another doctor for a few months and then went to Enid, Oklahoma where I practiced for about nine months. Then I went back to Korea in the Korean War. After getting out of that I went to Birmingham. Finally, I was corresponding with a medical placement bureau in Chicago and I sent them a resume of my medical records and my training and then they would seek out places in the United States that were looking for positions which might require my type of training. So, I finally contacted five places. One was Phoenix, Arizona, one was Alhambra, California, one was South Pasadena, California and one was Las Vegas, Nevada. So, I finally saved up a little time and money and went by train out to these areas and I interviewed with all of them with the exception of Las Vegas and it was the last one, on the way home. I was standing on the station platform in Pasadena, California, trying to decide what to do. Two trains came through there. One went north and one went south. I took out my map and looked and saw that Needles, California was a main town, so I decided to take the train and go the southern route to Needles and I got off, 10:00 pm and I said, do you have a bus line that runs from Needles, California North to Las Vegas? He says, yes. And I said, what time does it run and she said, at 5:30am. So, I said, I’ll take a room and call me at 4:30am. That’s how I got to Las Vegas and when I got here, I was met by the doctor, Kaufman, who was the first dermatologist here, who had come here in 1949 and he liked it because he had been stationed at Nellis Air Force Base and he was going back in the Air Force as a dermatologist. And, by the way, Dr Kaufman, who is responsible for me being in Las Vegas, was the first Air Force Dermatologist and after he stayed in the Air Force for a while, he came back and practiced and he died here.
Which year was this?
That was in 1952.
Now, someplace along the way, 1946, you took the time out to get married. How did you meet your wife?
I met my wife in St. Louis when I went to see a doctor about some training in allergies and she was at the desk and she invited me to come in and see Dr. Hanson and so, there was a window and a door and I said, how do I come in, through the window? She took a liking to me.
She liked that joke?
She thought I was pretty cheeky. So, we were married. We had two children.
What are your children’s names?
My son’s name is John Walter and my daughter’s name is Mary Elizabeth.
Where are they now?
They both live in Las Vegas. To continue the story, though, if I may. Dr. Kaufman took me around to see all the shows and downtown Las Vegas, at that time there were only 32,000 people and that’s all I saw. The Last Frontier, we saw a show. He took me down to the office the first morning, Saturday morning, and he saw three patients. One was a new patient. For that he got $10.00 and the other two patients were follow up visits and he got $5.00. So, at the end of the morning, he had made $20.00 and he said, that’s enough, let’s go home and have some breakfast. So, that was my introduction to Las Vegas. We met, I got off the bus at the Union Station and I called him and he said, I’ll be right down and I said, how will I know you? He said, I’ll be driving a green, Dodge, four-door sedan and I’m bald headed. He asked, how will I know you? I said, I’m kind of tall and skinny and have a crew haircut. That’s what I got when I was in the Korean War. So, when he came down, there was no need for all this because we were the only two there at the time, at the intersection of the depot and Fremont. So, we drove up to his little apartment and we had breakfast. We had cheese blintzes for breakfast and that night we went out to the movie and we went out to see the Last Frontier and that’s all I saw of Las Vegas and I went back to Birmingham, hadn’t made up my mind. He called me and said, Harold, and I said, yes, he says, are you coming up to Las Vegas and I said, well, I don’t know. One thing about it, I didn’t see too much and I didn’t see too many trees. I like trees. Oh, he said, there are trees up at Mt. Charleston so big you can’t even put your arms around them, big ponderosa pine. I said, I’ll come. So, in two weeks I was out there and I had to go to Reno and take my examinations and then I stayed all night in the YMCA building, took the bus down, stopped at Hawthorne first and we had some supper when the bus stopped. Then we drove all the rest of the night and we got there early at Beatty, Nevada and we had a little breakfast there. Saturday morning, we came to Las Vegas. In the meantime, he had already been called to active duty and I had the key [to his place.]…
(end of side one)
Dr. Jack Cherry was a pioneer physician in Goldfield and also Tonopah, Nevada and he could spin stories by the hour about these old mining towns. Anyway, he sponsored me into the Rotary Club, which was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I had so many fine friends and I became president of the Rotary Club here. Then I was active in the Boy Scouts for a while and then, I was active in the Cancer Society in Clark County and later became president of the Nevada division of the Cancer Society and I was eventually on a national committee for the American Cancer Society. I was quite active in that. I was fairly active in the Clark County Medical Society for about eight years. I was the secretary/treasurer of that organization and later on, I became president. At that time we had about 150 members. Now we have over 3,500 members.
With that busy schedule, what kind of things did women do here in Las Vegas? What was your wife doing?
Well, my wife was not a club joiner, but she played bridge and she gardened and she had a few close friends and we attended many public things. We were very strong supporters of the University and we were there when then laid the corner stone and we contributed to the Judy Bailey Theater and attended the performances. So, we’ve been pretty good contributors to the cultural things in Las Vegas and supported it in that way.
So, of your civic organizations and your involvement over the years, what organization do you think has made a major impact here?
I think in later days, it was the Las Vegas Convention Authority, which at one time was called the Southern Nevada Industrial Foundation and the abbreviation of it was SNIF and when it was called SNIF, it never amounted to too much. Some of the professional people would go to meetings in other cities and try to promote Las Vegas under the name of SNIF. (laughter) Later on it became the Nevada Developmental Authority and the Convention Bureau and I would say some of the early politicians that pushed this, they were very civic-minded people like Bud Albright who was probably the father of the Convention Center. All the Albright family and the Christensen’s, I would say that some of the most important people were the political people. Also, some of the heavy promoters were the, in the old days, the Elk’s Club and members of the Shriner’s Club have been community leaders. The Mormon Church has been very strong in support of the schools and even the Mesquite Club has had very influential women. You’ll find those same women leaders in various organizations that also belong to the Mesquite Club. The social clubs, the Junior League, the wives of young leaders in the community have been very interested in the [commuity.] More recently, the university has [had] a big impact on this place and then, of course, I think that the big people who have been, have made our gaming and tourist industry have been the people in the gaming industry. They are the ones who took the risk. They are the ones who had the foresight and they’re the ones who had the know-how and they are the ones who had the money and they are also the ones who have supported the infrastructure. They are behind the scenes, but they have contributed heavily and they are interested in a nice city and they are interested in the streets, they’re interested in good medicine. The gaming people have given us a great number of community leaders who have built. Of course, the early leaders were the old timers who came because the city was a railroad town, but believe it or not, the earliest organization in leadership was the Rotary Club. If you go down the rosters of the old Rotary Club, it was established in 1923, those men have been there since 1905. Much of the influence in Las Vegas in the early days came from outside. These leaders have come forth at different times and have done different things, but in the entire thrust, you’ll find it is peppered by the same people.
Did you ever think about politics for yourself?
Only at one time.
What happened?
Well, I was busy practicing medicine. I didn’t think I knew that much about business, but I, at one time, gave serious thought to becoming a member of the Board of Regents. I think that I could have, but I just made a decision not to do that. So, I’m in the Republican Party, but I’m not very active. I just contribute to it.
With your interest in the University, even to today, that probably would have been a very good step for you.
But I’m not one of these people who step up. I don’t have aspirations to be known. I like to see things done. I don’t care if I do it or someone else does it. I’m not the rooster in the barnyard who crows the loudest. But, that’s the only thing that I would have considered because I was interested in the University, but I just thought that there were people who were better qualified. I still think that people on the Board of Regents should be highly educated people, well qualified and have the time to devote to it. We have been fortunate, Archie Grant who was a leading businessman here, very smart. We had Dr. White out of Boulder City. She had a Ph.D. She was a graduate of an eastern school. We had Dick Ronzone who was a knowledgeable businessman. He had Ronzone’s Department Store and they were one of the pioneer organizations. We have had a number of people who have had foresight and they have had political know-how and they have been into politics.
Where did your children go to school?
Well, my daughter went first to a girl’s school in St. Charles, Mo. It is the oldest girl’s school west of the Mississippi. Some of my wife’s friends had gone there and her grandparents lived there. My brother lived there at that time and that’s why she went there. She was not quite ready for co-education, so that’s why we sent her. Then she later went to school back in New Jersey and then she went to a small college down in California. She went to UNLV. I think she finally got her degree in UNLV, but she must have a total of over 200 college hours. She went from school to school and teaching. She still takes classes, occasionally. She is a bright young lady. She hasn’t been able to handle men and they haven’t been able to handle her. My son went to Cal Western down in San Diego for his prelaw and then he went to Gonzaga Law School up in Spokane, Washington. That’s Bing Crosby’s old alma mater. When he was in prelaw, he also went to University of Utah because he wanted to get in some skiing his senior year. So, he’s turned out to be a successful lawyer. He’s a low key and quiet, but he’s well liked. Everyone I meet likes him. He’s very bright, very smart. He doesn’t have aspirations to be an Edward Bernstein or anything of that nature. At one time, he ran for state assembly. I said, what’s going to be your goal? He says, I don’t think the state constitution and laws are very well written. Fortunately, Nevada missed out. He wasn’t elected.
(end of session)
This is Claytee White and I’m with Dr. Boyer. It’s the last day of November, 2000. So, how are you this morning?
Just fine, thank you.
Now, the last time we stopped, you had said a few things about some of the civic organizations that you belong to. You talked about the Cancer Society, your medical society. Smoking is one of the highest, Las Vegas is one of the places in the country where smoking is at its highest. Was that topic ever discussed in any of your groups?
Well, that was one of several things discussed. This is part of our general education to the public, the dangers of smoking, among other things. People didn’t appreciate the dangers of smoking in those days as they are now. But, I can remember even as a child, my father used to preach to me as I’d go with him on country calls about the dangers of smoking, about how it would stunt a little boy’s growth. People would die early and that was in the 1920s that he was preaching about the bad things with smoking and tobacco and he knew that then. So, I was off to a good start when I went to work for the Cancer Society because I knew about that and, of course, I learned about other aspects of cancer after that. There was a big public education program. That was a big part of our program then.
Do you ever think that Las Vegas could become on of those cities where we don’t have smoking in restaurants?
I never would have dreamed that we would have that and now I just take it for granted. Most people do, including the smokers.
What about non-smoking casinos? Would that work?
I don’t know about that. People have the choice of going into the casinos. They have no choice about how much smog is in the air. They have no choice about other sources of public smoking, but I think that smoking casinos is pretty much a part of the picture and, fortunately, you don’t see as much smoking in the casinos as you did at one time. When we first came here, sometimes you almost couldn’t see across the casino because there was so much smoke filled air. The cocktail waitresses would tell you that when they came home from work, their clothes were saturated with smoke and even the beautiful clothing that the women wore, beautiful gowns, and the men wore suits and when they came home from the casino, everyone would smell like a tobacco pot. That was the way it was. So, you can imagine what the smoke did to our lungs.
One of the things that you had talked about before was your great interest in UNLV. You also had a connection with the Judy Bailey Theater over there. How do you feel when people say there is no culture in Las Vegas?
I accept the fact that some people just don’t know about it because it’s not advertised as much as it could be. Many people do know it’s here and people have much more culture in large cities, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia and they know it’s there, but they don’t make use of it. I think proportionately, percentage wise, population, we do appreciate our culture and we talk about it to our friends. Of course, part of that is to off set the feeling they may have about sin, gaming, and casinos. We do have culture. We have a lot of churches and we have a university and all these things. So, we sort of tend to brag a little bit about our culture. We do have a great deal of culture here. We have fine musicians here, we have fine dancing groups, we have the ballet, and we have plays advertised in the papers everyday. There is no reason they can’t know about these things because the papers do a good job of publicizing what’s being offered on the strip and off the strip in the way of plays and concerts and the things put on by the University. But even before that, there was a subculture of culture, should we say. There was the Mesquite Club that was founded by the pioneering women. There were literary groups and people sent their children off to school. Las Vegas is pretty much of an enlightened community, culture wise, I would say compared to other cities of the same size and under more adverse circumstances.
When you first came and you began to be a part of the community building group, what kind of relationship did that group have with the African American community or any other communities of color?
There was early integration in the churches, educational system, the school system and there were non-educational groups [in] which there was participation and membership and it was, I would say, more of an enlightened community than many other communities were in the United States. There were also an Afro-American and there were Hispanic and there were the Asians and, as I remember, that was not very much of a consideration. There was, of course, [the fact that] the African American population was concentrated on what was called the Westside, but that was the old pioneer part of Las Vegas. That’s where the early black settlers came in and there were also black settlers out in the northern part of town. They were pretty wealthy. They had a lot of land holdings and out in Paradise Valley, there was a Japanese group who were very progressive and they lived almost in shacks, but they did a good job of rearing their children. One of them became a pathologist at Veteran’s Hospital in Los Angeles, one of them became a nuclear scientist at either Harvard or at MIT and a third one, Mr. Tomyasu was a successful businessman here and they were highly respected in the community and they contributed a lot to the community. They practically fed the workers by the thousands when they were building the dam here in Las Vegas and they did some scientific farming. Then, many of the Hispanics worked on the railroad and I had a number of Hispanic people, they were all very charming people. I was just not aware of that much difference and I grew up the first 12 years of my life in a town where there were no blacks at all. The way it was, I had no prejudice at all and so, I didn’t know that much about it until I interned in New York. They were more racially conscious there than they were in the communities that I had grown up in. When I was a paperboy in Oklahoma, there were some blacks in the community and we loved them all and they all loved us and I was invited to their homes for pie and milk when I delivered the papers. They were just my friends. I was not aware of that. Actually, I wasn’t aware of that much racial difference here when I first came here. It seemed to come later. Of course, later on with integration in 1965, [sic] they had to integrate the schools and a conscious effort was made to overcome that. They began to get jobs in the casinos, dealing, cocktail waitresses as so forth. So, I think the community as a whole has made a conscious effort to integrate.
Compare racial attitudes in New York to Las Vegas. Now, I know the difference in the size is tremendous at this point.
Well, I interned at New Rochelle, New York, which was a suburb and we had a pretty good-sized black community there and there was also a big Irish community and an Italian community and I knew most of the blacks as patients in the hospital. So few were employees and I think that the school system in New Rochelle may have been integrated too. My contact then with blacks were as patients and the ones that came to the emergency room. They didn’t bother me. I wasn’t afraid of anything, but I was taught that something might happen to you, this or that, because these people fight and they shoot and when they shoot to kill someone, they don’t know who did it. So, all of this was kind of a surprise to me. I had never witnessed anything like that before. My patients, they were just like all my other patients, I had no problem.
A few minutes ago you said that early on you thought the churches were integrated?
Well, not integrated, but we’d have, I was in the Methodist Church and quite often the ministers would have things together and there was one very prominent Methodist minister over there and he’s still here, I can’t think of his name, Marion somebody.
Did he run for public office at one time?
Yes, and a dentist came in here and he was a suave person. He was in the medical society and he was accepted. Even then, I don’t remember that much trouble.
Was it Dr. West?
Yes, Charles West. I knew him real well. We worked together on the American Cancer Society.
Dr. West did a lot of volunteering. He volunteered as the medical person for one of the football teams here in the city. He used to travel with the team and all of that. How well did you get to know Dr. West.
I knew him as well as I knew any other doctor. He served as the ambassador, I would say. Sometimes when guest came in, like an African delegation, he and his wife would then act as the [hostss.]
What was the relationship between the community builders and the people who ran the strip? I want to know in the early days, when the strip was run by people who today we consider a ‘family’ or a ‘mob.’ Was there any kind of relationship?
I know some of the old time contractors had some of their right hand people [who] were blacks right here in the community and they had a very close relationship. I can remember several that were very close with their employees. Since that time, some of them have started up their own business, you know. I had one person who was a cement finisher and he had dermatitis on his hands from handling all the cement and so I said, it looks like you may have to get out of this. He said, this is my business. So then, he was being taken care of by the Nevada Industrial Commission and every time he’d get cleared up, he’d go right back to work as soon as he could. First thing you know, he’s into it again and I had to patch him up. So, it got to be about every three months, Doc, I’ve got it again. I’d have to give him some cortisone and get him straightened out again with some salve. Finally, they persuaded him to become a dealer. Went through dealer school and he went out on the strip and he didn’t like it. He wanted to go back to the cement business and he did. Finally, he was his own contractor. I knew him quite well. I had a lot of the culinary business because they had wet work and the bartenders would have wet work dermatitis and maids would have wet work dermatitis and the cooks would have wet work.
What is that?
It’s just dermatitis of the hands from all the soap and water and heat and fish juice and meat juice. They were allergic to certain things. I saw a lot of occupational dermatitis among any one who works on the strip, but that was just part of the job. Even doctors would get dermatitis on their hands from scrubbing so much. I’ve even known one doctor to give up surgery because he couldn’t scrub. This being the town of hotels and thousands of culinary workers, they were covered by insurance. They had good medical care, but the hands just couldn’t take the thing unless they protected them or got some kind of duty that required less wet work and less contact with these things that irritated their skin. The Nevada Industrial Commission and the unions were all very helpful. They had a good relationship there.
What was the relationship between the community builders, people like you and other members of the Rotary Club, between that group of people and the owners of the casino, especially in the early days?
Quite often the Rotary Club, when I came here, had a number of members in the club who were in the casino business. They were owners, they were presidents, for example, the owner of the Tropicana was a member of our club, the president of the Tropicana Hotel was a member of our club. They were in our club [and] in the gaming business. In the beginning, this Rotary Club of about 23 members, they were businessmen. Of course, they that the Rotary Club before they had gaming here, too. They were all businessmen and no casino operators among them. Later on, it was obvious that the gaming industry was a big part and they were in our community, but they also not only belonged to the Rotary Club, but they belonged to the Masonic clubs and they belonged to their churches and they sent their kids to school. They served on the school boards and cocktail waitresses would be den mothers and so, there was no problem [about] being in the gaming industry. In the early days, it was a pretty religious town. They had a few Methodist churches and Baptist churches, but they all took gaming chips in the collection tray and then they’d go down and cash it. They had no aversion to taking them. Our Lady of Las Vegas over here has always had gaming people. The first cathedral here was heavily supported by bosses on the strip because they had a cathedral and a Catholic church right on the strip. That was never a problem with people here in this town. Now, you see, we have gaming all over the country. So, now they don’t point to Las Vegas as being sin city because they have the same problems and the same things we do, but they have more trouble with theirs than we have with ours. They can’t keep the politician’s hands in their pockets. Now, they don’t say anything.
Last time you told me you were going to tell me a story about Al Capone.
Oh, Al Capone.
Well, of course in the early days, after they had gaming here, there were people who had been in the gaming industry and things in other cities and they couldn’t [afford to] surface. In Newport, Kentucky and Covington, Kentucky, right across the river from Cincinnati was a gaming community, but the men there, who worked there, their wives went to church with my husband.[sic] He’s a clerk; actually, he was a dealer. Now, I had a close friend, she worked in the casinos back there and they knew Jerry Lewis and knew Tony Martin, all those people when they were in their early days, but the people from Cincinnati, which is a good German Lutheran community, all went to Kentucky. They would flock in there in the same way that our good friends the Mormons up in southwest Utah, they like to go down to Mesquite for dinner and get a little bit of play and a little bit of fun and then go across and go back home at night and go to church on Sunday morning. It’s convenient to do that and no one bothers too much about it here. I would say that now, no one pays any attention to what they do because they all have legitimate jobs and they make an effort to keep their gaming industry clean with no cheating because if they do, they can lose their license. Fortunately, from the very beginning, we’ve had very good gaming control. The sons of business people have gone into law and are on the gaming commission. Alan Bible’s son was a chief of the gaming commission. You won’t hear the preacher preaching about it from the pulpit, either. In the same way, they don’t have clock in the casino because they don’t want the people to know how late it is, they should be going home, go to bed and go to church the next morning.
Tell me how Al Capone plays……
Well, I had this little fellow who was a dealer and it’s funny how some people confide in their doctor when they won’t even confide in their minister. Anyway, he worked in Chicago. He said, Doc, I worked in Al Capone’s office and I lived maybe 10 blocks from the office, so I walked home for lunch everyday. My wife had lunch for me, so one time they said, well, there’s a brand new black T model Ford down there and you can drive back and forth to your home, courtesy of Al Capone. He said, I’m all right, they said, go ahead and take it, see how you like [it]. So, he went down and cranked it up, same model that I have in my Country Doctor Museum back in Arkansas, by the way. He drove it home, had lunch, came back out and he said, just happenstance, I walked around to the back of the car and lifted the lid on the trunk and said there was a Thompson sub-machine gun lying in that trunk. I said, what did you do? He said, I very gently let the lid down, started the car, went back down to the office and said, here’s the keys, I believe I just prefer walking. Then he said, when I came to Las Vegas, I would see some of these people I knew that had been in the mob business in other places and they would see me and they would recognize me and I would recognize them. I kept going and they kept going. They didn’t want to know anything about one another, mum is the word. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes forward and you won’t get in trouble. On the other hand, I’ve had other bosses, up high in the gaming business, who have been in gaming since they were kids and they would tell me who was a big shot in this hotel, I knew him back in the purple mob days in Cleveland and, oh, he was a crook. You couldn’t trust him. This one fellow, Mr. Eddie Fritz, made two fortunes in gaming and he was on a ship going back home from Europe. His place in the stock market went down, he said, Doc, I lost everything I had in the stock market crash. But, anyway, they’d tell me stories about themselves, about other people, and some were people here in town but I had to keep my mouth shut. They would confide in me. I’ve heard some pretty good stories. I could name some names and this one friend that I had, he was from Covington in Newport, Kentucky and he knew a lot of these people who have been big men on the scene in the gaming industry and he knows who’s mobsters and who’s not mobsters. He knows the game inside and out and he’s now 88 years of age and the stories he could tell you.
Has he been interviewed?
No.
Would he tell the stories?
He’s getting up in years, but he would be interesting to talk to. He remembers a lot and has a very bright mind and had a wonderful wife. She was a good bridge player. His wife and my wife were close friends; in fact, they lived right across the street from one another. He has a son here who has a good position out at the test site. After he got out of the hotel business, he went into the restaurant business here. He could tell you all these stories about the early days and he tells me, he started the first baccarat game in the Caesar’s Palace hotel. He knew how to play it. He learned it back in Kentucky. They asked him to come out to Caesar’s Palace. He went out there and he said, I want to see so and so. Go to the back room. So, he went back and they set up a deal. He’s been the eye-in-the-sky. He can spot a crook from here to there without batting an eye, crocked dealer. He just knows the game like the back of his hand.
Has he ever told you how to spot a crook, how to look for someone who is cheating?
He’s told me just stories. He can tell it in detail, just like telling you how to bake a cake.
It sounds like the communities were just so integrated, business, the professionals like the doctors and everybody. Tell me about the beginning of Heldorado.
Heldorado was started, I believe, in 1937 when business was bad. There were two business leaders. One was a Mr. James Cashman, Sr. who had Cashman Cadillac and the other was a Mr. ???? I believe he had a plumbing company. He had a business. He has children who were pioneers, too. So, they put together this Heldorado which included a rodeo, a parade and they declared that you wear western wear during Heldorado days. When I came here, we all did that. I wore a wide belt, I wore cowboy boots. I had a bolero and I had a handkerchief around my neck and I wore that to the office and everyone dressed for Heldorado. The clerks in the bank, they went western style from the president right on down to the lowest clerk. It was just a community thing and everyone pitched into it because they all realized that it was part of their livelihood to do this. They had a kiddie’s parade on Friday and then they had the old timers parade and on Saturday they had the beauty parade and they had beautiful floats that had been built by the hotels and the local people. They had showgirls out there, standing up in their costumes with their feathers on and some of the young high school girls, very pretty, they were selected from the local families and they would be parading. Then, they had the high school bands and there was a famous Spanish riding group that came up every year from Santa Barbara, California and we usually had some Hollywood figure to be the Marshal of the parade. I remember seeing John Payne and Hoot Gibson was here at that time, the old cowboy type. It was usually headed up by prominent people and they all went down to Bonanza and Las Vegas and Main Street, the Heldorado ground and they had games and they had food, a barbeque. Then they had a dance that night and they, also, had a fining routine where everyone had to buy a badge, a Heldorado badge that you wore with your clothes. It cost $2.00. You had to buy one because if you got caught without it they could throw you into the pokey which was a big iron barred cage right in the middle of the street and they’d put you in there and you had to stay there until some of your friends saw you and bailed you out by buying you a ticket and so forth.
It sounds like so much fun. Did it help to revitalize the businesses?
Well, it helped bring in more tourists and that kept going from 1937 until, I guess sometime in the ‘60s. Then they got to the point where the hotels wouldn’t participate because it was drawing people from out on the strip to downtown. It no longer had the heavy support of the hotels. Before then, they didn’t have that many hotels.
(end of side one)
The old time hotels that would participate were the Thunderbird, Golden Nugget, Sal Saveg Hotel, Last Frontier that was built in 1941 or 42 and they all pitched in because the parade brought business up to Las Vegas from Los Angeles, but later on, the gaming was concentrated on the strip and they didn’t want to go down there because they had generated their own publicity and they had their own publicity committees. They did many things to get notoriety. The local people did the PR too. Many were quite good at it. The Union Pacific Railroad would support it because they were getting people to come up by train at that time, too. The airlines, it generated business for them, Bonanza Airlines. So, my wife, she was a stewardess on Bonanza Airlines, she was on a float one time that was sponsored by Bonanza Airlines. It was home town play.
When did that home town atmosphere change? When did you see that change taking place?
I would say approximately in the 60s and 70s because I remember, even then, as late as 1975, 1985, I would see patients who had moved in from larger cities, saying we just love the small town atmosphere. Now, that was in 1980, 1985. Of course, these were people from Los Angeles, people from New York or Chicago. Here we were, the old timers, we could remember like it was back at 32,000 [people] and when I came here there were people who could remember when it was really the old days when they had the start of Heldorado. I’ve had the opportunity to see all this change that has taken place over the years. My patients, some of them were founders who came here in 1905, like the Von Tobel’s, Bob Squires, who had the newspaper, Bill Ferron who had the White Cross Drug Store, Ronzones who had the store downtown and a number of them who were truly the old pioneers. There were others who came here and built the dam and raised their families, some stayed and some left, but they were all contributors. I tell my friends, I tell my family, I tell my children, I said, everyone that comes here does something, everyone lays a brick, everyone scrapes a little mortar, everyone carries a hod. I said, it takes all these people to build these sky scrapers, it takes all these people to do the culinary work, it takes all these people to give the support, the cleaners, the launderers, the doctors, the nurses, the teachers, we have all helped. Even what you are doing here is helping to record the history of Las Vegas and so we are all pioneers, even though we may not stay here for a very long period of time, we all contribute.
In the 60’s, Howard Hughes came and that’s when we see a break and the city goes toward the big corporations coming in. Hilton and all of those big companies started to come in at that point. Did your professional community see a big difference when that began to happen?
We knew it was happening, but we didn’t participate in it because we were physicians and we took care of them whether they were a pit boss or whether they were a street cleaner. We had a broad spectrum of all of this, you see.
Was there a change in the feeling, the small town?
No, it didn’t take place. You could see it taking place, but you didn’t feel the full impact until the 80s. Of course, I’m sure you’ve been told about the good influence of Howard Hughes moving in because he was a corporation man, accurate bookkeeper, he hired a lot of retired military officers. He had a lot of Mormon people on his payroll and he operated a clean game. If his hotels took in so much money and he paid so much taxes on what he made, then that would put the bee on other people in hotels who were doing as much or more and might not be paying that much taxes. The stories we heard, just street talk, [were] that people would go to Phoenix and they would go to Mexico and they would take money out of here by the case full. They had messengers and all that. I never knew anyone who did that, but that was just common talk among the people. By the same token, if a crime was committed it was some man who was a mobster who did something wrong to other people in the business. They might do away with him, but they would do it out of town. You heard about [the] Gus Greenbaum story. My wife knew both of them down in Phoenix.
Tell me that story.
Well, the story is that I think Gus Greenbaum left one of the hotels on the strip, it may have been the Flamingo and he had a clientele, I suppose, and he went to the Riviera and so, some people didn’t like that apparently. So, he and his wife were killed in a hotel in Phoenix. Then you’ve heard that some of Bugsy Siegel’s bosses didn’t like him because they thought he was spending too much money on this and that and wasn’t doing the job right. He had this girlfriend, Virginia [Hill], and that’s how his career ended because he wasn’t playing the game according to the rules of his bosses. What I’m telling you now is just talk about the old times. It’s nothing. It’s no secret. I have had people tell me these things over the years, doctors, friends who were physicians to these people. One was a personal physician to Gus Greenbaum, a close friend of his, but you wouldn’t ask him about this. He wouldn’t tell you. He was just a physician.
If you, right now, had the opportunity to interview let’s say two people, who are still alive today, who do you think would be the two most important people whose stories we should get on tape?
One of those people who still has a very clear mind is Ed Von Tobel. You may have already interviewed him, but he has a good memory, he’s one. One that would have been very good, [could] tell you about some of the inside gaming industry, would have been my friend Jeff Abbott, but he’s 88 years old now. He has a clear mind, but he’s not quite a vigorous as he was. He could tell you some of the relationships of people here to Newport, Kentucky and the gaming figures he has known and he has known a lot of them and they knew him. He was well known and well liked and could go and get a job anytime. It’s odd enough; he was a dealer and a box man. He could have been a pit boss, he could have been a shift boss, but he didn’t want that. All he wanted was his job. He didn’t want to go any higher than a box man or a dealer. If he went above that he would lose his tips. He just never aspired to be a boss. On the other hand, there have been people who have started at the bottom and worked up. Boys who’ve gone to high school have become presidents of some of the hotels and I would have to sit down and think before I could give you an answer like that. A person downtown who knows a lot, he may have been interviewed, that Jackie Gaughan who had the hotels and his son, Mike Gaughan. They live across here and Mike Gaughan’s mother-in-law lives right next door to us.
This is such a beautiful, hidden away, community here. How long has this been here and what is it called?
This is called Rancho Nevada and it is not as affluent as Rancho Circle. When I came here Rancho Circle was the affluent area.
Where is that located?
Right back here, behind us. I’ll drive you around here. Steve Wynn’s brother-in-law lives right down the street. There are some pretty prominent people living here. It’s convenient because it’s located in the central portion [of town.]. There are so many areas now that some of these people who are upwardly mobile, they don’t know which way to go. There are so many places to go. They are confused and frustrated. My son lives right across the street. We’re right next door to the umbilicus of Las Vegas, that is the Las Vegas Valley Water District and my son lives right across the street. Over there is the old artesian belt, which at one time had a well flowing 30 feet in diameter. It went down this way and it filled the spring along the way the mountain men came and John C. Fremont came and Mormon pioneers came. The belly button is right across the street and they are going to make this into a preservation park which I think is the greatest thing that’s happened. The Las Vegas Valley Water District is doing that and some of the community organizations are kicking in and it’s going to be nicely developed. Of course, you know about the Union Pacific property down here. Mayor Goodman is trying to do something. That is the second part of the umbilical region, that came second. I think what they should do with that, instead of putting a stadium or performing hall or something, they should make it a park. It would be like Grand Central Park in New York. It would be like the Golden State Park in San Francisco. It would be like the big park in St. Louis, Missouri.
So, why don’t you suggest this to the Mayor?
When I talked to him I told him I thought it was a good idea. You know, it has such a wonderful exposure along the freeway. On one side it has 95, it has the railroad on one side, it parallels the downtown park. It could be the garden park of downtown Las Vegas. That would bring back downtown Las Vegas. That would be like having, look at all the famous stores up and down the streets at Central Park in New York, highest priced property in New York, very attractive and it’s better known than any other part of New York City.
I think that is a great idea.
Think of all the business that would be brought in. It could be a centerpiece of Las Vegas. It could be the emerald surrounded by the diamonds.
My last question. A lot of the civic organizations have created the foundation of the city, the Rotary Club and other clubs like that. What kind of projects are you working on now in the Rotary Club and what are some of your big plans for the future?
Each administration had their own project. The only thing that we have going now, which is an ongoing thing, is the Las Vegas Foundation which is a tax free fund and we dispense funds out of that for any deserving group or individual. That’s the only ongoing thing we have besides the membership and the structure of the Rotary. The club has done so many things. We have a little Rotary park up there but it’s been surrounded by buildings. Every year, we have a speech program, a public speaking program and we circulate this to all the high schools and invite them to participate and they select one speaker from each high school and they give their pitch and are judged by people who judge public speaking and [the] winners there and they go to district meets and they compete again. So, the Rotary supports public speaking. I think that is kind of a cultural thing.
Do the participants get some kind of prize or scholarship?
They get a monetary prize.
What would you like to see, clubs like the Rotary, doing, let’s say in the year 2001?
I would like for us to upgrade our membership. We have too many people who come into our club to use it as a stepping-stone. They come to the community and they want to get into the swing of things, so they become a member of the Rotary Club and they can add that to their C.V. Some of them do things and some don’t. Some people are the workhorses and they do everything. I remember the year I was president, the thing which I tried to get was to get a meeting of the Rotary International here in Las Vegas, but we were before our day. We finally did get one. We had one in 1986. I had been one that had tried to get it going before then. When I became president, one of our old pioneers, Wayne Kirsch said, Doc, you ought to promote Rotary International, so I took him at his word and I prepared a big, long letter and submitted it to the convention board. Of course, I didn’t realize the immensity of it, how little my letter was. These things are very much sought after like the Olympics in Australia or in Salt Lake City. They even get to the point where the Mormons put money on the line. One of our big programs was a polio foundation drive in which Rotary International undertook this project to pass out vaccine all over the world to stamp out polio. We raised thousands and thousands of dollars for it here in Las Vegas. Nationally and internationally we raised millions of dollars. Every club in the United States participated in it. We did especially. We supported good things in the community such as this World History Foundation. Many Rotarians are active on the various committees in the University. We also will help young men who are future leaders who, obviously, have a drive to do things in the community. We’ll make them president of the club. Our president now is Tom Krob. And he’s been very active in the Boy Scouts and a number of organizations. He’s the type who has come in and done things.
My very last question. Where do you see Las Vegas ten years from now? Where do you see the progress, the changes in this city if you look down the road? Where are we going to change most?
I think we are going to be a big business center. I think that’s going to be invented by the airport out here. If you look on a map, we’re right in the middle; a very strategic area and we’re in the middle of a clock. If you have your hands on the clock that are two hundred miles long and they sweep, that clock will sweep through Los Angeles, Phoenix, part of the way to Salt Lake City, to San Diego, to Reno and over the mountains to Yosemite. So, we’re in the middle of a large area and even now, it’s my understanding that the federal government has designated [us] as a trade area and this trade area not only includes southern Nevada, but it also includes southwest Utah, northwest Arizona, includes the southern tip of California. We have a large area and we have the infrastructure, we have the freeway system going, we have a tremendous airport which is only going to get better and this is one of the visions that Howard Hughes had, by the way. He wanted to do just what they are doing now, have a big airport. Of course, you have to deal with the city politicians and they don’t have as much vision as Howard Hughes had, but he was right on the button. The other place would have been down here south of Boulder City, that little sandy valley there, but too much surrounded by mountains. Anyway, that was one of his concepts. I think that Las Vegas has gone from a small railroad town which served as a depot and watering station for a railroad that came from here and there were railroads and trails and mines and cattle shipped out of here. If you go south of here down to Kelso, you’ll see a big depot. So, we have the railroad, we have the airport, we have the climate. I say that our beautiful season starts the first of October and goes clear through until the end of June, when it turns hot. He have three hot months and nine months we are home free. We don’t have to shovel snow, we don’t have to wipe ice off the windshields, the sun shines, it doesn’t rain. We have all this. People have shown that they like moderate climates. The climate is a part of our industry. I think as time goes by, we’ll have more water and we are learning to use what we have now by having more desert landscaping, except in this area of Rancho Nevada, this is the garden district of Las Vegas. We’ll pay the water bill. It’s gone from a railroad town, then it went to a trade center for this big area and then it went to the casinos in the 30s. Then, along came the military. Another thing in which we were blessed was the Basic Magnesium [Plant] and that came on just before the military moved in. Now, we have the casinos and we’ve grown from certain type of shows, one player, Danny Thomas and Frank Sinatra, and now, it’s become Las Vegas itself as the center of attraction. It’s not one show, one group, it’s Las Vegas itself in the same way that Central Park is in New York and New Orleans has the French Quarter and Florida has Disneyland. Las Vegas is the attraction and it’s still going. In the the next stage we’ll become international. We’re going to have international plane flights. The end is not in sight. No one ever had any idea that all of this was going to happen. I understand that we are now up to one and a half million, 1.4 million. When I came here, I came here because it was a nice size town of 32,000 and they just blew my town all to hell! What do you do? You sit back and enjoy the show.
Right. Thank you so much. This was wonderful.
|
|||||
Oral History Project |
|
||||