1 NEVADA STATE MUSEUM & HISTORICAL SOCIETY LAS VEGAS, NEVADA THE LAS VEGAS I REMEMBER INTERVIEW WITH R. GUILD GRAY December 18, 1997 Taken At KNPR Studios 5151 Boulder Highway Las Vegas, Nevada TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 2 MR. WRIGHT: Okay. Just to set the record, this is December 18, 1997. And I'm Frank Wright, and this is The Las Vegas I Remember. I'd like our guest to introduce himself. MR. GRAY: Well, my name is R. Guild Gray. I've been around here quite a spell. I first came here as a teacher. As I recall, it was December 1935. MR. WRIGHT: So you have been around awhile. MR. GRAY: Well, I left again. I was one of those that, as the dam entered completion stage, I thought, well, this town will just become a little tourist attraction, so I moved. Then I came back in 1953, I think it was. Might have been '52, '53, and it was a different world. MR. WRIGHT: Let's go back a little bit, to about the beginning, if I may. First of all, a simple question. Most people seeing your name in print would pronounce it "guild." MR. GRAY: That's correct. MR. WRIGHT: G-u-i-l-d. Is there a story behind that? MR. GRAY: Yeah, there's a little story behind it. My father had a friend who was a French Huguenot. I understand that's the origin of the name, and they pronounced it Guild instead of guild. And dad wanted to name me after his friend, and my mother wanted to name me Raymond. That's TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 3 where the "R" comes from. And my dad said, "Well, go ahead. Name him Raymond." But then he never would call me Raymond, and I got stuck with that. I tried to get rid of that when I went into the Navy during World War II. So if you meet anybody that knew me only in the Navy, I'm Ray Gray. But when I came back home -- MR. WRIGHT: You couldn't lose the first name. MR. GRAY: Couldn't lose the Guild. MR. WRIGHT: How did the Gray family come to be in Nevada? MR. GRAY: Well, I tried to get that out of my dad one time. Both of my parents were from southeastern Missouri in the levee country. And dad worked in Peoria, Illinois, for an automobile factory at the time. And for health reasons, I guess, they decided they'd move West, my dad's health. We ended up in Reno, Nevada. And I said, "How come we ended up here?" He says, "That's where I ran out of money." MR. WRIGHT: That's probably not an uncommon story as people were coming West and stopping over there. So were you born in Reno, then? MR. GRAY: No, I was born in Illinois before my parents started out. I was just a little shaver. Well, we ended up in Reno. We stayed in other places for short periods of time, Dad looking for a place to light. It was 1913 when we ended up in Reno. I was two years old when we ended up in TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 4 Reno. MR. WRIGHT: So you went through the public schools in Reno, went to Reno High School. MR. GRAY: Yeah, through the university, which used to be called the University of Nevada. MR. WRIGHT: And your father was a teacher, among other things. MR. GRAY: My father was a teacher at one time, yes. He was a vocational educator. He taught carpentry in Reno High School. MR. WRIGHT: And there's an interesting story about how you came to be in Las Vegas. MR. GRAY: Well, two stories. One is that I had a pretty good reputation in the education department at the university when I was an undergraduate. And I got out of school mid year in 1935-36 school year, and I was looking for a job. And jobs, particularly at that time of year, were hard to find. The dean called me in one day and handed me a contract, came up through Maude Frazier, who was the superintendent of schools down here. And I had already been accepted, but I was accepted to teach Spanish. MR. WRIGHT: Had you had a good background in Spanish? MR. GRAY: I had a minor in Spanish. So I said, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 5 "Dean, I can't do that." He says, "You're not going to let me down now. You take that job. I got it for you." So I ended up down here as a Spanish teacher, but I only lasted at that one semester. One of the teachers was taking leave for that semester, and I went back where I belonged, to an English teacher. MR. WRIGHT: And you also taught forensics, did you not? MR. GRAY: Yeah. I had all the drama and oratory and debate and that sort of thing. MR. WRIGHT: In 1936, anybody thinking of Nevada probably would have thought of Reno first. MR. GRAY: Oh, yes. Las Vegas was hardly in anybody's horizon. Frank, knowing that this interview was coming up, I wanted to check some figures that I had in the back of my mind, and I did that yesterday. I have an old encyclopedia set, and I looked up the population of Nevada and the various cities in Nevada in 1935. The state, as you know, was 110 square miles, roughly. Well, that particular book says in 1935 there were 91,000 people in the state of Nevada, of which about 5,000 were in Las Vegas. The largest city was Reno. But interestingly enough, the second largest city in 1935, and had just sprung up overnight, was Boulder City. They had 6,000 people. They TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 6 were all construction workers over there. MR. WRIGHT: Right, and by the time you got here that was dwindling down. MR. GRAY: That was dwindling down, yeah. They were doing the painting and cleanup work by the time I got here, yes. MR. WRIGHT: So your first impressions of Las Vegas? You were used to Reno, which was an older city and established community, and you came to this town of just over 5,000 people. What did you think of it? MR. GRAY: Well, first of all, I'm on old sagebrusher. Until we had the type of metropolitan populations that we have now, pretty much wherever you were in Nevada was the same. The people were pretty much pioneers or parents had been pioneers, old ranchers, old miners. And it was a different world. It was a closer world, a more personal world. So I really wasn't out of place in Las Vegas. The people that I met here when I came, the people that I worked with, many of them had been in Nevada a long time. And I hate to generalize too much, but there is a difference between an old, well established populace than a new, where there is a new melting pot and people haven't established their relationships. So I felt pretty much at home here. The teachers had all been in the state for some TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 7 length of time that I worked with. And many of the parents were old-timers here of the kids, too. So as far as the people are concerned, it was no big change for me. MR. WRIGHT: One thing I wanted to ask about before we get too much into your experiences in Las Vegas, you have reason to know the state really well from a very young age. And in fact, I think you've said you've been just about everywhere in Nevada. MR. GRAY: I think I wouldn't be exaggerating too much if I would tell you that I've been in every community in the state, that I have crossed every valley in the state and probably every mountain range in the state. And there's a reason for that, two or three reasons. One is -- that some people find interesting -- that I got out of high school at age 16, which is a little young for getting out. And I probably needed to get away. I had some youth problems with my parents, and I was too young for the age group that I was associated with. So, I fortunately got a job with the United States General Land Office. And their job in the state of Nevada at the time was to survey the unsurveyed lands. And at that time most of Nevada had not been surveyed. You couldn't establish a definite location for a piece of property. So I went out on a survey crew and that took me into the hinterlands of a hinterland state for a couple of years. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 8 And I fortunately had a boss who took an interest in me and taught me many good things, including how to run a transit. As a matter of fact, I became a working topographer even though I was the youngster on the group. And that took me into the hinterlands of many of the counties of the state. Then I was fortunate, a little later in life, to become a deputy superintendent of public instruction. And in those days the state was divided up into five educational districts, and I had one of the districts which put me in charge of all of the rural schools in those counties. That served me in good stead. Then of course, in working in education in Nevada all those years, I also had the opportunity to go to meetings and conventions and that sort of thing. Then after I left the schools, I went into financial consulting work, and I worked for most of the counties, including the State of Nevada during that period. So I've really worked -- well, I think I can safely say either worked in or lived in 13 of Nevada's 17 counties. MR. WRIGHT: Not very many people can say that. I think that's pretty amazing. Back to Las Vegas in 1936. You taught at Las Vegas High School, which was the only high school. You had some students whose names some people might recall even today. MR. GRAY: Yes. Yes, there are some that their names TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 9 are still quite prominent in the community. I had one of the Cashman kids in school, James Cashman's family. I had three of the Foley boys, the Judge Foleys, the attorney family. I had people like there's Grant Stewart, one of the Stewart family. I had Jerry Mack of Thomas & Mack. Everybody knows Thomas & Mack. I had Jerry Mack. Oh, others. A lot of those people are still around and still pillars of the community, the family is. Dick Ronzone of Ronzone's Department Store and so on. MR. WRIGHT: Some of those people were to play a role in your returning to Las Vegas, but we'll get to that all in due time. I think you told a story about when you were the director of the forensics team and traveling around the state. What was it like? How did one get around the state in those days? MR. GRAY: Well, when I was in high school, it may have been a year or two before I got out of high school, the first paved road was made in Nevada. There was a narrow concrete strip between Reno and Carson City. The rest of the state was dirt road. Some of it had been graveled, but most of it was pretty primitive. So to get anywhere was a tough deal. It was a good two-day drive to Reno from Vegas. Elko's about 300 miles from Reno, and that was daylight to dark trip. And then, of course, some of the other towns that were TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 10 mining towns, and still mining towns at that time, like Regan, Austin, out in the middle of the state, it was pretty rough to get there. You got there, but the roads weren't good, that's for sure. MR. WRIGHT: I don't know whether it was during your first stay in Las Vegas, you told a story about traveling northward between Las Vegas and Reno with another Las Vegas High School teacher, Lewis Rowe. MR. GRAY: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: And an incident at Mina. MR. GRAY: There's a school named after Lewis Rowe. He was an art and music teacher and a loved person in the community. He had the school band. I wouldn't know exactly, but along about '36, '37, '38, along in there, Lewis took his band to Reno to a state festival. And going through the little town of Mina, Nevada, which you've heard the expression "speed trap," being the idea that Mina depended on a lot of its revenue for people speeding through a little wide place in the road. MR. WRIGHT: And this was up between Tonopah and Hawthorne. MR. GRAY: Yeah, between Tonopah and Hawthorne, a hundred miles out of Tonopah let's say. MR. GRAY: The caravan of kids in cars -- those days they didn't have school buses to move athletic teams either. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 11 We took private cars. They got them for speeding through town. And Lewis on the way back emptied all the cars, got his band out and marched through town with his band in kind of a defiant gesture of what had happened to them going through. There was a real hullabaloo about that, I'll tell you. The papers picked it up, the disrespect and all that sort of thing. But Lewis was a big enough man that he overcame it. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. There are not too many people around that can give some sense of what Las Vegas was like in the 1930s, in your case '35, '36, '37. Any sort of a physical description of sort? MR. GRAY: Well, first of all, it was a small town, 5,000 people. Everybody knew everybody. All of the kids went to the same high school. There were only a couple of elementary schools, one in North Las Vegas and one in Las Vegas, a few in the surrounding areas. A comfortable, little town where everybody knew the politicians, and the politicians knew everybody, the two or three leaders in the community that pretty much ran the show, I think at that time, rightly or wrongly so. But they had a real strong, local spirit here, I think, because, first of all, Las Vegas was a kind of a hell hole really. It was hot here in the summer. Remember, there was no air conditioning. We didn't even have swamp coolers when I moved here. There was one theater in town that had TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 12 just been built before I came that did have air conditioning. And you can imagine what good business they did in the summertime. MR. WRIGHT: That was the El Portal down on Fremont Street. MR. GRAY: Right. Ernie Cragin, as I recall, but it might have been somebody else. He was later the mayor. But people did things together, dominated primarily by the people in the professional world here. We had a few attorneys and a few doctors and, of course, the teachers. And we had our own little theater. We had a little theater, and we put on plays, and everybody came. And they had musical groups. The ladies had an organization called the Mesquite Club back in those days, and that was purely a ladies organization. And the Rotary Club was a very strong group in the community, met down at the old Beanery. And I got acquainted with all those old boys because being a speech teacher at the school, they were always looking for programs. In a little town it's hard to get programs every week. And so every time I'd have a student that did something well, made a good talk, I was invited down there. So I can say, I think, I knew practically every founder of the local Rotary Club. And what a fine group, very proud of their community. Hard working. Well, they were kind of on the defensive for their community because they'd get a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 13 bad rap from people away because it was so hot here. And it was really hot. I think people were looking for good things to say about their town and were proud to shout them out when they found them. There weren't a heck of a lot of good things to say at that time really. MR. WRIGHT: Well, Rotary over the years has played quite a role in civic responsibilities and so forth. Do you recall at that early period any of the projects? MR. GRAY: Well, now, this happened before my time, but just a few years before. Rotary really got on the map here in the county when they took on as a project, it was a young fellow, a boy actually that had his legs cut off by a mowing machine up in the Overton area. And the Rotary took that on as a project and had artificial limbs made for him. And then as he grew, that was their project. The closeness of the community -- and I might say, too, at this time the Mormon people had a lot of influence in this town. Well, as an aside, I think it's interesting to know that we didn't have an auditorium or a place to go throw plays in the high school, and we used the Mormon church for our speech classes. And nobody said anything about it in those days. MR. WRIGHT: Which is right across the street, basically. MR. GRAY: Yeah. But that's the kind of town it TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 14 was. People really worked together, but I think most people could say that about their old home towns and towns of their younger days. MR. WRIGHT: You mentioned the Beanery. Can you just give us some conception of that? MR. GRAY: The Beanery. I was just looking at a picture the other day, and where did I see it? Well, anyway, the Beanery was the railroad station. It stood where the Plaza Hotel is now. And there was another edifice in there in between the Plaza Hotel and the Beanery. But it was just an old railroad station. The original railroad station, built in around 1905, that was the meeting place for everybody. There was one other place that was kind of a meeting place, and that was the Apache Hotel, downstairs in the Apache. Let's see, what was the name of that fellow? Well, I can't remember now. But anyway, they had a space down there where people had their meetings. For instance, while I was here, during that period of my life, the junior chamber -- they call them Jaycees today -- but the Junior Chamber of Commerce was formed here, and that's where we met. MR. WRIGHT: Paul Ralli, did you know Paul Ralli? MR. GRAY: Paul Ralli, I did. He was an attorney. Wrote a book that everybody should read of his attorney days in this small town. He was a suave fellow, handsome, always groomed beautifully, mustache, always had a flower in his TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 15 lapel. Just a plain character, bright, and very interested in the community, very active in the community. I'm trying to think of the name of his book. I think it's available in the libraries. MR. WRIGHT: Well, he had a couple. One was called Viva Las Vegas (sic), I think. MR. GRAY: I can't remember. I have it at home. MR. WRIGHT: The other one was Divorce Lawyer or something like. MR. GRAY: Yeah, uh-huh. MR. WRIGHT: But anyway, the reason I mentioned him, he was one of the pillars of the junior chamber in those years. MR. GRAY: Yes. He was president at one time. Other people in that organization, Johnny Cahlan was a member of that group. Johnny was the brother of Al Cahlan that ran the newspaper here. And well, it's funny, I can't think of all of them. But many of them went on, as they grew older became pillars of the community. And it became a very active organization. The period of the Cashmans, the second generation of Cashmans and people like Keith Ashworth and Bob Robinson and some of our politicians, Ed Fike and others carried on that institution and did a lot of good things for the community. MR. WRIGHT: You're talking about downstairs at the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 16 Apache, which is now the Horseshoe for those who don't go back that far. MR. GRAY: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Was that the Kiva Club? MR. GRAY: You know, I wouldn't remember. It might have been called the Kiva Club. There was a bar down there and there was a meeting room. MR. WRIGHT: And I think the manager of the hotel was Bob Russell. MR. GRAY: Yes. Oh, there's a character if there ever was one. Anybody that reads history of Las Vegas of that period will -- man with a wonderful sense of humor. Lot of stories about him. But Bob was the only person I ever knew outside of a blind person who could get a dog into the local hotels. He was just a town character. And Bob had an old dog that followed him everywhere. And if Bob couldn't take his dog in, he wouldn't go. Well, everybody knew Bob, and he was an eccentric, lovable fellow. That dog, well, I've seen him sitting right alongside of Bob in the Gourmet Room of the Tropicana, for instance, having dinner. Those characters come about in a community. Every community has some, I guess. MR. WRIGHT: I think so. But it seems like there was a plentiful supply of them in Las Vegas. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 17 MR. GRAY: Oh, one of his stunts that's quite commonly known, I think, written up in some of the books, that he brought in some barracuda from Los Angeles, the Pacific Ocean barracuda. They were dead, of course, but he put them on hooks and had people with poles drawing in these dead barracuda out there at the foot of Hoover Dam to advertize the fishing in Southern Nevada. MR. WRIGHT: So he was one of our first promoters, then? MR. GRAY: Yeah, yeah, he really was. MR. WRIGHT: You didn't stay very long. What, two or three years? MR. GRAY: Three years about, uh-huh. MR. WRIGHT: And how come you left? MR. GRAY: Well, I guess I really left because my father passed away. And my mother was sort of incapacitated and needed me, and I could get a similar job up there. I was glad to get back home to Reno, too. But I liked it here. I didn't leave here with a "God, I'm glad to get out of town." But I did think that there were more opportunity in the northern part of the state than in the southern part of the state, and at that time there surely was. But if I'd just stuck around a couple of years, it would have been different. But, oh, people kid me now. Gosh, all this land, you know, you could buy for $2 an acre and $50 TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 18 an acre, and now it's selling -- I saw a lot the other day for $600,000. But I wouldn't have made that money anyway, because if I would have bought it for two and I could have sold it for five, I would have. MR. WRIGHT: Well, several people have told us that those properties were going for the taxes. MR. GRAY: Oh, yes. I don't know how many people know that that whole area at the foot of Sunrise Mountain at one time was broken up into lots -- and this was in the '30s, I'm pretty sure -- and staked out. And those lots sold all over the world. Nothing ever came of it because it's only been in recent years where they're even thinking of building out there. But there was speculators here, of course, like every place else, and some of them did pretty well. MR. WRIGHT: So, could you sort of recap the course of your career in education and other fields? MR. GRAY: Well, my educational career, I'm sort of proud of. I first started out as a teacher here, went to Reno with the same kind of job at Reno High School. And then I was fortunate enough to get a job in the state department of education and became one of those five area deputy superintendents in charge of the schools. I had five counties, as I recall now. MR. WRIGHT: That's hard for people to imagine, you know, being in charge or responsible for five counties. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 19 MR. GRAY: Well, Nevada had a unique educational system level. When you say "in charge of the schools," I was really supervisor of the schools. Now, in those schools big enough to hire a superintendent, I didn't have any job there. They had their own privates. But in the schools that did not have, where you just had a school board was running things, then's when I was there. I was kind of their superintendent, the small schools and the rural schools. And I just feel that that was a real rich experience for me because I did get out and saw all the way different things are handled. And then the war came along and although I had a -- I forgot what the classification was, but I had some kind of a draft deferment thing because of the job I had with education. But I couldn't stand it. Most of my friends were in the service. See, I was a young man, 30 years old at that time, about that. And I remember going out to a rural school one day, and one of my jobs was to see that the kids were in school. And the teachers told me about a 16-year-old girl that wasn't in school and was out working on a farm. So, I went out to the farm to see why she wasn't in school, and she's driving a tractor out there along with her dad. So I went to the dad and asked why the girl wasn't in school. And he looked at me disgustedly and said, "I've got to make a living. My boys are in the service. I've got to use this girl." And he looked at TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 20 me and he said, "You look like a strong young fellow. Why the hell aren't you in the service?" Well, you know that got to me. So I went back into the service. But then I came back from the service and went back with the state department. But shortly after I came back -- that would be in 1940. When was the war over, 1945? MR. WRIGHT: '45. MR. GRAY: September '45. I got out of service January 1st, 1946, and I went to work for the state department for a few months. And then the people over at a school district called Yerington Union School District hired me as their superintendent. And so, I went to that school district, which was a wonderful experience. I just got to tell you a little bit how different high schools are if you've got a minute. MR. WRIGHT: Please. MR. GRAY: I was a superintendent of a school, two or three little elementary schools, rural schools, and one multi-graded school in the city of Yerington, and one high school serving the entire area. I served as principal and also board superintendent. And I compare that situation today when I go into these modern high schools with 2 and 3 and 4,000 kids. It's just a different world. I can't blame the schools for a lot of the criticism they're getting. It's the system. If we TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 21 can't get these schools down to a size where you can control it -- just the average person, when you see a bunch of -- just figure having 4,000 teenagers under one roof and how you handle that situation and the kind of problems that they can create. But if you've got 200, the kids know the teachers, the teachers know the kids. When we did things in that school, if the ball team was going to play school X forty miles away, the home ec girls made dinner. And we took the school buses, and the whole dang school went, including the teachers and parents. We had a school dance, the parents came. It was a town dance. Well, talk about control, you had control over kids in a situation like that. I had this experience once -- I talk too much, I guess. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, no. MR. GRAY: I had this experience once going from a high school of about 900 -- this is in Reno now in later years -- a principal of a high school of about 900 to a principal of a high school of a little over 2,000. This year I'm 900, this year I was 2,000. It was like in a different world. With 900 it's still small enough that you can have a pretty good core curriculum. And the teachers know the kids, and the kids know the teachers, and the teachers know each other. Well, you get up to 2 or 3,000, the faculty doesn't even know each other. So we're in a school small enough where TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 22 a kid knows I'm going to have that teacher if I don't have her now. He's careful that he doesn't misbehave where he's known and can be picked out of the group. These schools now, teachers don't want to get involved. The kids don't give a darn in a lot of cases. It's just a complete different world. MR. WRIGHT: It would certainly seem so. When you were here in Las Vegas in the '30s, there were actually several school districts, as I recall. MR. GRAY: There were 14 school districts in Clark County. See, I came back here as superintendent of the old Las Vegas Union School District. And then while I was superintendent, the state abolished all those districts and made one county school district. And they did this in every county in the state. MR. WRIGHT: Did you feel that that was a good move at the time, talking about the small districts? MR. GRAY: It's a little long story, but I think I'd better tell at least part of it so that it all goes together. First of all, we were just starving for money. In those days when the population was either not growing or growing very little, when our original school finance laws were made up, you received your moneys from the state on the basis of your enrollment the previous year. Used to call that average daily attendance. Well, when you had a situation like we had in the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 23 mid '50s here, where we had 10,000 new jobs out connected with the test site just come into a little town, at that time 7 or 8,000 people, it just made a new world. You see, they talk about growth today, Frank. Percentage-wise, the growth then was greater than it is now and it's a relative thing. We had half the kids in this system on double sessions at that time, and we were just starving for money. Well, you had some school districts like the Paradise district where there were three of those hotels by this time -- they had the Thunderbird, the Frontier, the Desert Inn, the El Rancho. I don't think it had burned by that time. But anyway, it became the richest school district in the whole state. They had all the money because they had so much assessed valuation per pupil, and we depended almost entirely on property tax at that time plus the state contribution. So the whole thing had to be reworked. Then you had districts like some of the agricultural districts or, better yet, a mining district that's deteriorating; that is, the mines are closing down, like Goodsprings, for instance, and they had no money. Their taxes went away, but the kids were still there. So it was a great equalizer, a consolidating and putting all the eggs in one basket and being able to take and then distribute it out equitably. MR. WRIGHT: And this was all initiated by TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 24 legislative action. MR. GRAY: Right. MR. WRIGHT: And you were in a position to be right in the middle of that. MR. GRAY: Well, yeah, I was, being the superintendent of the largest school district in the state at the time. And I don't suppose that that great reorganization would have come about if it hadn't been for the troubles in Clark County. Well, I needed a new school room every Monday morning. If we had a broken window, we put a piece of cardboard in it until the next appropriation came along. Freebies that we have in the schools today were unheard of then. We didn't have any feeding program at that time, very little busing, only in the hinterlands of the county. It was a different world. And people expect more now, of course, too. But that's because they can get it. We didn't even have any swamp coolers or any type of air conditioning in the schools until after the consolidation. If we had a little money, then we could get some. MR. WRIGHT: That's pretty amazing. MR. GRAY: Imagine teaching in this climate. It happens to you in September and October and in May or June every year when it's a 100, 110, and 40 youngsters in a room. That's asking quite a lot of a teacher. I will tell you that TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 25 discipline isn't so bad when it's that hot, though, because they're just lethargic. MR. WRIGHT: A little tough to get into too much trouble at that. I think I sort of jumped ahead a little bit. How was it that you came to return to Las Vegas as head of the unified school district? MR. GRAY: From the superintendent of the Yerington Union School District, I was offered a job as a teacher on the staff of the education department of the University of Nevada. And I took that job. And while I was teaching there, I also got my masters degree. And by that time my feet were deep enough into education, it looked like that was going to be a lifetime career, that I realized that I'd have to get -- for school administrators it was even then becoming so if you didn't have a doctors degree, you were sort of eliminated. So I quit the job. Well, I went from Yerington to the university and then to this high school job in Reno. And I quit and went down to California to get my doctorate. MR. WRIGHT: At Stanford. MR. GRAY: At Stanford, yes. And while I was there, I also got a job down there as curriculum coordinator for the Contra Costa County Schools in the Bay Area. And while I was there working on my degree and also working, I had a phone call from a fellow by the name of Quannah McCall, who was a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 26 dentist here in town, who was president of the school board. And he asked me if I'd be interested in coming up here as superintendent of schools in the old Las Vegas Union School District. Well, I knew enough about the community with my friends here and correspondence and so forth that they were having trouble. There was a factional fight in the schools between Mormon and non-Mormon people, and it was a very unhealthy and unhappy thing. And it just so happened at the time there were three non-Mormons and two Mormons on the board, so they had the votes. Well, nobody in his right mind would take a job under those circumstances. You don't know what the next election would do. But I did promise Quannah that I would come up. Well, I was sort of proud. I still am proud of the fact that three members of that school board were former students of mine when I taught down here, and that they would think of me made me kind of proud. There was Dick Ronzone, Jack Petitti, and Sherwin Garside. And then the other two members were Quannah McCall... So I came, and they had a contract all made out for me when I came up to look, but I wouldn't sign it. But I did go to see the two Mormon members while I was there. And I told them that they didn't have to worry about me taking the job if they didn't want me. And I had known Jack, of course, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 27 as a teacher at one time. So I was proud that that evening when we finally met that Jack was the one that made the motion to hire me and Mr. Crandall seconded the motion, and I came in with the complete understanding that everybody knew where we were on the thing. I'm sure that that situation between Mormon and non-Mormon was not as strong when I left as it was when I was there. My main goal was to mend that. It was pretty serious at the time. MR. WRIGHT: Well, getting that unified vote was certainly a good start. MR. GRAY: So that was really how I came back. But talk about the trauma to people moving here that had lived here, Erma, my wife, I called her. And while I was going to school at Stanford, I had a place at Lake Tahoe and she was living up there with the children. This is in the summertime. I called her and asked her how she'd like to move back to Las Vegas and she couldn't believe it. And then I told her, "Well, I'm serious. I'm offered a job." And she started to cry. Air conditioning made all the difference in the world. And after we got back down and here and she became part of the community, she was a real part of the community and loved it here. As a matter of fact, when I retired and we talked about moving, she didn't want to go. So that was a good thing. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 28 MR. WRIGHT: You also got involved not just with public education, I mean K through 12, the elementary and secondary schools, you also played a role in the establishment of the university down here. MR. GRAY: Yes. And that's a proud moment in my life, too. I think of all of the civic activities in which I was involved over and above my regular work, I probably am more proud of that than anything else because I consider myself one of the founders of the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Maude Frazier, who'd hired me originally in Las Vegas and was a member of the legislature when I came back as superintendent, we had become pretty good friends. I'd say good friends. I'm not using the word loosely because my work with her when she was in the legislature and I was with the state department of education, and there was a mutual respect and almost love I think there. There was certainly for me for her. And Maude was really the mother of the university. There's no single person that can take all of the credit, but certainly Maude Frazier was the one that got this university going down here. And I don't want to leave out a man by the name of Mahlon Brown. Senator Brown, recently deceased, was in the state senate up there and also was very helpful. But the first thing that happened was that Maude was TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 29 able to get the university to establish some classes down here for certain subjects that people could take some undergraduate credit here. And I think there were two or three classes where they could also get teacher credential classes. And they sent a man by the name of Jim Dickinson down. Dickinson Library named after him, and I could shoot them for giving that name up to the Dickinson Library after all that man contributed to this community. And I worked with Jim, gave Jim classrooms. When my kids weren't using them, his kids could. It worked out fine. Then they had a change in the university. And Jim didn't like administration, and they sent a fellow by the name of Bill Carlson down here. They didn't give him the title of president, he was a dean within a college of the university. And Bill was a real great educator. Bill and I worked together on that. But I'm a little ahead of the story. The legislature finally, at the insistence of Maude and Mahlon and others, finally consented to appropriating a sum of money for a building down here for a campus to start the university. MR. WRIGHT: A single building? MR. GRAY: But they put a hooker in it, that this money is available only if the local people provide a site for it. And as I remember now, they specified the number of acres so that it would be -- well, 50,000 people and find a site. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 30 So Maude and Mahlon and some other people in the community, great people like Monsignor Carmody from the Catholic Church and others, got together. Don Brown from one of the banks, got together and asked me if I would serve as a committee chairman to raise money to buy some land and get the land. So I took over that chore, and we did raise the money and we did get the land. There was some controversy about it, as there always is. I remember Ray Germain was on that committee also, a local journalist. And he and I were ad hoc to go out and choose a piece of property that was offered out here. And we got a great deal of criticism for choosing the present site because it was so far out. But there's another long story that goes with that. But anyway, that was a lot of fun raising that money. And it was talked about bringing a community together, we took every high school kid in the county at that time and we took a Saturday and we had them go around with cups collecting as little as four bits. There wasn't a lot of money in town. But the interesting thing, Frank, and I think you'll be interested in this, the gaming interests weren't interested in establishing a university here. And we didn't get a single major contribution, a single contribution in the name of a hotel in that whole drive. And I remember there was a man by the name of Joe TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 31 Brown who took over Binion's Horseshoe Club while he was serving some time for I think it was for income tax problems. And I got acquainted with Mr. Brown, who came up out of Louisiana to run this property. They had been friends before, he and Binion. And he said to me his wife was interested in education and things like that. And he said, "I'll tell you, I'll get all these folks together in one room, and we'll see what we can do." So I had every hotel represented in downtown in the old Sal Sagev Club -- Las Vegas spelled backwards. MR. WRIGHT: Which is now the Golden Gate right there on Main and Fremont. MR. GRAY: Yeah, the Golden Gate now. And had that meeting up there, and here are all these long-faced fellows, and we didn't get a single response. So after it was over, I got my largest contribution from Brown personally. He gave me a $5,000 personal check toward that. And then a few of the wives of some of these gaming interests gave us checks of a hundred. I remember the Kozloff brothers gave a little bit. But not in the name of any hotel or any gaming thing would you have any money come from them because they thought a college town would not be good for their enterprises. It worked out now. I think today you would find there was some great support because of the hotel school out there and that. But that just is an example. And of course, the money was all there. That's where all the money was. The TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 32 rest of us peons in town, the merchants weren't all rich people. If you wanted money, you went to Wilbur Price and Benny Binion and those fellows, you know. But we got the money. We got the land and we got the building, and we went from there. MR. WRIGHT: And the building was called Maude Frazier Hall. MR. GRAY: Yeah, thank goodness. MR. WRIGHT: And it still is called Maude Frazier Hall. MR. GRAY: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: There was a whole new leadership in Las Vegas by the time you returned. You were here in the '30s, came back in the early '50s. A lot of people refer to this as an era during which the Mob founded Las Vegas. MR. GRAY: I didn't live in that world, Frank. When you're superintendent of schools, you're this and that and everything. And I served on a lot of civic committees: United Way, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA. Well, on practically all of those committees there would be somebody from the gaming interests. Well, I think of people that were really good citizens. As far as I was concerned and as far as all I could tell you about them, would be like Sam Boyd of the present Boyd group; or Benny Binion himself; Wilbur Clark, the Desert Inn; and later Moe Dalitz, some of those people. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 33 Jackie Gaughan, an active person here today. Now, it's my understanding that they had roots in illegal gaming in other areas. They came here. They were a legal part of the community. And as far as I could tell, those men were pillars of the community and backed all good things. Now, you can read all kinds of stuff and you could read into all kind. Ed Reid, who wrote the Green Felt Jungle, or participated in the writing of it, was a neighbor of mine, and I saw that book. Before it was ever published, I read it. And I was just sick that it got a publisher because it was kind of unfair to a lot of good people. I didn't know the Bugsy Siegels. I didn't know those people, and I had no social contact, just civic activity contact. And all I knew were gentlemen, and good people to work with, and certainly didn't do this community any harm, that's for darn sure. And of course, now it's a different world. It's a different world in the gaming industry now. It's a corporate world. It's a numbers world instead of a personality world. And it's different, but there are a lot of good things to be said about those olden days because when they backed something in the community, they backed it. Now you've got everybody looking at the bottom line. The restaurant's got to make a profit, the rooms have got to make a profit. In those days, the gaming, so you got your four-bit meals. I don't want to go back, but I don't want to disparage the past either. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 34 MR. WRIGHT: Sure. You left as superintendent, what, about 1961? MR. GRAY: '62, I think it was. I'd have to double check that, '62 or '63. MR. WRIGHT: What was the next step in your career? MR. GRAY: I was offered a job as an officer and a member of the board of directors of First Western Savings and Loan, which was the largest savings and loan in the community at the time. And it paid a lot more money than the superintendent of schools, plus I was about burned out. I went through about eight or nine years of really tough going and trying to put that school district together. And I'd have gone back into education in a minute. I was glad to get out of the job I had. And they came back to me after I had sent in my letter of resignation and offered me a lot more money and all that stuff, but I had cut the cake and let's cut. But I think it wasn't just money. I needed to get out of that. It was dragging me down. And I kid with Kenny Guinn every once in a while, who lasted a year longer than I did down there, that it's a tough job. And anybody that's superintendent of that district has got to know his stuff, particularly the politics that's gotten into it. And that bothers the heck out of me. And you can't blame it on the individuals. I guess we just have to learn that bigness isn't necessarily betterness. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 35 Well, I think to make a long story short in connection with that part of my life, it was a real pleasure for me to get out into the business world. I'd been associating with these same people as a superintendent of schools, and I enjoyed that work. But then, you know, the bottom fell out of things in the late '60s here. We had quite a recession. MR. WRIGHT: So, in a way you jumped from the frying pan into the fire. MR. GRAY: Yeah. We ended up with about 3,000 houses we couldn't sell and owed money on. So then, I went to work for the county as a representative of the county for getting federal funds for poor-impacted areas. But I didn't last very long over there. Oh, in the meantime I had run for the legislature, and I had been in the legislature a couple of terms. MR. WRIGHT: I think you indicated once upon a time you were not really cut out to be a politician. MR. GRAY: Oh, no, I'm not cut out to be a politician. MR. WRIGHT: What qualities do you have or lack? MR. GRAY: No. Frank, this is a terrible thing to say about a lot of real nice people. It's a rare human being that can be a successful politician and be intellectually honest. The trades you have to make inside yourself, I don't TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 36 know how they stand it year after year after year. And therefore, I do not have too much respect for people who are politicians from boyhood to death. I'm a great believer in term limits. Go in, do your stint, and get out instead of making a career of making promises that you don't approve of or you can't keep and that sort of thing. Now, there are exceptions. I don't want to blanket every politician. I've known some really wonderful people who I did consider intellectually honest. But the majority of politicians have to give. MR. WRIGHT: What kind of issues did you, in your two terms, sort of get tangled up in or take a lead on? MR. GRAY: Well, one of the issues, I guess the biggest issue in the two sessions, the four years that I served, was redistribution of the senate and the assembly on the basis of the Supreme Court ruling one man, one vote. And you see, in those days each county had a senator. And I never was enough of a political scientist to know why it was unconstitutional for a state to have counties that could only be represented by one and the United States can have states represented by only two senators, but it's unconstitutional for a state to do it. Those things bother me a little bit, but I don't attempt to ever find the answer. But that was real traumatic for the northern part of the state. And then, you see, each county also had at least one TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 37 assemblyman, and then the rest of the 40 were scattered through on the basis of population. Well, here, you're an old-timer and you live in Eureka County, which at one time would be one of the richest counties in the state, and you have roots back into that type of thing, and all of a sudden you don't have any representation. It's tough. And there were a lot of people bled with that. And those people in the legislature that were my friends, and most of them were, both sides, both parties. I always considered myself an independent although I ran on one ticket. Well, we were brought back in special session three times before we ever solved that thing, and then we didn't solve it to anybody's satisfaction except the people down here. Well, it was even tough on people like Washoe County where they were the second most populace area, and they lost power in this whole deal, too. So I felt sorry for the cow counties, I really did. But it had to be done. It had to be done constitutionally, they say. MR. WRIGHT: Of course, Las Vegans sort of resented the power that the cow counties had and so forth. MR. GRAY: They did. A story that I like to tell, and I think it's worth our people here to remember, I think it's very natural that a politician can make quite a deal out of a fact that we bring most of the revenue of the state and TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 38 we don't get back what we call fair share, whatever the heck that is. But I would like to remind people that the rest of the state took care of us when we really needed it. This school reorganization, that was done for Clark County, not for the rest of the state. And I think in terms of like when Charlie Russell was governor and how much he helped me to get federal funds in here. And the sales tax, that's still another story, which I guess I still have people in the state that don't like me because of the sales tax. The rest of the state really didn't need that sales tax, if it hadn't been for this situation down here. The property tax was a dead duck in any appreciable amount. And of course, our income taxes is unconstitutional in our state. So... MR. WRIGHT: I suppose it might be useful to point out here that this was the initiation of the sales tax. MR. GRAY: That's right. MR. WRIGHT: And it went completely for education initially. MR. GRAY: Well, indirectly it did. Not directly because they were able to relieve some property taxes with the sales tax but ended up with education. It made a different world as far as education was concerned, just a completely different world. So I guess the bottom line is that those other TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 39 counties came through for us when we really needed them. I don't want to see the rest of this state disappear in a factional fight between the north and the south. It's human nature for that type of thing to happen, but we've got to keep our perspective. I keep saying we're Nevadans. We're not Clark Countians, we're Nevadans and we're also Clark Countians. But the politicians make a big deal out of that. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, I think it is not unusual. Other states have a similar thing, California. MR. GRAY: Sure, California. MR. WRIGHT: But Nevada, Las Vegans tend not to know very much about the northern part of the state, and northerners tend to think of us as brash upstarts, you know, glitzy and tawdry down here. So I think that idea of being Nevadans together is the one to keep in mind. MR. GRAY: I think of it that way. It bothers me when I ask somebody for your question what race they are, maybe, and you'll ask and they'll say, "Well, I'm an Italian." And I say, "Well, are you a citizen?" And I always have to say, "You're an American. When you get here, you're an American." And we're living under Nevada law, we're Nevadans. But it'll work out, it'll work out. It always has. MR. WRIGHT: I'm just about out of questions. But back for a moment on the subject of education. There's a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 40 current, I guess you could call it, a mini movement or at least some talk about deconsolidating the Clark County School District. MR. GRAY: Yes, I read that with some trepidation. I have lived by the economic philosophy, political philosophy that every child should have an equal educational opportunity as much as you can possibly provide it. And that is pretty impossible if we break away the rich from the poor. And I don't know, I suppose there's a solution possible. But knowing human nature as it is, if we would try to tear this district apart now without some real radical changes in our taxation system and maybe some traumatic changes, that we would be going right back where we were before, rich districts and poor districts. And the poor districts need the rich districts. If we're going to educate the less affluent areas of the county, or of the state, or of any community, we've got to give those kids the same opportunities that we can give to the kids in the richer areas. So if we pool our resources, find ways to spread it out so that we can approach equal educational opportunity, then I think that's what we should do. I just feel strongly about that. MR. WRIGHT: I think that's a good place. Anything that I didn't ask that you want to talk about? MR. GRAY: Oh, golly, Frank, you know me, I could go TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 41 on all day about this, but I'm about run down, too. If you think of something in the future, why, call me and I'll try to dig into the depths of my memory. MR. WRIGHT: You talked about the three guys. If you wanted to get something done in the community, there were basically three people you had to go to. MR. GRAY: Yeah. Well, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Who were they? MR. GRAY: Maybe three is a little small. When I arrived in this town in 1935, just as a teacher and not really a part of the community, it soon became, with everything that went on around, it soon became quite obvious that if you didn't have Al Cahlan, the publisher of the Review-Journal, behind you; and if you didn't have big Jim Cashman, probably the most prosperous of the businessmen in town, behind you; and if you didn't have a couple of the utility people like Ed Clark or some of those behind you, you were a dead duck. Those people ran the town. You had to run anything through them. I know when I was superintendent of the schools -- this was a year later, but these same fellows, most of them, are still running the power in the community -- you had to get to those people. They did have a little more competition as the town grew because Greenspun came along and counteracted Cahlan and, of course, other utilities and politicians. But, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 42 yeah, this was a pretty tight town. But I think most small towns are that way, too. As you look back through them, you've got a few people that run the show. MR. WRIGHT: There's always going to be an establishment, a certain percentage of people, sure. For those who have been around Las Vegas longer than most, the '30s is kind of a magical period in some ways. We're trying to get some people to talk a little bit about Helldorado, the sort of Western orientation. Do you recall being very much a part of that in your first stay here or what it was like? MR. GRAY: I'll have to tell you about my first Helldorado. That's the Elks Club activity. It takes place in the spring, as I recall, and this is my first spring down here. And I don't think there had been over two or three Helldorados before I came. MR. WRIGHT: They started in '35. MR. GRAY: Oh, well, then the first one was the year before I came because I came at the end of '35. And I came down here and we're out here on this beautiful evening and the floats, and the pretty girls with costumes that you wouldn't dare wear -- I'm not talking about the amount of nudity shown, but the temperature. And to see that, it was just like you were in heaven to have temperatures like that. It takes away for a lot of those hot days. But I remember that Helldorado TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 43 very, very distinctly. Oh, the whole community took part in it. And if you were known at all, you dared not go downtown without going into kangaroo court. You know how they have a court set up and put you in -- MR. WRIGHT: In the hoosegow? MR. GRAY: -- cage or something. And it was a fun thing. The whole community was part of it and everybody went. And gosh, now, take me for instance, I'm part of the community and I haven't been to one for years. MR. WRIGHT: Well, I think they even stopped the parades. MR. GRAY: Did they? MR. WRIGHT: I think 1997 was the first year they didn't have a Helldorado parade. MR. WRIGHT: There wasn't even a Helldorado Village. MR. GRAY: Where was that? That was downtown there close. MR. WRIGHT: Pretty close to where the El Cortez is now, as I recall. MR. GRAY: Right. MR. WRIGHT: About Sixth and Fremont. MR. GRAY: Yeah. But anything the town did then, everybody took part. As a thespian, a little theater and so forth in those days, I remember our place. Everybody came. It was just somebody did something in the community, we were TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 44 all there. And that's a fun type of community, too. MR. WRIGHT: There's one thing that's always sort of intrigued me about not just Las Vegas but any city, and that's the growth and development of communities and neighborhoods and so forth. You live generally in the area just off of West Charleston. And you've lived there a good long while. MR. GRAY: Yeah, over 40 years, almost 50 I guess. MR. WRIGHT: As recently as, say, about 1950 or so, that was just called southwest of town. MR. GRAY: When I first came here, where the Presbyterian church is, right alongside the freeway there, that was a farm. And about the only things on the west side of the tracks was our original Westside town site, which is out Bonanza and off to the north there. Yeah, there was nothing out there. Now, if I think it's going to be a pretty sunset from my house, I have to time it for 45 minutes to get out there to take a picture of it because the town's built up clear to the mountains -- MR. WRIGHT: Right. MR. GRAY: -- which is too bad. MR. WRIGHT: I think that's wonderful. MR. GRAY: Good. MR. WRIGHT: I thank you so much for taking the time and effort to do this. MR. GRAY: Kind of fun. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 45 (End of tape.) * * * * * ATTEST: The foregoing transcript of the interview was transcribed fully and accurately from the audio tape provided by KNPR Radio. Eunice G. Jones, Transcriptionist TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 ??