Transcript of interview with Sharon Gutzman by Lisa Mades, March 13, 1981

UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman i An Interview with Sharon Gutzman An Oral History Conducted by Lisa Mades Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman iv Abstract On March 13, 1981, Lisa Mades interviewed Sharon Gutzman (born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1935). Gutzman talks much about early Las Vegas, Nevada, including early businesses, the first casinos, and the first airport. She also discusses educations, shopping, recreation, entertainment, and gambling. UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 1 This is an interview with Sharon Gutzman taken on March 13th, 1981 at the Santos Tours office and Vegas Express office. The name of the collector is Lisa Mades. My address is 1155 East Flamingo Road, Number 206, Las Vegas, Nevada, 89109. This is a project for our Nevada History class, History 117. Okay, my name is Sharon Gutzman. I am presently residing at 1320 East Lewis Avenue in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on June 17th, 1935. I am now an American citizen, and nationality is Scotch and Irish. I speak English. I have lived in both Canada and the United States, having come to Las Vegas twenty-eight years ago. I have two children that were born in Las Vegas, both boys. My occupations have been varied, but among them are being a legal secretary for ten-and-a-half years and working in the tour industry for the past, over eight years. When I first came to Las Vegas twenty-eight years ago, I was working for Sevier’s Electrical Products, which was then located at Main and Charleston, which is now being housed by SPD office equipment. When I first came to Las Vegas, it was in November, 1952, and I arrived from Vancouver, Canada to visit my mother. I was only seventeen years old at the time and completely fascinated with the desert. I returned to Canada in December just long enough to pack up everything and return to Las Vegas as soon as possible. By January 1953, I was a permanent resident of Las Vegas, and although I liked to travel, Vegas has been my home ever since January 1953. In 1953, it was very difficult to find a place to live, so my mother bought a mobile home. There simply were no rentals available. It was during this time that the tract homes were starting to be built. I met a fella who was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base; we were married and had our first baby and bought our first home and moved into it in January of 1955 in the Twin Lakes Village, which at that time was considered practically out of town. My baby was born in Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital, which was located on Charleston in the UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 2 same place it is now. The only other hospital at that time was Las Vegas Hospital, which was located Downtown. The building is still there; however, it is not in operation as a hospital now. At that time, the Charleston underpass was just a two-lane street—not the huge four-lane or whatever it is now with the double underpass. In those days, you really didn’t have a big choice of where to do your grocery shopping. There was a Safeway where the Golden Nugget Hotel is now. The Golden Nugget Casino was there, but the hotel was not, and the Safeway was there in its place. It was also a little market on what was then called Fifth Street at Fifth and Gass; Fifth is now referred to as Las Vegas Boulevard South. It was called Fifth Street Market. There is a building there; however, it is no longer Fifth Street Market. Within the year, of course, markets started popping up all over town. The place that is now called Fantastic Furniture, which was, prior to Fantastic, it was Oran Gragson’s Furniture, and prior to that, it was a Safeway for a while. In those days, Helldorado was a big celebration. Everyone wore Western clothes. No matter where you went, no matter what you did, no matter what type of work you did, whether you were an attorney or a waitress—anything—everyone wore Western clothes, everyone got into the excitement of Helldorado, and the entire town was just completely Western at that time. Of course, nobody ever missed the rodeo. When I arrived in town, the Sahara Hotel had just been renamed to the Sahara Hotel from the Club Bingo; I was not here at the time it was the Club Bingo. It already was the Sahara Hotel by the time I was here. There were a few other hotels, of course—the El Rancho Vegas, the Thunderbird, which is now the Silver Bird, the Last Frontier, which is where the New Frontier is now, the Desert Inn, and the Flamingo—they were all open. I attended the opening of the Sands Hotel in, I believe it was December of ’52 on my first visit here. The Castaways Hotel was actually there, but it was a small motel called the Sans Souci. The city father were in the process UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 3 of changing the names of the various streets after the hotels started popping up; for example, Sahara Avenue used to be called San Francisco Avenue, and Tropicana Avenue, before the Tropicana Hotel was built, was called Bond Road. Of course, I’ve already mentioned about Fifth Street, which is between Fourth and Sixth, which I always thought was neat, that it was Fifth Street, is now called Las Vegas Boulevard. Hardly anybody had telephones in those days. If you had a telephone, nobody that you knew had a telephone, you couldn’t call anybody. The only places that had telephones, really, were businesses. Also, they were not dial telephones. You just had to pick them up, and you had to wait for an operator to put you through. You’d just give her the number, whatever you wanted, and it was only a four-digit number at that time. I don’t know whether you’d be interested in this or not, but the telephone book was very small. I would guess that it was probably nine inches by six inches and a quarter of an inch thick—pretty small compared to our current phone books, which is approximately eleven by nine and a quarter inches, and two inches thick. The one and only airport at the time was located in the vicinity of Hughes Terminal on the highway south, going to L.A. Of course, no freeway existed. It was fairly small, but it did have the slot machines there, and they certainly did get a workout. At the time of the first Calcutta auction golf tournament, I was working at the Desert Inn at the time, and at that time, Walter Winchell and Bob Hope were the emcees. I was on the stage collecting the money and the pledges from the various people who were betting on the various golf stars. At that time, we collected $90,000 actually in pledges, and cash went through my hands that night, which we thought was pretty good, and of course, it was the first Calcutta auction, and since then it has grown tremendously, and that is the least amount that they have ever collected since then. UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 4 Okay, how has the school system changed in Las Vegas as far as when your children were young and they started elementary school and then high school and, of course, the University of Nevada. Do you remember when the University of Nevada first started, and also the school system just in general in Las Vegas? Well, the University of Nevada wasn’t here, and when I first came to Las Vegas, they had only one high school, which was Las Vegas High, and what is now being housed with an annex to the county courthouse was Fifth Street School, and my children did attend that. However, we had already moved into Twin Lakes, and they did attend Twin Lakes Elementary School. The boys also went to Jim Bridger, and my oldest son went to Ranch High; he later then went to VoTech, which, of course, VoTech wasn’t even thought of being out there at the time, it was so far out of town. It was about 1959, I would guess, would be about the first time that we went out to Old Nevada, and it was Bonnie Springs Old Nevada at the time, and it was more like a family area where you’d take a picnic and you could go out there and use their pool, which they have since closed down and of course put Old Nevada out there and build the town. Yes, I’ve seen the university grow a great deal. As I say, I wasn’t even here at that time. My sons have attended the university, taking special courses and everything, primarily in the music end of it. Community college, of course, is fairly new; it was not out in North Vegas at that time either. As far as the schooling goes, though, really, it’s after my children started going to school that I knew more about it because I did not attend school in Las Vegas. I’m trying to think about what year that might be. It was after the Tropicana was built, and my stepfather had the health club concession at the Tropicana Hotel, and I worked in the ladies health club as a masseuse; at that time, you didn’t have to be licensed as a masseuse, and of course, I was not working in the men’s side. His name was Tom Dominkay, and he was a chiropractor, and he is UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 5 the one who taught me how to give massages to the ladies. I gave massages to a few of the stars, including Carol Channing. I also worked in several real estate offices for a while. I worked for Larry Stecker at Stecker Realty, and he was on the board of realtors from whatever commission that was from Carson City. He was the representative here in Las Vegas at the time. Lloyd Screnis was also working there at the time; he later opened up his own real estate office. I’m trying to impress about how hard it was to find a place to live here at the time. At the time of the Last Frontier Village, there was an old Texaco service station that has since been torn down, and on top of the service station where my husband, being in the service at Nellis, has a part-time job as a service station attendant there, we rented the apartment over the service station. And it was called the Little Apartment over the Last Frontier Service Station (Laughs). And we had a phone because you could call the Last Frontier Hotel, and you could call us; the only thing is, nobody that I knew had a telephone to call except if I had to call into work at Sevier’s. Then we were still trying to find a place to live, which, as I say, was very difficult in those days. And I went to live at 406-and-a-half South Eleventh Street, which is almost on the corner of Eleventh and Lewis, and I’ve practically down a circle around this town. From there, we moved to Twin Lakes; from there, I lived in North Las Vegas for a while, then out in Paradise Valley in Plata del Sol, and I have since moved back to Fourteenth and Lewis. In comparison to the real estate, as far as how much you have to have down for houses now, anywhere from $15- to $20,000 minimum down, when we bought that first house in Twin Lakes, it cost us, with the V.A. loan, $254 move-in—(unintelligible) at that time were $82; we had a corner lot, three bedrooms, one bath, a living room, dining room, family room, and the kitchen. Well as far as shopping goes, the only place to shop was down on Fremont Street. There was, Diamonds was Downtown at that time, and next to it was a store, Johnson’s. Penney’s was there, UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 6 which is still there, and what is now the telephone, Centel building, used to be Sears, which is right across from the El Cortez, which was there at the time. Woolworth’s was there, and going on further down Fremont Street where the Union Plaza is now sitting was the Union Depot, Railway Depot, at that time, and they had a nice little lawn in front of it, circular lawn—it was nice. The street was not filled with the casinos the way that it is now because there was, what is now The Mint and the Horseshoe, which takes up that whole block on that side of the street, there was a bank, and Rex Bell had his Western store. There was the Boulder Club, the Savoy Club—various different clubs, which have all been torn down, and now there’s only two clubs there that take up the entire block. When we used to go to the shows on the Strip, for example, at the El Rancho Vegas, before and after the show, the band would be playing and you could dance on the stage—people that were eating dinner and so forth would just go up and dance and then sit down and have your dinner, watch the show, and then afterwards you could still continue to dance there, which, of course, you can’t do that anymore. And all the hotel showrooms all had their chorus girl lineups, and they started coming back with that a little bit now. They have it at the Sahara, but every hotel at that time had it. As far as shopping, there was, where Foxy’s is now, which is now Sahara and the Strip, there was a little shop there, and gee, I can’t recall the name of it, but it was a dress shop, and it was open twenty-four hours a day. When the Boulevard Mall was first opened, there must have been a lot of excitement as far as people in the city goes because of having, like, a full-fledged shopping mall to go to. How was it for you? Was it more convenient, or whatever? Yes, I would say that everyone in town was kind of excited about that because, really, as far as Downtown, I named what was Downtown, and there just really simply wasn’t very much. And at the time when I was pregnant in ’54, I couldn’t even find any maternity clothes because they UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 7 didn’t have any maternity shops or anything. We took a trip to Los Angeles for me to buy my maternity clothes, ‘cause we couldn’t find anything here. The stores were—there just wasn’t a good variety of shopping at all at that particular time, and when the Boulevard opened up, it was just really kinda neat because you could go one place and you could buy almost anything that you wanted, and the stores were much larger and a larger selection. Another thing at the time when I arrived, it was a little—aside from it being almost impossible to find a place to live, it was also quite difficult to get a job, because at that time, it seemed that everybody thought that anybody that came to Las Vegas that wasn’t born here was coming for a divorce. And everyone figured that you weren’t going to be here longer than six weeks. Well, I proved them wrong there, being here for twenty-eight years. You almost had to kinda prove yourself that you just weren’t coming into town to leave it; it was just very, very strange. At the time when I arrived, of course, I was very young—at the time, I wasn’t in on it, but I do remember it happening and everything—it was in the paper that prostitution was legal in Clark County at that time. And the place that had opened that everyone had heard about was called the Four Mile. And Four Mile was located from the corner of Charleston and Fremont, where it starts the Boulder Highway; it was down the Boulder Highway exactly four miles, and that’s why it was called the Four Mile. Sheriff Glen Jones was the sheriff at that time, and he later opened a restaurant and so forth, but that was a long, long time ago. Of course, at that time, you still had to be twenty-one in order to get into any of the bars or buy cigarettes or anything like that; that hasn’t changed. Well, the Helldorado rodeo that’s now—oh, talking about something else that make a big to-do here in town was when the convention center was built. Prior to the convention center being built where now the Helldorado rodeos are performed, we had a place called Cashman Field, which was on Las Vegas Boulevard North going towards North Las Vegas. And it was an open air field, and it UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 8 just seemed really more like a rodeo there. It was great; it was a lot of fun to go to the rodeo in those days, and as I say, just everybody was dressed in Western. There used to be the Joe W. Brown Racetrack, and that would be standing in the vicinity of the convention center now. It went all right for a while, and then all of sudden it just wasn’t there anymore; it was torn down—right around the Hilton and the convention center was about where it was located. There was another neat little place that was the Supper Club, and they’d have dinner and dining and dancing at the back of it. You could look out onto a pool; you could actually go swimming at this place. It was called the La Vista, and it was located approximately where El Jardin is now on Paradise and Naples. Okay, down Spring Mountain Road, which, there wasn’t very much of a road—if you were going down the Strip and you turned right on Spring Mountain Road, you were kind of on a dirt road, but if you went far enough, you would come to a dude ranch, and it was called the D-dash-4-dash-C for D4C Ranch, and that’s the one Gibson had. How have you seen Boulder City and Henderson grow? I’m sure even, as far as, like, recreation in Boulder City must have grown a lot with the lake and everything else and the hotels that they have there now, and even in Henderson industry and everything, I’m sure you’ve seen industry come and go in Henderson also. Well, Henderson in those days just wasn’t very much of everything. It was more going towards Boulder City on the right hand side, and there were a few things there, but not very much. Of course, the Titanium Metals was there at that time. Boulder City was always very beautiful. They always kept Boulder City up very nice. I don’t know if there’s any gambling there now or not, but there was not at that time—they had no gambling in Boulder City. There’s been a lot of industry that has come into, well, not only Henderson but into Las Vegas, too, because there just UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 9 really wasn’t hardly anything here except the hotels and various little rodeo type of things that would be on. But as far as Levi coming in or Buster Brown Shoes or any of that kind of stuff, of course, there wasn’t any of that at all. Now, they used to come in here and make movies in those days, so they were making quite a lot of movies, as a matter of fact, even way back then when the El Rancho Vegas, before it burned down. There’s really not much to say about Henderson in those days. (Laughs) There were two little towns between Las Vegas and Henderson at the time; one was Whitney, and I can’t remember the name of the other one, but when I say it was a town, you went right past it and wouldn’t even know that you’d been in the town, because all it had was maybe a service station right on the highway, and that was it. The town actually stopped at Charleston and Fremont, and that was the end of it, except of course where Four Mile was, four miles, but beyond Fremont and Charleston, there just wasn’t anything. The place that’s there now that’s called the Silver Dollar was the Saddle Club at the time, and that was a really ripsnortin’ place—they had a lot of fun in there, Western music and stuff like that. It was one of the places where a lot of the local, people, the ones that didn’t frequent the Strip, and if you just, you know, wanted to dance and have a good time. North Las Vegas has grown; North Las Vegas was just what is now—well, Las Vegas Boulevard North, I guess, is what they’re calling it now. But there was nothing up Lake Mead Boulevard. Lake Mead Boulevard, at that time, was called College Street, something like that, but there wasn’t anything on it. They were in the process, in 1953, of building College Park, and that was the first addition out there. And then that was it, I mean, there was no city hall or anything in North Las Vegas; they built that really nice city hall and planted all the various trees that are there—various cities from the United States sent trees to North Las Vegas and planted them all in the grounds of the North Las Vegas City Hall so that there are several cities that are UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 10 represented in North Las Vegas. A place at Fourth and Carson, where the Nevada State Bank is now standing. At that time, it was a little green building, sort of a dilapidated old place, really, and that’s where Dr. George had his offices. And he wasn’t really considered Downtown at the time, ‘cause Fourth and Carson just was off the main street, and FMB, of course, wasn’t there. Now, the courthouse was there, but it didn’t look anything like it does nowadays—just absolutely nothing. It was in the same spot, but they’ve changed it so much that it’s difficult to see that it’s even the same place. Of course, I’ve seen the hotels change a great deal. They remodel those so much that it’s very difficult to even remember how it was twenty-eight years ago. Nellis Air Force Base is the one and only airbase or any type of base that I’ve ever been on, and I was really quite amazed, but it was like a city in itself. They had a bank and a commissary and the hospital and so forth out there, and it was just really quite interesting to go out there; it was like a city in itself. They even had a movie theater out there; I think it’s where the Golden Nugget tri-story parking lot is now. There used to be an old theater there called the Palace Theatre, and where the Cinemas Three, there was the theater, and the El Portal Theatre. And there were only three walk-in theaters in Las Vegas at that time, and there was on drive-in theater—well, it wasn’t twenty-eight years ago, it was later than that the drive-in theater came in, and it was called the Stardust, and it was right by the Stardust Hotel now. And of course when I first came to town, there was no television here. They didn’t have any television and when Chanel 8 first opened up, and we bought our first television set, we could only watch television for a few hours; it didn’t even come until four o’clock in the afternoon. And all the programs were taped—well there wasn’t too much around town that would be happening that maybe on UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 11 the news or something. Even though people complain now about the bus service with the Las Vegas Transit, it is much better now than it was in those days. It was practically impossible to get anywhere on a bus in those days, so it was a necessity to have a car. It wasn’t a luxury; you just had to have a car or you just simply didn’t go anywhere. As the influx of people was gradual every year, just more people kept coming here and coming here, and more hotels opened, more industry opened, more people could have jobs, which necessitated more building, and of course, if you have money, there is no problem with buying. And rentals are plentiful right now, which was really good because for a while there, it was just most difficult to get any type of place to live at all. But with the influx of people, and they had to build, and when they started building, of course, that gave more people jobs for, you know, the carpenters or the bricklayers or whatever they happen to be—sprinkler system people, lawn people and so forth. And then with the hotels, of course, then came more jobs and everything. So, it’s just, the population was just sky high. I think it was something like 65,000 or something when I moved here. My mother, although having been born in Canada, always loved the United States, and she particularly loved the sun. And she was deciding at the time as to where she was going to stay for a while, and she flipped a coin—heads, Las Vegas, tails, it was Phoenix—and it came up Las Vegas. So she moved here, and she loved it. And when she moved here, she stayed here for the rest of her life, and then she died here in Las Vegas. And she just loved it. So when I came down here the first time to visit her, I came from Vancouver, and my sister was living in Tulsa at the time, and she came here. And I just moved right back—my sister went back to Tulsa, and now my sister has been here now nineteen years, she moved here, and of course she just thinks Las Vegas is the greatest thing, too. She works for the telephone company and has for nineteen UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 12 years, and of course we’ve seen a great deal of change in the telephone service. Some people still get a little irritated with it, but it still beats having to wait for an operator to put your call through. Wayne Newton, the big entertainer now that everybody knows, the first time I saw Wayne Newton, he was in the small lounge in the Fremont Hotel when he was just a young fellow, and his brother Jerry was in the act with him at the time. It seems to me like the crime rate was really down then. They say that the mafia was running the town at that time, and I don’t know whether they were or they weren’t, but whoever was running it certainly took care of the crime situation, because they didn’t mess around with people then if they were doing something wrong. They had to pay the price. And we just didn’t have nearly the problem that we do now, and now banks are being robbed all over the place. Of course, there weren’t too many banks in those days, either, but just the same, the crime rate was not nearly what it is now. And Downtown, since there wasn’t the Boulevard Mall and there was only two things to go to—either the Strip or Downtown, and Downtown was, at that time, a very nice place, you know, Downtown no—one block north off of Fremont Street and it looks terrible. It’s in really bad shape, and it’s really too bad because I hate to see that happen to Las Vegas. Well, as far as the gaming industry goes, as much as I like Las Vegas, I’ve never really been a gambler, and of course I’ve pulled a few slot machines in my time and played a few keno tickets, but to this very day, I don’t know how to shoot craps. And it’s kinda strange because, since we’ve never really been in the gaming industry or anything really related to it that now, in the past eight years that I’ve been related with the tourist industry, my one son is a bell captain at a hotel, and my other son is a floorman at another hotel. And he was a crap dealer prior to being a floorman, and it’s kinda strange that they even really got into it because people will say things like, “What kind of a place is Las Vegas to bring up children?” And I’ve found it to be a very good place to bring up UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 13 the children. Randy was going to Our Lady of Las Vegas Catholic School when he was in about second, third, and fourth grade, something like that, and when I started working when the children were young, they were going to the Divine Providence Day Nursery, which was also run by the nuns. And it was just a regular home life like it would be in any little town back in the Midwest. It really didn’t affect us as far as the gambling goes except, of course, when people would come to visit us and we’d want to go and see the shows or something and everyone was always fascinated with the one-armed bandits, and that’s what the slot machines looked like in those days. They actually looked like a cowboy with only the one arm, and the arm that you’d pull would be the arm that would make the slot machine go. And they were kind of colorful to have around. You could go into the Las Vegas Club, and the slot machines were always cowboys standing there with their one arms. Of course, when they built the new airport, McCarran, that was really something, too. And then when Howard Hughes moved in and had the Hughes Airlines, the airport was under expansion at that time, and they are constantly expanding and are doing so again, which really makes it nice because now that it’s an international airport and we have more people coming in, more conventions. Obviously, you really enjoy living here. I don’t think that you could really imagine living any other place. I’m sure that you see a lot of hopes—you could just give me a couple of things, maybe, you’d like to see Las Vegas improve on now and grow further in certain areas. Can you think of any areas that you’d really maybe like to see it even grow more than it’s already grown? I would like to see the town grow and bring in more industry and have more people here so that we can accommodate more tourists—since I’m in the tourist industry now, I would certainly like UNLV University Libraries Sharon Gutzman 14 to see all the people that come to Las Vegas handled so that when they go back home, all they can do is rave about Las Vegas because I personally think that it’s the greatest place in the world to live, and I’d like to go and travel and see other places, but this is home. I want to see it continue— [Audio cuts out]