Richard W. Bunker Interview, July 18, 2017, July 21, 2017, and September 28. 2017: transcript

i AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD W. BUNKER An Oral History Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2017 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editor: Stefani Evans Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Frances Smith Interviewers: Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Project Manager: Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the UNLV University Libraries. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea and the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes 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. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iv PREFACE Fourth-generation Nevadan, Las Vegas native, and great grandson of Mormon pioneer Edward Bunker, Richard W. Bunker knows Southern Nevada as few others do. For example, when Richard Bunker speaks of water, he talks about his father's family leaving their home after the completion of Hoover Dam because their little town of St. Thomas was submerged in the rising waters of Lake Mead; he recalls swimming at the Old Ranch pool, the Springs, and the Mermaid pool; he shares stories of hiring Pat Mulroy, mentoring her, and encouraging her to apply to lead the Las Vegas Valley Water District; he mentions the Dunes and its two fresh-water wells, the Sanitation District and wastewater treatment. Few others have actively shaped Southern Nevada as Richard Bunker has through his lengthy career as a lobbyist (1973–2000); assistant manager for City of Las Vegas (1973–77); Clark County Manager (1977–79); member and Chair of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (1980–1982); executive director (1988-1990) and CEO and president (1990-2000) of the Nevada Resort v Association, and as member/vice chairman (1993–97) and chairman (1997–2010) of the Colorado River Commission. In this interview, Bunker reveals the history behind a wide range of events that affected the daily lives of Southern Nevadans: he talks of his role in a 1975 Las Vegas-Clark County consolidation halted only by the courts; he speaks to reorganizing Clark County's governmental structure and recalls work in gaming with CircusCircus, the Dunes, and the Aladdin. He remembers replacing key people at the Gaming Control Board, the FBI's Operation Yobo sting, FBI agent Joseph Yablonsky, and Federal Judge Harry Claiborne. Throughout, he speaks fondly of his longtime friends Jim Gibson and Judge Lloyd George and friend/business partner, Jim Joyce. Bunker offers a glimpse into the international politics of water from the perspective of the Nevada Resort Association, the Las Vegas Valley Water District, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority. He recalls the history and formation of the Colorado River Commission and the allocation of Lake Mead water to Colorado River Compact (CRC) states and Mexico. He shares attending a CRC meeting in Mexicali, Mexico, with Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science, Bennett William Raley, when the Nine-eleven (9/11) terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York. He concludes by praising Pat Mulroy's global leadership on water. Richard W. Bunker passed March 17, 2019, in Las Vegas. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Richard W. Bunker July 18; September 17, and September 21, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Preface…………………………………………………………………………………..………..iv Fifth-generation Nevadan; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) and family history to Bunkerville, St. Thomas, and Las Vegas; uncles Berkeley Bunker and Martin Bunker and parents, Wendell Bunker and Marion Mott. Life on Seventh Street, Tenth Street, Bridger Avenue, and 1605 East Carson Avenue (Mayfair); schooling at John S. Park and Las Vegas High School (class of 1952); Barbara Binion, cruising Fremont Street, and Binion family; Gold Dollar, African American schoolmates Jerry Hoggard, Overton Curtis, Donnell Hooker……..……. 1–22 Joe W. Brown racetrack (Las Vegas Racetrack, 1953); George "Bud" Albright, first director of the Convention Authority; Bunker Brothers Mortuary, the racetrack and [1956] mid-air collision with multiple fatalities; Nevada Rock and Sand, bishop of the Las Vegas Fifteenth Ward, Sierra Produce; grandson…………………………………………..………………………………. 23–39 Nevada Rock and Sand, Clark County assistant manager/lobbyist (1973); lobbying, subject knowledge, trust; 1973 legislative session, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department merger, Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb and Senator Floyd Lamb; "open city," the mob, prostitution, Ralph Lamb; Clark County Automotive department; Lambs and Stewarts, family contacts, and old Las Vegas; Robert N. "Bob" Broadbent, Myron Leavitt, Mayor William "Bill" Briare, Senator Jim Gibson, and Las Vegas City assistant manager 1976; City and County fire departments consolidation and State Supreme Court ruling. Jim Cashman, Bob Robinson, Keith Ashworth, and moves by Las Vegas to annex Clark County; Broadbent, 1977 return to Clark County as manager with assistant, Bruce Spaulding; Clark County administrative reorganization; George Ogilvie; hires Pat Speckman, Pat Shalmy, Randy Walker, Pat Mulroy………………………………. 39–54 Lake Mead, advanced wastewater treatment plant; Gaming Control Board (1979), Chairman (1980); the value of one's word; pride in role of water conservation, Pat Mulroy. Gaming Control Board (investigation, audit, enforcement, and technical divisions), Kansas City tapes, mob, and Gaming Control Board reorganization; Kansas City tapes, FBI agent Joe Yablonsky, Sheriff John McCarthy, Gary Reese, Benny Binion, Frank Sinatra, and Paul Laxalt ……………………. 54–72 FBI Operation Yobo; FBI undercover agent Steve Rybar; state senators Floyd Lamb and Eugene Echols, Clark County commissioners Jack Petitti and Woodrow Wilson, and Federal District Judge Harry Claiborne. Bill Raggio and Nevada's north-south divide; Clark County School District and deconsolidation; UNLV, Coach Jerry Tarkanian, President Robert Maxson. Governor [Richard] "Dick" Bryan, attorney Patty Becker, attorney Robert Faiss; transition from position of power. Death threat, the Aladdin closure, Sorkis Webbe, and Carl Thomas. The Stardust, Allen Glick, Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno; Herb Tobman and Alan Sachs. The Dunes, "Machiavellian of Las Vegas"; Ash Resnick, Ginji Yasuda, the Aladdin. The Dunes and Adnan Khashoggi …….. 72–90 vii Nevada Resort Association, Health and Welfare Trust of the Culinary Union, brain condition, mental health care for Culinary workers. Valley Hospital board. Jay Bingham and Pat Mulroy. Water and City of Las Vegas; swimming at the Old Ranch, Stewart family from Alamo, the Springs, Mermaid pool downtown, and Twin Lakes. Artesian flows, wooden pipes downtown, radio play by the Water District; Vernon Bunker and wife, Rose (Stewart) Bunker, the Old Ranch, Ebb Davis, and horses. Water and Sanitation District. Mayfair tract. Sanitation District, City of Las Vegas, Dr. Thorne Butler, and wastewater treatment. County manager salary and Gaming Control Board member salary. City-County politics, Bob Broadbent, Myron Leavitt, and Clark County consolidation of power; Bruce Spaulding, Pat Mulroy, Randy Walker, Jim Gans, Pat Shalmy, and Pat Speckmann ………….…………………..………………………………. 90–112 Jim Gibson Sr. and Jim Gibson Jr.; Circus Circus; Jack Anderson, the Dunes and Maxim, bankruptcy, Judge Lloyd George, Ginji Yasuda, and the Aladdin. Chuck Ruthe, Jim Joyce, and clients Southern California Edison, Aerojet, Harvey Whittemore, Coyote Springs, Caesars, and Michael Gaughan. Nevada Resort Association, water, Pat Mulroy, Colorado River Commission, Southern Nevada Water Authority, Nevada State Senator Hal Smith, and Governor Bob Miller. Colorado Compact states, formation of Colorado River Commission, Arizona v. California, Pat Mulroy and her staff. Colorado River Commission, Southern Nevada Water Authority, and Nevada Power. Mexico, water, Lake Mead, Lower Basin states, and Colorado River Compact. Nine-eleven (9/11) terror attacks, Mexicali, and Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science, Bennett William Raley. Pat Mulroy and Steve Wynn, Pat Mulroy's leadership, Robert Lewis, and NAIOP (Commercial Real Estate Development Association)………………………….…112–133 Appendixes .…………………………………………………………………………….……... 134 Harry Reid, "In Honor of Mr. Richard Bunker," Congressional Record, May 25, 2000 .….…. 135 Kimber Laux, "Las Vegan Bunker Dies," Las Vegas (Nevada) Review-Journal, 18 March 2019, pp. 1A, 9A …………………………………………….……….….…………………………... 136 Michael Scott Davidson, "Bunker Quietly Made Impact," Las Vegas (Nevada) Review-Journal, 19 March 2019, pp. 1A, 10A ..……………………………….….…………………..………... 137–38 viii 1 Good morning. This is Stefani Evans and Claytee White. It is July 18th, 2017, and we are with Richard Bunker. Mr. Bunker, would you please spell your first and last names for the recording? R-I-C-H-A-R-D, B-U-N-K-E-R. Thank you. Normally we begin by asking you to tell us about your early life, but in this case we're going to ask you to begin before your early life started. We're going to ask you to go back and tell us why your family came to this part of Nevada. Once we've exhausted that, then we'll talk about your early life. My family in our genealogy was back in the early 1600s. I don't remember when it was that the Pilgrims came, but we came very shortly thereafter. The best I can tell from the experiences that I've read about, my people went to Maine and settled around Maine and in the Boston area. One of the things I think many people will remember and know about is the Battle of Bunker Hill during the Revolutionary War, which, of course, if you research that it was not the Battle of Bunker Hill; it was the battle of Breed's Hill. But I think Bunker Hill was the most prominent hill in the area, so that's what they called the battle. My great-grandfather left home in Maine when he was...My recollection is he was about sixteen. It was difficult in those days because you remember—he had a family of several boys and then two or three girls, but the oldest boy usually got the farm when things didn't work out. My great-grandfather said, "I'm going to just go find out what I can find out." He took off and started to move west. He came through the Erie Canal, which was then one of the new things around, and he ultimately ended up in Nauvoo, Illinois. To those who follow history, Nauvoo, Illinois was one of the first major—of course, in that day minor—but to us, it was one of the first major establishments of the Mormon Church [Church of Jesus Christ of 2 Latter-day Saints]. It was there that he was converted to Mormonism and asked the local leadership there, "What's the best thing for me to do? I don't know exactly what to do." He was probably about twenty years old when this all happened. Nauvoo is where he went to because that's where the Temple was being built. When he got to Nauvoo—now, you have to remember by that time Joseph Smith had already been martyred. He was not there. But things were in an upheaval because of things that happened with Joseph Smith and his associates. My great-grandfather was working primarily and every day on the Temple. But then things started to get really bad and the extermination order came out and our people were leaving Nauvoo. It was the middle of the winter and my great-grandfather didn't have anything. So he was looking around and finally found a couple who had a family and who had a wagon, but they needed some help to get across the Mississippi River and get over to the other side. So my great grandfather hired on with them. After he got across the Mississippi, they went on in to Winter Quarters. It was in Winter Quarters where he met his first wife and it was there that they were married. It was soon after that—they still had nothing—he built a sod hut for his wife, who, when he left—and I'll tell you where he left to in a minute—she was expecting their first child, and she was living in this sod hut. Well, again, having nothing, he said, "I've got to do something." The call came out from Brigham Young to form the Mormon Battalion. So he went to the Mormon Battalion and, in his memorandums that he left, he had a shirt and a loaf of bread, and he left to go pick up the Mormon Battalion. I believe they were in Independence, [Missouri]. But he walked; he didn't ride. 3 Well, anyway, he went with the Mormon Battalion. A little ways down with the Mormon Battalion—he had been walking, spent most of his time walking—they had a need for a teamster to drive one of the wagons, so they put him on one of the wagons. He ultimately went with the Mormon Battalion clear to the end. They got to San Diego and, as you probably know, it [the Battalion] disbanded in San Diego, and the members dispersed to many different areas. Several of them went up to the northern part of California, because that's where the gold strike had come. My great-grandfather followed the group that went up to that area. Getting to that area, he was not primarily concerned with gold prospecting; he got a mule and some supplies and headed for Winter Quarters, because that's where he had his wife. He went back through the Salt Lake area. Going back, he got his wife, and then they came west with one of the wagon trains and ultimately settled in the Ogden area. My great-grandfather was on the first Ogden City Council. It wasn't soon after that, still with one child and a wife—and I believe it was in that area sometime when he got the second wife—the call came out to him to go on a mission. This is something that the LDS Church does still today. But they sent him to England. He was in England for two years, and, as he was getting ready to come back, they notified him that they needed him in Scotland. So he went to Scotland for about another year. After that he came home and was in Independence, Missouri, and this was at the time of the big westward movement of people coming west. The year that he came—what they did, they had the return missionaries who were coming back from Europe. They put them in charge of the companies that were coming across the plains because of the experience they had had as missionaries. He was put in charge—there were five handcart companies that came across in the year that he was there. The first two [companies] got through very easily. It took them ninety 4 days or something like that, three and a half months. But you have to remember they were pulling handcarts. Seventeen pounds each handcart could be. But you had to pull it or push it by hand. The handcart company that my great-grandfather had was Welsh. He could not—they had their own language. But he managed to do what he needed to do, and there was over a hundred and fifty of them that came across. But the last two of those five companies that year were the Martin and the Willie Handcart Company. They got caught up around Cheyenne, Wyoming, in really, really tough winter weather, freezing weather. The stories that came out of that experience are just... They're tragic. There were people walking with blood in the snow, and people that died on the way, and they were burying their mothers and their fathers and children along the way. You can take this at face value, but it's in the history. I know it's accurate, but people could take it the way they want it. Before these things happened, Brigham Young put together a group of men and sent them back towards the east on the trail that the handcart companies were coming. Fortunately at that time, for the relief of the handcart companies, they did reach the Martin and Willie Handcart Company and were able to save quite a few of the people. But had Brigham Young not done that they wouldn't have got there nearly in time to do anything. The way he did it, they called a general conference of all the Church members there in Salt Lake. He stood at the pulpit, and he said, "I need a rescue party to go pick these people up and to get them and help them." I guess by late afternoon they had a group put together, and off they went. My family finally got into Salt Lake. My great-grandfather finally got a third wife at some point in time there. Of course, if you know, if you ever drive to Salt Lake, [you'll notice that] the small cities are fifty miles apart. Of course, that's what they figured they could do, some 5 of them in a day, some of them in two days. So there was at least water and feed and supplies when they needed to travel. My great-grandfather originally settled in Ogden, but my understanding is he was somewhat of a cantankerous individual. He did not relate—I don't know how he was a missionary—but he did not relate to everyone very well. And he came to the point—where he had a grape farm and everything else—he sold out and moved to Panguitch. Panguitch had already been established. He was a bishop in Panguitch for quite some time. A bishop is, you might know, head of a group of people in a ward. We call them [Church districts] wards; the Catholics call them [diocese]. He was in Panguitch for a few years, and then, once again, too many people and too much going on. So he packed his family up and moved down to Santa Clara. He was actually the religious leader of the Church in Santa Clara for several years. Where is Santa Clara? Santa Clara is just south of St. George. In the old days you will remember—and even people who aren't LDS—when you used to travel the old highway before the freeway, you'd come through Santa Clara, and it was some of the best fruit in the country. You could pick up fresh fruit there. Later on, when I became a little more aware of what was going on—not particularly at that time, because they had to grow it there—but later on during my experience driving back and forth to St. George, they started to truck the fruit in because they didn't want to lose a good deal. So they were trucking fruit in from California. And it was lucrative. We used to drive through St. George to go to the Temple, and you'd see cars lined up from California and all these other places, buying fresh fruit from— From California? Well, actually, yes, right. I asked a couple of my friends, "Did they ever advertise that it was 6 from California?" And he said, "No, but they also did not advertise that it was from Santa Clara." If people wanted to— It just had a reputation. That's right. But anyway, the time came then when my great grandfather again had had enough and he wanted to do something. Brigham Young said, "Brother Bunker, you can head south, but it will have to be someplace between Santa Clara and San Diego." He says, "There's lots of room there." Well, you know what kind of room there is between Santa Clara and San Diego. The contention in our family has always been, and mostly humorously, that Brigham Young sent my great-grandfather that way because he hoped that he would die out in the desert. Because he evidently continued to cause problems. But anyway, he was the head of the operation there in Bunkerville. But when they left Santa Clara, the Leavitt family also went with them. So you had the Leavitt family primarily and the Bunker family there in Bunkerville. We had an experience called—and the Church tried to use it quite a bit—called the United Order. I think it was a lot like what the communists thought about doing originally; they didn't do it too well, nor did we. What happened was the bishop of the area would open a store house and keep everything together. All the goods? All the goods, all the wheat, the food, everything. Then as you needed it, it was parceled out. Very few of those in the Church made it; they had problems, people problems; they had all kinds of problems. However, one of the things that we are very proud of is that the Bunkerville United Order experience ended profitably for everyone. Again, the time came when my great-grandfather and the Leavitts had a little—I don't know what it was—it was a little "discourse" of some kind, and he decided he was going to 7 move again. So what he did, he moved a little farther down the valley into an area called St. Thomas. St. Thomas is where they stayed and practiced polygamy. Well, they practiced that wherever they were. At some point in time the church came out with what they called the Manifesto. The Manifesto said there absolutely will be no polygamy in the church from this day forward. Well, again, my great-grandfather, trying to be as harmonious with everyone as he could, said, "I don't care when that comes, I'm leaving." So he took the two older wives and they left St. Thomas and went to Colonia Dublán, in Chihuahua, Mexico. So they left your great-grandmother in— The third wife, yes. Five boys and two daughters and the youngest wife stayed in St. Thomas, yes. CLAYTEE: What was the reasoning for leaving that wife behind? She did not want to go. She just flat said—I believe if we could get into it, I think she probably was a little better founded in following the direction of folks than my great-grandfather was, and she decided to stay. So it was there that my grandfather and his siblings grew up and lived and worked. They worked with the Indians. My own father [Wendell Bunker], who was the youngest of five boys—there were five boys and two sisters that stayed with the mother—he can remember my grandfather trading with the Indians. Now, you have to remember these were not hostile. These were Indians that were relatively... Southern Paiute? I think most of them were that way. I think they were Paiute. I'm not sure. You guys don't remember, but when we used to go to St. 8 George with the old road, you'd go up through the Paiute reservation. So there was a reservation there south of St. George and south of Santa Clara, where the Paiutes had their reservation. Near Moapa? No, no, no. Further up. This would be a lot farther up, yes. This would be after you passed the state line of Utah and Nevada and went up into southern Utah. The situation in St. Thomas was extremely difficult. I was fortunate as a young boy to get to see some of the things that had happened in St. Thomas, but not much. It was only after, here in the last several years, the last ten years that Lake Mead has been down so dramatically that a lot of St. Thomas has been brought into the forefront. You can visit it if you want to and see some of the things there. It was a pretty active town, a typical small farming community. It was tough farming this ground, though, this alkaline dirt that was over there. They found some very ingenious ways to move water out of the Virgin and the Muddy [rivers] and that helped. But it was no picnic, no picnic. Berkeley Bunker is my uncle. On the day we dedicated the Berkeley L. Bunker Elementary School, he passed away. He was scheduled to be the speaker. Well, he, of course, couldn't be the speaker. So they hijacked me, and I was sent in as the speaker. I asked a couple of the old-timers what was something that I could use in my talk and they said, "Well, the only thing that we really remembered Berkeley and his brothers for was the fact that they left three calves in the schoolroom over a weekend." He said, "That disrupted the community considerably." Now, you can imagine what that schoolroom looked like after three calves had been in there for three days. So that was one of the things I used that night in my talk. 9 But it was an extremely difficult situation. My oldest uncle, Martin Bunker, married while he was there in St. Thomas, and he was given a team and a wagon, which was the lifeblood of activity. His wife's family evidently had had some money and they bought that for them and gave it to them. My Uncle Marty was transporting freight between St. Thomas and the little valley—Logandale, Overton—and back up to Santa Clara and St. George. Anybody that knows anything about the Virgin and the Muddy [rivers] in those days and probably still today, there was a lot of quicksand. One day he was taking his freight up to Santa Clara, and he had his team and his wagon. I don't know what the time frame was between receiving the freight and the time that this happened, but he got caught in the quicksand and lost his team, lost his wagon. But not his life? No, not his life, no, no. He survived. But that was a very, very huge setback for the family. He was the oldest brother and he sort of called the shots and did all those kinds of things. It was sort of the basis [for the family enterprise]. When that happened, then people started to disperse. I think my two older uncles, one of them came to Las Vegas. It was just sort of an upsetting time. Then 1930–31 came, and the government decided to build Boulder Dam and they came into the valley. That was our first experience with the federal government that close, and we did not like what happened. They came in and said, "This is how it's going to be," and they bought all the land, and we had to move. Everybody in St. Thomas had to move, because that's where Lake Mead is and was going to be. So at that time we had been established over here [in Las Vegas] with two of my uncles. My Uncle Marty didn't want to come to Las Vegas, because he was a farmer and a rancher. So he went to Alamo, just north of here, and he set up a farm and a ranch up there, a small one. I was 10 privileged as a youngster when my father was in the [U.S.] Army to spend three of my summers growing up on the ranch; it was the highlight of my life until the year 2000, and we'll get to that. They came to Las Vegas, and my dad started school at Las Vegas High. Your dad, what's his name? Wendell Bunker. My grandmother, her father, William E. Mott, was the sheriff here in Clark County at the time. One of their daughters was my mother, Marion Bunker, M-A-R-I-O-N. At some point in time they got married. My mother was— And she was Marion Mott? Marion Mott Bunker. My mother through some deal became acquainted with Maude Frazier. Maude Frazier was the first principal and main cog of the school system here. My mother, for the first several years, was Maude Frazier's secretary. My father, after he graduated his first job, was working for the milk company here in Las Vegas, delivering milk to the Boulder site, where they were building the dam. His job was to take the milk back, whatever that entailed. Anderson Dairy? No, no, it wasn't Anderson Dairy then. It could have been a co-op of some kind, and that I'm not really familiar. Anderson Dairy came in a little bit later. That was what he was doing. He then went from that to other odd jobs. Beckley's Store was the men's store in Vegas at that time. It was on Fremont Street. Actually, it was on Fremont and First Street, right there on the corner. My dad went to work for Beckley's and worked at Beckley's for a while. My dad then left Beckley's. There was a title company that finally had come to Las Vegas, and my dad went to work for the title company. He used to take me when I was small. 11 They used to make the great big blue maps that they had in those days. It was quite a deal to make those things, because they were huge. Then they'd put them up on the wall and people could come in and look where their property was and all that sort of stuff. So he was working there when World War II started. He was drafted into the army in 1942. At the time he was, as I say, working for Pioneer Title. My mother had, of course, left Ms. Frazier, and she had gone to work in the Recorder's Office of Clark County, where she worked all through the time my father was in the service. Our first home that I remember was on Seventh Street. It was probably a couple of blocks north of Stewart. There were a couple of duplexes there, and my folks had one of the duplexes. It was a humble situation because we didn't have anything. Anyway, we kept going. My dad finally got home from the service. When he got home—he had had some experience having worked for the title company with the maps, and there was a fellow in town by the name of Tom Campbell, who was one of the first real estate brokers of any prominence in Las Vegas—he was hired by Tom Campbell. In the interim we lived there on Seventh Street on the north side of Fremont. We then moved to Tenth Street on the north side of Fremont, one block off of Fremont. We had a little house there. I remember, in the summertime, as if it were yesterday, when it got hot and it was just brutal, I was sleeping out on the porch and my mother would wet sheets and put them up at the screen there. That's how they would try to cool the room off and cool me off. If that didn't work then she'd actually put a cool sheet on me, just lay it over me, dry it off and lay it over you. Do you remember what the addresses on Seventh Street and Tenth Street? No, but could I get those for you? Absolutely. 12 I'd be happy to get those for you. I don't remember what they were. But anyway, down the road a little ways it was such that my dad started to do some business as a real estate agent, getting a commission for the things that he sold. They bought a house down in Mayfair and the address was 1605 East Carson [Avenue] and that was just east of 15th Street. We lived there for a lot of the time that I was growing up. Let me just say there's one other place my folks and I lived. We lived in a duplex on Bridger [Avenue]. It was a half a block from Las Vegas High School. Our next-door neighbor was Mahlon Brown and his wife. It was after we bought the house in Mayfair. That's when I, of course, went to school. From the first through the sixth grade, I went to the Las Vegas Grade School right there on Fifth Street. What we call the Fifth Street School now? Fifth Street School, right, yes. Anybody that's been here a period of time at all, Mrs. Hancock was my kindergarten teacher and we all remembered her. She was quite a woman. But when I got to the sixth grade, we lived there in Mayfair, and it was sort of a toss-up between where we would go to school, whether we would stay at Fifth Street; the other school that had opened was North Ninth Street, which was farther away. But right after North Ninth Street, John S. Park was open. So my cousin was going to John S. Park and some of my folks' friends' children were going to John S. Park. So my mother said—and I don't say this for any reason other that it was a fact—in those days a lot of the teachers and principals in the school district were LDS. J. Harold Brinley was the deputy superintendent for the schools under Maude Frazier. Of course, when he was recruiting teachers, that's who he—probably not advisedly—recruited, but that's how it was. Anyway, that's what happened. There were a lot of them there. My mother knew most all of them. It was a small town. When I was born I think they told me 13 there was eighty-five hundred people here. But we started school there at John S. Park. Ruby Thomas was the principal at John S. Park. It was a great place to go to school. You knew everybody, and the kids, we all got along well. We had a sixth-grade basketball team that won—there were only three teams to play; it was North Ninth, the Fifth Street School, and John S. Park—we won the championship one year. Mr. Stillman was our coach. R.E. Tobler was also our coach. You remember Tobe? He was a great guy, too. So I went to grammar school through the eighth grade and graduated from John S. Park. For years and years and years—I've driven by there a few years ago, and they totally tore it down and built a brand-new school—we had barracks, Army barracks. Well, I'm not sure they were Army barracks. I better not say that. They probably weren't Army barracks, but they were those kind of buildings that Army barracks— The World War II-type of temporary buildings? Y