Transcript of interview with Harvey N. Dondero by Elizabeth N. Patrick, August 9, 1984

UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero i An Interview with Harvey N. Dondero An Oral History Conducted by Elizabeth N. Patrick 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 Harvey N. Dondero ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 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 Harvey N. Dondero iv Abstract On August 9, 1984, collector Elizabeth N. Patrick recorded an address by local long time educator, Harvey N. Dondero (born November 12, 1909 in Hawthorne, Nevada) before the Kiwanis Club at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas. This address includes Dondero’s observations on the growth of the school system in Las Vegas, Nevada. After the address, Dondero receives a Distinguished Service Award, from the Kiwanis Club of Uptown Las Vegas, as a token of appreciation for his fifty-three years of dedication to children and youth education in Nevada. Dondero also answers questions posed by audience members, regarding the future of Nevada’s education system. UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 1 This is a recording of an address by Harvey Dondero, longtime educator in Southern Nevada before the Kiwanis Club. At a luncheon meeting at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas. August 9th, 1984. (Unintelligible) and it would have saved me having to say something. Gazelle brought up the fact that I was born at Hawthorne. I suppose that all of us in our lives at one time or another can look back on some event, which shaped our lives or caused some kind of impact to bring us someplace else. And in my case, ah, it was Boulder Dam, the building of Boulder Dam which brought me to the Las Vegas area. Although I was born in Hawthorne and lived in the northern part of the state, the building of the dam here at Las Vegas is what brought me here. And I spent the rest of my life here. So, the impact is that great project is what started me in Southern Nevada. In 1930, the appropriation bill for building the dam was passed by President Herbert Hoover. Who some of you may remember from your history. But prior to the signing of the bill there was a great deal of activity going on in Las Vegas. And because there was a great deal of activity and because there was a great expectation as a big project coming into this area of the state, there were a great many people moving into this area. Boulder City was being built as a tent city, until they were able to get a more permanent type of city built there. The young people who were living in Boulder City had no schools and because of a lot of government red tape, it took a long time to get schools started. So the high school youngsters who lived in Boulder City came into Las Vegas to go to school. So the number of youngsters from Boulder City plus the number of families who were moving into the Las Vegas area caused the schools to become very, very crowded, and especially, Las Vegas High School. And there were swap over classes of many different subjects at that time. And they had to send out a call in the early part of September, for teachers to fill in for extra classes that had to be created at Las UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 2 Vegas High School. I happened to be available and that is the reason that I came to Las Vegas. So I always look back on Boulder Dam as a thing that brought me here. Although, I never worked there, nor did I ever have anything to do with (Laughs) the building of it. At the time that I came here, the southern boundary of Las Vegas was what is now Charleston Boulevard. There was very little on the other side of Charleston Boulevard. The Park family had built a home down on the other side and one of the doctors had built a home there. And the little park that is now located at the corner of Eighth and Charleston was formerly the Dunton Ranch. And there were two Dunton children that I remember at Las Vegas High School. Aside from that there wasn’t much else except that the Park family owned considerable amount of property to the south of that. Charleston went across the railroad tracks and over the tracks and over to the other side of the area which is now well built up. But at that time there were about a half a dozen small ranches that existed over on the other side of the railroad track which were reached by going over on Charleston Boulevard. The east end of Las Vegas ended at about where Eleventh Street is now. At that time, Lads Resort existed there. And Jim Lad was one of the old pioneers of this town. He had come here, I think even before 1905, when the city of Las Vegas was established. And he had a swimming pool there and a dancehall and a picnic area and it was quite a popular place. Although Eleventh Street at that time seemed like it was a long way out of town. Then finally they built a swimming pool at the corner of Fremont and Fifth Street, which now is known as Las Vegas Boulevard. But in my mind it was always Fifth Street and it still is, and I think a lot of the old timers still think of that as Fifth Street rather than Las Vegas Boulevard. The only high school in this area at the time of course was Las Vegas High School. There were high schools in Moapa Valley and at Virgin Valley. They had been established back at the UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 3 time when Las Vegas High School was established. But the people in the valleys decided that they needed high schools and they did. It was a long way to come to Las Vegas to go to high school. So there were high schools over there. When the school board built the high school, which now is located at 315 South Seventh Street, they bought two full blocks and were able to get Eighth Street blocked off, so that there was no street running down between the two blocks. People criticized the board at that time and said, “Why are they buying all of that property way out there in the desert when they will never need it?” Well, they built Las Vegas High School anyhow. But part of the property they felt they didn’t need and they sold the east, the north, the northeast corner off to the First Baptist Church. And that’s why the church exists on the corner there, of what was once the Las Vegas High School property. The elementary school children at that time went to a school at the corner of Fifth and Bridger or Fourth and Bridger. It was a two-story building, which was built in 1910. It had fourteen classrooms and it was full of young people who came from the North Las Vegas area and the area around there. Because that was pretty much residential area at that time. So it was no problem for young people to get to the Fifth Street School. When there was enough high school youngsters for a school of their own, the first high school was built at the corner of Fourth and Clark. And then when that high school was abandoned as a high school, and the high school was built at, ah, over on Seventh Street, the high school that was at Fourth and Clark became a part of the elementary school. So the elementary school ran from Bridger to Clark, and took in the whole block. The old high school then became a school for the upper grades and one day after school in May of—it was May of 1934, the building caught fire and all of it burned and was destroyed by fire. At that time there wasn’t money to build another school for the upper grades. There UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 4 wasn’t a bond issue available and for two years the upper grades, the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades in Las Vegas, went to school in tents on the playground, there at, facing Fifth Street, or between Fourth and Fifth Street. Finally, they decided that the town was going to grow and went ahead and decided to have a bond issue and built another school at that corner of Fourth and Clark. Well, that school now is the auxiliary courthouse. That’s the building that part of the courthouse is in that the registration—or the voter registration department and all of that area was—is now a part of the schoolhouse, of the courthouse. The area which we refer to now as Westside was built prior to the establishment of the city of Las Vegas. It very often was referred to as Old Town or McWilliams Ville. Because JT McWilliams was an old time surveyor who was here. He established a subdivision over there across the railroad tracks and a great many of the people living in Las Vegas lived over on that side. Because there were children over there who had the burden of walking from there over to the Fifth Street School on Bridger. An annex was built on the Westside, a two-room annex for the younger grades. And that building is still standing over there. It was taken over by the Economic Opportunity Board. It was developed into a program of the Economic Opportunity Board. Then in 1932, because of the growth in the North Las Vegas area, the first school in North Las Vegas was built. This was built down on what is now Lake Mead Boulevard. At that time it was called College Street. I don’t know why, unless somebody planned that there might be a college there someday. There was a two-room school built down there so that the youngsters from down there would not have to walk up to the school at Fourth or Fifth and Bridger. After the dam was completed in 1935, things rather slowed down around Las Vegas. There wasn’t much activity except that it was becoming a tourist center. And a lot of people were coming up to see the dam. It was a wonder of construction at that time. So the tourist business UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 5 came to be quite a factor in building Las Vegas from what it had been. And then of course Hitler started stirring things up in Europe. And there was a great deal of preparation going on in this country for possible war, World War II breaking out. The Nellis Air Base was built and then of course because of the use of magnesium and making airplanes, the development up at Gabbs above Tonopah started and Henderson was built. The factories there at Henderson were built in the 1940 and Henderson grew up on the side of that slope over there. Which was nothing much but rocks and sand and bushes. So that the whole town of Henderson, in a period of two years, developed. In the meantime, a whole school system was built in Henderson, starting with kindergarten through the twelfth grade and because government funds were available it was possible to put a school there. In the meantime, Boulder City had started its schools and a high school at Boulder City had started. Since then, since the beginning of World War II and after the end of World War II, there has been a steady growth of this area so that the town has continued to become the biggest city in the state of Nevada. And the Strip area started about 1940s so that as the Strip extended in that direction there was a great deal of development there. So we find Las Vegas gradually growing in all directions from that time right after World War II. Then in 1950, the Atomic Energy Commission came in, and the Test Site was established and this brought more and more people, more and more development and the city has continued to grow in all directions since then. I noticed on the program I was supposed to talk to you something about the growth of education in the county. Gazelle mentioned the fact that the schools were incorporated or consolidated into a county system in 1956. As the area grew, it was always difficult to finance schools. And every year school people went before the legislature and said, “We need more UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 6 money for schools. We need more, a higher tax rate to continue with the schools.” And the legislature finally said, “Well, let’s find out if there isn’t a better way of operating schools than this.” And they hired a consulting firm from Peabody State Teacher’s College to come in. They spent considerable time making a thorough survey of education in this state. And they came up with the recommendation that the best thing we could do would be to consolidate all of the schools in each county into one county system and finance them separately as seventeen county school districts. So the legislature passed the law in 1955, 1956, we became a consolidated school district. There were fourteen individual school districts in this county at that time. By individual school districts, I mean little districts like Searchlight, Blue Diamond, Nelson, Garnet—which was up the road here, were all separate school districts, Henderson, Boulder City, and the Las Vegas Union School District, were all separate. Each one had its own board of school trustees. Each one had its own tax rate. Each one had its own budget, and each one had its own troubles in trying to keep going with the amount of money that was allotted to them on state and county taxes at that time. So under the county system, we ended up with about, with the seventeen counties throughout the state and about two hundred individual school districts that existed at that time, were all consolidated into seventeen county districts. And that’s the system under which we are operating at this time. It turned out to be the best thing that could be done. Because all of the salary schedules in the county could be the same. Transportation could be all under one heading. Food services could all be taken care of and so on. So under that system, we have been operating, and up to this date, it shows a great deal of growth. At the present time, the Clark County School District has some eight thousand employees. And this coming fall when school starts we should have about ninety thousand UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 7 youngsters that have to be taken care of. Which is a far cry from the day when I came back here, came back down here, at the time of Boulder Dam, when they had about six hundred people in high school and about twelve hundred in elementary school. So you see we grow and we continue to grow. (Audience clapping) Presenter 1: Harvey talked a great deal about the forty years that he’s spent in the local system here. But if you add those other years that he worked for the U.S. Office of Education and that he worked for the five county districts, we’re talking about fifty-three years, and that’s what the president’s going to read to you about in this distinguished service awards ceremony. Presenter 2: From time to time we like to try to take the opportunity in the club to recognize some of the outstanding individuals in our community with our Distinguished Service Award. And it says the Kiwanis Club of Uptown Las Vegas is extremely proud to present this award to Harvey N. Dondero as a token of appreciation for fifty-three years of dedication and hard work on behalf of good education for Nevada’s children and youth. Thank you very much. Thank you. (Audience clapping) You know, If I’d a known that this was going to be taped and the photograph taken— (Audience laughs) And a nice award like this, ah, presented to me, I woulda prepared a speech. (Audience laughs) P 1: Do we have time for any questions? Yes. UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 8 P 2: Yes. We got—are there questions? Yes sure. Audience Member 1: Harvey, I have a couple here. Yes. AM 1: First of all, I would assume that there are some masterplans going into the year, century 22 or something for expansion of the school system, right? So that you’re staying ahead of the growth and student population in that sense, right? Yes. For the last year the district has been working on a masterplan which will project the needs and the programs of the school district into the next ten years. Right now the board of school trustees is studying this masterplan and taking the best parts of it for the best educational system possible for the kids in the next ten years. Incidentally, the thing I didn’t mention to you, is because of our growth, great growth in the last twenty, twenty-five, thirty years, this school district is now the nineteenth in size in the United States. Starting with New York as the largest district. Because we have some ninety thousand youngsters and that’s a lot of kids, and that’s why we are nineteenth. Did that answer your question? AM 1: Oh yes, sure. I just have (unintelligible) Yes. Very definite plans are being taken to project into the future for a very, very sound, solid, type of education that we’re going to need in the 20th century. AM 2/Don: Harvey, I have a quick question. Yes. Don. AM 2/ Don: My wife of course was a student of yours way back, she was born over in North Las Vegas, when you were there. But the question I’m sure she’s going to ask me if she sees this picture is, what happened to all of Harvey’s curly hair? UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 9 (Laughs) (Audience laughs) Well, you know, after fifty-three years Don, things change a little bit. (Laughs) P 1: Yes. They do. AM 3: He’s only fifty-three? P 1: Yes. (Laughs) AM 3: Oh. AM 4: I had one about teacher’s salary. Yes. AM 4: ‘Cause I know that’s a current problem and it’ll continually be a problem into the years ahead, especially if we don’t come up with the cash. What’s gonna happen there? What’s your opinion on it? Well, of course there’s a proposal being made to the next legislature right now, to make it possible to increase teacher salaries beyond what they are now getting. The average salary at the present time is about $23,000.00 and that doesn’t hardly keep up with the cost of living and the preparation the teachers have and the amount of time they have to put in. And I look forward to the fact that we eventually will get a better teacher salary schedule. It’s, it’ll be hitting the next legislature. We’ll see what happens. AM 5: Oh. I’d like to remark here that Las Vegas has had trouble with teacher salaries, historically. I ran into an interesting story, in 1915, Las Vegas was really suffering. Because it was paying $85.00 a month teacher’s salary and Tonopah was paying $105.00. And teachers would come here and they would stay perhaps until they could get a position in Tonopah. And UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 10 they would high off to Tonopah in a couple of months to really where the bright lights and all the fun was. (Laughs) AM 5: And there was a series of stories in the Las Vegas Age, when the school board decided to make an example of Clara Fitzgerald, who was a teacher here. And I think eventually they pulled her license because she went to Tonopah for a $105.00 a month and Tonopah wouldn’t give her up. And so the state’s school superintendent eventually took her certification away. Audience: Wow AM 5: It happened a long time ago. Okay. Over there, Roger. AM 6: What went through, on the masterplan that you refer to? Yes. AM 6: Is more of the elementary schools going to a year round school concept? Is that on the plan? We have fifteen on the year round school concept this year and since buildings depend on bond issues and the last bond issue didn’t make it, it doesn’t look very likely that we’re going to have money to build additional schools very soon. So it just means that more schools will be going on the year round program. But you know, most of the people that are on the year round program are happy with it. They were a little bit skeptical at first but now teachers who are in there like it. The kids don’t mind it at all and the parents are getting used to it. And it probably will extend into the junior and senior highs eventually, if they can work out a few other wrinkles. Ah, so that’s the way we may go. Maybe we don’t need the nine month school anymore. AM 7: Do you have a lot of farmers (unintelligible)? UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 11 The farmers. (Laughs) Well, for an area like the Moapa and the Virgin Valleys, the nine-month school is pretty practical. AM 7: Mm-hm. Because those youngsters up there are needed during the summer months on the farms. But in Las Vegas they might just as well be going to school nine weeks and off three and nine and back on nine and it really doesn’t affect them too much. Jeff knows. Jeff’s been through it. AM 8/Jeff: I came, you were talking about, we’re the nineteenth biggest now, I came to Las Vegas because I couldn’t get a job teaching school in California or anywhere else in the southwest. (Laughs) And I think we were the twenty-eighth largest school district then. Yes. AM 8/Jeff: That was in ’77. So we really zipped up the road here in the last seven or eight years. Not only is this district growing every year but there are some large school districts like San Francisco that are losing kids every year. So they drop down the scale while we climb up above them. And that’s one reason why we’re climbing so fast from twenty-eight, as Jeff mentioned, up to nineteen. AM 9: How many teachers are we gonna hire this year? Something like 240. AM 9: Is that because the district is growing bigger or people, ‘kay this is my question right now. Well. AM 9: Teachers are leaving the profession. It’s both, it’s both. It’s people who are retiring and getting out of the game or people who are going someplace else. Wives whose husbands are being transferred and the wife goes and the family leaves. And not only that but as our enrollment increases every year, it means that you UNLV University Libraries Harvey N. Dondero 12 have to have more and more teachers for more and more classes. We try to keep the number of youngsters in a class down and the numbers still just keep climbing up because we keep getting more and more youngsters as we grow. Thank you. (Audience claps) (Tape ends)