The Wheel Las Vegas Rotary Club newsletter, late 1970s

Don Aiken Assumes New Responsibility Don Aiken, after serving the f i rm of Chanslor, Barbieri and DeWhitt for nearly a year, now has joined the f i rm and will serve as general manager of the office of the auditing and account-ing company. The offices are located in the Valley Bank building. Prior to joining the f i rm in January of 1976, Don served as an auditor and financial investigator for the Gaming Control Board in the state and was employed in that work for some 15 years. He also worked as comptroller and general manager of one of the Las Vegas hotel and casinos for five years. He also served three years in the navy. While he began his schooling in Henderson, he was graduated from Oakridge High School in Oakridge, Tennessee, and later attended the Uni-versity of Nevada in Reno, majoring in accounting. He later was graduated with a BS degree in accounting from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Our secretary, Jan West, serves Aiken as his office secretary. - Rl - Scotty Thursby Tale Told in Valley Times It's been a couple of weeks now since "Scotty" Thursby was featured in a section of the Valley Times. But, the editor of the Wheel finally gets around to things and today is presenting the story. The story carries Thursby from the time he started in the grocery business at age 11 and up to the present time when he is responsible for 13 Safeway stores in the area, w i th a fourteenth on the way. It was during the depths of the de-pression in Barstow that Scotty started on his career and he went to work in 1933 and was paid $4 a week to climb up on empty crates to weigh the meat he cut for the then Continental store. The Safeway stores, which were just getting under way at the time, hired Scotty away from his original job, raised his salary to $7.50 per week and he began to cut meat for the new store after school, in the eve-ning and over the weekends. Scotty was drafted into the Air Force in 1942 and was assigned to one of the commissaries at a Texas air base. Then he was sent to Europe where he was in charge of moving supplies to the Allied forces in Germany. He was mustered out in 1946 and returned to his family and to his old job with Safe-way. He was sent to Victorville and later to Barstow. He then went to Big Bear and in 1950 returned to Barstow. He remained there until 1958, when he was sent to Las Vegas as manager of the only Safeway store in the city. While in the city he was promoted to district manager and sent to Bakers-field and he was put in charge of 13 stores then in the region. When he returned to Las Vegas in 1972, Thursby became district man-ager and is now in charge of 13 wide-ly scattered Safeway stores, 11 in Las Vegas, one in Henderson and one in Boulder City. A fourteeneth, at Tropi-cana and Pecos, is expected to open early next spring. It is expected that most of the stores in the southern Nevada area will be remodeled and expanded in order to take care of the growing population in all sections of the city, Scotty says. - Rl - Two Rotations Are Saluted by Bank Two members of the Las Vegas Ro-tary club were honored by the Valley Bank last week when they were grouped with eight other members of the insurance business in an ad in all of the local papers. Angelo Manzi and Ellsworth Hei-man, both of whom are engaged in the life insurance business here, were praised for their places in the Million Dollar Round Table. Each of them had to sell more than $1,250,000 perma-nent life insurance during the year 1977. Both Manzi and Heiman quali-fied. Valley Bank saluted "the remark-able achievements and the dedication which made it possible." Bill McGrew Turns Seer For Vegans Our Bill McGrew, he of the Central Telephone company, turned seer re-cently and gave the Las Vegas Sun a prediction of what the telephone busi-ness would be like by the year 2001. There are quite a f ew innovations com-ing, according to Bill, and most of them will be of great value to the businessman and the homemaker. Bill, in his interview with the re-porter, said it is his belief the cus-tomer will be greatly surprised by the innovative processes and the new types of service that are coming. His most interesting prediction was the de-velopment of what he calls the con-sole, a combination picturephone, tele-phone nad the capacity to display any kind of written material on the screen. The housewife, he says, will be able to order her groceries by using this de-vice and it may some day take the place of mail delivery. There are the possibilities of having the whole Library of Congress on the console in one's own home, the wrist-watch telephone and an encyclopedia that can be updated by the mere press of a button. He also sees a future elec-tronic newspaper in the future. He says the picturephone already is in operation at the MGM Grand Hotel. He said the picturephone has been un-der testing for the past 10 years and the prototype already is working. It is difficult to operate now because of the number of wires required to make it go. However, with what is known as fiber optic cables anything might be possible in the future. The fiber optic cables are made of glass and a laser beam sends the sig-nal over one of these cables. It is pos-sible to put 600 conversations over one of these fibers where, with the J L O j M if y o u f i n d MISTAKES v ' i f W l f i f l IN THIS PUBLICATION, \ PLEASE CONSIDER THAT " THEY ARE THERE FOR A v / i PURPOSE. WE PUBLISH SOMETHING FOR EVERY-ONE, AND SOME PEOPLE ^ ^ ^ ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR MISTAKES! copper wires now in use, only a very few conversations can be transmitted. The picturephone of the future will be so rigged that anyone just out of the shower or dressing can eliminate the picture and maintain the privacy desired. There also will be international di-rect dialing. There are all kinds of things in the future and by 2000 we will be living in a new communication world, he says. - Rl - Last Call Is Out For Rl Confab The last call for reservations for the Tokyo Rl convention is being heard, and unless such reservations are not made immediately you might find yourselves having to sleep and eat on a junk. The convention starting date is on May 14, which isn't quite that far away, and as room accommodations were somewhat scarce to get, they now are becoming almost impossible. If any of you want to make reserva-tions for the convention, as well as room on one of the various post-con-vention tours which are available, it would be advisable to see Darrell Luce and make the proper arrangements.