Transcript of interview with Norman Forsythe by Steve Flint, March 19, 1981

UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe i An Interview with Norman Forsythe An Oral History Conducted by Steve Flint 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 Norman Forsythe ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 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 Norman Forsythe iv Abstract On March 19, 1981, Steve Flint interviewed Norman Forsythe (born 1927 in St. Paris, Ohio) about his experiences living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Forsythe talks mainly about his arrival to Las Vegas and his time as a firefighter with, at first, the Las Vegas Fire Department and thereafter the Clark County Fire Department, where he eventually became a battalion chief. Forsythe also talks about the history and development of Las Vegas, the prices of land, some notable fires, including the El Rancho Vegas fire, and what he recalls about the aboveground atomic testing. UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 1 The narrator’s name is Mr. Norman Forsythe. The date is March 19th, 1981. The time is seven o’clock. The place is Forsythe household, 4251 Cloverdale, Las Vegas, Nevada. The collector is Steve Flint, 4995 South Maryland Parkway. This is a local history project. Mr. Forsythe, were you born in Southern Nevada? No. I was born in Ohio. What made you come out to Las Vegas? Well, initially, I was going to Los Angeles, and I stopped here on the way through and spent a couple days and went on to L.A. and was there about a week, and I came back and stayed a couple more days and decided to stay here. It was just enjoyable and? Well, I left home where I lived in Ohio looking for a better job, and after I came back from L.A., I met a fireman here who had come from Akron. And I asked about the fire department because I (unintelligible) back east in Ohio. And he said that they had openings quite often, so he said, “Why don’t you come and stay with me a while and wait for an opening and try to get on the fire department.” So, I did. I went and lived with him, and I went to work for Anderson’s Dairy in the meantime before I got on the fire department. Anderson Dairy, at that time, was just a little place there on Fifth Street—I think it’s Fifth and Park or something, but at that time, it was just a small building and a small operation. But they did have the bulk of the wholesale trade (unintelligible) counting the firemen. It was just a small house (unintelligible). I, and one other guy, at that time, did all of the (unintelligible) of all the truck, both retail and wholesale, so you know how big it was. It was a big operation then. Has it changed much since then, the dairy and—is it still there? UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 2 Well, no. Anderson Dairy eventually went down off of Foremaster, and they built a big plant down there, and for a long time, they had almost all the Las Vegas business, wholesale and retail, and they had Highland Dairy and Anderson Dairy was the only two that I can recall being counted at the time. And both of them had door-to-door delivery. And I can’t remember what year that they—it seems to me that it was in the late sixties, possibly early seventies, that they stopped doing the door delivery, because the dairy couldn’t make any money on it, but the time they paid for the trucks and the driver’s salary, and there just wasn’t that much profit. And that was really something to have something like that all your life, like door-to-door delivery for your milk—you go out and you get your milk off a doorstep every morning—and all of a sudden, you don’t even have that anymore. Did your family come out here with you? No, we weren’t married at the time. My wife and Carol Lee and I have gone together in Ohio, and it was my intentions of going west and trying to find something better. I looked for the fire department back here, and my base salary was $150.00 a month, and I got $35.00 a month in cost of living bonus, which would fluctuate. The city council gave us that, but they could either raise it or lower at their discretion—they never raised it. They didn’t lower it either, but that was in ’52, and that’s how much I was making. And you had to have two jobs to survive it that way. So I had a little money saved up, (unintelligible) go out to Los Angeles or out west to see if I can find—if I can’t find it, I’ll come back and (unintelligible). So what’s how we ended up here. Were you looking to be a firefighter out here, too? Well, not necessarily but I did like the job, and if something would’ve come up, some other (unintelligible) job, I would probably have taken it, but it just happened that an opening came up in the fire department, and I interviewed for it, and I got it. Well, I started out at $385.00, base UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 3 salary, so right from $150.00 to $385.00 was quite a jump for me. And I worked for the city fire department for three weeks, and the county started the department—they didn’t have any fire department then, Clark County—and my captain in the city was Art Travese, who later became city manager. He became the battalion chief of fire prevention, and then he went into the city manager’s office, and eventually he became city manager, and he was city manager for quite some time, I think about fourteen years. And that’s a long call for a city manager in this town. At that time, (unintelligible) changing like clockwork. So, his father was named the chief of the Clark County Fire Department, and I asked him, “Art,” was the captain, I said, “What do you think about going out there?” And he had just started from scratch, and he said, “I’ll talk to Dad,” so next day at work, he said, “Dad wants to see you at the fire station.” Well, they were just building the first fire station; it was across from the MGM, that one right there across from the MGM was the first fire station that the county ever had. And it was under construction at the time, so I went out there and he was there, and we chatted. And he had had eight firemen and one chief; that’s what started the fire department. Well, he had all people hired, and one guy backed out—he was (unintelligible) Coca-Cola, and he decided he didn’t want to go to be a fireman, he (unintelligible) Coca-Cola. So, I got his job, and in January the 1st, 1954, I went to work at the county fire department. How much has it changed since then? The fire department? Yes, the fire department in general—or what was it like? Then, I just reminisce about it (unintelligible). There was only nine of us on the fire department: four worked one day, and four worked the next day, and then the chief. Well, first of all, he didn’t have a car. He had to drive his own car. We didn’t have any radios. We had one phone for UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 4 about a month, and then all the hotels put in a direct line to the fire station. Well, there was only nine hotels then, like—I’ll come down the Strip—Sahara, El Rancho, (unintelligible) that was where the El Rancho was, Desert Inn, Las Frontier—not New Frontier—Silver Slipper, Sands, Flamingo—I’m trying to think, how many did I name—well, there was only nine. We only had nine hotels at the time (unintelligible) was built yet. We had direct lines from each one of those hotel—nine of ‘em—and they were all sitting on a shelf, and they were all individual telephones. Well, you can imagine, in the middle of the night in our sleep, one of those phones ring, just feel (unintelligible), and that’s how I got our fire calls from the hotel. Well, we only had one firetruck, so you know, four guys working, one fire truck, that’s enough, but that was to take care of the whole Strip. And now, let’s see, the county has, well, to the best of my knowledge now, twelve stations. We probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 350, 375 people. When I retired, I think we had 325 or maybe 330. As far as (unintelligible), they got ‘em coming out of their ears now. Did you end up getting married here in Las Vegas, or? Yes. When I got settled here, Shirley came out—she came in April of ’54, and got married, justice of the peace John (unintelligible)—I don’t know if he’s still living or not. He was just a Las Vegas JOP at the time. At that time, he was a big money man, big money job. Of course, they got a cut of theirs. And we got married at the JOP in the office, and the chief and his wife were with us, and we stayed in Las Vegas and had our family and raised them. You’ve lived here ever since? Yes. How long ago did you retire? It was a year ago last July 11th—coming up on two years in July. UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 5 Do you miss it at all? I did at first, but it wasn’t necessarily the work; it was sort of a relief, because (unintelligible) lot of pressure, I was the battalion chief, and my area was south of Sahara and west of Maryland Parkway and that whole quarter down there of the Valley, and then through all the Strip. And people don’t really realize now—well, nobody would unless you really visit—the complexity of one hotel, how big it is, what all is in it, and how complex building a (unintelligible) just to get around that. I mean, you go in one door, and (unintelligible) hallways, you know, it’s just really, really bad. I’ll get back to your question. At first, I didn’t miss the job as far as doing work, but I miss my association with people, ‘cause I was the last one there who started the fire department, and I had seen everybody come. And I knew everybody on the fire department that had been there for many, many years, and was good friends of most of ‘em. And to sever yourself from the daily association with them now, and you don’t see ‘em like (unintelligible) worked with them or talk with them, sit down and shoot pool with ‘em—you miss that (unintelligible). And I think being honest about, you kinda feel like you’re not important anymore, being in a job like that—(unintelligible) authority and respect and then all of a sudden, you know, just “Hi,” and it’s—my biggest thing was I miss the association with the guys, being around and talking (unintelligible). I visited each station almost every day, and I didn’t stay long at all of ‘em, but (unintelligible) the guys start talking and, you know, you just might, time flew by, you might be a couple hours just sitting there shooting the bull with the guys (unintelligible). Were you ever on any major fires or any big news events, or? Well, as the fire department grew, I was on a lot of that. Now, it wouldn’t be big, but at the time, it would be great big. I was on the El Rancho, and that was nationwide that news went. My mother-in-law was on the way out here to visit us, and she was in the Chicago airport, she picked UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 6 up the newspaper—(unintelligible) was there, and that was the headlines in the Chicago Tribune, so she picked the paper up and brought it out and had the picture then. Red Skelton was there; he was out here taking pictures (unintelligible). That was a big one for its time. Most people wouldn’t remember the building now, but where the shopping center is across from Stardust (unintelligible) anyway, you know where the shopping center is directly across from the Stardust Hotel where Mr. (unintelligible) is in the corner? Right. Okay, originally, that was a hotel building—well, it wasn’t a hotel per se. It was sort of a separate club and gambling hall. Well, it was only there about a year, and one night it was stormy and starting to storm, and there was lightning. Well, lightning struck the building, and we didn’t know it. We got a fire call when smoke started coming together, and that place burned down, and it was bad. It was fire (unintelligible) when we got there. It was a really (unintelligible). Six months after that, one of the service magazines, I reading the article in it, and in it, it was telling you about (unintelligible) and how people were in the building at the time would describe the fire all over the walls, and, like, blue flame on the walls. Well, when the lightning strikes the building, it goes into and follows all the wiring, and it’s such a heavy load and it burns it all up. So we have fires in all the walls, you know. And that’s what happened. And this had a two-story building, but it didn’t have any windows on the second floor. It was just a big huge roof that had a second floor. Well that was fully involved—when you got there, Rex Bell—at the time, he was a former movie star, and he became lieutenant governor a couple years, sometime later—but he had (unintelligible) in the building. When I pulled up there, that fire was coming out of the roof, the ceiling of that store. Well, that means the whole second floor was on fire (unintelligible). At that time, we had three firetrucks and one ladder truck (unintelligible), UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 7 and we had about thirteen men on all those trucks, we had to protect (unintelligible). And that was a big fire for its time. It wouldn’t be considered a big fire now, except for money, well, value-wise. And I had the A.M. Lewis fire—I don’t know if you would remember that one either, but A.M Lewis is the wholesale distributor for grocery here, and out on Harmon—Hacienda, there was a big warehouse out there, and they’re the local distributor for wholesale groceries to all the markets—now, not Safeway, but independent (unintelligible). And this huge warehouse full of all grocery items, and that thing caught fire and (unintelligible) when we got there, it was rolling. What had happened, they had taken a break for lunch, and nobody was in the back of the warehouse, and then somebody came out of the room where they were having lunch—the whole area that contained all the paper (unintelligible) for the grocery store, that was all fully engulfed. And of course, it just mushroomed out of the building, and I think that was (unintelligible). That was several years ago, so now, at least double that amount. Are you in any kind of a volunteer program with the fire department anymore or? No. The only way I would get into any kind of firefighting program now would maybe try to be an instructor for a small department. And I was a training officer for about two-and-a-half years, and it was interesting. It was awfully hard here, you know, trying to get a program going. I started scratch and (unintelligible), and I visited L.A. County, which is a very highly rated fire department, and I spent some time there. And I went to Phoenix and looked at theirs and talked to them to get some ideas, and then came back, and so I started on here. That was the first actual training program that we had. And it was interesting. We started from scratch; we didn’t have any materials, we didn’t have any tools, didn’t have any classrooms, so you had to work with what you had, ‘cause (unintelligible). It was fun. UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 8 What have you noticed about the main changes in the growth of Las Vegas, like, over the last twenty-five years? Population. It’s hard for me to conceive the number of people that are here now. When we came here, the population of Las Vegas was 33,000. And you could drive from one side of town to the other, the whole way from dirt to dirt, probably in ten minutes—fifteen at the most. That’s how good traffic was. But you (unintelligible) morning, the air would be clear, no smog. Our house faced Sunrise Mountain, and just, I could see every rock on the mountain (unintelligible) and (unintelligible) the window. The (unintelligible) the way the town has grown. And it’s hard for me to see that there is that much work here to keep that many people in jobs, even though MGM hires 3,500 or something like that—think (unintelligible) people in this town, and now it’s hard to believe it’s growing. Were you ever a gambler? No. (Unintelligible) the odds are against you (unintelligible). And Carol Lee doesn’t gamble a bit, I mean, she doesn’t, not even a nickel. She (unintelligible) playing a slot machine. Now that you’re retired, what do you do to keep you busy? Well, before I retired—I have a friend who was a registered (unintelligible), and I worked with him part-time. So, now I have an arrangement with him, where he has two boys that go to UNLV that work with us. So, they arrange their classes so they’re off in the afternoon, and I work with him in the morning, and then they come in at noon and work the rest of the day, and I go home. Well, I only have to do that until school is out. Then they work full-time all day, and then I head somewhere else. And I brought some property down in Pahrump—that’s a joke around here, but (unintelligible) in this area and Southern Utah, Sandy Valley, and places where I could get what (unintelligible) near what I wanted. And I found Pahrump showed the best Prospect. So, Carol UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 9 and I bought five acres down there, and we have three acres in (unintelligible). So, on weekends, I go down there and I work and I’ve got it all graded off, I’ve got my septic tank in and the well in, I fenced it in, I built a combination of workshop and a garage—I put a garage door on it so I could (unintelligible) workshop (unintelligible). And she has about four (unintelligible) trees sitting out here on the patio that I got get down there to plant. I bought an old tractor with a cultivator on it, and I gotta do some work on that and (unintelligible) start tomorrow. I’m working on that (unintelligible) down there. And eventually—well, hopefully, this summer when the boys get out of school, I can be far enough along that I can go down there and starting building a house. And hopefully, in a couple years, we might be down there and live in it, ‘cause Carol Lee’s got about two-and-a-half years to go to (unintelligible) ten years. She was considering coming down and living down there, ‘cause she worked at a part-time job with the state. So you’re going to be starting the whole thing from scratch? Yes. We have a photo album of it, and we got pictures from the very beginning, like the first picture in the beginning, she wrote on the top of it, and it’s just tumbleweeds. Then it showed you the first pence post, next picture. It’s all graded off, this (unintelligible), and each thing we do or have done, we have taken pictures of it, like the (unintelligible)—take the dirt and then work in the dirt, have a picture of that, and have a picture laying the forearms for the floor, you know, and that’s where we’re going, and we’ll keep going, taking pictures of it, and have a whole history in pictures of what we’re doing down there. Do you remember when they put in Hoover Dam? No. It was already in when I got here. And I lived here probably two years before I ever took the time to go out and go through it. It was already built, all completed and everything— UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 10 [Recording cuts out, tape ends] The price of land, what it was when I first came here (unintelligible) and what it is today—when I worked at Anderson’s Dairy, the plant manager, one morning when I wasn’t busy, he came out and was loading (unintelligible) between trucks. And he sit there and just started talking to me—he was an old guy then, but he said at one time he had an opportunity to buy some land out on the Strip, where the Strip was then, at a quarter an acre, buy it for taxes. That’s what he had to pay on it. It was back taxes and you could buy that, pay the taxes, and become owner—the El Rancho was the first hotel built on the Strip, and then when they built the Flamingo—Flamingo was way out in the boonies (unintelligible) El Rancho, well, you, you know (unintelligible) desert, nothing but desert between them. And (unintelligible) he was out of his mind to build there. At that time, we had government-owned land, lots, and five-acre parcels, two-and-a-half acre parcels, and you could go out and (unintelligible) or you could go file it on the land and then pay the federal government a fee. My fire chief, at the time, my first job for the fire department—he had five acres, and he paid $352.00 for it as a government fee to get title to it. And he was trying to unload it for what he had in it. Today, that same parcel would probably be worth $100,000.00. He was in Paradise Valley, where this parcel was. It’s in a (unintelligible) subdivision now. Out north on Tonopah Highway, there was nobody out there; there was nothing out there. Now, a half-acre lot out there is worth $25-$40,000.00—a half-acre lot. It’s just unbelievable how the price of land from when I came here in ’53, to how much it’s gone up and what the value of it is. On the other side of the freeway, on Spring Mountain where you go under the freeway and immediately there on your right, at one time, somebody started to build a subdivision. They called it Starlight Park, and they had poured slabs and had the (unintelligible) for about thirty houses. Well, it stopped; they didn’t do anymore with it. It just laid, sit that way UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 11 for years and years, those pipes (unintelligible) slabs of those houses—couldn’t give the land away. I know for a fact that now it’s selling for $4.00 a square foot. Now it’s (unintelligible) industry, you got warehouses in the industry and office buildings and—it’s just unbelievable. You go out clear out on the old L.A. Highway on the Strip—if you go off the Strip and go out past McCarran, you make that turn, that curve that goes back over to the onramp over the freeway and back on the freeway, where that curve starts, where that road goes straight on down, that used to be the road between L.A. and Las Vegas—that two-lane road. And that’s why they called it the old L.A. Highway. That used to be the road that you took to L.A. You off the freeway—but that road still goes out to the Henderson cutoff and on (unintelligible), too, but (unintelligible) come back in the freeway on down. On the weekend, a two-lane road coming from L.A., or L.A. to Las Vegas, and traffic would be bumper-to-bumper—and I mean that literally. I mean, if you got some guy, a slow car up ahead, it might take you eight hours to drive from L.A. to Las Vegas because of the traffic. There’s no way you could pass and pass and pass, you know. There wasn’t that many breaks to get around the cars. You had to (unintelligible)—I mean, if you went out there, say, on a holiday weekend and was standing up on a high place and looked down there, there would be a solid stream of light from as far as you could see over the hill, that comes in, drop down (unintelligible)—a solid light. I mean, a beam of light—it wasn’t even (unintelligible), just a solid light. People coming from L.A. to Las Vegas, two-lane road. I think it was 19—it seems to be 1955, possibly ’56—I can’t remember for sure. I’m trying to associate what I was doing (unintelligible) where I saw it—(unintelligible) at the Test Site. It wasn’t the first one, but it was a special one; he had dropped it out of an airplane. We knew what time it was going to happen—it was eleven o’clock in the morning it was supposed to happen, I mean it was supposed to (unintelligible). We were standing by the fire station on Flamingo Road UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 12 across from the MGM, and all we knew, we just looked in the general direction of the Test Site. When that went off—now believe me, I’m not exaggerating any (unintelligible) at all—when that thing detonated, when that thing fired, it was a bright sunny day when they did it—the sun was out, there was no cloud in the sky—but when that thing went off, you couldn’t see the sun. If you look at that direction, toward that Test Site, from that point, across from the MGM, you couldn’t see the sun. The sun disappeared until that light dissipated. Now, I don’t know—you’d think that that would blind you, and if you get in closer, it probably would have. There, they said (unintelligible) when they have a detonation, don’t look at the fireball. It was unbelievable how bright it was. And after that, they had a guy who—they shut down the Test Site for a while, minimum action, and so a lot of people were laid off—well, he was security guard there, and he came to the fire department and got a job on the fire department. And we got to talking about that; he was there when it happened. And he said, “Well, you know, they said (unintelligible),” so he said, “I thought he got (unintelligible).” So, then (unintelligible). He said four, four o’clock in the morning, and he was gonna drop it at seven. And they dropped it and it went off, big flash of light, he said all he, he just stood there, (unintelligible) “crazy enough” (unintelligible) just to see this, ‘cause nothing happened right off. And he said that in the next moment, it was awesome what happened. He said, “You have to see it,” and he said, “I cannot describe it to you, I could not make you understand what happened.” He said, “All of a sudden, the whole everything on the desert floor right straight up in the air—cactus, sagebrush—everything that was on the desert floor went right straight up in the hair.” He said, “It was unbelievable.” He said, “Dirt and rocks and boulders and trees and everything that was out there just went right straight up in that, where the fireball was.” He said, “I couldn’t not believe it, what I saw was seeing.” And it created a UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 13 suction that just sucked everything up, and then it scattered it out. And that’s why they don’t have drops close to ground, because it sucks up the dirt, contaminates it, causes a fallout. Right. But then they didn’t—they really weren’t concerned as much then as they worry about it now. And (unintelligible) that cloud, where it went was (unintelligible) through it and check for radioactivity and so on and so forth. How many detonations and drops did you see? That’s the only one that I ever saw. I have a neighbor who used to work there; he was a carpenter. And now they drill down in the ground deep tunnels, they go drill down and they tunnel out from where they’re gonna—and they tunnel out fingers from the point (unintelligible) in these fingers, at the end of them, they have rooms the build—they got big rooms. Now, this is one he was up there. And in those rooms, they built structures, like in rooms (unintelligible) they would build—his job was to build forums. They would build the forums full of concrete—thirteen feet thick, the walls were. They had eight-foot walls, ceilings, thick with concrete, and in these, they would put instruments in each one of these rooms. It’s like going out from a spider web (unintelligible) in all these rooms. Well, (unintelligible) talking about cement and so forth, and he would have to down and take the forums out after the cement was cooled. Well, cement, when it’s curing, creates heat, and he said, “Oh, it was terrible down there pulling out those forums from that concrete when it was curing (unintelligible),” ‘cause it was set up but it wasn’t cured all the way through. And he was talking about how hot it was down there and how the heat was so terrible. But, to me, that was just—he had firsthand information on it. The security now, as far as the effect on the public or whatever, you know, they really tightened down on it. They spent millions of dollars just trying to make sure that somebody won’t have reason to say UNLV University Libraries Norman Forsythe 14 something was contaminated or something. Those surface shots—now you’ve probably seen motion pictures of those. They built that city up there, and this guy I was telling you about who was the security guard who came on the department, eventually he went back up there when they opened up (unintelligible) a full war, he went back to work. And he said when he reapplied for his job, he had to through the FBI, and the FBI checked him out at that time, and he had to tell them what he had done from the time that he was laid off until that day—everything he had done. And he tried, he told ‘em the best he could remember, and he said, “Are you through now,” he said, “that all you got?” He said, “Yeah.” They pulled out a folder, opened it up, and they knew everything that he done since that time that he was laid off until he had—he had insignificant things, little things, they knew everything—he said, “They knew more about me than I did myself.” He said, “They knew everything about me.” Everything he had done, the places he’s been, everybody he talked to, any girls he’d been out with, any places he had gone to shows or dinners or visit anybody—they knew every move that he made since the time he’d been off. He said that he witnessed one of those where (unintelligible) you could see through a guy—see (unintelligible). I don’t know how I got off on that. Well, Mr. Forsythe, thank you very much for this interview, and I hope that we can get together again sometime and chat some more. Thank you very much. You bet.