Transcript of interview with Richard Erbe by Marcela Yepes, March 19, 1978

UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe i An Interview with Richard Erbe An Oral History Conducted by Marcela Yepes 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 Richard Erbe ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 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 Richard Erbe iv Abstract On March 19, 1978, Marcela Yepes interviewed Richard Erbe (born 1922 in El Monte, California) about his experiences in Las Vegas, Nevada and specifically about his career in education. Erbe first talks about his family background and German ancestry before describing how he ended up moving to Nevada. He then describes his wife’s father’s background in the gaming industry and some of the early illicit casinos that existed in California. The interview shifts to Erbe’s educational background, his first teaching position as a fifth grade teacher, his experience in the military, and his reasoning for not seeking employment in the gaming industry. The two also discuss church activity, politics, and social activities in Las Vegas. The latter part of the interview includes Erbe’s viewpoints on the issues in the educational system, his experiences as a principal at multiple Clark County schools, and some of the challenges he encountered in the administrative side in the field of education. UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 1 The interviewed is Richard Erbe. The date is March 19, 1978 at seven p.m. The place, 1319 Lucky Street, Las Vegas, Nevada. The interviewer is Marcela Yepes. The project is Local History Project: Oral Interview. This interview is going to cover some of the basic important aspects of Mr. Richard Erbe’s life and some aspects related to education in Las Vegas. Mr. Erbe, were you born here in Southern Nevada? No, actually I was born in the small suburb of Los Angeles in California in a small town called El Monte; it’s towards East L.A., and I really have my originations in Southern California and still feel very much a Californian. Why do you say you have your originations in Southern California? Is your family all from there? Well, actually I am a third generation German—I guess you could say second generation—my father was actually born in Germany, and he came here with his father in 1908. And they settled, originally, in St. Louis with a very large German colony that settled in St. Louis. And for various reasons along with a lot of other people who were attempting to break out of the German colony there in St. Louis, they moved out to the West Coast here to Los Angeles, and I was born in Los Angeles in 1922. And so, I really feel, although I have been back in the Midwest and I’ve been in very many places, I really feel that I am really from Southern California, although now I’ve lived in Las Vegas now for twenty years. In the first place, why did your parents or grandparents move from Germany? Well, the same reason that a lot of other immigrants left Europe. The job opportunities were very scarce; they were not, economically, as well off as they’d hoped to be here in the United States. They were not particularly skilled laborers; my grandfather was a barber, and they just said—in general, just as many other people who had heard about the United States, they felt that it was a UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 2 land of opportunity and that perhaps they might be able to increase their standard of living and have a better life in the United States. So, they were part of the many thousands and millions of Europeans that left in the early decades of the 1900s and came to the United States looking for opportunities. And it wasn’t due to any kind of conflict in Germany, such as World War I, which of course a lot of people fled, but it came much before that, and I think it was just basically for economic opportunities. When did you come to Southern Nevada? Well, I myself have been in Southern Nevada off and on since the late forties, visited somewhat, and my wife has always had family ties here in town, and so we visited off and on through the forties and early fifties until we finally moved here in the late fifties. Is your wife from here? No, actually my wife is from Oklahoma, and she didn’t really have a whole lot to do with Las Vegas until her father became involved in the gaming industry here. She was actually part of the migration during the Great Depression with the Okies as they came across the Grapes of Wrath and came through the Dustbowl Era, and she moved out here by car originally to Los Angeles along with a lot of the other Okies. And as I saw, it wasn’t until her father got involved in the gaming industry that she actually came to Las Vegas. What part of the gambling did her father have to do with the business here in Las Vegas? Well, actually kinda got started around about, he came out to California during the Great Depression with his father and his brother, and he originally settled with his wife in California in Los Angeles and set up his own small business, a dry cleaning store, and it wasn’t until his father’s brother got involved in gambling activities in some of the casinos that were being set up illegally in Long Beach and on the sly. UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 3 Do you know the names of those casinos, those illegal casinos? Actually, I don’t. They were operating out of several hotels in the City of Long Beach. And they used a lot of fake fronts, and they were moved constantly—there was actually not actually a name for the casino itself. It was an operation that worked by word of mouth, and from one day to the next day, were never certain whether or not they would be working or not. There would be times that they’d receive a phone call and say there’s a game on for the night, so we need you, and they might not receive another phone call for two or three weeks, and sometimes it was just a scanty type of operation which, maybe it was only one or two tables, and perhaps they would work and make pretty good tokes and maybe a little bit of money on the side. But, in general, it was just not a very lucrative thing for them, and it was just kind of a fly-by-night type thing, if they could make a little bit of money now and then. What was his job before he got started in the gambling business? Well as I say, he was involved in the church; he was very active in the church (unintelligible) to be a minister, and then he had to move from his home in Oklahoma and came out to California with his wife who really had the main interest—they set up their small business in the dry cleaning store. That was really what he was trained in, working in the dry cleaning industry, and it wasn’t until he started getting calls every now and then to work in Long Beach that he actually got involved in gambling. And I would say probably since those days in Long Beach, that since then he hasn’t left gambling. Did he specialize in some special way of gambling or games, or did he have a favorite predilection for one of them? Well, actually, of course, a lot of people who were breaking in in those days back in the thirties—they tried to break them in on every game, trying to make them an expert in every UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 4 game, but it seemed that his main interest went towards the roulette wheel first, back when casinos in operations that were operating in the hotels in Long Beach. And then of course when they were busted pretty well by the police and the state legislature in California who began working on the floating casinos that they called them that operated just outside of the international limit off of, say, Long Beach. He would ferry out there by boat each night, and that was fairly consistent, steady work, and he stuck pretty much to roulette. And he worked those floating casinos for, oh, quite a number of years, probably four or five years off and on. He worked those casinos rather steadily, and his father even became an owner of one of the boats, and of course that increased his working hours, and he became part of the management, I guess you could say, in one of the floating casinos that operated off Long Beach. His father was a rather interesting character who made and lost millions of dollars several different times during the course of different crap games. He was a big crap player, and I think that was one of the things that kept my wife’s father from becoming interested in dealing craps, was the enormous amounts of money that he saw across the tables during some of his father’s crap games, and I’m sure that influenced his decision to stick pretty much with roulette. What was the name of his father, did you mention it? Well, actually come to think of it, I hadn’t actually ever heard of him referred to as anything but “Papa Jordan.” That was pretty much what everybody called him, and his nickname on the gambling casinos was “The Kid,” and that was what he was called quite often, and I believe his initials were J.C., and everybody called him J.C., and his son, of course, has been called J.C. since then. And I never actually knew what the J.C. stood for, but I know that he went by several different names, and most of the people knew him by “Kid” or by “J.C.” Do you know the name of the boat he owned by then? UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 5 No, I really can’t remember exactly what the name of the boat was. He didn’t keep ownership of it very long; that was one of the deals where we won at the crap game and lost in the crap game, and those were kinda crazy times back in the Depression where people made and lost a lot of money overnight. And he had the boat and I can’t exactly remember what the name of it was. It just kinda slips me right now. Coming back to your life and your background, were you educated here in Southern Nevada? No, since I grew up in Southern California, my education pretty much is there. I went through high school in El Monte High School, and then the war interrupted my chances of going to college, and I was drafted in the Navy. Actually, I upped and volunteered before my draft notice came due, and I was in the South Pacific Theater during World War II, and I was stationed out of Briscoe, Pocatello, Idaho, and then later out of the state of Washington, and then I was assigned to the South Pacific Theater as a radioman. So the war kind of interrupted my education, and when I came back, of course, after settling down and trying to find a little bit of work perhaps, I decided to use my V.A. benefits, and I went back to school, and I got my degree at Whittier College in Whittier, California, and alma mater (unintelligible). Do you have any special anecdotes or things you remember of our war that you would like to tell us about? Oh, not particularly. There was a lot of different episodes, of course. Everybody has war stories that they like to swap, but pretty much, it went basically the same way as everyone else. I did have somewhat of a problem from the war in that I did lose partial hearing from the fact that I constantly had headsets on, and only one ear was always covered by the headset. So the other ear, since we were in the housing of one of the batteries, was constantly impounded by the UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 6 sounds of the shells going off, and I lost partial hearing in the other ear, ‘cause it never was covered, but there really isn’t anything in particular, of course, about the war other than what most other veterans now. You said you came here back to college and you got your degree; what was your degree? Well, I took a little bit of everything; I was very interested in playing baseball and, of course, so I majored in physical education which seemed to be the thing to do at the time. And that’s the area my degree was in, and I really hadn’t given too much thought as to what I was going to do when I graduate, so that’s probably why I majored in physical education. Why the special interest in baseball in particular? Were you good at that sport? Well, it’s not necessarily being good; it something I enjoyed doing, and I participated in the teams in high school, and then later after the war, I got involved again a little bit and I played on the Whittier Varsity Club, and I led the league in hitting, so I guess you could say that I was not a bad ball player. I had a couple ball clubs interested in me—the Los Angeles Dodgers expressed an interest—but I looked around and realized that by the time I graduated, I was twenty-seven years old, and it just didn’t seem that I was going to make it in any quick time into the majors, and it seemed that the war had pretty much just interrupted all of that for me. So you decided to leave baseball aside and concentrate your studies in something else? Yes, actually I decided to continue baseball as a hobby, and I played semi-pro off and on after that, just picking up a few dollars here and there, and then later just playing with the clubs here and there, pickup teams and things like that, and played in different leagues that they had. And I decided that I was gonna look into something else to try and make a living, so I decided that education looked good, and I finished off my degree in physical education and got my first job UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 7 teaching in EL Monte, in the school district there. And I started work, originally, as a fifth grade teacher. Did you continue as a fifth grade teacher, or you changed your subject to something else? No, pretty much I stuck to the upper grades in elementary school, and that’s pretty much what I had specialized in, and then later I went back to school again and finished off my education by getting a master’s degree. Why did you choose elementary school in particular? I don’t know; I just seemed to like the interaction with that particular age group. Have you noticed any growth or changes in your career field? Oh, I guess you could say a lot of things have changed. Salaries, of course, were one of the major things that have changed a lot in the field of education. Of course, the standard of living, I imagine, has not improved that much for teachers. I can remember back in 1949 when I got my first teaching job that I was making $2,700 a year, and it seemed like an awful lot of money, and today, of course, that would just not even be enough probably to pay my taxes for the whole year. Can you make, more or less, a summary of the places you have taught and the occupations you have had rather than being a teacher, have you had any besides that? Well, of course, trying to put myself through the school and get myself finished up and take care of all that I went through quite a few number of occupations, selling pots and pans door to door, and working in the post office service and all these other kinds of occupations that people pick up as part time work and things like that trying to just get by. But in general, since I got my first teaching job, I’d say that I’ve been involved in education one hundred percent. And of course, I did have a change in jobs when we left the Southern California area and moved to a naval UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 8 ordnance station in California called China Lake, and I even switched employers—I was gonna work for the federal government there in the school that was contained on the military base. And once I got there, I got involved in the administration, making the principal of the school there, so I guess you could say that there was a slight change from classroom teacher to administrator. What was the reason for you getting involved in administration? Initially, I was very much against it. And my wife talked me into the concept that by getting involved in the administrative end of the school, I was going to have more influence on the education of the children. Not only would I be able to influence the one class that I was responsible for, but I would be able to influence all the different teachers’ classes by determining policy and establishing priorities and goals and helping teachers realize some of these goals for the kids, and so I guess I finally came around to her way of thinking that by becoming an administrator, I would have maximum input on the education of the students. You had just mentioned your wife, but we know quite a little about her. Can you tell us something about your wife, when did you marry her, where, if she worked or not? Well, actually I met her in college, and we got married during our senior year in Las Vegas in 1948. And we came up to Las Vegas for the wedding. Her father, as I said, was very involved in the gaming industry here. He had come here during World War II to evade the draft, for one of the reasons, and also because the gaming ships in Long Beach had closed up. And so he had become involved here with his father and his brother and some of the different gaming ventures here in Las Vegas. He was very much involved in the Pioneer Club, and his father was part owner, and his brother was one of the shift bosses, and so it seemed natural that we would come here to Las Vegas and have our wedding, so in 1948 we were married here in Las Vegas in the first Methodist church down on Third Street—not the new structure, of course, but the old rock UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 9 structure was there. And we spent our honeymoon that night in Bugsy Siegel’s new Flamingo Hotel that had just opened up in ’48 or ’47, and we were one of the first people to spend the night in the honeymoon suite that they had there at the hotel. Which hotel did you say? That’s the Flamingo; it’s not been taken over by the Hilton people, but originally it was opened and operated by Bugsy Siegel. When you came here with your wife, did [her] father offer you a job in the gambling, or did he offer you to get involved in the gambling business? As a matter of fact, he’s never actually tried to influence any members in our family to get involved in the gaming industry. I think he realized, although financially it’s very good to him, it’s not a very rewarding type of career, and it’s something that, if it is avoidable, perhaps you would like to steer clear of it, so he’s never actually tried to involve me or make job offers or anything like that to get involved in the gaming industry. And I guess, over the long run, I’m glad he didn’t. But you had a good opportunity to get involved in all that business; why didn’t you? Why didn’t you choose gambling as a way of supporting your life? Well, at that time, I guess I was at the crossroads in making a decision as to what career I was going to go into, and I realized that I was (unintelligible) a young man at that time to be entering my career; I was almost twenty-eight, and it looked as if things had passed by rather quickly due to the war and my late start in education. So I decided that gaming was not going to be for me, that there was not that stability that I desired within the gaming industry. There was a very high rate of alcoholism, a very high rate of husbands leaving their wives and marital instability, and just a lot of different problems that were associated with being involved in the gaming industry at UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 10 the time—a lot of the dealers drink, and they were associating a lot, of course, with the cocktail waitresses, and of course a lot of the girls were picking up tricks in the casinos. So it just didn’t seem to be the stable kind of career opportunity that I was looking for. Do you think that has changed, or that gambling still has those unstable opportunities of losing and winning and just not too sure of what you can do there? Well, I think that the gaming industry has changed somewhat in scope; it has become more of a business, more businesslike, I guess you could say. It has a more corporate image to it, and the dealers, of course, are treated with more of a corporate-type atmosphere, but I still think that the possibilities exist, particularly with the tremendous amounts of money that pass through the dealers’ hands in terms of their tokes and the type of people that frequent casinos—the abusive personalities of the people and the players, and also the fact that you cannot deny that within the casino there is always going to be a certain amount of alcohol. And there’s always going to be a certain amount if prostitution involved in the casinos. And these are certainly things that can lend problems to someone who has unstable character and someone who might lean towards these type of things. And I think although on the surface, the casino seems to have changed so much from the innocent operations that they used to be back in the forties or fifties—I’d have to say that there’s still the possibility that someone can get all caught up within sinful ways, I guess you could say, of the casino. Changing of subject, let’s talk about something else. Let’s say, your church activity, are you involved in some kind of church activity or special way of living your life towards the church, or? Initially, when we moved here, we became involved with the Griffith Methodist Church that’s over on St. Louis. And we were members of that church, but we had moved out to a home, or we UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 11 bought a new home out in West Charleston off of Jones Boulevard. And it was quite a long drive for us each morning to try to make it all the way out to Griffith, so we became involved in the new Methodist Church that was being established out to Trinity. And we were, as a matter of fact, one of the fifty founding families of the church, and we were in on initial stages in the planning of the church, and we were very close with the Pastor, Reverend Jerry (unintelligible) who had come out from Mississippi. He was somebody who fit into our mold, he was very active in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi; as a matter of fact, he had lost his church in Mississippi because he had allowed Blacks to be seated during sermons there and during services, and his White congregation had asked for his transfer. And they had moved him out here to a little bit, I guess what they considered a safer zone here in Las Vegas, and he was trying to start the church from ground zero, and we were very excited by the possibility of working with this man. So, initially, with the beginning of Trinity Church, we were very, very involved in the church activities as it began here in Las Vegas. Did you continue—involved in church activities, or does that—has changed in your life now? Oh, I think it’s safe to say that after Reverend (unintelligible) left the community in San Francisco to begin working in a community center that things changed drastically within the church. The congregation became much more conservative, at least on the surface, and they brought in a very conservative pastor, (unintelligible), and it became a congregation known for its conservative viewpoints. And it didn’t seem to be in keeping with what Reverend (unintelligible) tried to achieve within the church to try to open up everybody’s minds to different people and different cultures. And it seemed to be something that we didn’t want to continue to be involved with, and we gradually dropped out to, I guess you could say, the graces UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 12 of the church, and we did not continue to attend. And we kinda just let things lay that way, and we didn’t, had finally gotten back active in the church until just recently when my daughter and son-in-law became active in the University Methodist Church, and we’ve since then become rather active within the activities of the University Methodist Church. In politics, do you belong to a politic party? What are your activities in politics? Are involved in a special movement or something? I guess you could say that although I’m not apolitical, I’m certainly politically aware that politics is just not something that I guess you could say has turned me on. Traditionally, I’m a Democrat. I did vote for Eisenhower in ’52 and then again in ’56; having been a veteran, I felt that Eisenhower could best serve the needs of the nation at the time. Looking back on it, I probably can say that although he did not damage, he certainly didn’t present too much of a positive side, also, for the nation. But I have voted Democratic since then, and I am a supporter of the Democratic Party, although I don’t make any political contributions or work for the party. And having to do with social groups and social clubs, do you belong to anyone special? Do you have any special social activities you want to talk to us about? Well, I guess you could say that here in Las Vegas, the social life, although it’s not nil, I guess you could say there is some social life here that I haven’t been particularly interested in, in any particular social group or anything like that. It’s not like I’m a member of the Elks or anything like that. I pretty much stayed away from groups like that and have worked pretty much within organizations within my school, such as the PTA and things like that, but in terms of social groups, I could say that I really haven’t been very active in the community. In talking about social events in Las Vegas, do you remember any special event or any special (unintelligible) that has come to Las Vegas, anything outstanding? UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 13 Well, of course there have been the presidential visits of Kennedy and Johnson, and I attempted to attend the Kennedy one, and I couldn’t quite make that. And I was not able to attend Johnson’s either. I remember a lot of the press write-ups that went along with them. And in a state such as Nevada, of course, things like this are, I guess, (unintelligible) importance to certain people; it just seemed to me as just another stopover for another politician. I did attend, however, a special service that was in honor of the reverend, archbishop of Canterbury, and that was a rather interesting in-service that was presented by all the different churches within town. I did attend that, and I can remember thinking somewhat that here was a church that had broken away from the Catholic Church and the Pope and for all of the supposedly regal attachments with the Pope and everything, and yet it was almost as of it was a visit of a Pope here to Las Vegas. It was a rather interesting affair. Going back to the war, did you notice any special changes or blackouts due to the war after you—? In what respect, how do you mean, blackouts, in what respect do you mean like that? Well, let’s take for example the subject you are more familiar with, like education or anything like that? Well, in terms of the war, of course, I was overseas at the time, and didn’t actually start living here in Las Vegas until the fifties. So I didn’t miss out on a lot of the pre-war and of course during the war and postwar activities here in town—the construction of the dam and of course, although I did follow it in California ‘cause I lived there, and of course during the war, the completion of the works out in Henderson. And then postwar activities here in town, particularly with the Yucca Flats testing, all of us, of course, in California were very interested in that, and a lot of people really ribbed me about coming to live in Las Vegas. We were constantly receiving UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 14 letters from relatives telling us not to drink the milk because, of course, the cows have been contaminated by the atomic testing being done in Yucca Flats, but I was never actually able to get to see any of the shots that took place here. I have seen several photographs since and films that were taken by individuals that were allowed to go out there. They’re rather spectacular shots, but I myself was never able to experience one of those shots. And fortunately, with the ’63 Test Ban Treaty and the moratorium placed on atmospheric testing, I haven’t had to put up with all the (unintelligible) of my relatives and friends who live in California as to contamination here in Nevada. Going back to education, since we’re going to talk a little about education, since you’ve been a school principal and a teacher, you must have lots of experience with this subject. What do you think are the main problems or disadvantages in education here in Nevada? Well, personally, I think particularly within Clark County, they have allowed the district to grow too large. When they made the original district boundaries whereby each school district would attempt to follow the county boundaries, I think Clark County, due to the population growth that it experienced in the late fifties and early sixties, it has gotten to such an extent that it should be divided. I believe that the district itself has become almost unmanageable—not unmanageable in the sense of proper corporate management. They are—possible, of course, they can bring the budget in the black and many things like this, but I really firmly believe that the quality of education here in Clark County in particular, has suffered because of the fact that the district has grown past its size. I think that, when I moved here in the fifties, we were a very small district, and I can remember going down to what, I guess you could call, the equivalent of the (unintelligible) today that was in the hold history building down on Fifth Street right next to the Fifth Street Elementary School. You could go down to the administration center down there and UNLV University Libraries Richard Erbe 15 you could pick up anything you wanted, you could see people, you knew everybody by first name. Everybody knew each other, and it was a very friendly atmosphere, and you knew what was going on from one school to the other. Of course, we didn’t have the tremendous warehouses that we have today; it would hold so many different and great articles, but somehow we managed to get by, and it seemed, all in all, the district was a very small district, of course, but it seemed that it ran somewhat more efficiently in terms of what the students—the services the students were receiving. Of course, we didn’t offer the same services that we offer today, but the district did make attempts and gradually, through the pressures of some people—particularly people who came from out of state—they started instituting various programs, programs for the blind, for the handicapped, for the mentally retarded and the emotionally handicapped and other special activity program— [Recording cuts out] So, we were talking about the problem of education. Can you continue with the point you were making? Well, I think definitely one of the immediate things that can be done is that they can begin to separate the rural areas from the urban center. I feel that many of the different rural schools have suffered from neglect, I guess you could say, due to the fact that so much growth has taken place within the valley that most of the emphasis on school district budgeting and plans for the future has been to meet the growth within the valley. And the outlying areas such as Virgin Valley, Moapa Valley, and Mesquite areas like this, they have really suffered because they have been kinda neglected within the thinking and the planning of the district, and I think that would be one of the first steps that they’d have to take would be to separate these rural areas perhaps into a rural school district. And then even the urban setting here within town could be divided. I think, UNLV University Libra