The Wheel Las Vegas Rotary Club newsletter, 1960s-1970s

Exchange Student Program One of the finest programs ever cultivated by our club was the Foreign Exchange Student Program. It began during the office of the late Allye Lawson - 1950-51. Early Harris coordinated the pro-gram through the American Field Service and Las Vegas High School. Students were selected for their quali-fications presented to us and the field service. The one selected spent the senior high school year at Las Vegas High School and lived with a Rotary family. While these students lived and sfudied in Las Vegas their counterpart f r om Las Vegas High School spent a year abroad in similar circumstances. We were able — w i t h the aid of Early Harris — to dig up the old file and it might bring back some mem-ories to the club presidents and spon-sors. EXCHANGE STUDENTS LAS VEGAS HIGH SCHOOL 1951-52 Gus Bodensieck Germany 1952-53 Paul Zoller Germany 1953-54 Horst Schmidt Germany 1954-55 Guy Withofs ..Belgium 1955-56 Anna Frykholm Sweden 1956-57 Federico Togni Italy 1957-58 Uli Fritz ...Germany 1958-59 Claes Andersson Sweden 1958-59 Michele Ruby ... France 1958-59 Emmanual Pikoulakis Greece 1959-60 Allan Lucas Denmark 1959-60 Berit Vage Norway 1960-61 Robert De Greef-Strum France (Belgium) 1960-61 Maria Bazzanella Austria 1961-62 Hiroko Tatara : Japan 1961-62 Asthildur Brynjolfsdotter Iceland 1963-64 Noemi Fabiola Lapentti Carrion Ecuador 1964-65 Edvardo Spagnnuolo .....Argentina 1965-66 Raymond Las Combe France 1966-67 Jane Boukouvala Greece Wheel Editors Make Progress At least we're making progress. For much of the time in the past, the weekly bulletin of the Las Vegas Rotary Club caused little comment. The members read it, laid it on the table and forgot about it. Not so any more. These days the editors are receiving complaints every John Cavanaugh Services Held Rotary suffered another loss this week when John E. Cavanaugh,-Sr., 63, was killed in a tragic accident on the Mt. Rose roadway early Saturday morning. Mrs. Margery Cavanaugh, w i f e of the Nevada developer, was injured in the smashup on the down-grade. John Cavanaugh was a native of Nevada and had lived an active life in the ranching, home building and land development fields. Cavanaugh and his brother, Charles, were both active in Rotary. John had held membership in the Tonopah and Reno clubs. Charles also was active in Rotary and held membership in the Tonopah and Reno clubs as well as being a present member of our club. The elder brother, John Cavanaugh, was active in the development of land tracts and acreage. Charles devoted much time in marketing of oil prod-ucts and was exceptionally active in Rotary. John Cavanaugh is survived by his w i f e , Margery; a daughter, Mrs. Wil-liam Thornton; son, John Cavanaugh Jr.; five grandchildren, sister and brother. Nevada Governor Mike O'Callaghan, Senator Howard Cannon and Repre-sentative David Towell were among the mourners. The Reno businessman was best known for his development of the 22- story Arlington Towers apartment-of-fice complex and the Arlington Plaza Motor Hotel in Reno. Funeral services were held Tuesday at St. Thomas Aquinas Cathedral with interment f o l l o w i n g at Mountain View Cemetery. Thursday for some error they have made in the bulletin. It is a sure sign we've got readership. If we make er-rors, tell us about it; w e don't give a damn about praise. That is for the working press. Now, if we could only get the mem-bership as interested in attendance, we'd figure we had it made. Commissioner Myron Leavitt Last Thursday's Speaker Myron Leavitt, chairman of the Clark County Board of Commissioners, was the principal speaker at the Rotary Club last Thursday, detailing for the membership the status of the proposed monorail facility from the airport to the Strip area. He said he wanted to clear up a great many misconceptions which had been generated during the discussions over the project, and the first one he desired to talk about was the fact that the planned work would not, no mat-ter what, cost the taxpayers of the county one dime. He said the work was being done under a new law which was passed by the Nevada legislature which allowed creating a so-called beneficial trust for bonds which would be sold to finance the project. He said that the bonds would be sold to private purchasers and the county's assets would not back the bonds for one penny. The bonds could be purchased by anyone so de-siring, but that it is likely they would be taken by the firms which would build the hardware for the operation of the monorail. Under the present plans, the A. J. Kavanaugh Co. is making a feasibility study of the project and has sunk more than $100,000 in the study. If the study proves the project is feasible, then there still are several steps which must be taken to protect the county and the taxpayers of the area. One of these steps is another public hearing, and after that the Public Serv-ice Commission must hold a hearing to provide a certificate of convenience and necessity. The board of finance of the state also must approve the proj-ect, he said. Under terms of the present agree-ment, if the project receives final ap-proval from the state and the county, then a contract must be given to the Kavanaugh company for construction and operation. If the county does not decide to go ahead with the project within a period of five years after the feasibility study is completed, and de-cides to do so later under other aus-pices, then Kavanaugh must be repaid they monye that went into the study. Leavitt pointed out that there prob-ably is some federal money available, but under the terms of the beneficial trust law the bondholders will be re-soonsible for the construction costs and it is probable no federal money will be involved. "The only thing which will back the bonds is the revenue which will be derived from operation of the mono-rail, and there w i l l not be one dime of taxpayers' money involved," Leavitt said. He said that before any contract is signed there would be some under-standing reached as to what would happen to the hardware and structures should the monorail fail to pay oper-ating expanses. "You can rest assured that the coun-ty commission will see to it that the monorail is not a monument to failure. Some method of removal will be locked into whatever contract is signed." He also assured the membership that there is no chance that McCarran International Airport will be moved from its present location. "It's too much of an asset where it is," he said, pointing to the fact that in no other community in the United States, of any size, has an airport been so conveniently located. He did indicate, however, that a general aviation airport might be built in Paradise Valley. Leavitt was introduced by Dr. Bill Busch, who was program chairman for the day.