Transcript of interview with Stanley Hyman by Eleanor Doble, March 10, 1981

AN INTERVIEW WITH STANLEY HYMAN An Oral History Conducted by Eleanor G. Doble March 10, 1981 The Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas i ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans ii The recorded Interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes 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. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iii I'm interviewing Mr. Stan Hyman. What's your date of birth, Stan? August 26th, 1925. And where were you born and raised? Born in San Francisco, California, and raised in Los Angeles, California, and Grass Valley, California. How long for a total of years did you live in California? Until I was twenty-one years of age. Is that when you moved to Nevada? Yes. When you moved to Nevada, what kind of occupation were you involved in? I was district manager of the Farmers Insurance group in Reno, Nevada. So did you live in Reno for a number of years? I lived in Reno from 1940?actually, the first of 1948 till May first, 1951. Then I moved to Las Vegas May first, 1951. What was Reno like when you lived up there? Rather a small town, a lot like San Francisco. People dressed on most all occasions. It was very common for the ladies to wear a hat and gloves and for the men to wear business suits, double-breasted. Were there many hotels up there when you were there? The time I was in Reno there was just the Mapes Hotel and the Riverside Hotel. Just two, huh? Yes. Those were the large ones. The Golden Hotel, also, was a small hotel down on 1 Commercial Street. Were people very friendly up there? Was it a close atmosphere? Very close, just like San Francisco, very friendly, very close, very formal, so to speak. And when did you say you came down to Las Vegas? May first, 1951. Las Vegas must have been real small then. It was. I think at that time there were under seventy thousand population. What was the Strip like? A lot of bare land, a couple of hotels. The Desert Inn had just opened. The Sahara had just opened. The Flamingo, of course, was way out on the Strip, which was considered at that time way out on the Strip. And there was the Old Frontier and the El Rancho. That's the one that burned down. The one that burned down was the El Rancho or Rancho Vegas?the El Rancho. Were they owned by actors at that time or businessmen? Actually, at that time they were primarily owned by individuals. Wilbur Clark owned the Desert Inn. Jake Kozloff owned the El Rancho. And the Frontier was bouncing around between various owners at that time, individuals. And the Sahara was owned by a group of people out of Portland, Oregon. Did any of those owners (inaudible)? No. You've been in insurance for a long time. Have you seen any changes since you first came out? Tremendous growth in population and the fact that Las Vegas has become a metropolitan city 2 rather than a small country town that it was when I came here. When I came here in 1951, there was one movie theater in town and when you went to the movies you knew almost everyone in the movies. And now you can go to ten or fifteen movies and not know nobody. That's the same way in the hotels. Being the salesman, why, you'd go in the hotels and practically know everybody that worked in the hotels in various shifts and they knew you. And now with the tremendous growth it's just a large metropolitan area. It's like Los Angeles or Southern California. Have you seen any major changes or noticed any?I'm sure you have?that you can compare with Las Vegas itself? Well, the thing that I actually thought was the major change is the fact that the population grew. But the area, as far as the city or county goes, it didn't grow to the capability of handling the growth of the population, meaning that the streets weren't improved, widened enough, and the flow of traffic hasn't been improved to the point that there's no?actually, I would say that there's no east-west expressway as there is a north-south expressway or freeway. Are you involved in any kind of clubs or activities? (Inaudible) Lions. How long have you been in Lions? Since 1949. What kind of group is the Lions? It's a men's business organization with a service plug. They now have Lions Clubs, also. But primarily a group of businessmen would get together to raise money to be donated to pay the blind, needy blind, for people less fortunate than we are. were you ever involved in any kind of politics then? 3 No, other than just endorsing or supporting certain candidates and giving them money, donations. Are you Democrat or Republican? Republican. Is your family all Republicans? Yes, at the present time. Recently we had a fire at the MGM. Have there been any other disasters in Las Vegas over the years? Oh, yeah, they had a couple of bad airplane crashes. But the real bad one, one of the old Bonanza airplanes came in too low out in the southern part of the town and hit a mountain just south of Blue Diamond. Killed everybody onboard. It was snowing that night. I think with the plane coming in from Phoenix. That was a major disaster. And then they had a jet hit a commercial airliner and some of that fell into the Southern Nevada desert area. And then, of course, over the Grand Canyon, they had the two commercial airliners that crashed into each other and killed, I think, about two hundred people over the Grand Canyon. As far as hotels go, there was never any major fire other than when the El Rancho burned down, but that was only a single story. Did that kill anybody? No. No. That started in the showroom, backstage in the showroom and burned out through the casino area, and the rooms were separate from where the casino and the dining rooms and the showroom was. But it all burned down and left a lot of the rooms standing and for a long time the rooms were just apartments rented out. Then eventually, when that property was sold to Hughes, they just went in and leveled all the old buildings that were sold. 4 What kind of influence did Hughes have over this town? Well, at the time that Hughes came in and bought all these hotels, the town was more or less...I would say it wasn't a booming, growing town because when he started to build the Stardust Hotel, it stayed for years before they really got it finished and people came in with the right kind of money and took it over. The economy kind of went up and down like a roller coaster here for years. I've seen a time that in the wintertime all the showrooms were closed. They would close the day before Thanksgiving and they would not reopen until New Year's Eve and they kept Las Vegas more or less as a summer town and not a winter town. The economy in the wintertime would go way down and the economy in the summertime would come way up, and that was customary for years. Then they started wintertime promotions. I think it started with the Sahara Hotel on the Strip when it opened. They started with promotions of airline parties of various things that would draw people here in the wintertime. As they did that it was followed by other hotels years later where they had these big winter promotions. Eventually, over a period of time we got Las Vegas to be recognized as an all year round active town to come to, playing up the weather quite a bit. But over the years I've seen the weather change here quite extremely. For instance, I've seen two inches of snow on my swimming pool driving board in December and I've gone swimming in an unheated pool in February. But now it just seems like the winters have become much milder. As evidenced by the sheer. Right. Have you noticed any kind of changes in entertainment? Oh, yeah, it's become super entertainment here. It was very customary in years going back...I 5 saw Roy Rogers in a horse trailer on the stage; actually had the horse on the stage. All the chorus lines were very popular in the early days of Las Vegas. When they opened the showrooms, they didn't have major stars as much as they had the chorus lines and the big productions, such as the dancers. Then they'd have one entertainer, a mediocre magician or a singer. The live bands, they were primarily way up front on the stages so you could see who they were. I can recall many times before the actual show went on that the people in the audience would get on the stage and dance to the music of the bands. It was very customary. Do you remember any entertainers that may be here in Las Vegas now who performed when you first came? Most all of them are passed away. (Inaudible.) The new ones seem to be younger, yeah. How do you think Las Vegas compares to other towns you've lived in and been to? I know you travel all the time. There's nothing like it. You don't know how to live here. In other words, you've got to know how to live here. What do you mean? Well, if you want to go out and gamble every day, the town is going to own you. Other than that you won't have any assets. But if you control yourself and watch for your future and your retirement, you can keep yourself under control. I do gamble but not to an extreme. What kind of gambling do you do? Oh, blackjack or craps and keno. When you first came did they have all those games? No. Just primarily only twenty-one, roulette and craps. That was all. Big money or just real small bets? 6 It was good-size money then. Smaller bets came in later. But, of course, you used to play ten-cent craps or twenty-five-cent blackjack many times, but that all went up with the economy. How about in the bars and stuff? The price of drinks went from thirty-five cents up to what they are today. I think they're two dollars and eighty-five cents. And I know there's lots of those breakfasts that they offer. Well, and the smorgasbords were the big things. For a dollar and a quarter you could eat all you want for lunch and have the real prime rib and not just (inaudible). And the dinners were the best and finest of food you could have from upwards of two dollars at the most. Were there any particular restaurants that you remember when you first came here that you really enjoyed? Luigi's was on the Strip, which I think has since been sold or gone out of business, Luigi's, and also the Copa Lounge. How long have you lived in your house that you're in now? Ten years. Nineteen seventy-one I purchased it. Actually, I was living in it. I purchased in January of 1970. Do you mind revealing what you paid for it then? Sixty-five thousand dollars. And I'm sure the price of it is? I wouldn't sell it today for under two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. That's a good area right there. Where did you live before that? Over in Rancho Park. I had a home in Rancho Park that I built. Then after I sold that I moved into Central Park West and rented an apartment for a while and then I bought this house on (inaudible). 7 How do you think your neighbors or the people you live compared to people who are in California? Everybody here is kind of independent and on their own. I don't even know the name of the people live north of me. I know the name of the people live south of me. But we don't go into their homes and they don't come into my home. (Inaudible) not too social in Vegas so much. Yet, in Reno the neighbors were all very friendly and would go on picnics together. But I think it comes when you're raising small kids. It makes a big difference. How about any changes down in the downtown area? Oh, yeah. It's grew tremendously, tremendously, just like the Strip, the high-rise hotels. There was never any other hotels other than skid row stuff downtown, all the gambling plots. And then all of a sudden the first one downtown if I'm not mistaken was the Fremont Hotel. When they built that and opened it, everybody said it wouldn't go because nobody wanted to come to Las Vegas to go downtown; they all wanted to come to Las Vegas to stay on the Strip. And then the Fremont caught on and then one went from one right after another like it is today, and the ones downtown do just as good if not better than the ones on the Strip. Were there major buildings, like bank buildings and stuff down there? Nothing like today. Bank of Nevada was on the corner of Third on Fremont where the Mint is now. The First National was over where the Pioneer Citibank is now. I think those were the only two banks in Las Vegas when I came here. Even Valley Bank wasn't open. Then when they came to town and the town started to grow, you can see it blossomed until today. I'm sure you've seen many conventions come and go. Do you know of any of the major ones? Well, the first major convention that came to the convention hall when it opened, I served on the 8 executive committee of that and it was called the World Congress of Flight. They had people and airplane people from all over the world. They had airplane demonstrations out at McCarran Field and they had a fighter bomber demonstrating out at Indian Springs. To me that was the most fabulous, outstanding convention that ever came to Las Vegas since I've been here because it involved the military from every country in the world. It brought in their jet teams and the armies and they showed bombing exhibitions, military air landings, and then the commercial aircraft companies brought in the newest type of airplanes they had at the time. And they brought in at that time the first commercial jet that this town had ever seen; it landed out in McCarran Field and that in itself was a tremendous show. Then they had an air show. To me it was just the greatest exhibition to the public that I've ever seen since I've been in Las Vegas. I don't know why they never repeated it. But it was just a super, super? That was the only year they did it? The only time they did it. It was called the World Congress of Flight. I worked with Barney Rawlings and I worked with Pat Clark. We were on the executive committee with Gene Brown and Senator Cannon. But this was the most outstanding convention, I think, that I've ever worked on. I've worked on a lot of them. I've worked on Lions international and Lions district convention committees. But I did that through the chamber of commerce to help, the World Congress of Flight. I think if they had that type of convention here today again, it would probably be just as outstanding because the military displayed all of the new and up-to-date things that they had. It was open to the public and then they displayed out at Indian Springs. The first time these acrobatic planes flew by at level of grandstands and broke the sound barrier right in front of you. It was just unbelievable. I even had a 35-millimeter camera at that time, but I took the pictures the best I could. And then that sound barrier broke and almost knocked 9 the camera out of my hand, but you could see that on the film. That was very, very interesting. It was a most memorable event. Did you say what year that was? Do you know? Boy. Whatever year the convention center opened because that was the first major convention ever booked there because I saw the racetrack there and I used to go out to the racetrack and then they tore the racetrack down. What kind of a racetrack was that? A horse racetrack. Oh, they did have a horse track in Las Vegas? Uh-huh, Las Vegas Downs. I never knew they had horses. How long ago was that? Give me a chance to guess. I've got to think it was probably 1958, or '57-58. Would they run in the wintertime? No, they had a meet in the spring, not in the summer. The summer was too hot. But the track failed badly. It was over where the Las Vegas Country Club is today and the convention hall; that's where the racetrack was. And I lived in a home?from my home on 909 Bonita, the only thing between me and the racetrack was bare land and I could sit at my front yard with binoculars and see the horses run on the track, which is now I'd say exactly where the Hilton Hotel stands is where the actual track itself was, where the clubhouse and the grandstands were. That's interesting. How about any kind of changes down at the lake? Did people use to go there for recreation and all? Not as much as they do now because the boating business and the boating field wasn't that popular then, recreational vehicles such as speed boats, although we did have a small boat and 10 we did go out there quite a bit. In the summer the big thing was to go out there at night and picnic on the shores and swim in the lake. But it never had the popularity that it has now because of the fact that people trailer their boats in from Southern California. But in the days that I came here it was never crowded, never crowded. what did you do for other recreation other than that? Up to Mount Charleston and go hiking up around there and then we'd drive up to Utah and we'd waterski on the lake down here. In those days water skiing wasn't that popular, though, but we had a small boat. We used to go out and picnic out on the lake. But in those days the summers to me were a lot hotter than they are now. In fact, it was so hot you couldn't go down to the lake. You'd go out there at night. When I first came here they didn't have refrigeration air-conditioning; they only had the evaporative coolers. And if the humidity got up, they weren't working. But the heat seemed a lot more intense then, I think, due to, in fact, there was more bare land here, not the grass and growth they have here now. Because actually we were in the desert. Like I said, you could walk out my front door and walk across the street and you were in the desert. I think that's what made it so hot. You get all that heat during the day. Flamingo Road was a dirt road. Paradise Road was a dirt road, two-lane dirt road I'd say from Sahara?well, Sahara Street wasn't even Sahara Street; it was called San Francisco Avenue then. Then San Francisco Avenue was paved, but none of it was wider?it was just two lanes. Paradise Road south of San Francisco Street was nothing. The biggest store in town was next to the Huntridge Theater; it was a Safeway store and that was a big thing when that opened because it was a big food store that opened. The favorite place and the only place in town that stayed open around the clock was on Las Vegas Boulevard, then called Cliff's Fifth Street Market, and they stayed open twenty-four hours a day and that was a big thing then. 11 Oh, really? (Inaudible) a convenience store. But they're gone. That's no longer there. That has since been torn down. You mentioned some kind of a?the first commercial jet. Do you know of the first major airline in Las Vegas? Western was here and then they had Bonanza. Over the years they brought in TWA. The old airport used to be?when I came here, of course, it was on the Strip side and that was Richard McCarran Field here other than what they used at Nellis right after the war. And then when they moved over to the side of Paradise Road site, nobody could understand why they would move the terminal clear across the other side of the field. If you could land?I often wonder if they don't wish now they were still on the Strip side. But I think they did that for the traffic. Was it real, real small when you first came? Oh, very small, very small. They were flying DC-3s and that was all. Oh, really? Did you first fly?did you used to fly? Yes, I have. DC-3 from here to Reno. You'd land in Tonopah and then Hawthorne and then on into Reno. Was it a real rough ride? Oh, yeah. It was rough, hot and very poor service. Oh, really? Yeah. None of the comforts of today, huh? No way. You've always been in the insurance business. Did your wife work for a living? No. 12 Has she ever? No. Well, she did at one time. She was a cocktail waitress. How many children do you have? Two by a previous marriage. Any grandchildren now? Ten. Do they all live in Las Vegas? Four of them live in Las Vegas. The others live in California. No, pardon me. Six live in Las Vegas and four in California. What are their ranges of ages? Anywhere from one year to twenty years, one to twenty. Did you know at the time you moved?did you meet any of the other major businessmen in Las Vegas? Oh, yeah. In those days in the Lions Club and Chamber of Commerce you met practically everybody. Like I said, it was a small town. You knew everybody. You knew the mayor, the police chief and the sheriff. Who was the mayor when you first moved here? I believe it was Ernie Cragin. Ernie Cragin, you said? Yeah. Do you know who the governor was? I think it was Charlie Russell. Is he deceased now? 13 No. He's still alive, I understand. In Las Vegas? Uh-huh. I think so. You seem to have a lot of awards. What kind of awards have you gotten over the years? I was Convention Man of the Year and other things in hotel administration. Chamber of Commerce. What kind of award? What do you mean Convention Man of the Year? That is the Hotel Management Association in Las Vegas votes each year to give an award to a local citizen who they feel donates a lot of time to promote the image of Las Vegas and they gave that to me for various work on the Lions Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the World Congress of Flight, the United Fund. I support all the local drives as much as I can. I used to be chairman of several (inaudible) United Fund drives. What's the United Fund? That's where they raise some money to help various organizations such as the Salvation Army and the welfare organizations at that time. They give to the poor. And you said you had Man of the Year? Uh-huh. And then I received these other awards from the Farmers Insurance group, production awards and different clubs for business. Have you always been district manager? Well, no. I was a local agent for the company in Grass Valley, California. Then when I moved to Reno, they appointed me at the age of twenty-one, the youngest district manager they ever appointed in Reno when I was twenty-one and I've been district manager since then, which I've been the district manager now for twenty-three years?twenty-four years. 14 When you first started out in the insurance business, did people buy a lot of home insurance? No, no. Where I lived it was mostly mobile homes. I worked in Highway 40 in those days up and down from Grass Valley to Nevada City, up around Lake Tahoe, Truckee, then up north into Susanville, Emeryville and all around the lumber area. I used to go out on the lumber business, lumber trucks and lumber mills, commercial insurance. But homes were very nominal in Grass Valley. The big thing in those days was the mobile homes and commercial, log trucks and school buses; things like that. Did agents make a good living at that time when you sold? Considering it was a good living. I would say yes considering I used to make five hundred and fifty dollars a month and have a wife and child, a not working wife and child that I supported and I home that I rented and I did that on five hundred and fifty dollars a month. Now it takes that about an hour. [Laughing] What kind of major occupations were in Las Vegas at that time? Gambling and military. They had the atomic site out there where they blew off the atomic bombs. That was a big thing then. A tremendous volume of people worked out there then. I think at one time they had as many as forty-five thousand. Do you know when they first started that? Was that before you came? That was when I was in Reno. The first bomb they blew off I was in Reno and it lit up the sky in Reno when they blew it off. Oh, it did? Oh, yeah. So that would have to be, I'd say, between 1950?oh, that would probably be 1950. I'd say 1950, '48, '49 and '50. 15 Was it a big ad and everything? Oh, yeah, it was a big thing, really big. Really advertised in the newspapers? Well, they'd let you know on the radio and everything. Then when I moved into Las Vegas, every time they would blow off one of those bombs, you really saw it. It would light up the sky at like two o'clock in the morning. And then they came by and dropped it one day with a bomber and the bomber flew right over Las Vegas with that atomic bomb in it and nobody said a word about it. And you could even see it when it flew over here. And then they dropped the bomb out there and then you saw the smoke come up, the mushroom, right where the Union Plaza?there used to be a railroad station. You could look right down Fremont Street and it was just perfect. It came right up there. That was the direct line to it. It would really shake. The Venetian blinds and my home would rattle and the ground would shake. And they blew those bombs off and nobody said a thing about it. There was no controversy like there is today? Nothing like it is today, believe me. You better believe it. They used to fly those bombs?I think they came over in B-29s. The first one they dropped was out of a B-29, a World War II bomber, and it flew right over Las Vegas with the bomb in it. Nobody said a word about it. [Laughing] Were you ever in a war? Oh, yeah, I was in World War II. You were in California then, right? I was overseas. Well, I mean but? 16 Yes. I went in in California and was discharged in California, but I served in the South Pacific. Went down with the 13 th CB Battalion. Then I got assigned to a ship, USS Clairton, an APA. We came in assigned to the ship in Los Angeles and then we were sailing overseas. Just halfway out the harbor they ordered us to Bremerton Naval Yard to decommission the ship. We decommissioned the ship after we get out there and then I came back to California and got discharged. So how many years was that? Was that one year? Oh, no. I was in the service for about three and a half years. Don't you have to stay in for like two years? Isn't that a normal? Not then. This was wartime. I went in in '44 and I came out in '46. That's right. I went in in '44 and came out in '46. We were in the South Pacific. When the war was over I was in New Guinea out at bay on the ship when the war was over, when they dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the war was over there. And then I was?let's see. Yeah, I was overseas when the war in Europe was done, too. How many agents did you first have working for you when you came here? When I came to Las Vegas? One part-time man. That's all that? That's all. What other companies, do you know, that were here? Oh, most all of them were here. But, of course, insurance wasn't that big because the population wasn't that big. But I had one part-time employee. Since then I've probably gone through two hundred and fifty, three hundred agents. They've come and gone. Right now today I've got thirty-eight agents. Then they split my district in half and now there are two other districts and I 17 think there's over a hundred agents now in Southern Nevada in Farmers. What kind of, when you first moved here, occupations did women have? Food waitress, cocktail waitress. Was that considered respectable when you were a cocktail waitress? Not in those days. Showgirls, of course, they were allowed out into the casinos after the shows. There was a whole group (inaudible). But the cocktail waitresses and food waitresses was a good job. And then came other things around town that you see women doing, nothing like it is today, believe me. It wasn't at all. Schoolteachers and that was about it. Schools, since I've been here anyhow, for eleven years, they seem to have grown a lot. What was the major high school here then? Las Vegas High. Was the only one in town? That was the only one here when I came here. Right. Do you know if there are any women executives now in the hotels? In the sales departments, yes. But I don't think in the actual management other than sales, administration and food and beverage I know some that I deal with. But I don't know any in the top echelon of what you would say general management. You mean the head of the hotel? Yeah. No. Only in the convention sales and catering that I know. When was your first woman agent, do you remember? I don't think I've put a woman agent on?probably about twelve years ago. Do you remember if she was married at the time or was she just a career woman? I think the first woman agent I appointed was one of my ex-secretaries, used to be my secretary. 18 I'm really thinking it was Barbara Dierro. But she was married at the time. And she's still an agent now, isn't she? She's still an agent, right. And then one just fell in after another to the point where now I've got fourteen now. Do they compare? Very good. Less complaints on them than the men. They do a better job of servicing. That's interesting. All right. Well, I think that about wraps it up. If you have anything else to add? Not a thing. Great time. I have just interviewed the informant Stanley Hyman. The date is March tenth, 1981, at eight a.m. The place, 4045 Spencer, Las Vegas Nevada. The collector is Ellie Doughbol, 4441 Escondido Ave., Apartment 5108, Las Vegas, Nevada. The project is the Local History Project, Oral Interview. [End of recorded interview] 19 20