Dr. Richard V. Wyman was born in Painesville, Ohio, and lived there until he joined the navy in 1943 at the age of 17. His father got into real estate and insurance in Painesville. Richard's mother graduated from Ohio State with a degree in home economics, worked until she married, and then devoted her life to her family. In high school, Dick took college prep classes. A month before he graduated he joined the Navy and was sent to college part of the time. He got out of the Navy in 1946 and continued on in college with help from the 52-20 club, a type of GI bill. He studied geology in the night school division of Western Reserve. He met his future wife Anne during this time and they were both admitted to Michigan State grad school. After graduate school, Richard and his wife moved to South America where he had been offered a job. His wife eventually taught grade school there, K through 8. They moved back to Prescott, Arizona, where Dick was offered a job with New Jersey Zinc. Art Still then hired him to work for Western Gold and Uranium and the Golden Crown Mining Company, so Richard and Anne moved to St. George, Utah, with their son Bill. In 1959 Dick met with Don McGregor who hired him to build the Marshmallow Tunnel at the Nevada Test Site. He also built the Exchequer Tunnel for the Sunshine Mine in Idaho, and a tunnel in Merced, California. Eventually McGregor asked him to return to the Test Site to work on Project Pile Driver. In 1969 Herb Wells offered Richard a job at UNLV teaching in engineering. He taught statics, strength and materials, surveying, field mapping and geology. He later added engineering economics, engineering management, economic geology, field geology and mineralogy. Richard took a couple of terms as chair of science and engineering, sharing that responsibility with Herb Wells, Bob Skaggs, Ray Martinez, and John Tryon. The program eventually had three civil engineers and could apply to ABET for accreditation. Dick was chair at the time, motivating the faculty to gather everything they needed for the inspections. In the '80s, the Engineering Advisory Council helped the faculty develop a plan for a new engineering building. Faculty members worked with the architect to make sure those classrooms and labs had everything they needed. After moving into the new building, civil engineering forged ahead, creating a PhD program. Over the years, Dick saw the splitting up of the old College of Science, Math, and Engineering into separate disciplines and watched the number of graduates increase from 10 to between 30 and 50. After he retired from UNLV in 1992, Dick did ABET evaluations for about eight years.
Yearbook main highlights: schools and departments; detailed lists with names and headshots of faculty, administration and students; variety of photos from activities, festivals, campus life, and buildings; campus organizations such as sororities, fraternities and councils; beauty contest winners; college sports and featured athletes; and printed advertisements of local businesses; Institution name: University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Most Las Vegas residents like living in Southern Nevada, but few make the leap of faith that Ron M. Portaro did in 1994. The business and development consultant gave up a "tenure-track, full time, full-benefits, kids-could-go-to-college-for free job" to keep his family in Las Vegas. He had no local job, so he commuted twice a month to the Cleveland and Toledo areas for two years to complete the consulting assignments that fed his young family. As the Ohio native discusses the dysfunctional family into which he was born and was raised, he also talks about forging his own path as an overachiever, about going to college at Penn State at Altoona on a mining engineering co-op program with Morton Salt, working six months out of the year in the salt mines and attending classes the other six months. After transferring to the University of Toledo, he formed his own painting business to pay his tuition and graduated in management in 1978 and earned his JD and MBA in 1981. His mentor at University of Toledo asked him to teach labor management. While teaching labor relations he also began representing athletes as a player agent in the National Football League and the United States Football League back in the day and the Canadian Football League. From there, he became associate director for the Northwest Ohio Center for Labor Management Cooperation at the University of Toledo and later with the Cleveland State Labor Management Center. It was with the latter that he learned the benefits of the BUILT-RITE model of business relations to promote cooperation between and among the building trades, contractors, and owners. In this interview, Portaro speaks to the BUILT-RITE model for cooperation, his 1993 move to Las Vegas and fortuitous meetings of Pastor Paul Goulet of the International Church of Las Vegas, City of Las Vegas councilman Arnie Adamsen, and Charlie Kajkowski of the Las Vegas Public Works Department. He reveals how these connections eventually not only shaped Portaro's life in Southern Nevada; they also enabled him to turn his life experiences, education, and skill set to benefit his church, his family, and his adopted community. The commitment Portaro made in 1994 to remain in Las Vegas has benefitted Southern Nevada tourists, residents, and business owners in countless ways we can appreciate only when we stop to think about how many people had to cooperate and communicate to make our large infrastructure projects come to fruition.