John F. Cahlan - University of Nevada, Reno

A Career in Journalism: Overview37public relations man for Hughes’ operationand TWA. And we told him what we hadheard, and he said, “No, Ava Gardner was noton the plane. However, the plane did go intothe lake, and they rescued the pilot.”So I went to the closest phone and calledand told the newspapers that Ava Gardnerwas not on board, and that I would give themthe full details of the story later. So we wentin to see the pilot, who was not badly injured,despite the fact that the plane sank in thewater. And they rescued him and pulled himout. I got a story as to what happened and sentthat out over the wire. I don’t know whetherHughes is cognizant of the fact that we knewthe story on Ava Gardner or not. But she wasnot in the plane, and she was not supposedto be in the city of Las Vegas, which we knewwas not true. But at any rate, that’s neitherhere nor there.The next day or two—or the next two orthree days—they brought divers up here togo down into the lake for the plane becausethere was a lot of secret instrumentation inthe airplane, and they wanted to get that, ifthey couldn’t get anything else, so they pulledthe plane out of the lake and took it down toLos Angeles. And Hughes was around thecity of Las Vegas occasionally for, oh, maybea year or two.He came back here later, after the FlamingoHotel was built and had—it was just after he hadpurchased all the property up in the Red Rockarea. And he came back here, and apparently,at that time, was going to do something withthe land that he purchased. He went out tothe Flamingo and hired the penthouse outthere and was living in the penthouse whensome general from Washington, who was avery good friend of Benny Siegel’s, came totown. The hotel people told Hughes he’d haveto move out of the penthouse. And he said,“This is fine,” and he left Las Vegas and nevercame back until about 1966, when he didcome back to stay. His activities now are in thenewspapers every once in a while, but at thattime, we were sure that Hughes was going todo something in the city of Las Vegas. But—hejust got mad and left. We hope the same thingdoesn’t happen again.Another thing that I had a lot of fun withwas when I attended the legislative sessions,I first went up to the legislature as a reporterfor the Review-Journal in 1954. And from1954 until 1962, I covered eight sessions ofthe legislature. I think there were six regularsessions and two special sessions.Attending a legislative session after youget the swing of it—after the first legislativesession—is much like attending collegeagain. You’re living in a separate world in thelegislature, just the same as when you’re goingto college, and if you’re in the fraternity of thelegislators, you’ve got it made.It’s interesting to see the processes oflegislation and to learn how little most of thecitizens know about legislative action. I haveseen in the legislature the state of Nevadafrom 1954 until 1962 grow double—triple, Iguess. I can recall when the slogan of the stateof Nevada used to be “One square man forone square mile,” because we had a hundredthousand population and a hundred thousandsquare miles. Now we’ve got that many people,or better than that, in the city of Las Vegasalone, And the whole tenor of the legislativeprocesses has changed. Naturally, it’s changedbecause of the reapportionment.People will tell you that they don’t have thesame kind of leadership that they used to havein years gone by, citing people like, oh, DougTandy, Getchell, Ken Johnson, and the bigpeople of the past who ruled the legislature.Well, I’ll put guys like Fred Settelmeyer, FloydLamb, John Fransway, Melvin B. “Bode”Howard, the last two from Winnemucca,