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Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 350 Centennial Dinner 10-13-2006
Complete info on Centennial Commemorative Book
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Update: Tuesday, May 23, 2006, 1:10 a.m. PDT — Democratic Party national chairman Howard Dean, MD, will headline the Nevada State AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) state convention scheduled for May 30-June 1 at the Luxor Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas. If matters progress as usual, a wide range of state and local political hopefuls will address the event, seeking the endorsement of organized labor in this year's elections. Registration and a reception featuring the former Vermont governor and presidential candidate will highlight the event's ramp-up day. The heaviest death-defyin' speechifyin' will take place on May 31 if bygone years are any guide. The getaway day is usually anti-climactic, but some interesting rhubarbs about candidates or resolutions have been known to erupt in the waning hours, fittingly accompanied by a symphony of jangling car keys and rustling plane tickets from the back of the room.
ON MAY 23, 1910, author Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon, Runaway Bunny) was born in Brooklyn; in 1933, U.S. District Judge Harold Louderback (a graduate of the University of Nevada), impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on February 24, was acquitted by the Senate; in 1934, bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed in an ambush by Texas and Louisiana police on a highway between Sailes and Gibsland in Louisiana (see below); in 1936, longtime Nevada assemblymember Robert Price was born in DeLand, Florida (EDITOR'S NOTE: Bro. Price is a 40+ year member of IBEW Local 357, Las Vegas); in 1937, in Reno federal narcotics agent Chris Hansen made bail after being arrested in a narcotics raid by federal agents; in 1937, at Beckwourth Pass just over the California border northwest of Reno, a monument was erected to honor James Beckwourth, an African American scout and explorer who located the route over the Sierra foothills by which many frontier emigrants safely traveled to California; in 1955,the Dunes Hotel Casino opened in Las Vegas; in 1960, acting on information obtained from war criminal hunter Simon Wiesenthal, Israel announced it had kidnapped Adolf Eichmann from Buenos Aries; in 1965, 500 Nevadans attended the opening of Las Vegas' newest park, Tule Springs Ranch; in 1965, the base hospital at Nellis Air Force Base moved from a World War Two-era building to a new $2 million structure; in 1996, Washoe County Airport Authority board members Dawn Gibbons, Tina Manoukian and Larry Martin walked out of an Authority board meeting in protest against the board refusing to hear their concerns about mistreatment of local residents of Rewana Farms, and their departure halted the meeting because it deprived the board of a quorum; in 2004, the Nevada Historical Society held a Centennial Jubilee Garden Party.
The Story of Bonnie and Clyde
by Bonnie Parker
(mailed to a Dallas newspaper by Parker before their deaths)
You´ve heard the story of Jesse James
Of how he lived and died
If you´re still in need
Of something to read
Here´s the story of Bonnie and Clyde.
Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang
I´m sure you all have read
How they rob and steal
And those who squeal
Are usually found dyin´ or dead.
They call them cold-hearted killers
They say they are heartless and mean
But I say this with pride
That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean.
But "laws" fooled around
Kept takin´ him down
And lockin´ him up in a cell
Till he said to me: "I´ll never be free
So I´ll meet a few of them in Hell."
If a policeman is killed in Dallas
And they have no clue to guide
If they can´t find a fiend
They just wipe their slate clean
And hang it on Bonnie and Clyde.
The road gets dimmer and dimmer.
Sometimes you can hardly see.
Still it's fight, man to man,
And do all you can,
For they know they can never be free.
If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat
About the third night
They´re invited to fight
By a sub-guns´ rat-a-tat-tat.
They don't think they are too tough or desperate,
They know the law always wins.
They have been shot at before
But they do not ignore
The death is the wages of sin.
From heartbreaks some people have suffered,
From weariness some people have died,
But take it all in all,
Our troubles are small,
Till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.
Some day they will go down together
They´ll bury them side by side
To a few it means grief-
To the law it's relief-
But it´s death for Bonnie and Clyde.Update: Monday, May 22, 2006, 3:34 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1868, the Reno brothers, who had staged the first U.S. train robbery in Indiana in 1866, robbed a Jefferson, Madison, and Indianapolis Railroad train near Marshfield, Indiana, taking more than $90,000 (among connoisseurs of such things, this is one of the most admired train robberies in its planning and execution, so much so that it is known as the Great Train Robbery); in 1876, Bishop Ozi Whitaker said he expected the Reno seminary for young ladies (now the site of Whitaker Park) to be completed by October 1; in 1912, at London's Old Bailey, suffrage leader Emmaline Pankhurst and the editors of Votes for Women, were convicted of malicious damage to property and sentenced to nine months in jail; in 1912, at Reno's St. Thomas Catholic Church, Father Meagher gave a sermon on "Marriage and Divorce"; in 1912, Charles Cavanaugh of Reno, who fell off the wagon after 28 months of sobriety, found that the Reno Evening Gazette considered it front page news; in 1925, California Governor Friend Richardson signed legislation providing $100,000 for the state's exhibit at the Transcontinental Highway Exposition in Reno in 1926, which included the construction of a building (which still stands in Reno's Idlewild Park), and the news was such a boost for the prospects of the exposition that a crowd gathered in front of Reno's Golden Hotel to celebrate; in 1939, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini signed a ''Pact of Steel'' committing Germany and Italy to a military alliance [New York Times e-headlines]; in 1944, U.S. war labor board chair William Davis told a U.S. House committee that his agency had to take action in a Montgomery Ward labor dispute or concede that 15,500,000 people in various industries had the right to strike; in 1944, the University of Nevada commencement was held for the first time in the new gymnasium, with most of the 55 graduates women (the gymnasium was completed in time for the 1943 commencement but it was housing military training cadets at the time); in 1968, Cream's Disraeli Gears went gold; in 1974, White House aide John McLaughlin, a Catholic priest who repeatedly defended President Nixon, was called to Boston by his church superior for "prayer and reflection" after he defended the heavy use of profanity in the Nixon tapes; in 1976, boxer Oscar Bonavena was murdered at the Mustang Ranch brothel; in 1997, U.S. Air Force officers forced bomber pilot Kelly Flinn out of the service by threatening her with prosecution for adultery.
Update: Sunday, May 21, 2006, 6:03 a.m. PDT — BREAKING NEWS: LV pharmacy workers lockout over health care costs tentatively settled
[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2006 Dennis Myers.]]
Update: Sunday, May 21, 2006, 5:55 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean. [New York Times e-headlines]
On May 21, 1832, the Democratic Party held its first national convention to choose Martin Van Buren as vice presidential running mate for President Jackson after Jackson and Vice President John C. Calhoun split over slavery and federalism; in 1866, in Gold Hill, the Good Templars were organized with about 30 members and served (in the words of one history book) to exert "a positive influence in building up society and neutralizing the virus of the criminal element"; in 1877, five bars of gold bullion, still warm, arrived in Reno from the new boom camp on Peavine Mountain and were on display in the Reno Savings Bank; in 1880, the Nevada State Journal reported "There is no denying the fact that Reno is dull. Every man will tell you so. Some attribute the stagnation to one cause and some to another, but there is a unanimity of opinion as to the result."; in 1883, Wisconsin attorney Kate Kane was released from the county jail in Milwaukee after serving 30 days for contempt of court (she threw a glass of water in a judge's face); in 1883, W.L. French was in Reno after a trip to England where he sought financing for his plan to link San Francisco with Nevada's Carson and Colorado Railroad by putting a railroad through the Yosemite Valley; in 1884, in Paris the Statue of Liberty was completed; in 1897, with marriage within a year after a divorce forbidden under a new California law, the tugboat Vigilant discovered a new source of income — taking couples to sea to be married; in 1897, the Reno Evening Gazette asked "How long will it be before Reno shakes the barnacles off and gets in the procession of the march of progress and prosperity now rampant in other localities? We seem to be degenerating instead of progressing. What, if anything, are we doing to help ourselves? Finding fault and crying hard times availeth us nothing."; in 1904, Thomas "Fats" Waller was born in New York City; in 1906, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that U.S. Senator Ralph Burton would have to go to prison for accepting money from the Rialto Grain & Securities of Missouri in exchange for intervening with the post office on the company's behalf (it was Burton's second trip to the Supreme Court — a January 16 1905 ruling also went against Burton).; in 1906, Catholic officials purchased the Sol Levy home at the corner of Second and Chestnut [now Arlington] streets in Reno for $10,000 to be the site of a church, possible a cathederal; in 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the 67th person to fly across the Atlantic (but the first to do it alone); in 1943, in Fallon, irrigation district official Ward Emery suggested that as a remedy for the wartime meat shortage, people start eating the muskrat carcasses taken by trappers from the sloughs in the area (though Emery's wife refused to cook them); in 1955, Chuck Berry had his first recording date for Chess Records in Chicago; in 1969, John and Yoko began their bed-in for peace in Montreal; in 1973, Sierra Pacific Power was making another run at saddling the state with a nuclear power plant; in 1973, in remarks to a Reno Rotary Club, Reno Evening Gazette/Nevada State Journal publisher Richard Shuster challenged earlier comments by New Hampshire Union Leader publisher William Loeb (Loeb was a tax resident of Nevada), saying that if Loeb followed through on instructing his reporters to reveal their confidential sources and turn over their notes to grand juries, then Union Leader reporters "will be the loneliest individuals in the world"; in 1979, on the eve of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk's birthday, former supervisor Dan White — charged with murdering Milk and Mayor George Moscone — was convicted on the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter after using a defense that he had been depressed and eaten large amounts of sugary junk food on the day of the murders, a verdict that set off angry protests and the "white night" rioting; in 1990, the situation comedy Newhart ended its eight-year run with an episode that stunned and delighted viewers — Bob Newhart woke up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette, his wife from his previous sitcom The Bob Newhart Show, making the whole eight-year series a dream.