Harold Hyman

Fri, Jul 5, 1974 (midnight)

Del E. Webb, a major Nevada hotel and casino owner, and founder of one of the worlds’ largest construction and development companies, died yesterday in a hospital in Rochester, Minn. He was 75.

Webb underwent a successful lung operation in March to remove cancerous tissue but a routine checkup later at Mayo Clinic and further surgery revealed unexpected spread of the dread disease.

He had been confined to a hospital for a month before the end came at 8:30 a.m. Central Daylight Time. He apparently died in his sleep.

Webb, a tall, quiet, unassuming man who wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, is survived by his wife, Toni, of Phoenix, and a brother, Halmer J. Webb, of North Hollywood, Calif.

In accordance with his wishes, no funeral or memorial service will be held. His remains will be cremated and the ashes scattered over the Arizona desert, which he loved more than any other part of the globe.

Webb, in the last few months of his life, knew that the end was near. In ordering that no funeral service be held, he told his wife and friends not to grieve when he died. “Life is for the living,” he said.

In Las Vegas nevertheless, a shock wave of sadness spread through the gaming and resort industry yesterday.

Aside from Howard Hughes, Webb was the largest casino owner in Nevada. In Las Vegas, his Sahara-Nevada Corp. owns and operates the Sahara and Mint hotels in Las Vegas, the Sahara Tahoe at Lake Tahoe, and the Primadonna Club in Reno. In addition, the construction company that bears his name is building a huge $40 million hotel casino called the Park Tahoe Hotel that will dwarf the Sahara-Tahoe across the street.

Other Webb hotels include the plush Mountain Shadows in Scottsdale, Ariz., the TowneHouse in Phoenix, Newporter Inn in Newport Beach, Calif., and the Kuilima on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

Additional Webb business interests were world-wide and included management of several plush hotels in the western Pacific and Orient. For 20 years beginning in 1945, he was a partner with financier Dan Topping in ownership of the New York Yankees baseball club.

Webb once said one of his proudest achievements was development of Sun City, a retirement community outside Phoenix. Founded in 1960, it now has a population of some 32,000. There are Sun Cities throughout the West today.

In Las Vegas, his construction firm built the Sahara and Flamingo hotels, the new Las Vegas City Hall, and is presently working on a major expansion of Caesar’s Palace. It also built Valley and Clark high schools and three junior highs for the Clark County School District.

Born in Fresno, Calif., May 17, 1899, Webb learned carpentry from his father, the late Ernest G. Webb, a contractor who was also in the sand and gravel business.

His father went bankrupt when Del was 14 and young Webb hit the road working as a journeyman carpenter during the week and playing semi-pro baseball as an infielder on weekends.

“I’ve been on the move ever since,” Webb once said, “It gets in your blood and you can’t stop.”

A hard slide into home plate, resulting in some torn ligaments and some cracked ribs, and a bout with typhoid fever in 1925 put an end to his athletic career and Webb turned his attention to construction on a full time basis.

He went to work for a small contractor in Phoenix, but a short time later his employer gave him a paycheck, which bounced. The employer skipped town. Webb was in the midst of building a grocery store at the time and the grocer asked him to finish the job.

He took over the defunct contractor’s business. Its total assets were one cement mixer, 10 wheelbarrows, 10 pick axes and 20 shovels.

Webb turned these meager tools into a $3 million business by 1935. The advent of World War II brought about still more successes for Webb. During the war he built most of the military installations in California and Arizona.

In 1946 he built the Flamingo Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip for the late mobster, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Because his construction managers had difficulty getting paid for the project, Webb personally went to the hotel and nervously asked Siegel for the money.

Noting Webb’s nervousness, Siegel reassured him with the words: “You’ll get paid, don’t worry about it. We (mobsters) only kill each other.”

As the United States entered the space age, Webb designers, engineers and builders kept pace by completing such projects as a multi-million dollar radar system manufacturing plant for Hughes Aircraft in California, a modern engineering laboratory for Hughes scientists in Arizona, and nuclear field laboratory facilities in California.

The Webb Corporation erected the nation’s largest rocket engine test stand, embedding the 22-story-high structure in a mountainside of a remote area at Southern California’s Edwards Air Force Base. The joint venture missile construction included $77 million Minuteman silo complex in Montana and a $31 million Titan II project in Kansas. Builder Webb personally received from Lyndon B. Johnson, then Vice President, a Certificate of Appreciation for Patriotic Civilian Service” for his company’s part in the Montana missile silo project.

A solid background in home building helped win such postwar housing contracts as the giant development for U.S. Air Force Academy personnel in Colorado, and attractive, modern homes for officers and airmen at Offutt, Whiteman and Vandenberg Air Force Bases. These expansive military projects were in addition to scores of civilian housing developments in Arizona, California and other states, including an entire town in Southwestern Arizona built for Magma Copper Company.