Where I Stand: Vegas loses two who kept the valley’s history

Saturday, Jan. 11, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Another piece of Las Vegas history has died. And so has gone another repository of the stories which have made Las Vegas famous.

When I learned of the recent deaths of longtime Las Vegans Willow Morrical and Norm Jansen, it struck me that not only would these very warm and colorful people be missed by the thousands of Las Vegans who were their friends, but that with their passing another piece of the Las Vegas legend would be buried with them.

Norm has probably lost little time in his new home finding a racetrack where the horses he bets on actually win, or at least have a fighting chance of winning.

I suppose that's what his friends will most remember about Norm. Not only was he a kind and very considerate man who lusted not for the limelight but only the success that hard work could bring, but he also understood the very special relationship between man and beast -- the four-legged kind that runs at post time.

At least that's the story he told to all who'd listen. And to all who followed his tips at the track, well, that's for another day.

I felt fortunate to have been able to spend some time with Norm in the last few years listening to his stories of the old days ... that was the treat I got for listening to his theories about winning at the track. For his memories of the early days and the people who made this town tick are a part of the fabric that makes Las Vegas a most special place.

I will also miss Willow Morrical who, for as long as I have known her, always represented a kind of style and grace that separated her from some of the roughness of the early pioneers.

As long as I can remember, Willow has been the perfect hostess. Whether it was at Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn when it opened or the Las Vegas Country Club, Willow was there with her smile, her calm in the face of constant disaster and her graciousness.

My mother told me how Willow became the hostess for the Flamingo Hotel when it opened. Bugsy Siegel was at the El Rancho Hotel when a call came for the mobster. Willow summoned him to the phone and then stepped out of earshot so he could have some privacy.

Apparently that was a courtesy that the mobster was not used to so he returned the gesture with the offer of employment. From there she moved to the Desert Inn where she was a fixture through the glamour days of Las Vegas. And nowhere were the stories more exciting and the players more colorful than at the Desert Inn Country Club, the place where the rich and poor, famous and infamous created a semblance of a social life in those early days.

I will always remember one story Willow told me after my father had died and her longtime boss, Moe Dalitz, also passed away. Even though it was harmless compared to what she saw and heard during her life, it was a sign of her discreetness and respect that she waited.

There was a time when my father, Hank Greenspun, was fighting daily with the mob element that had entrenched itself on the Las Vegas Strip. It just so happened that most of the membership at the Desert Inn Golf Course bore the brunt of his "Where I Stand" column to the point where not only he, but also my mother, became persona non grata.

That meant that lunch and golf at the Desert Inn Country Club were out.

That's the real story about why my parents built the Paradise Valley Golf Course in 1959 way out in what is now Green Valley but what was then a resting place for lava rock and rattlesnakes. The townspeople called it Hank's folly. He called it the only way he could keep his marriage together while he battled the mob for the soul of this new and growing community.

Each year the Desert Inn Country Club hosted a Halloween Party that would be the envy of any city, even by today's standards. My mother, ever the party animal, wanted to attend and convinced my father that she could create a costume under which they could hide from the very people who refused them admission to the Desert Inn. And wouldn't that be fun.

When two witches' hats with arms walked into the Country Club everyone was perplexed because no one could guess the human contents within. My father, who was sipping his holiday cheer through a straw so he wouldn't have to reveal his identity to his unknowing hosts, soon began to feel no pain. The witches' brooms which accompanied the costumes were soon used to swat the mobbed-up offenders to the point that they insisted on knowing who was under those hats.

It was after my parents won first place while still concealing their identities that Moe Dalitz asked Willow, "Who are those people?" and insisted that she answer. She told me that because Mr. Dalitz was also in a holiday mood, she told him what no one else knew.

"That's Hank and Barbara," she said. With that, Willow confided to me, Mr. Dalitz said that "Hank sure is a pain in the neck but I have to hand it to him. He's got guts!"

Willow laughed as she told a story that I'm certain gave her more pleasure in the telling than it did to those who listened. That's because no matter what she heard -- and I know she heard a lot -- she always kept her sense of balance. She knew what was right and what was wrong and was never confused. In a community that struggled in its early days to remember one from the other, Willow Morrical was like a beacon of light so good would always find the way.

I know Willow Morrical and Norm Jansen will be missed greatly by all of us who called them friends. I also know that with the passage of time, the stories that they told, the ones that gave color to this most wonderful city, will also go away.

It would be a shame if the million-plus people who live here awoke one day to find the old-timers gone and, with them, the rich history that made Las Vegas famous and human at the same time.

We should not let that happen.