Saturday, April 4, 1998 | 4:35 a.m.
It was in 1954 that the late Hank Greenspun, founder and publisher of the Las Vegas SUN, got his start in television.
That year he was among a group that purchased KLAS Channel 8, Southern Nevada's first television station. Within a few years, Greenspun bought out his partners, and he continued to run the station until he sold it to Howard Hughes in 1969.
It was when he owned KLAS that Greenspun first conceived of the idea of a local television news station. At that time he was publisher of the state's largest independent newspaper and was in the process of securing the cable television franchise for Clark County.
Today the late publisher's family members are carrying his idea for a local television news station to fruition.
Greenspun was born Aug. 27, 1909, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and grew up in New Haven, Conn. In the early 1930s, he worked his way through St. John's University School of Law and was admitted to the practice of law in the state of New York.
In 1941, Greenspun enlisted in the Army, and served nearly four years in Europe under Gen. George F. Patton, attaining the rank of major. He was awarded four battle stars.
While stationed in Ireland, Greenspun met Barbara Ritchie. The two were married in Belfast in 1944, and a few days later Greenspun was shipped out to join his company awaiting the invasion of France.
After the war, Hank and his growing family settled in Springfield, Mass., and in 1946 they moved to Southern Nevada. That year, Greenspun and an old law school classmate, Ralph Pearl, founded Las Vegas Life, "America's only 5-cent magazine," with Pearl as editor and Greenspun as publisher. Pearl would later write an entertainment column for the Las Vegas SUN.
Las Vegas Life, a small show business magazine, ran hopelessly in the red until early 1947, when the magazine happened to publish a story referring to the owner of the Flamingo hotel-casino as Ben Siegel.
Neither Greenspun nor Pearl realized what a lucky break that was, because Siegel -- the mobster, who had just built the Flamingo and who absolutely detested the nickname "Bugsy," -- appreciated being called by his real name.
After the article appeared, Siegel dropped by the offices of Las Vegas Life and asked, "How much for the back cover for a year?"
Greenspun, who never before had been asked for a full-page ad, asked for $250 a week, and got it.
"I didn't even know who I was dealing with," Greenspun said years later.
After deciding Greenspun was OK, Siegel hired him as a publicity man for the Flamingo. Greenspun wrote a column, "Flamingo Chatter," for the local newspaper and conducted many promotions. But the Flamingo continued to lose money, and Siegel was murdered in Los Angeles on June 20, 1947.
A few months later, Las Vegas Life folded and Greenspun worked as a publicity man for the Desert Inn hotel-casino, which he partly owned.
In June 1950, Greenspun's life would change forever. It was then that he paid $1,500 for a foundering newspaper called The Free Press. The thrice-weekly had been started by striking printers from the rival Las Vegas Review-Journal. It was "the only recent instance of a man buying a newspaper for under five figures," wrote New Yorker press critic A.J. Liebling.
Greenspun renamed it the Las Vegas SUN and turned it into a daily.
"I pledge that I will always fight for progress and reform; never tolerate injustice or corruption; never lack sympathy with the underprivileged ... " Greenspun wrote on the front page of the first edition June 21.
Over the next four decades Greenspun and his newspaper battled the most powerful agencies in the nation -- from the FBI (for equating gaming with organized crime) to the IRS (for targeting dealers and other casino workers). He also helped launch the political careers of many of the state's most powerful leaders, including former Sen. Paul Laxalt, and helped shorten the careers of others.
One of Greenspun's first political foes was Patrick McCarran, the senior senator from Nevada, who was the model for the senator in the film Godfather II.
"He was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a ranking member on Appropriations -- and increasingly reactionary and bitter as the Nevada of ranchers and sheepherders was taken over by lamisters (fugitives) in flowered shirts," Joseph Dalton wrote in a 1982 article in Harper's. "Yet at the beginning of every Senate session, the lamisters were invited to kick in money to help defeat all the bills outlawing gambling that McCarran was sure would be introduced this time around, but somehow never were."
After researching the Kefauver hearings on organized crime, Greenspun twice attacked McCarran in his front page "Where I Stand" column in 1952.
In retaliation, McCarran convinced several casino owners to cancel SUN advertising. Greenspun filed suit against the casinos alleging a boycott conspiracy, and just before the suit came to trial, the casinos settled for $80,500, and agreed to continue advertising in the SUN.
Within a few months Greenspun was locked in a ferocious battle with Sen. Joe McCarthy. In a series of front page "Where I Stand" columns, Greenspun called McCarthy everything from a "secret communist" to a "cheap, sadistic bum."
For speaking out against McCarthy in an age when the "Red Scare" threatened the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who dared voice an honest opinion, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas described Greenspun "as one of our greatest Americans."
Strangely, this great American was also a convicted felon.
In 1948, Greenspun had risked his life and his freedom by running guns to the Haganah, the Jewish underground military organization in Palestine.
"(Premier David) Ben Gurion called me and said he needed some help," Greenspun said years later. "I ransacked a naval depot in Hawaii. I cleaned out Mexico and Central America of arms."
Not content to break only a dozen or so federal laws in three countries, Greenspun then hijacked a yacht at gunpoint in California, loaded it with the stolen arms, and sailed it to Mexico, where members of the Jewish underground waited.
Two years later Greenspun was indicted on two counts under the Export and Neutrality Act, pleaded guilty and was fined $10,000. In 1962, he was pardoned by President John F. Kennedy.
Today, Greenspun is remembered as a national hero in Israel.
While he championed his public causes, Greenspun put together financial deals that would affect the course of development of Southern Nevada, and would guarantee financial security for his family.
In March 1966, Greenspun headed a corporation called Community Cable Television that applied for a state certificate to operate a cable television system in Southern Nevada.
After several hearings before the state Public Service Commission over several years, the PSC in 1970 awarded Greenspun's group a franchise for half the Las Vegas area, and awarded Southwestern Improvement headed by rival publisher Don Reynolds a franchise for the other half.
A court battle between the rival franchise holders ensued, and in 1972 the Nevada Supreme Court directed the PSC to re-open the case, and to consider the recently passed rule by the Federal Communications Commission that prohibited one company or person from owning both a television station and a cable television system in the same geographical area. Reynolds, who owned what-was-then KORK Channel 3 in Las Vegas, eventually withdrew his cable television petition.
In 1980, Greenspun's Community Cable Television -- which later would become Prime Cable -- began operations.
Another goal Greenspun achieved during this time was the development of Green Valley.
Throughout the 1960s the SUN publisher purchased land in Henderson southeast of Las Vegas. Then, in 1972, he purchased 4,500 acres from the city of Henderson for about $1.2 million. That brought the total amount of land he owned to 8,000 acres, and he began planning the Green Valley community.
Jack Jeffrey, former Henderson councilman, explained that Greenspun had bid against several others in the 1972 acquisition.
"We didn't want to parcel it off. We wanted a planned community, and that's what Hank agreed to do," Jeffrey said. "You have to remember, the council was desperate to build (Green Valley). We had 12 percent unemployment and practically no business or industry at the time and needed a tax base."
Mark Fine, former president of American Nevada Corp., noted that Greenspun did exactly as he promised.
"Hank was up against a lot of competitors to develop that area, but he worked hard, and I think the way Green Valley has turned out makes the statement that the city got what it bargained for. It's simply the best planned community in Southern Nevada."
Greenspun died in July 1989, at the age of 79.
At his funeral at Temple Beth Sholom, Nevada's most powerful leaders praised Greenspun as "a last American hero" who helped shape the direction and growth of Southern Nevada.
But what probably said more about Greenspun's character were the throngs of everyday people -- including many former employees -- who wanted to pay their respects.
"I remember 25 years ago when I first started working for the SUN, he'd come into the back shop and he always treated you well," Sydney Cottam, a retired SUN paste-up artist, said after the funeral. "He read his column, and he'd say: 'That's great. There's just one typo here.' And we'd fix it.
"I tell you, when I heard he died, I stopped what I was doing and I sat down and cried."
