Tuesday, April 7, 1998 | 10:28 a.m.
Walter H. Green, a longtime Las Vegas SUN engineer who built simple wooden fixtures that after 20 years are still in use at the newspaper, died Friday of heart failure at a local convalescent center. He was 88.
Services for the Las Vegas resident of 39 years were scheduled for this morning at Palm Mortuary on Jones Boulevard. Interment was in Memory Gardens.
Green, who survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was in charge of the newspaper's engineering department for 15 years until his retirement in 1990.
He had a knack for using inexpensive materials and a little common sense know-how to resolve pesky problems.
For example, when name placards for moderators at the SUN Youth Forum kept falling down, Green took a few one-by-four-inch wooden planks and used an electric saw to create about two dozen foot-long bases. The placards fit perfectly into the slits that were cut into the stained but crude blocks and remained upright.
It was unmistakenly Green's work -- simple, functional and most of all enduring.
"They weren't fancy, but they did the job," SUN Assistant to the Publisher Ruthe Deskin said. "We still use them today."
Other Green-built fixtures that are still in operation at the SUN include the Cashwords contest box that greets visitors at the front entrance, the recyclable newsprint receptacle in the newsroom and the mail boxes in the sports department.
He also built the newspaper's first computer room.
"Walt was a quiet guy but he was always there to help other employees whenever he could," said Ken Jones, former SUN photographer for 44 years.
"Walt also liked to travel, mostly to places in Nevada like Cathedral Canyon."
Green was a good friend of Roland Wiley, a longtime Southern Nevada attorney who built the picturesque open-air church called Cathedral Canyon on his Hidden Hills Ranch 50 miles west of Las Vegas. Wiley died in August 1994.
Born Jan. 2, 1910, in Rome, Ga., Green moved to Detroit after graduating from high school. There he was a longtime employee of the Muller Brass Co.
Green later joined the Navy and was stationed aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia on battleship row at Ford Island on the morning the Japanese attacked the then-U.S. territory of Hawaii, forcing the United States to enter World War II. Green's ship was among those that sank.
In 1959, Green moved to Las Vegas and a year later got a job as an engineer at the Nevada Club downtown. He worked there for five years and in similar positions for other companies before joining the SUN as its maintenance supervisor.
Green is survived by two brothers, Clarence Green of Florida and Gardner Green of New Mexico; and three sisters, Nell Babjack of Michigan, Lucille Nixon of Reno and Marie Bustamonte of Hawaii.
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