Thursday, April 16, 1998 | 10:19 a.m.
Over the years, you've welcomed them into your home.
They've been there as you sipped the morning's first cup of coffee and drifted off to sleep at night before (depending on the era) Johnny Carson's, Jay Leno's and David Letterman's monologues.
They narrated Las Vegas' history as it happened -- from nuclear tests and flash floods to star-studded casino openings and devastating hotel fires.
And then, they moved on.
But where did the television news anchors, reporters, weathercasters and sportscasters -- who, at one time or another, brought you the day's events on one of the city's local TV stations -- go?
The SUN located more than two dozen of these broadcast journalists, many of whom have gone on to television stations in larger markets and reported on events of global proportions, or gotten out of the business altogether.
In this and an accompanying story on page 2F, they reminisce about their time spent covering news in Southern Nevada:
Andrea Boggs
* After a brief stint at Channel 8 in 1974, Andrea Boggs, who had worked on-air previously in Northern California, turned to radio when she joined the news staff at local KORK AM and FM stations.
She stayed until a spot anchoring weekday morning and Sunday night newscasts (and eventually, weeknights) at KORK's sister television station, Channel 3, During her stint there, Channel 3 waged an ongoing battle with the Federal Communications Commission over its license. "Things were in an uproar and people weren't sure what was going to happen," Boggs recalls.
So she left in '79 and went back to KORK Radio as news director until she left Las Vegas two years later.
Boggs spent little time behind the TV news desk -- and "a lot of time chasing" mobster Anthony Spilatro around town.
She also remembers casino bigwigs Benny Binion, Sam Boyd and Alan Glick as "colorful characters. It was just a fun time to be in Las Vegas," she says.
"When I was here and when Chris (Chrystal, another former television news person) was here," the local affiliates were the only source for television news, she says. "People would turn us on and listen to us and watch us and call us up. They just seemed to be more interested in what was happening in Las Vegas."
Boggs returned to town in 1993, this time to work as a private investigator with Philip Manuel Resource Group, a firm founded and owned by her former husband, Philip Manuel, one-time chief investigator for the U.S. Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations, whom she met during her radio days here.
Private investigating "is not much of a switch at all (from news reporting) if you think about it. I did a lot of investigative reporting during my career," she says. "You're asking the basic interrogatories -- who, what, when, where and why."
But if you figure 55-year-old Boggs for a female version of Las Vegas' most famous gumshoe, the character of Dan Tanna from the television series "Vega$," think again.
"I don't carry a gun; I don't do any surveillance," she says, explaining that her business is more about gathering, analyzing and reporting information to clients.
"You'd be surprised how much it's like journalism, but without having to worry about deadlines and cameras and lights and microphones."
Boggs is clearly displeased with the current state of local news.
"I think the news teams let themselves get caught up in 'Hard Copy' and 'Entertainment Tonight' (by producing) that sort of no-brainer-type of story," she says.
"It takes time to find out if (the city is) going to have enough water, to find out why the infrastructure is so behind schedule. It's not easy, it's not a sexy story, but it's what people need to know."
Roosevelt Toston
* "I have my place in history," assures Roosevelt Toston, formerly of Channel 3, who was the state's first full-time black television reporter in 1970.
In the early days, he also worked as a cameraman."The idea was to train me for six months and start giving me light assignments," he says.
Two weeks into the job, the Las Vegas High School graduate was sent on his first interview. "I think, at first, I had some difficulty in really getting my craft down," Toston says. "I was sort of learning on the job."
As the first black reporter here, Toston says he faced some unique challenges. "I think it was just that some people were not used to being interviewed," or were "caught off guard, a little surprised at first to see me there, a black reporter," he says.
"I think we were doing a lot more ambulance chasing in those days than you find these days," he says. Toston also reported on "uprisings" in the city's black community. "I was a natural, as far as the news department was concerned, to cover some of those stories."
He is most proud of the local documentaries that he and his former Channel 3 news director, John Howe, produced, titled, "Is Life Cheap in the Black Community?" and "Does the Dream Come in Black?" -- half-hour series which ran on the station for several days during prime-time.
"We don't see much of that now," says 50-something Toston, who left broadcasting in 1975 to pursue a career with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. He travels the globe, selling the city's facilities for meetings and conventions (Comdex is one of the accounts he oversees).
Does he miss working in front of the camera? "Not really," he says. "I think the idea that you could be replaced with the change of a news director ... there's no job security. There was a lot more security at the Convention Authority then and now."
Hank Thornley
* Longtime Las Vegans may remember Hank Thornley's term on the city commission (precursor to today's city council) from 1969-73, or his unsuccessful run for Nevada governor in 1970.
But he also spent eight years, beginning in the early '60s, as an anchor and news director at both KLAS Channel 8 and KSHO, now KTNV Channel 13.
"At that time, (Channel 8) had no news department, per say," recalls Thornley, a former Sacramento, Calif. newsman, who still resides in Las Vegas. It was his job to set one up for the station.
"Some of the people I worked with were just gems," he says, "very resourceful and very ingenious. In a lot of respects, you had to be to stay afloat."
News events that Thornley and his staff covered included the marriage of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, Evel Knievel's "disastrous" motorcycle jump over the Caesars Palace Fountains and John F. Kennedy's visit here in the months prior to his assassination.
"A lot of things could happen anywhere else and not be newsworthy (but) they happen in Las Vegas and they become national news," he says. "The dateline means a lot."
Always interested in politics, Thornley, a Democrat, "handily" won the 1969 race for a spot on the city commission. Admittedly, "a lot of it had to do with this exposure I had on television. It was a great victory."
He quit television news briefly to run for the state governor's seat, which he lost to two-term governor Mike O'Callaghan, now the SUN's executive editor and chairman of the board.
Following the election, Thornley worked as a public relations assistant for billionaire Howard Hughes and later purchased three radio stations.
Thornley got back into broadcasting in the mid-'70s as new director at Channel 13, hiring several of his former Channel 8 staffers, including Del Wade, Mel Harris and former SUN journalists, reporter Alan Jarlson and city editor Chris Chrystal.
They called themselves "The Over-the-Hill Gang" and filmed a series of promotional "'Bonanza-type" ads on horseback at Floyd Lamb State Park, which boosted the station's 6 p.m. nightly newscast to No. 1 in town.
"We would have been No. 1" with the 11 p.m. newscast also, Thornley says, "but Channel 3 had the lead-in of the Carson show, which gave them edge there."
While he's impressed by the news-gathering technology available these days, 80-year-old Thornley, now in "semi-retirement" and developing property he owns off Las Vegas Boulevard South, says he's often frustrated by the type of stories that are covered locally.
"It just bothers me the time that's wasted with some of the frivolous stories," he says, "when there's so much meaningful hard news."
Chris Chrystal
* There's no such thing as a free lunch. Or, in Chris Chrystal's case, as free time for lunch.
While working as a SUN reporter in 1972-73, the sassy blonde, who covered the Clark County Courthouse and county government, also reported on stories from there during her lunch hour for Channel 13.
SUN founder Hank Greespun had given Chrystal the thumb's-up to pull double duty. "He said, 'Hey, it's OK with me as long as you don't steal any SUN stories and give our exclusives to TV,' which I would never do," she says.
But in '74, Chrystal made the switch from print to television when she took a job at Channel 13, becoming the first full-time female reporter at any Las Vegas network affiliate.
"People weren't accustomed to having a woman interview them," she recalls, "and the men who worked at the station weren't accustomed to having a woman work with them.
"When I would interview people, men mostly, I would ask the questions and often they would answer to the photographer rather than to me. I found that men .... didn't respect you as a reporter as much as they respected" her male counterparts.
Also back in those days, reporters often toted and rolled the cameras on their own stories.
Not long after Chrystal arrived, "Somebody said, 'Hey, just because you're a woman doesn't mean we're gonna carry your gear,' " she recalls. "I said, 'Don't worry about that.' "
But it was tougher than it looked. "You had to hold the camera in one hand because you had to use your other hand (to hold) the light." A battery pack was strapped around her waist.
"It was quite heavy. When I first tried it, I couldn't hold (the camera) steady because my arm wasn't strong enough," she says. Eventually she got the hang of it, with the help of a sympathetic male co-worker who took her under his wing.
The following year, Chrystal jumped Channel 13's ship for Channel 3. She covered a massive flood that turned the Strip upside-down. "Cars were just tossed around like little matchsticks. It was unbelievable," she says.
In 1976, she made the move to Channel 8. A year later, she traded TV back in for print and was hired as the SUN's city editor.
After leaving Las Vegas in '79, Chyrstal worked for a newspaper in Southern California and later had an office on Capitol Hill while covering the Western United States for United Press International.
It was during that time that she met California Gov. Pete Wilson and went to work for his administration in 1993, in the State Resources Agency, which oversees California's natural resource divisions.
Chrystal, 55, recently returned to the Silver State to serve as media relations manager for the Nevada Commission on Tourism in Carson City.
"I love Nevada," she said earlier this year. "My heart is there."
Elaine Tack
In 1980, when Elaine Tack was offered the job of health reporter and co-anchor on Channel 3, she jumped at it.
After spending only six months as a Los Angeles-based writer for then news newcomer CNN, she was ready for a change.
"My parents thought I was insane to move to Las Vegas, but I loved it," she says. "The town was small. It was so much fun. There were great stories."
By chance, Tack was called to cover one of the biggest -- or at least most notorious -- stories of the era: The car bomb that nearly rubbed out mobster Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal.
She had already turned in for the night at her abode at the Las Vegas Country Club when a call about the bombing on East Sahara Avenue came from the newsroom. Tack was the reporter closest to the scene.
"I slicked back my hair, threw on a blouse and a pair of jeans and I ran over there," she recalls. "I went up to the FBI guy and said, 'Hi. I'm Elaine Tack from Channel 3. I need to know what's going on.' He looked at me and said, 'Sure don't look like her.' "
She managed to convince him of her identity and got the story. "I used to have a sign-off that was unique -- 'E-laaaine Tack'. I did that for him and he knew it was me," she says.
Tack left Las Vegas in 1984 and went on to reporting gigs in Cleveland in Chicago.
Along the way, she crossed paths with Dave Hanlon, former chief financial officer at Caesars Palace, whom she had met here on a blind date during her on-air years. The two married seven years ago. (Hanlon is now president of the Rio hotel-casino.)
These days, 40-year-old Tack-Hanlon travels and entertains her husband's clients. "You change one career in for another," she says.
Terry Care
* Terry Care has the distinction of being the first reporter to do a live remote interview in Las Vegas.
At least, he's pretty sure he was.
Not long after he arrived at Channel 13 in 1979, the station purchased the city's first "live truck" and Care interviewed former Mayor Bill Briare on the eve of a large convention opening.
But the night before, Care recalls how Channel 8 used telephone lines out of the Las Vegas Convention Center to interview someone there. "So they claimed they were the first and (Channel) 13 claimed to be first," he says.
Something the competitors certainly had back then over Channel 13 were ratings. Care recalls how the station was "at the bottom of every Arbitron and Neilsons ratings book" while he worked there from '79-'80.
The only exception was the 11 p.m. broadcast on Wednesday nights.
"We always had terrific numbers because that's when the TV series 'Vega$' (ended)," he says. "People didn't have remote controls too much back then and they were too lazy to get out of bed and change the channel after they had watched their friends on 'Vega$.' "
In 1981, Care moved to Channel 3 where he worked until '82, when he returned to Channel 13 as assignment editor, eventually becoming news director. But in '86, then 39-year-old Care went back to school to become an attorney.
"I realized that there may be a lot of 60- and 70-year old attorneys running around, but you don't see any 60- and 70-year-old news directors or anchors running around," he says.
He's been in private practice in Las Vegas since '92.
archive
