Longtime owner of brick company Aiken dies at 97

Wednesday, Oct. 28, 1998 | 11:56 a.m.

As a young man, Denzel Nelson Aiken tried his hand at chiropractic therapy and sales, but he had construction in his blood.

Aiken was a direct descendant of James T.S. Allred, one of 30 men Mormon leader Brigham Young sent to Las Vegas Springs in 1855 to build the Mormon Fort, which still stands at what is now Las Vegas Boulevard near Washington Avenue.

In 1942, Aiken founded Aiken Block, a company that produced cinder block that was used to build Las Vegas homes and hotel-casinos, including the Stardust and Frontier.

Aiken, a dedicated administrator in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who credited his longevity to the clean-living tenets stressed by his religion, died Friday at the Shadow Mountain care center. He was 97.

Aiken became ill two weeks ago and died of heart failure, his family said.

Services were this morning at the Hollywood and Stewart LDS Chapel for Aiken, who lived in Las Vegas for 57 years. Burial will be in Spring City, Utah. Bunkers Mortuary handled the arrangements.

"My father was a hard worker who at one time farmed and sheared sheep," said his daughter, Denza Wright of Las Vegas. "He ate right, never smoked, never drank alcohol, coffee or tea and he never gambled."

Aiken lived in a house off Bonanza Road near the LDS temple, where he went regularly to work on church projects well into his 90s. He twice served in the Bishopric and was a one-time church high counselor.

Born April 9, 1901, in Spring City, Aiken was the fourth of eight children of Lorenzo Aiken, a farmer, and Mary Jane (nee Nielsen) Aiken.

After graduating from North Sampete High School in Mount Pleasant, Utah, Aiken went to Palmer Chiropractic College in Davenport, Iowa, where he graduated in the early 1920s. He then opened chiropractic offices in small communities in Iowa and Nebraska.

During the Depression, Aiken returned to Utah where he worked for awhile as a salesman, which his daughter said did not work out. He then worked as a logger, sheep shearer and farmer before deciding on a career in construction.

In 1938, Aiken's first wife, Sophie, died. Two yeas later, he married his second wife, Loa. In 1941, he bought a truck and headed for Las Vegas, after friends told him there was a good deal of construction work in that boomtown.

"When he came here, there was no Strip -- just the old El Rancho Vegas Hotel," said Wright, who was a Las Vegas High School English teacher in the early 1950s. "He saw all of the growth over the years and helped play an important part in it."

Aiken bought some land at Cheyenne Avenue and Walnut Road, where he built the first Aiken Block plant. Eventually, he built a second plant -- an automated facility -- outside of Henderson.

"On the first day of operation at the new plant they produced 11,500 blocks and dad was elated," Wright said, noting that the old plant at best produced just a few thousand blocks a day.

In 1977, Aiken sold his company to WMK Transit Mix, which later was bought by CSR. Today it is one of the area's largest concrete firms.

In 1978, Denzel and Loa went on an 18-month Mormon mission to Dallas.

"Dad had just bought a new car and was packing it for the mission when he stopped and said the car was just too small," Wright said. "So, instead of packing less, he went out and bought a bigger car and filled that one up."

Aiken spent a good deal of his 20 years of retirement working for the LDS church, which included stints as a Boy Scout master and sponsor, for which he received several awards.

In January 1985, Loa died. In August of that year, Aiken married widow and longtime family friend Jane Bybee-Aiken, of Las Vegas, who survives him.

Aiken also is survived by a sister, Velda Peterson of St. George, Utah; six step-grandchildren; 11 grandchildren and 42 great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by a daughter, Verna Nielsen.