Lawyer Schreck loses wife, father within a few hours

Monday, Feb. 15, 1999 | 11:53 a.m.

Upon losing his wife and father in a matter of a few hours, longtime Las Vegas gaming attorney Frank Schreck said they went to the great beyond together.

"Bonnie never wanted to be alone," the former Nevada Gaming Commission chairman said of his wife, Bonnie Hayes Schreck, who died late Thursday of cancer at Nathan Adelson Hospice. "So she came down, scooped him up and took him with her."

Services for Bonnie are today at 3 p.m. at Palm Mortuary-Eastern. Family and other friends will return to that site at 3 p.m. Tuesday to attend services for Frank Schreck Sr., a longtime Henderson businessman, who died of heart failure Friday at a local hospital. She was 51. He was 83.

Schreck Sr. worked in the business department at Stauffer Chemical Co., for 30 years and worked for the Nevada Economic Development Division in the 1970s.

He co-founded the 50-year-old St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Henderson, a town he called home for 58 years. He was born May 17, 1915, in Land O' Lakes, Wis.

Bonnie Schreck was a longtime local socialite and community activist whose causes included the Meadows School and Nathan Adelson Hospice.

Born Oct. 29, 1947, in Boston, she came to Las Vegas 47 years ago and was a graduate of Western High School. Bonnie was entertainment director at the Desert Inn in the late 1960s.

In addition to her husband, Bonnie is survived by her father, George Balcom of Nashua, N.H., her mother, Jean Hayes of California, her stepfather, Gordon Hayes of Orcas Island, Wash., a 14-year-old son, Derek Matthew Schreck; a 12-year-old daughter, Sydney Schreck; and two sisters, Stacey Henderson of Bolinas, Calif., and Kathryn England of Sandy, Utah.

Donations:To the Bonnie Schreck Endowment for the Meadows School Center for the Arts or to Nathan Adelson Hospice, 4141 Swenson St., Las Vegas NV 89109.