Services scheduled for Boggs

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 1999 | 9:47 a.m.

Services for pioneer Las Vegan Ethel Boggs have been set for 9:30 a.m. Friday at Boulder City Cemetery.

Boggs was born in Las Vegas on Sept. 15, 1907, and according to news accounts of the early 1950s was "the oldest living child born in Las Vegas." She died Thursday at a local convalescent home at age 91 after spending her entire life in Southern Nevada.

Boggs was the youngest and last survivor of 10 children born to Southern Nevada pioneer Rose Warren, after whom a Las Vegas elementary school is named. Boggs also was the sister of Earnest May, the first Las Vegas policeman killed in the line of duty in 1933.

She was a licensed practical nurse who worked for hospitals in Henderson and Boulder City from 1949 through the late 1960s.

Born Ethel Neta Kesler, she was delivered in the back room of Ronnow Clark Transport on Main Street, a few blocks south of where the Plaza Hotel now stands, because there were no hospitals in Southern Nevada in those days.

Her birth preceded the incorporation of Las Vegas by four years.

She married longtime Hoover Dam worker William A. Boggs in 1937, her second husband. He died on Sept. 18, 1986.

Boggs is survived by four sons, Bill Boggs and Tom Boggs, both of Las Vegas, Luke Hinman, of Florence Ore., and Ernie Boggs of Veneta, Ore.; a daughter, Johnna Hinman Emmanuel of Florence, Ore.; 22 grandchildren; 11 great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren.