Father of prominent LV attorney Gentile dies at 86

Wednesday, April 26, 2000 | 9:27 a.m.

During much of the 1990s, Charles Gentile was a popular man about town, hanging out at Las Vegas eateries where he told fascinating stories and sitting in courtrooms, proudly watching his son, noted attorney Dominic Gentile, ply his trade.

In his favorite haunts, such as his son's former restaurant, Dominic's Fish Market in the Commercial Center, or at Herb Tobman's Mr. T's on Industrial Road, Charles would entertain other customers with tales of his beloved Chicago.

He talked of working at age 10 in a speakeasy during the Depression, and he spoke in glowing terms of the late Mayor Richard Daley and the political machine for which Charles made no apologies for being a part of as a longtime precinct captain.

"My father truly was a raconteur," Dominic Gentile said. "He loved to share stories of his life as a saloon keeper. I didn't see much of him growing up because he worked nights. But these last 11 years I have just enjoyed being around him."

Charles Pasquale Gentile, who also worked for two decades for the city of Chicago's streets and sanitation department and for the city's water department, died Saturday at his son's Las Vegas home of complications from emphysema. He was 86.

Services and burial will be Thursday in Chicago. A memorial service will be 3 p.m. Monday at Guardian Angel Cathedral in Las Vegas. Hites Funeral Home is handling the local arrangements.

Dominic says if it had not been for his father's inspiration, he would not have become a lawyer. "When I graduated from DePaul, I wanted to open an apparel store, but my father told me: 'Get an education. Be a lawyer and do good things.' " Dominic returned to DePaul where he earned his law degree.

Born July 20, 1913, in the Italian section of Chicago's Southside, Charles Gentile was the third oldest of seven children of Italian-born Dominick Gentile and the former Rosa Pietrantino of Philadelphia.

Dominick, who immigrated to America in 1898, made a good living as transportation director for the National Baking Co. He moved his family away from the old gangster-controlled neighborhood to a more peaceful, rural area in northwest Chicago. But Charles Gentile's heart was in urban Chicago. At age 8, he often sneaked back to the old neighborhood to work as a shoeshine boy. At age 10 he worked days as a presser in a tailor shop and he worked nights in the speakeasy.

Charles quit school in the eighth grade and, as a teenager, got a job as an ambulance driver. As a young adult, he developed a strong interest in the alcohol industry.

Over the next 30 years, Charles worked as a bartender and manager for Chicago taverns.

"My father instilled in me a strong work ethic," Dominic said. "Although my mother and father paid for my college education, I worked throughout college because Dad felt that with school and a job I would have no time to get into trouble."

When his bar closed in the late 1950s, Charles was given a city job by the Daley political machine. Dominic said his father never hid the fact that he got his foot in the door through a political connection because he worked hard over the next 20 years to earn his position. He retired as a water department inspector in the late 1970s.

A frequent visitor to Las Vegas since 1979, Charles Gentile moved here in 1989 shortly after his wife of 44 years, the former Florence Greco, died.

When Dominic had interesting cases, Charles would watch the trials gavel to gavel.

"He often gave me advice on my cases whether I requested it or not," Dominic said. "But I was always happy to look up and see him sitting in the back of the courtroom."

Charles was a member of the Italian American Club, a supporter of the Augustus Society -- an organization of Italian-American professionals of which Dominic is a member -- and a longtime supporter of Chicago's Villa Scalabrini retirement home.

In addition to his son, Charles is survived by a brother, Donald Gentile of Chicago; two sisters, Agnes Maione of Oak Park, Ill., and Eleanora Picchietti of Chicago; and three grandsons, Adam Gentile of San Diego, Gabriel Gentile of Chicago and Peter Gentile of Las Vegas.

Ed Koch is a reporter for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4090 or by e-mail at koch@lasvegassun.com