Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: As time slips by …

Friday, Dec. 8, 2000 | 9:46 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

Las Vegas was once a very small community.

In the early days -- the time before the Mirage was built, MGM Grand changed the skyline, Caesars Palace opened way out on the Strip, the Sands played host to the Rat Pack, the Desert Inn made Las Vegas famous and, yes, even before the place that Bugsy Siegel built, the Flamingo Hotel, opened and closed its doors -- our town was struggling just to stay alive. It was a newish town built by the dam, nurtured through the war effort and then left to its own devices to find its way while the rest of the country was getting back to normal. It was 1945 and life as we know it hadn't even started.

That's when Evelyn Goot moved to Las Vegas. She followed her husband, Max, who had come out the year before and quickly took a liking to the small-town atmosphere that welcomed people with big ideas and the know-how to make them happen. In those days people survived and prospered on their wits and their willingness to take the big chances, an environment that meshed with the Goots' risk-taking attitudes. But beyond the dreamers, Las Vegas also needed the doers, the people who could build a community from practically nothing using only their modest means, fertile imaginations and a determination that we know was the hallmark of that generation of Americans.

It was not long after Max and Evelyn moved to Las Vegas that my parents came to town. The couples became friends. It was a friendship that lasted through Max's death over 20 years ago and my father's passing a decade ago. In fact, until Evelyn died last Monday it was a friendship the length and nature of which is the kind that is envied the world over. My mother lost a very close and dear friend this week. But so did many others in this buzzing metropolis. Most of them were there to say goodbye Thursday. Most of them I have known my entire life.

Life, as in most small towns across America, was far simpler back in the days following the war when couples started a whole new baby booming generation and set their sights on building a life free from war, famine and joblessness. It was centered on the values that promoted family above all else and hard work as a virtue to be exalted. The succeeding 50 years have changed far more than the landscape as many Americans yearn for just a little bit of those good old days.

If you moved to Southern Nevada prior to the last 10 years you are considered a native because most of the 1.3 million people who now call this home are recent arrivals. Think about how I felt at Evelyn's funeral when I looked around Woodlawn Cemetery at faces I remember from my childhood, many of whom I haven't seen in years. Where did they come from? Where have they been? What have I missed by not seeing these people more?

I suppose these are the kind of questions to be asked during a funeral because that is the time we think about the finality of death, at least to life as we know it. Saying goodbye to Evelyn was not as difficult for me as it was for my mother and friends like Myron Friedman, Irwin Molasky, Herb Kaufman and Toby Cohen. These are people who grew up with the Goots and each other at a time when all they had was one another to lean on. Now they are leaving one at a time. And with them goes a living history of Las Vegas that, for the most part, will not be found in the history books because the fabric of community they stitched was not the one made famous enough for the universities to pay attention to or the authors to seek out for novels.

Herb Tobman was there Thursday. He talked to me about the time when he and Max were competitors in the furniture business. The first thought that came to my mind was how many furniture stores could there have been in the early 1950s? Nevertheless, the competitors were friends who never shirked the responsibility to build a community together. Whether it was a synagogue, a church, a library or even a soup kitchen to feed the poor, the people surrounding that grave site came together without regard for resources or station in life. They were all in this grand experiment together and that was the only way they would succeed -- together.

What struck me throughout the service -- and afterward when everyone joined together with the family to celebrate a wonderful and giving life by eating and enjoying each other's company -- was this feeling of time having slipped by, practically without notice. I saw a neighbor who, as a child, wouldn't let me play with his fabulous train. That's what I remembered and I told it to this man who is now pushing 60 -- from which side I am not sure. What happened to all the time in between?

I saw another man whose family owned the nearby variety store -- that's what we called today's Wal-Mart when it was 80,000 square feet smaller and didn't have anything much to choose from -- and all I could remember about him was his parents who tended to their store and their customers like it was all they had in the world. It was. This man, their son, is now retired after a lifetime of work. Where has all the time gone?

And dear, dear Toni Clark came with her loving friend, Larry Finuf, to say farewell to a lady who was their friend for half a century. Toni has always been the class of the Strip and Las Vegas' leading lady -- a fact not as well known today as it was in the days when her late husband, Wilbur Clark, almost single-handedly put Las Vegas on the map but every bit as true as it was when she rode high over this city of lights. I remember playing as a child at Toni and Wilbur's house on the newly built Desert Inn Golf Course. Now it is getting ready to be torn down, following the path of the once beautiful homes that graced the DI. Where has all the time gone?

And finally, there was my mother, surrounded by her own kids and now, Stephen and Joel Goot, just like it was in those very early days when people watched out for one another's families as if they were their own. It was sad for me to watch because I knew what it meant. My mother and those dozens of pioneers who made this all happen are not getting any younger. And while I hope Barbara lives forever -- I think that's her plan -- the others are on a more mortal track.

I am saddened that my lifelong friends, Stephen and Joel, can no longer tell their mother that they love her, at least not the way they once could. But I am heartened that in Evelyn's death she has taught us all an important lesson. It is one she lived and one that she would be proud to know that we have learned from her death.

And that is that it must not suffice to wait for the next funeral to question ourselves about where the time has gone. We each have a responsibility to stay in touch -- with our families and our friends. It is a responsibility we have to ourselves, and to ignore it is to ignore that which makes us a community. Evelyn Goot didn't ignore her community, her friends and, certainly not, her family. Goodbyes are not easy, especially to someone you love like Evelyn.

Hellos are much better. That's the lesson from Woodlawn.

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