Services set for Greenspun

Tuesday, June 13, 2000 | 10:44 a.m.

Services for David G. Greenspun, longtime Las Vegas Sun vice president and former co-owner of KLAS Channel 8, will be 1 p.m. Wednesday at Palm Mortuary-Eastern.

Greenspun, the brother of late Las Vegas Sun Editor/Publisher Hank Greenspun, died Sunday at MountainView Hospital from complications of blood cancer. He was 86.

Burial of the Las Vegas resident of 47 years will be in Palm Valley View Cemetery.

"My uncle always encouraged me to pursue science, technology and math -- the things I was interested in -- while others wanted me to write," said Danny Greenspun, vice president of the Sun and Greenspun Inc., where he is in charge of technologies.

Danny Greenspun said every day the school bus would drop him off at Channel 8 studios, where David Greenspun would let him operate the camera for the afternoon Cinderella children's show.

"There I was, 9 years old, eating ice cream and running the camera."

David Greenspun was a 1998 inductee into the Channel 8 Hall of Fame, in which his brother and late billionaire Howard Hughes, who bought the TV station from the Greenspuns, also are enshrined.

Greenspun, who had survived 10 years with cancer, fell ill and was hospitalized on May 27, the day he and wife, Belle, celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary.

Born Oct. 26, 1913, in Brooklyn, N.Y., David Gordon Greenspun graduated from Columbia University's School of Pharmacy in the late 1930s. After World War II, he got a job as an engineer at WNEW radio in New York, where he cut wax discs for Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and other top artists of the 1940s.

In 1953 Greenspun moved his family to Las Vegas, where he and his brother Hank opened KLAS. He was the talking "Camera Dave" on the long-running movie show that was hosted by the late Gus Giuffre.

On Nov. 15, 1958, David Greenspun joined the Sun as vice president, a post he held until his death.

In addition to his wife, Belle, Greenspun is survived by two daughters, Lynn Silva of Las Vegas and Karen Greenspun-Mainwaring of Boulder Colo.; a son, Dr. Richard Greenspun of Santa Monica, Calif.; a sister, Alice Goldberg of Las Vegas; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Ed Koch

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