Ashton, former Sun district manager in circulation, dies

Tuesday, March 21, 2000 | 10:09 a.m.

Longtime Las Vegas Sun newspaper distributor Bob Ashton and 19th century author Horatio Alger lived remarkably similar lives.

After touring Europe as a correspondent for Boston newspapers, Alger lived among poor New York newsboys and wrote rags-to-riches novels. Ashton was born to a modest family in England and, with little money in his pocket, came to Las Vegas, worked with local newsboys and became a Horatio Alger-type success story.

"My father always said there are two ways to make money -- sell a few big things for a lot of money or sell a lot of little things for a little money, and he chose the latter," said Las Vegas businessman Jim Tucker, who also was a longtime Sun circulation worker.

Tucker said his father was a generous man. Like Alger, who gave ragged newsboys much of the income he derived from the more than 100 books he wrote about virtue always being rewarded, Ashton often gave his top newspaper delivery boys trips to Disneyland to reward them for their hard work.

"A number of those boys today are Las Vegas businessmen and attorneys," Tucker said. "Over the years, they came to my father's house to thank him for his guidance."

Robert Ashton, who worked 21 years as a circulation district manager for the Sun, died Saturday of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 74.

Services for the local resident of 43 years, who worked for the Sun from 1959 to 1980, will be 7 p.m. today at Palm Mortuary, 1325 N. Main St.

"Bob was the best street dealer when it came to keeping returns (unsold newspapers) to a reasonable level," said former longtime Sun General Manager Burt Buy. "He did an excellent job in everything he did. I wish I had 10 more like him."

He was born Dec. 17, 1925, in Hebburn On-Tyne, England, the fifth of six children of carpenter George Ashton and the former Annie Pollock. He served in the British Army during World War II.

"Bob was only 16 and lied about his age so he could get in," said former Las Vegan Fred Ashton, Bob's older brother.

After the war, Bob and Fred became waiters, with Bob working aboard the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth ocean liners and at the Savoy restaurant in England and Fred emigrating to New York, where he got a job at the Stork Club, and later at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. Fred convinced his brother to come to Las Vegas.

Bob and his wife, Elsie, whom he had met in 1950, came to Las Vegas, where he became a waiter at the El Rancho Vegas. She was a restaurant hostess at the Silver Slipper.

"Those were such happy days and the town was so small -- we really loved it," Elsie Ashton said. "But Bob soon grew tired of being a waiter and answered an ad in the Sun looking for a district manager. He had never worked at newspapers before."

Ashton made up for his lack of experience by being an aggressive salesman.

In 1963 when the Sun building, then located on Main Street, burned, Ashton was among those who went to McCarran Airport to pick up the Sun papers that were printed in California and distributed them on time to his newsboys and street racks.

Ashton invested his earnings in real estate, buying land in northwest Las Vegas that later was developed into thriving residential and commercial ventures.

In the 1970s, Elsie and Bob Ashton became U.S. citizens.

In addition to his wife, son and brother, Ashton is survived by a daughter, Janet Foulk of Morgan Hill, Calif.; two sisters, Nancy Read of Olney, England, and Betty Tanase of Detroit; five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

The family suggests donations in Ashton's memory to the Las Vegas Sun Camp Fund, 800 S. Valley View Blvd., Las Vegas, NV 89107.