Former IRS agent, Valley Bank auditor Manning dies

Monday, Oct. 16, 2000 | 10:10 a.m.

In the late 1950s the Internal Revenue Service told its Las Vegas agent John Manning to padlock the doors of the Las Vegas Sun because the newspaper owed $44,000 in back taxes.

Manning, who had met with Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun to work out a repayment plan of the taxes owed for 1953 and '54 during the paper's infancy, stood up to his superiors and steadfastly refused to take possession of the plant.

He wrote letters to his bosses, saying, "Mr. Greenspun has proven himself to be a man of integrity on any tax matters that have come before us" and assured them that the debt would be retired.

John F. Manning, who long advocated that the IRS be more helpful to delinquent taxpayers -- a policy it has been forced to adopt in recent years -- died at home on Thursday in St. George, Utah. He was 94.

Greenspun paid the debt by July 1961, and Manning left the IRS three years later.

"My father literally fought his superiors every step of the way because he believed the little guy -- the one-paycheck family -- needed to be protected," said Mary Manning, who joined the Sun as a cub reporter in 1965 and is now its environmental reporter.

A memorial service for John Manning, a Las Vegas resident of 24 years, is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday at St. George Catholic Church. Burial will be in his birth town of Marlborough, Mass. Metcalf Mortuary of St. George is handling arrangements.

John Manning was a revenue agent who marched to his own drummer. Blinded in his left eye during his military service, he could shoot the neck off a bottle at long distance. But despite such skill with a handgun, he refused to carry one in the line of duty.

"My father felt guns would do nothing but get you killed," Mary Manning said. "I was with him once when a man in a trailer held a shotgun on him. He calmly talked to the man, who slowly put his gun down and then offered my father a drink.

"He did not throw his weight around. He treated people kindly, with respect -- and he always told the truth."

Born Jan. 4, 1906, John Manning graduated from the College of Holy Cross and Boston Law School.

He served as a Democratic representative in the Massachusetts Legislature for three terms during the 1930s with the late U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neill. He befriended a Bay State teenager who showed great political promise -- John Kennedy, the future president.

Manning later would join several others in writing letters to President Kennedy in support of pardoning Greenspun after a 1950 conviction for providing weapons to the Israeli freedom fighters during their war for independence -- a violation of the Neutrality Act. Kennedy pardoned Greenspun on Oct. 18, 1961.

Manning was a veteran of World War II, serving in the Army Air Corps from May 16, 1942, until March 4, 1944.

He married the former Mary V. Bordeleau of Marlborough on June 7, 1943. They moved to Las Vegas in 1954. After serving as an IRS agent from 1945 to 1964, Manning joined the former Valley Bank of Nevada as an auditor. He became the bank's purchasing agent until he retired in 1974 from the institution that now is Bank of America.

The Mannings moved to St. George in December 1978.

In addition to his daughter of Las Vegas and his wife of St. George, Manning is survived by a son, John Manning of St. George, and a granddaughter, Michelle Whitaker of Las Vegas.