Popular LV home goods show canceled

Friday, Sept. 22, 2000 | 11:13 a.m.

A popular home improvement trade show for consumers, usually conducted twice a year in Las Vegas and set for next week, has been canceled because the lead organizer has vanished.

The NYF Inc. Home Show, which has been conducted for 22 years at either the Las Vegas Convention Center or Cashman Center, normally draws between 15,000 and 30,000 people during its three-day run and about 400 exhibitors display everything from carpeting to roof tiles.

A spokesman said the event scheduled Sept. 29 through Oct. 1 at Cashman Center was canceled Wednesday because the show's top executive, Tom Yarborough, has disappeared. He was last seen about two weeks ago.

Yarborough's family and friends say they don't know where he is and a missing-persons report has been filed with Metro. The detective handling the case could not be reached for comment.

"It's a complete mystery," said Rich Newman, whose newman verrill advertising in Las Vegas has handled the home show's ads and publicity for 20 years.

"A lot of folks have been waiting for authorization from Tom to take care of things and he hasn't been around or returned calls," Newman said.

In addition to the two home shows conducted each year, Yarborough has conducted an annual crafts exhibition for consumers. Newman said he has conducted 49 shows in Las Vegas.

Newman said because Yarborough alone authorized expenditures for the show, no advertising had been approved. Officials with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority had been trying to contact Yarborough to finalize arrangements for use of the convention hall.

Late Wednesday, Yarborough's attorney recommended that the show be canceled.

That angered several exhibitors that have been gearing up for the home show, but Newman said he's a mystified as everybody else about Yarborough's unexplained disappearance.

"His family is concerned because they don't know where he is either," Newman said of Yarborough's brother Glenn Yarborough, who sold the show to Tom three years ago.