Pioneering Nevada attorney Miller-Gang dies at 83

Monday, Jan. 22, 2001 | 9:24 a.m.

Virginia Miller-Gang was a strong-willed woman who believed that even some of history's most notorious figures deserved a fair trial.

As a judge at Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II, she was critical of the way the trial was orchestrated in a time when much of the free world was thirsting for revenge on what little remained of the Third Reich.

"She did not talk much about Nuremberg because she was not happy with the way the Allies conducted the proceedings," said Bill Gang, statewide program coordinator for the Nevada Administrative Office of the Courts, and her stepson. "She would say it was nothing like it was portrayed in the movies, and tears would well up in her eyes."

Nevertheless, Miller-Gang did her job as part of the historical tribunal that put to death many of the Nazi ringleaders. Then, before settling in Nevada in 1949, she traveled throughout Europe with 50 gallons of gasoline stored in the trunk of a Polish-made car and saw for herself the war's devastation.

Virginia Miller-Gang, who as the first woman to run for District Court judge in Nevada campaigned for the creation of what eventually became the county's juvenile court system, died Wednesday at her Las Vegas home following a six-month battle with cancer, her family said. She was 83.

Services will be private.

"One thing about Aunt Virginia was that you always knew where you stood with her, whether it was in her personal or her professional life," said longtime Nevada Republican Party activist Marilyn Gubler, who today operates a dude ranch in Sandy Valley.

"She went to law school at a time when she was the only woman in her class -- not to prove anything, she just did it because she was capable. She was courageous."

Deputy Public Defender Michael Miller, a nephew, called Miller-Gang "an exception to the times. She was doing some unheard of things -- and I'm sure some unacceptable things -- (in the eyes of) the male population."

In 1958 Miller-Gang made history by running for the District Court on a platform that Las Vegas needed judges to specifically handle juvenile cases. She lost by less than 200 votes to George Marshall.

It would be another 24 years before current Nevada Supreme Court Justice Miriam Shearing would become the first woman elected to a Nevada District Court judgeship.

Miller-Gang's concept for a juvenile court system years later became a reality.

Born March 28, 1917, in Kansas City, Mo., Miller-Gang graduated from what today is Missouri State College in 1939. She got her law degree two years later from the Washburn School of Law.

Her first job was as a librarian at the Wichita Law Library, followed by a stint as a deputy district attorney in Sedwick County, Kan., according to the 1999 publication "Nevada's First 100 Women Attorneys."

Miller-Gang then moved to Washington, D.C., to serve as a review attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and, from there, was selected as a prosecutor for the Internal Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.

After touring Europe, she moved to Carson City, where she worked as an amendment clerk for the Nevada Legislature while waiting to pass the bar in 1950. Only 27 women before her had passed the Nevada bar.

She moved to Las Vegas in 1951 and practiced family law until her retirement in the mid-1970s. After that, Miller-Gang's legal work was limited to looking after her personal interests and those of her family, Gang said.

"She never wrote a book about Nuremberg or her other accomplishments because she never felt a need to have her ego fed," said Gang, a former Sun reporter who long covered District Court beat. "She succeeded and had the kind of life that she chose -- not one chosen for her."

Miller-Gang's husband, Paul Gang, who owned the Long Branch and Shamrock casinos, preceded her in death in 1979.

In addition to her stepson, Miller-Gang is survived by her brother, Larry Miller, and his wife, Betty; a sister-in-law, Laura Belle Kelch; a stepdaughter, Christine Romero, a daughter-in-law, Pamela Gang; and several nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by a brother, Clyde Miller.

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