Popular Las Vegas hotel desk clerk Lewis dies at 89

Wednesday, July 11, 2001 | 10:23 a.m.

Russ Lewis lived by a simple motto for more than a half-century in the hotel business: "The customer is not always right but a good guest is never wrong."

It was a warm smile and friendly greeting that made the diminutive silver-haired chief desk clerk a fixture at both the Flamingo and Las Vegas Hilton from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s.

"My father loved the good old Las Vegas and knew how to run a hotel," said Russ Lewis Jr., bell captain at the Stardust hotel.

Russell Grant Lewis Sr., who entertained guests with stories of the Las Vegas of yesteryear and often rubbed elbows with celebrity guests, including John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Wayne Newton, died Monday of heart failure at an Omaha, Neb., nursing home. He was 89.

There will be no local services for the Las Vegas resident of 31 years. Services in Omaha are pending.

Born Nov. 19, 1911, in Stromsburg, Neb., Lewis was on his own at age 11 when he quit school and hitchhiked to Omaha. There he met Joe Rosenberg, who later became a hotel executive at the Riviera. The two sold the Omaha Bee daily newspaper on street corners to afford modest shelter and meals.

As a teenager, Lewis began his hotel career as a pageboy at the Fontenelle Hotel in downtown Omaha. He worked his way up to bell captain.

When he tried to enlist in the Army during World War II, Lewis had flat feet and ulcers and was classified 4F. During the war, he was manager of Omaha's Rome Hotel, where he comped rooms and meals to soldiers who stopped over en route by train to their posts. After the war Lewis managed the Montrose Hotel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

In 1959 Lewis and his son visited Las Vegas on the invitation of Roseberg.

"Dad immediately fell in love with the town because it was so friendly and there was a lot of action and excitement," Lewis Jr. said. "We moved here in 1963, and Jackie Gaughan, who also is from Omaha, put us up for two months at his El Cortez hotel."

Gaughan got Lewis Sr. his first job at the Flamingo, where he worked as a desk clerk for five years. When the International hotel opened, Lewis was one of its original employees. The resort where Presley performed before sellout crowds in the 1970s today is the Hilton. In 1989, at age 78, Lewis retired from the Hilton.

Lewis was married twice -- first to his son's mother, Martha, for 25 years and, for the last 36 years, to the former Irene Kasamenus. Both survive him and live in Omaha nursing homes.

In addition to his wife and son, Lewis is survived by a daughter-in-law, Donna Maria Lewis of Las Vegas; and two grandsons, Anthony Russell Lewis and Vincent John Lewis, both of Las Vegas.