Columnist Ruthe Deskin: Aged column rekindles sad memories

Ruthe Deskin

Thursday, March 8, 2001 | 8:16 a.m.

Ruthe Deskin is assistant to the publisher. Reach her at deskin@ lasvegassun.com.

In late November of 1963, few people would have given the Las Vegas Sun another lease on life after a devastating fire gutted the building. This week an even brighter Sun moved to spacious new quarters in Green Valley.

The old address at 800 S. Valley View Blvd. will be pre-preempted by the new 2275 Corporate Circle Drive, Suite 300, Henderson NV 89014 address.

In preparing for the move, many of us rifled through old files that revived memories long forgotten.

I found a column written by Paul Price after the fire. Longtime Sun readers will remember Price as a hard-hitting investigative reporter and columnist, who, along with writers like Ned Day, set the example for today's Jeff German and Jon Ralston, among others.

It seems appropriate at this time to let our new readers know how far the Sun has come since those desperate days following the fire. With keen insight, Price explains what a newspaper means to those who choose a journalistic career. His thoughts are identical to those of Sun publisher Barbara Greenspun, who believes the strength of the newspaper is not in a building, but in the hearts of the entire staff.

No one could have told this story better than Paul Price:

A newspaper dies and you cry a little.

It's nothing to be ashamed of. A newspaper is more than sweat and ink, deadlines and headlines, page one news and columnists.

A newspaper is sitting around when the presses are singing and shooting the breeze with guys like Noel Greenwood, Dave Bradley and Joe McLain and wonderful news gals such as Gloria Riel, Jerry Appleby and Ruthe Deskin.

It's walking into a city room and having somebody like Alan Laythorpe holler, "Price, you were dead wrong today about Sonny Liston." So you fake a punch.

And mostly it's getting yourself in a peck of trouble with district attorneys or judges or hoodlums or doctors and having Hank Greenspun say, "OK, I'll go along with you." And you know he will.

And that's why I cried a little when I thought the Sun had died.

Bill Wilson called me shortly after 5 a.m. and said, "Paul, get over here. The Sun is on fire."

After all these years you get like a fireman. "I'll be right over," I said and jumped out of bed. I told Dorothy the paper was on fire and I have to get over there. As I jumped into my clothes I thought about the years and the stories, the friends and the opponents, the dog stories, the cops I had criticized and the few people I had tried to help.

And mostly I thought about a newspaper being burned to death. Maybe you won't understand, unless you are a reporter, but that's when I first felt the tears.

It was chill and dark on Main Street, but as I turned off Charleston I could see the smoke that marked the pyre. There was no doubt that the Sun, which is a a living, breathing home to all of us who love her was in mortal combat. She was in agony and all of us were to die a little with her.

And when you get there, what do you do? Mostly nothing but look at the building that has been so much a part of you and hope the nightmare will bring the sunrise. But it won't, and you know it.

Bill Wilson was there, and some familiar faces with no names. And I wondered how I could work with these men so many years and know so little about them. Not even their names.

So I called Ruthe Deskin, but her line was busy, then I phoned our managing editor, Bryn Armstrong, and said, "You better get over here. The paper's on fire."

I think we were brave. We're a hard lot and we've seen the mangled bodies, the smothered babies, the victims of vice crimes and a lot of terrible wars of one kind or another. And we're mostly cynics because we have learned from crooked politicians, bully boys, cops, harlots, liars and hoodlums.

But we weren't brave yesterday morning. Oh, maybe we were brave, but not hard and made of steel.

I think we all cried in our own manner. Some with tears, some with prayers and a few of us with violent oaths.

And finally it was over. Ken Jones stood there, and Gary Jarlson, Bob Shafto, Ruthe, Bryn, Noel and the nameless, and we watched what could have been the incineration of our hopes and dreams and futures.

Bob Brown, the editor of the R-J, and I climbed on the firemen's ladders to a high vantage point and looked down into the ruins of what once was the proud, the valiant and the fighting Sun.

And I think he cried a little, too, because rivalries are dead when a newspaper is in dire trouble.

I didn't know then that Hank was to call from Europe and say, "We'll fight back, and give them a Sun every day."

I turned my back on the ruins and there was a rainbow in the east where the Sun should have been.

"Look at the rainbow," I said to Bob.

And we went our separate ways.

And I cried once more.