Where I Stand — Hank Greenspun: Return of Price is right for Sun readers

Friday, May 4, 2001 | 9:25 a.m.

Note to readers: Sun founder Hank Greenspun's last Where I Stand column was written in 1989, the year he passed away. In the following weeks Classic Sun will feature columns written by Hank that still relate to today's headlines. In this column, written on Feb. 21, 1985, Hank writes of the return of longtime Sun columnist Paul Price, who died on April 26 of that year at age 83. Price's wife Dottie died last month, on the 16th anniversary of Paul's death:

Fearless, peerless, priceless Paul Price.

Paul Price is back writing again, making thousands of Sun readers, happy, sad, loving and caring -- depending on the mood Paul is in. But it isn't easy.

There used to be a popular song during World War II, that symbolizes what Paul is going through these days. It was supposed to be a romantic ballad titled, "I'll Walk Alone."

Paul is sort of limping, not exactly walking, a long road these days and his efforts take a whole lot of what many men do not possess. Few could go through it and most would have been long gone.

He really isn't walking alone because his extra special gal Dottie of many years is there beside him, but the courage and determination has to come from the person who is undergoing the ordeal.

Unless one has been there, there's no way of gauging how much grit it takes to move from a reclining chair to a typewriter when pain grips the body with every agonizing step.

Paul has been determined to write again, ever since he began one of the most formidable battles against cancer that any of us have witnessed in practically a lifetime. After years of every conceivable treatment, new and old, discovered and still in the process of experimentation, suffering almost unendurably with days that a lesser person would have packed it in because of melancholy and self-pity, Paul kept going, always trying to get back to the typewriter.

Today -- and we hope for good -- Paul appears to be winning the battle. He walked the 15 feet from his chair to the table on which rests his beloved old and trusted friend -- his typewriter.

Price isn't the kind of columnist who can pick up a phone and dictate, or use some newfangled invention. His fingers have to roam the keys as he thinks of what he wants to say.

Paul has walked down many roads since he became the conscience of the big guys and the ombudsman of the little fellow. The tougher the assignment, the quicker he answered the alarm.

I recall some years back when he got a tip concerning a fellow who was supposed to have knowledge of the bombing of a prominent and popular lawyer in town, Bill Coulthard.

The alleged lookout for the bombing was fleeing from what he considered a life-threatening situation, but kept in touch with Sun staffers to let us know where he was.

At one point, he called from Texas, wanting to give himself up, but only to Paul or myself. We both left for Texas, along with Ray Jeffers of the D.A.'S office, and checked in with the sheriff of the small town to find out where the fellow lived. The sheriff took us to the point nearest where the chap was holed up and would go no further. He warned that the man was extremely dangerous and "could cut four people in half as quickly as four people could shoot him." We were also told that the man was a suspect in the Gus Greenbaum murder, which was the vicious knifing of Greenbaum and his wife in Phoenix at a time when the suspect was a room service waiter at the hotel.

The sheriff pointed to a small house at the end of a long desolate road and said, "He's down there, be my guest, but don't look to me to go along. I wouldn't go near that wacko."

We had come to pick up the guy and we had no intention of coming back without him. I told Paul that I would go down alone and coax him out so if anything happened, he could write the story. He handled murder stories far better than me.

Paul didn't flinch. "I'll go down and get him because if anything happens to you we'd all be in trouble financially but if I don't come back, I know you'd always take care of Dottie and the family." It made sense.

I watched with heart in mouth as Paul walked the quarter of a mile down a road that seemed without end to a house to pick up an emotionally unstable, armed fugitive.

And then there was the time when the ex-FBI Las Vegas chief Joe Yablonsky tried to set Paul up on a frame with an informer who rolled over. Paul and I played along with the scheme to entrap the entrappers. It fizzled when I brought the informer to my office to face Paul and a high official and after I shook him down, the fur flew.

Paul was again walking alone, depending on me to hold his coattails, but that never bothers him when there's a good story to get -- even though he is the railroadee.

He's a walking life's history of Las Vegas in all its facets of the political, social and economic order. He fears nothing or nobody when he has his trusty typewriter to back him up.

He can do backstage with the girlies in a Parisian revue as well as fighting unscrupulous public officials, exposing shoddy business practices, needling law enforcement to action against vicious criminal elements -- the supreme muckraker.

Sitting with Paul a few weeks back at his home where he kept eyeing the typewriter and telling me he would make it to the table by the next day, I agreed but did not believe.

It took more than a few days but he's back, painfully so, with the same deep sense of critical humor, a little cynicism, a whole lot of belly as they say in the trade, but doing what he was born to do.

No one covers a ghastly murder, or execution, or the side streets and the suburbs or can chronicle the joys and tragedies of the ordinary run of people as well as Paul while giving bad tips on good sports. He is the biggest boon to the racebooks and the best friend the little fellow ever had.

Welcome back, old buddy, because we will once again be treated to newspapering at its best -- covering Las Vegas with the same old confidence and fearlessness that is merely your way of life.

For the sake of your loyal readers, we hope and know it will the best years of your life.

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