Pioneer Strip publicist, journalist Fisher dies

Thursday, Oct. 10, 2002 | 8:24 a.m.

In the early years of the Las Vegas Sun, when the paper was being established as a crusading voice, Publisher Hank Greenspun assigned reporter Lee Fisher to investigate why people were having their homesites challenged by others who were holding mining claims.

Fisher, who penned the paper's "Talk of the Town" column, embarked on an investigation and wrote a series of stories that led to court action and an eventual landmark Supreme Court decision that protected the rights of thousands of Las Vegas homesteaders.

"It was one of those early stories that helped put the Las Vegas Sun on the map," said Ruthe Deskin, longtime assistant to the publisher. "Lee was a man of integrity and great intelligence."

Leon "Lee" Fisher, who went on to manage Strip hotel public relations offices from the 1950s through the '70s and became known as the dean of Las Vegas publicists, died Friday at Valley Hospital Medical Center.

He was 86, according to a notice from Desert Memorial Cremation and Burial Society, which is handling arrangements. The mortuary listed his birthdate as March 4, 1916.

However, in an unpublished memoir Fisher wrote that his birthdate was March 4, 1923, which would have made him 78.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 51 years will be 10 a.m. Monday at Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.

Fisher came to the Sun in 1951, the year after Greenspun bought the newspaper. Having a keen interest in mining, homesteading and other sagebrush issues, Fisher helped the Sun break public lands stories through the mid-1990s.

Fisher's original public land series focused on 9,000 Clark County residents who had filed for homesites in and around Las Vegas only to have their ownership challenged by people who produced sand and gravel mining claims.

Las Vegas attorney Mort Galane took the case that became known as Homesiters vs. Crocus. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the homesiters' contention that the miners were trying to use the 1892 mining laws to take over land the interior secretary had deemed best suited for home development. The mining claims were voided.

The ruling permanently changed the residential landscape of Las Vegas.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Fisher sold newspapers on street corners at age 6 and was hired as a copy boy by the Associated Press while he was a freshman at Columbus South High School. He was a reporter for the school newspaper, winning a state award, and a shortstop on the baseball team.

The day after he graduated, Fisher was hired by RKO studios as a press agent.

During World War II he served in the Army in Europe as a combat scout and military war correspondent. After the war he helped gather evidence for the war crimes trials in Germany. He was discharged Aug. 9, 1945, at the rank of sergeant.

After the war Fisher returned to Ohio, where he started the Columbus Bowling News and Sports Review tabloid. He went to Tampa, Fla., in 1949 to host a daily talk show on WTSP radio and become public relations director for the Sunshine Park Thoroughbred Racing Association.

After a brief stint in California managing a chain of movie theaters, Fisher came to Las Vegas in 1951.

In 1957 Fisher went to work for the Dunes hotel as public relations director and left there in 1970 to manage the singing career of the Dunes' "Casino de Paris" star Rouvaun, who became an RCA recording artist.

In 1962 Fisher married a London-born dancer, Elna Fisher, who survives him.

He did publicity for the Aladdin from 1972 to 1977, where he ran the publicity for the 1976 opening of the Theatre for the Performing Arts and Neil Diamond's first-ever Las Vegas appearance. He left to become general manager of Southwest Advertising, then the town's biggest ad agency.

Fisher was a member of the American Legion, Jewish War Veterans and former chief jester of the Las Vegas Saints and Sinners organization.

In addition to his wife, Fisher is survived by a daughter, Lisa Davis, of Las Vegas; two brothers, Eddie Fisher and Elmer Fisher, both of Columbus; three sisters, Ruth Schwartz of Columbus, Marsha Goldsmith of Cincinnati and Shirley Berman of San Rafael, Calif.; and four grandchildren.