Longtime Sun printer, antiquities hunter Gresser dies at 80

Tuesday, April 15, 2003 | 9:59 a.m.

For more than a quarter of a century at the Las Vegas Sun, printer Don Gresser set Linotype, cut and pasted ads and ran the presses.

But occasionally he would pick up the pen. In the early 1980s Gresser wrote the Sunday Sun column, "Lost Mines and Buried Treasure," where he would tell readers of his adventures hunting for antiquities.

"I wanted to write stories that would interest a man," he said in a company newsletter.

Donald J. Gresser died Thursday of heart failure at his Las Vegas home. He was 80.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 48 years will be 10 a.m. Wednesday at Palm Mortuary-Downtown. Burial will be in Palm Memorial Park. Visitation will be today from 2-7 p.m.

"For a man who had only a high school diploma, my father was one of the most knowledgeable men on every subject from poetry to history," said Jeff Gresser, an Excalibur executive who oversees valet parking. "He truly is one of the last of a dying breed."

Gresser retired in December 1985 after 25 years as a printer and display ad composer. He began at the newspaper as a Linotype operator.

During vacations and other breaks from his job at the Sun, Gresser, a World War II veteran of both the Merchant Marines and Marine Corps, traveled the globe.

In 1968 Gresser traveled with a friend to the Reo Bolem in Panama to search for two cannons supposedly abandoned in the early 1500s by Spaniards under the command of Christopher Columbus.

Gresser never found the cannons and instead wound up being detained briefly for not having an entrance permit.

Born June 25, 1922, in New York City, Gresser was the son of Linotype shop owner Walter Gresser and the former Elizabeth Hein. Don worked in his father's print shop as a boy. At various stages of his life, he also was a bread delivery man, a crane operator and a blackjack dealer.

After the war Gresser worked for newspapers on New York's Long Island, in Medford and Grants Pass, Ore., and Santa Ana, Calif., before coming to the Sun in 1959.

During the 1980s Gresser also worked as a deputy constable for North Las Vegas. In more recent years he was an adjutant for the Marine Corps League of Las Vegas.

During his retirement, he wrote poetry, did oil paintings and went on cruises.

In addition to his son, Gresser is survived by his wife, Mary Gresser, a grandson, Michael Gresser, a granddaughter, Stephanie Gresser-Rouw, and six great-grandchildren, all of Las Vegas.