Editorial: Wright strengthened our grasp of history

Wednesday, April 30, 2003 | 8:49 a.m.

Anyone who still thinks a mobster named Bugsy Siegel was the founder of Las Vegas could not have spent much time around Frank Wright. A specialist in the city's pre-1950 history, Wright worked hard to give credit to the true founders of this city, whose industrious and sophisticated lives were in stark contrast to Siegel's. Wright, who first moved to Las Vegas in 1968 to teach at Southern Nevada University, now the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, spent 21 years as curator of manuscripts for the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society, which he helped establish. He died Friday of cancer at his Las Vegas home.

Journalists, students working on homework papers, authors, movie script writers -- anyone who needed information about Las Vegas' past -- turned to Wright. "For anybody coming to town to do a documentary, a book or news story about Las Vegas, Frank was -- or should have been -- the first person they called," said Michael Green, professor of history at the Community College of Southern Nevada.

We remember Wright in the same way that everyone who knew him does -- as a first-rate local historian who loved to share his knowledge and help people learn more about our past. Now Wright himself is part of our history, a part we will always treasure.

archive