Kelsey, longtime owner of LV steel business, dies at 94

Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003 | 9:07 a.m.

Bill Kelsey was a stickler for working with only the finest steel available.

Whether it was as a 35-year-old businessman supplying the Strip's earliest builders or as an 85-year-old retiree in his workshop building a Model T Ford, he refused to compromise on the materials.

"Bill was absolutely methodical in his work," said longtime friend Donna Andress of Searchlight. "He was a perfectionist who became frustrated near the end of his career when good steel was hard to find in Nevada. He wouldn't even bid on projects unless he knew he could get top quality steel."

William Henry Kelsey, longtime owner of Las Vegas Machine and Engineering, which during a half-century in Southern Nevada fabricated the steel to build numerous structures including the Las Vegas Convention Center, schools and Nevada Test Site projects, died Wednesday at Nathan Adelson Hospice. He was 94.

Private services for the Southern Nevada resident of 72 years were Monday. Burial was in Palm Mortuary Memorial Park.

"While they were building the school named after my mother (C.H. Decker at 3850 Redwood St.) Bill took us there to show us the framework," Andress said. "It meant a great deal to him to show his work and it meant a great deal to us to see the work in progress."

Las Vegas Machine and Engineering, which was located for many years at 707 S. Fifth Street -- now Las Vegas Boulevard -- and later at 2700 S. Highland Drive, once was the town's largest manufacturer of fabricated steel.

Among the products the firm produced were the long trusses used in the construction of the original Convention Center and steel beams for some of the county's earliest malls.

Born Nov. 6, 1908, in Pasadena, Calif., Kelsey came to Nevada in 1931 to work as a steel fabricator on Hoover Dam. He later worked as a miner at the Duncan Mine near Nelson. In the mid-1930s he opened the Kelsey Mining and Milling Co. in Searchlight.

While in Searchlight, he met Dorothy Helen Douglas, a miner's daughter, whom he married on her birthday, May 28, 1938. She is his only survivor.

In the late 1930s, the couple ran a fishing operation in Avila, Calif. They returned to Las Vegas in the early 1940s and, with partner Robert Tucker, bought the Lundy Machine Co., which they renamed Las Vegas Machine and Engineering.

As a business leader, Bill Kelsey was the 1965 recipient of the Federated Employers Private Enterprise Award. But with the recession of the early 1980s, the company fell on hard times. Kelsey sold the firm that later folded.

Kelsey was an avid pilot and owner of a Cessna 180 that during retirement he flew on trips that ranged from a fishing excursion in Alaska to a short hop to a Phoenix grocery store just to buy a bag of oranges.

In his 80s, Kelsey quit flying and concentrated on projects in his home workshop in Nelson. He built Model A and T Fords with wooden wheel spokes that he manufactured on a huge lathe he had purchased from the Techatticup Mine near Nelson, Andress said.

Also in his 80s, Kelsey repaired a backhoe, rebuilding the engine, hydraulic cylinder and the transmission from parts he milled in his workshop, Andress said.

Kelsey was a longtime member of the Civil Air Patrol and the Boy Scouts of America, for which he was a scoutmaster and a member of the executive board. Kelsey also was past president of Eagles Lodge 1213 and was a member of the Elks, Lions and Masons.

He was president of the Builders Exchange in the mid-1950s and was an advisor on the Nevada Vocational Technical Advisory Council.

Kelsey was long active in local softball leagues, on bowling teams and was a member of the Whirlaways Square Dance Club. He also was an avid hunter and fisherman.