Longtime Las Vegas journalist, publicist Odessky dies

Monday, July 7, 2003 | 8:54 a.m.

Dick Odessky witnessed the first traffic light installed on the Las Vegas Strip, where Convention Center Drive intersects Las Vegas Boulevard South.

Odessky knew that the Rat Pack -- Frank Sinatra with pals Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and others -- dealing blackjack after hours to delighted fans actually was an idea thought up by comedian Joe E. Lewis.

Odessky confirmed billionaire casino owner Howard Hughes paid the medical bills of a newspaper photographer injured in a plane crash.

Wayne Newton was "the little fat kid from the Fremont" as Odessky described the singer in his book, "Fly on the Wall: Recollections of Vegas' Good Old, Bad Old Days."

Odessky witnessed the transformation of Las Vegas from the 1950s to the 1970s, when corporations built and bought Strip resorts.

Odessky, 70, died Thursday at his home in Gleneden Beach, Ore., after a battle with cancer.

His wife of 49 years, Joyce, said no funeral services are planned for her husband.

Instead, his ashes will be scattered over Las Vegas.

"He was vibrant, totally alive," Joyce Odessky said in a phone interview Sunday night.

"Everything he did in Vegas, he did for the city and the state," she said. "He loved Nevada and he loved Las Vegas. Money never mattered."

"Mostly, he was the smartest man I knew," his son Jeff, of Reno, said. "He was in the right places at the right times all of his life."

Odessky's daughter, Robin Selensky, lives in New Hampshire.

Odessky was born in Los Angeles on April 3, 1933.

When Odessky arrived in 1953 at age 19 as a general assignment reporter for the Las Vegas Sun, he discovered that he was the only full-time reporter for the newspaper.

By day Odessky covered everything from court to casino news. At night he interviewed the top Las Vegas entertainers.

"At the time, I was only 19 years old -- too young to legally be in the casinos and showrooms covering that beat," he once said.

"About that time, entertainment columnist Bill Willard left the Sun, so editors Adam Yacenda and Colin McKinley and I wrote the entertainment column under the byline Dick McAdam," Odessky said in a Sun interview published in 2000.

"After a while, they stopped contributing and I wrote the column myself."

Joyce Odessky said her husband never betrayed a confidence.

"He never violated a confidence, he never violated a source," she said.

Odessky stayed with the Sun for about a year.

Following his Sun job, Odessky worked for the Los Angeles Herald-Express, then was offered a job at the Flamingo hotel in 1960 by Morris Lansburgh. At 27 he became the youngest casino publicist in history at the Las Vegas hotel made famous by Bugsy Siegel.

While at the Flamingo, Odessky originated the International Press Christmas Party, an annual party for members of the working press throughout the world.

After a short time in California with his own public relations firm from 1967 to 1971, Odessky returned to Las Vegas to work for the Stardust. He directed public relations for the Stardust, the Aladdin and the Fremont.

After the Stardust was sold to the Argent Corp., Odessky wrote a six-day-a-week column on gaming for the North Las Vegas Valley Times.

In 1981, after new management arrived at the Stardust, Odessky returned to his role of publicist.

Within six months, Odessky and his wife, Joyce, began moving around the country, to New Hampshire, Reno, back to New England, eventually in 1994 to manage the Thundercloud Resort in Big Bear Lake, Calif.

The Odesskys kept coming back to Las Vegas until 2001 when they moved to Oregon, Joyce Odessky said.

"It's what (the late) Chester Simms, a Flamingo manager, said," Joyce Odessky recalled. "You never leave Vegas, he said, you're paroled. We're like parolees violating our parole."