Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Vegas pioneer, longtime Sun executive Deskin dies at 87

It was fitting that native Nevadan Ruthe Deskin spent some of her final waking hours recalling a state landmark 40 miles west of where she grew up in Yerington, which she often called by its original name, Pizen Switch.

Deskin, who worked for nearly 50 years as assistant to the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, talked of her visions of "blue trees" at Lake Tahoe and summed up her eight-decade career in journalism in a single sentence.

"Just tell people I love the world," Deskin said last week at Sunrise Hospital, battling heavy sedation and pain to converse in short, soft-spoken breaths with family and friends.

Those words were unnecessary, for Deskin's deeds long spoke much louder of her unselfish contributions to the Las Vegas community.

Through her Sun column that ran for a half-century, Deskin championed the rights of abused and neglected children and supported programs that got addicts off drugs and seniors into quality hospice care, sparked community interest in the arts and placed abandoned animals into loving homes.

Ruthe Deskin, who won awards for her down-to-earth writing and earned recognition for her tireless community service that resulted in two Las Vegas buildings being named for her, died Saturday at her Las Vegas home surrounded by family. She was 87.

Deskin, who was sent home Friday from the hospital and was under hospice care, had suffered in recent years from a heart condition but continued writing her Back and Forth column in the Sun's Accent section through last month.

But that same ailment four years ago ended her run as an accomplished amateur bowler who had won several local and state titles en route to her September 1995 induction into the Las Vegas Women's Bowling Association Hall of Fame. In her youth, she was a lanky star basketball player for Yerington High School.

Deskin was to have celebrated her 88th birthday Friday and was to have celebrated her 50th anniversary at the Sun on June 24.

A viewing will be from noon to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Palm Mortuary, 1325 N. Main St. The funeral will be at the same location at 11 a.m. Thursday.

Since 1954 she served as assistant to the Sun publisher, first to Hank Greenspun and, after his death in 1989, to his wife, Barbara Greenspun.

"Ruthe Deskin represented not only the conscience of the Las Vegas Sun but, for 50 years, the conscience of Las Vegas," said Sun Editor and President Brian Greenspun, Hank's eldest son.

"With everything that happened in this town, from its earliest days right until the present with her last column last month, she kept her sense of humor and an eagle eye out for the moral temperament and direction of Las Vegas."

Greenspun said the Sun would not have become the newspaper it is today "without Deskin's vital contributions. She taught me so much about the importance of good newspapering and the importance of good friendship. She had a long and happy life worth celebrating. We will miss her."

Barbara Greenspun called Deskin "a symbol of leadership at our newspaper."

"I can't imagine the Las Vegas Sun without Ruthe Deskin and it is even harder to imagine Las Vegas without Ruthe Deskin," Barbara Greenspun said. "She was a very dear woman and I will miss her greatly. My heart goes out to her family."

Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn called Deskin a person "who cared deeply about her community."

"No one will ever replace Ruthe in the Sun newsroom," Guinn, a longtime friend, said. "She touched countless lives during her journalism career. She was always someone I looked forward to seeing during my visits to the newspaper over the years."

The Republican governor recalled when Deskin asked him to fill in writing Where I Stand columns for Hank Greenspun when the publisher was on vacation, and said he learned from that experience "how difficult it is to be timely and interesting."

Sun Chairman Mike O'Callaghan, a two-term Nevada Democratic governor, called Deskin his "friend and mentor for almost half a century."

"The values she brought to journalism have had a positive impact on thousands of people who worked with her or read her column," O'Callaghan said. "As a role model, she has been a shining light for the Silver State."

Deskin, who long penned the front-page Memo to Hank column, was many times recognized for her civic duties.

In 1989 the Ruthe Deskin Elementary School was dedicated at Lone Mountain Road and Tenaya Way and in 1994 the activities center at Child Haven, the county's home for displaced children that had been co-founded by Deskin in the early 1960s, was named for her.

Ironically, Deskin opposed buildings being named for living people. She did not lobby for the honors and often joked, "What if I go out and murder somebody, then what are they going to do?" Still, she did not protest the naming of the facilities because she did not want to offend those who wanted to honor her.

"She went to so many functions at the school, and even though she would say 'you shouldn't have named this after me, you shouldn't have done it,' it touched her heart," said former Clark County School Board member Lois Tarkanian, a longtime friend. "She was very proud of Ruthe Deskin Elementary.

"There was nothing phony about her. She stood up for people who needed help and she made people feel at home. She made people feel that they belonged."

Deskin co-founded the Sun Youth Forum in 1956, giving local high school students a voice in the community.

In March 1980 Deskin was named a Distinguished Nevadan by the university Board of Regents, and on Oct. 12 of that year, "Ruthe Deskin Day" was proclaimed in the city of Las Vegas, Clark County and the state of Nevada.

On June 12, 1984, then-Rep. Harry Reid, D-Nev., gave a tribute to Deskin on the floor of the House, calling her a "premier journalist and communicator."

Reid, who first met Deskin when he was a student at Basic High participating in the first-ever Sun Youth Forum and who worked as a pro boxing judge under Deskin's late husband Jim Deskin, former executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, said Ruthe "is what Nevada is all about."

"Although many people's names have become associated with it, the Sun Youth Forum was hers," Reid said Sunday. "Hank had her put it together, and she did a great job building it for so many years."

In a Feb. 24, 2000, Back and Forth column, Deskin, who had long supported Reid in his political career, criticized him for not revealing the sources of funding in a political action committee, saying he was "caught in a web of distrust."

Shortly after the column was published, Reid disclosed the sources.

"I was under no legal obligation to make the disclosure, but if Ruthe Deskin didn't like it, then I had better not be doing it," Reid said. "I didn't want Ruthe to be disappointed in me."

Reid called Deskin "a kind and gentle woman."

In 1984 Deskin won the Nevada Press Association's top award, the Silver Makeup Rule. When the Nevada Journalism Hall of Fame was resurrected in 1998, Deskin and the other 33 prior Silver Makeup Rule winners became inductees.

Deskin was a pioneer, starting her career in an era when few women were hired as newspaper reporters, much less as executives. Yet she never saw her gender as being a barrier to her success.

In 1959 Deskin won the Nevada State Press Association award for best story written by a woman -- an honor that by today's standards would be considered sexist. But she refused to see it that way, noting that at the time it recognized the accomplishments of women in what was then a male-dominated field.

"There were important women's issues that had to be written about, and Sun women reporters wrote those stories and won that award several times," Deskin said in 2000.

Deskin, who worked at the Reno Evening Gazette, in local radio programming and in advertising and public relations before coming to the Sun at age 37, said she never experienced discrimination in the workplace.

"I never felt that being a woman was a drawback in anything I ever did," she said. "I always got things done by being 'a woman.' I never tried to be one of the boys. I pulled my weight and had a good work ethic."

In a May 18, 1980, Where I Stand column, Hank Greenspun wrote of Deskin: "In an industry filled with prima donnas and deep-enders, Ruthe is the balance wheel that keeps the stories in proper focus with objectivity and responsibility."

She was born Ruthe Goldsworthy on Feb. 20, 1916, in Yerington, the eldest of three children of Jim Goldsworthy, a mining engineer who also ran a feed store that he lost during the Depression, and the former Viola West, a member of a pioneering family of Mason Valley.

Ruthe was educated in a two-story schoolhouse that today is a state landmark. In the afternoons, she worked as a newspaper girl, loading up her wagon and delivering the Reno Evening Gazette door-to-door.

At Yerington High School, Deskin, described in one news account as being "all legs and arms," made the All-State girls' basketball team. Deskin went to the University of Nevada Reno, where she worked on the school newspaper, coached youth basketball and graduated in 1937.

During World War II, Deskin worked as employee relations director for the Army's Herlong (Calif.) Ordnance Depot, earning the Extra-Meritorious Civilian Service Medal. She was one of only a handful of women in the United States to receive that honor.

In the late 1940s, Deskin was hired as women's section editor of the Reno Evening Gazette. She came to Las Vegas in 1950 and initially worked as program director at the KENO and KLAS radio stations. There she co-hosted one of the first radio talk shows in Las Vegas, "Southern Nevada Today."

She then served as publicity director for the Last Frontier Hotel and then took a job at a local advertising firm for $65 a week.

"The Sun offered me $50, so I turned it down," Deskin said of Greenspun's initial offer. "When the Sun decided to start its Sunday edition in June 1954, I was approached to be the Sunday editor. I said I wanted $100 a week. I thought that was the last I'd hear from them. The next thing I knew I was hired."

Her first series of articles was about a woman who came to Las Vegas to open a facial clinic.

Soon after, Deskin was promoted to assistant to the publisher. In the 1950s she co-wrote the Sunlight on Politics column with then-Sun investigative reporter Alan Jarlson. They initially wrote the column under the byline Charlie Guam.

In the mid-1950s, Deskin and other community leaders, including the late Harvey Dondero, got together to lay the groundwork for the Sun Youth Forum, a gathering of local high school students to discuss the issues of the day and write columns that are published in the Sun. The program continues to this day.

"It has been a wonderful opportunity for the students to have," said University Regent Thalia Dondero, widow of Harvey, who was associate superintendent of Clark County Schools.

"The key to its success was that students not only got to share their ideas with others but also that they got their ideas out to the community through the columns they wrote in the Sun."

Others have also praised Deskin's efforts to make the program so enduring.

"(The Sun Youth Forum is) one of the greatest programs ever developed to start young citizens on their climb up the ladder of life," late Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame member Jack McCloskey, wrote in his April 1, 1987, Jasper column for the weekly Mineral County Independent News.

Under Deskin's leadership, the Sun Youth Forum won numerous honors, including the National Golden Press Award for America's top youth program.

Thalia Dondero, who also has served as Clark County Commissioner, said Deskin "never wavered in her friendship with people. If you were her friend, you stayed her friend. She was true blue.

"And her columns were always fresh and to the point."

Deskin's Memo to Hank column started as a result of a blunder.

At the time, Hank Greenspun had been in an automobile accident and Barbara Greenspun had just given birth to one of their four children. To keep the Greenspuns up-to-date while they recuperated at home, Deskin wrote highlights of the day's news along with her observations on copy paper, placed the notation "Memo to Hank" at the top and gave it to a Sun copy boy.

Instead of the document being delivered to the Greenspuns' home, it wound up in the hands of a typesetter.

"As I recall, I said some uncomplimentary things about the University Board of Regents and certain public officials," Deskin recalled in her July 11, 1983, Memo to Hank column. "Imagine my chagrin when I opened the Sun ... and there on the front page was a new column. It was my memo."

Early on, Deskin used her column to champion causes, particularly for troubled and abused youth. In the process, Deskin developed numerous sources in Clark County Social Services.

In 1961, Deskin became involved in Juvenile Court Services after co-authoring a series of articles that led to improvement of conditions at the local juvenile detention center.

Also at that time, Deskin worked with community leaders Peter Updyke and Judge David Zenoff to acquire a house on Ninth Street that became the original Child Haven. Deskin at the time also served as a director of the first Spring Mountain Youth Camp.

Deskin was appointed to the Child Welfare Advisory Board in the late 1960s and, in that position, further reformed the juvenile justice system by helping to establish an educational system for youth detainees. She also served on the Juvenile Probation Committee.

Deskin was an inspirational leader in the Sun newsroom.

In November 1963, following a fire that destroyed the Sun newspaper plant, Deskin offered her home as the temporary Sun offices, using every room from the kitchen to the garage. And she personally supervised the daily production of the paper.

"We had reporters waiting in line to use the only phone line we had," Deskin said. "There were editors working on the coffee table, the floor -- papers everywhere. It was a ball getting the newspaper out under such difficult conditions."

In 1966, Deskin became only the second woman elected president of the Nevada State Press Association.

In the early 1970s, the Sun sent Deskin to Israel, where she visited the battlefields of the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Yet, amid turmoil, Deskin saw much beauty.

In an April 19, 1972, bylined story, she wrote of "breathless scenic views of terraced hills, hand-painted forests, the San Francisco-look of Haifa, the blue of lake Galilee and the everlasting agelessness of Jerusalem."

Deskin often wrote fondly of her Northern Nevada roots, noting in a May 8, 1984, Where I Stand column, "Today, Las Vegas is my home; but Yerington (Pizen Switch) remains the place of my heart."

In 1983 Deskin's husband, Jim, died. Both were longtime avid bowlers.

Ruthe Deskin served several posts in the Las Vegas Women's Bowling Association throughout the 1950s, including recording secretary, and was long a fixture at local and state tournaments.

Once, at a tournament in Elko there was a snafu with her team's hotel reservations. Undaunted, Deskin talked a local brothel owner into letting her and her teammates use bunks in the back room as lodging.

In the late 1990s, far past the standard age of retirement, Deskin reduced her hours and responsibilities and worked out of her home after the Sun relocated from Valley View Boulevard to Green Valley in Henderson.

She said in 2000: "That doesn't bother me because as you get older you realize that you've had your turn and it is time to stand back and watch younger people have the same ambitions and make the same mistakes you made."

Deskin was a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, the UNR Department of Journalism Planning Committee, the Senior Times newspaper advisory board, Nevada Magazine editorial advisory board, the Arts Council, the Las Vegas Art Museum, the Clark County Law Library advisory committee, the Animal Rescue Foundation Board and the Silver State Kennel Club.

She also was past president of the Las Vegas Press Club and she served on the American Cancer Society crusade committee, State of Nevada Tourism Advisory Council, the board of the Westcare drug treatment center and the Nathan Adelson Hospice board.

Deskin's honors for her work with youths included Nevada "Media" Mother of the Year, recognition as co-founder of the Sun Camp Fund for underprivileged children, recognition as founder of the US Inc. drug education program for youths, Faith Lutheran High School Outstanding Citizen Award, life membership in Foster Parents of Clark County and the 1986 Olympiad Medal from Hadassah for service to youth.

Her awards include the Southern Nevada Drug Abuse Council's Distinguished Service Award, Nevada Women's Political Caucus Woman of the Year, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Woman of Achievement Award, induction into the Yerington High School Graduate Hall of Fame, and the Southern Nevada Association for the Handicapped's outstanding service award.

Deskin also was an avid University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball fan who regularly attended home games at the Thomas & Mack Center and, before that, the Las Vegas Convention Center, as well as major road games and tournaments.

"Ruthe and Mike O'Callaghan's mother-in-law (the late Marjorie Atkinson) would sit together, wearing the colors and cheering the team on," said Lois Tarkanian, wife of former longtime Rebel coach Jerry Tarkanian, recalling the early 1980s. "They were among the team's most loyal fans.

"Ruthe got to know all of the players over the years and she would remember so much about them many years later. She remembered things I thought had been long forgotten -- things she held in her heart."

She is survived by two daughters, Nancy Cummings and her husband Dr. Elwood Schmidt, both of Reno, and Terry Gialketsis and her husband, Babe Gialketsis of Las Vegas; a stepson, Jack Deskin of Apple Valley, Calif.; a brother, Myron Goldsworthy of Lovelock; a sister, Eleanor Gottschalk of Lovelock; two grandchildren, Ronald Woodbury of Riverside, Calif., and David Woodbury of Las Vegas; and three great-grandchildren, Sydney, Tyler and Ryan Woodbury, all of Las Vegas.

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