Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: A pillar of real Las Vegas

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2004 | 8:51 a.m.

I'M JUST WILD about Harry and Harry's wild about me.

Harry Claiborne tilted at a few windmills in his time. Sometimes he even won. I remember once, though, when all of Harry's considerable charm and folksy humor was no match for the overwhelming odds against him. His futile attempt to unseat a sitting senator was the kind of folly even Don Quixote would not have attempted. But that was what made Harry so special -- he didn't care about the odds. He just went out and did it his way.

During that truncated campaign, Claiborne's theme song was "I'm just wild about Harry," and everyone, supporter or not, was singing it. That's because it fit. To know Harry Claiborne was to love him. And the reason people did that is because they knew that Harry was wild about who they were.

Big or small, people from all walks of life knew that they had a friend and a champion in Harry Claiborne the man and Harry Claiborne the consumate criminal defense lawyer. You don't see that kind of connection, especially in politics, these days. Come to think of it, you just don't see much of that anywhere these days.

When the news of Harry's death spread across the phone lines early Tuesday morning and later that day on the front page of the Las Vegas Sun -- a place reserved for most of what Harry did during his most colorful life in Las Vegas -- I shared a moment of great sadness with what I was certain were thousands of old-time Las Vegans, the people who know who Harry was and what he meant to this town in the very early days.

It wasn't that 86 years was not a ripe old age -- and for Harry just enough time to live a dozen lifetimes -- but, rather, there was a sadness in the knowledge that one more of the pillars of the real Las Vegas had crumbled back to dust.

I know that the overwhelming majority of the people who today call Las Vegas home probably have never heard of Harry Claiborne. But for those of us who grew up with the Claiborne mythology, it is hard to imagine that the end has come.

When I spoke to my friend and Harry's pastor, Dan Newburn, we shared a few old stories about the man before it struck us that the timing of his death was not an accident.

It is now well-known that Harry suffered a long and painful illness and that the ravages of Alzheimer's were starting to control his life. For a man as vital and life-loving as Harry Claiborne, the prospect of living in pain, causing pain to those he loved and existing in a state that would become less familiar with each passing day, was not something he could even fathom. So, he died as he had lived, in control of his destiny.

There were times, however, when life got more complicated. When the federal government decided that U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne stood in the way of its desire to run roughshod over the rights of certain Nevadans, there was little Harry could do to get out of the way short of capitulation, which would have caused him to violate his oath of office. You know, the part about protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States.

That chapter in his life is a most revealing part of the history of this country and the impeachment process of federal judges. School kids will study the words but they will little understand what happened here 20 years ago, when the entire federal government trained its sights on one man. He never had a chance. Neither did our system of justice, which took a forced vacation while Strike Force attorneys, pimps and hanging judges collaborated to subvert every Amendment in the Bill of Rights just because they could.

It is also no coincidence, I believe, that Harry's life ended practically the same time as the fall of the Horseshoe, long the symbol of real gambling in a gambling town and the place that Benny Binion built.

Just like you couldn't say gambling without saying Horseshoe and you couldn't say Horseshoe without saying Binion so, too, could the name Claiborne not be intertwined with all three. The thought of a Las Vegas without the Horseshoe -- and most certainly without his Binion family at the helm -- must have played hard on a man who had lived it all.

It is said that each of us knows, or has the chance to know, when the time is right to make an exit from the world as we know it. There were times when even the greatest forces of man's evil nature could not convince Harry Claiborne to give up the fight. He knew there was just too much to live and fight for to allow the world to carry on without him.

This time, though, Harry knew. He had been a master of timing most of his life and he was not about to miss his cue.

As for the rest of us, there will be a lot to miss about Harry Claiborne. His was a life, the telling of which, will provide lessons hard learned.

For now, we will just say goodbye and rest well from a Las Vegas that was wild about Harry.