Big crowd expected at O’Callaghan’s Mass

Wednesday, March 10, 2004 | 8:26 a.m.

The family of late Las Vegas Sun Chairman Mike O'Callaghan said Tuesday they are honored that his services will be televised live, but they are encouraging those who want to go to the services to do so.

Although an overflow crowd of friends, co-workers and family is expected to attend the 1 p.m. Thursday funeral for the former two-term Nevada governor, Catholic Church officials say there are 2,400 parking spaces and room for more than 2,200 mourners at the Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer.

The church is at 55 E. Reno Ave., just east of the Strip, just south of the Tropicana hotel.

O'Callaghan, who worked the past 25 years as chairman and executive editor of the Sun and served as governor from 1971 to 1978, died Friday of an apparent heart attack while attending morning Mass. He was 74.

"It is a great honor for a person to have his funeral televised, but we want anyone who wants to attend to do so because people need closure," said daughter Colleen O'Callaghan-Miele. "We don't want anyone to be discouraged from attending."

Las Vegas ONE, Cox cable channels 1 and 19, will broadcast the funeral live.

O'Callaghan-Miele said eulogists will be Sun Editor and President Brian Greenspun and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who was a student of O'Callaghan's when O'Callaghan taught at Basic High School in the 1950s. Reid was later O'Callaghan's lieutenant governor.

"They were chosen because they were like his sons," said O'Callaghan-Miele, co-publisher of the Henderson Home News with her brother Tim O'Callaghan, who will be one of eight pallbearers. Their father was longtime publisher of that newspaper.

"My father's love for the Reid and Greenspun families was as strong as his love was for us," she said.

The other pallbearers are sons Michael Neil O'Callaghan and Brian Jack O'Callaghan and grandsons Michael D. Duke, Matthew A. Miele III, Justin Miele, Sean Paul O'Callaghan and Brian J. O'Callaghan Jr.

Reserve pallbearers are grandsons Joshua Miele and Mark Miele and nephew Tobias Martinez. Honorary pallbearers are Reid, friend George Brookman and brother-in-law Harry Bryan.

Visitation for O'Callaghan was scheduled from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. today and from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Thursday at the Palm Mortuary, 7600 S. Eastern Ave. There will also be a one-hour visitation before the 1 p.m. funeral Mass. A rosary will be said at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the church.

Graveside services will follow at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City on Thursday.