Longtime Strip waitress, Culinary official Duke dies

Friday, Sept. 24, 2004 | 8:32 a.m.

For 27 years Lillian Duke was a waitress at the Riviera hotel, where she served Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and a host of other notables.

As a longtime shop steward for Culinary Local 226, she also could be found walking picket lines during strikes and otherwise being a champion for the rights of Las Vegas' working men and women.

Regardless of whether she was filling drink orders or fighting for improvements in her workplace, Duke said in a July 1987 story in the Sun that for a simple girl from Peoria, Ill., "the fast lane" of Las Vegas took a little getting used to.

Lillian Mariam Duke, who began her 37-year career as a waitress at the old El Rancho Vegas in 1956 and became a fixture in the Riviera's Versailles Theatre for a quarter of a century, died Thursday at Harbor House Hospice of complications from a recent fall. She was 81.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of more than a half century will be 1 p.m. Monday at Palm Mortuary-Eastern. Visitation will be 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the same location. Burial will be private.

"She hated the day she retired in 1993," said son Steven Duke, a dentist in Georgetown, Texas. "She needed to help people. She continued to attend union meetings until shortly before she died.

"An endless list of hotel employees owe their employment to her unyielding efforts on their behalf. She walked the picket lines in the 1970s, fighting for their rights and never turned her back on someone in need of help."

Duke was related to the O'Callaghan family by the marriage of one of her sons to a daughter of former Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, who for 25 years until his death in March was chairman of the Sun.

Duke is the fourth member of that close-knit family to die this year. Mike O'Callaghan's wife, Carolyn, died in August, and Carolyn's brother Richard Randall died in July.

Duke was born Lillian Shemas on Aug. 13, 1923. Her father was Samuel Shemas, Peoria's chief of police. After graduating from high school, Lillian worked as an administrative assistant in Washington, D.C., during World War II.

In the mid-1940s, she went to Hollywood with her brother Mitchell, a movie company cameraman. Mitchell introduced her to Richard Duke, whom she married in 1946. He was a chef who worked for various restaurants in Las Vegas, including the Tropicana's Blue Room, before his death in 1978.

The Dukes came to Las Vegas in the early 1950s and Lillian took her first local waitress job at the El Rancho. She worked there for four years until fire destroyed the Strip resort in 1960. From there, she went to the old Thunderbird, then to the Riviera in 1966.

In addition to her son, Duke is survived by another son, Richard Duke, of Las Vegas; three daughters, Carol Nicheff, of Little Rock, Ark., Kathelene Teutsch of Las Vegas and Vicki LePore of Henderson; two step-daughters, Diana Brownfield and Donna Callas, both of Lancaster, Calif.; three sisters, Betty Mullen of Las Vegas, Janet Piez of Chevy Chase, Md., and Dee Rigsby of Ocean City, Md.; 23 grandchildren; and 26 great-grandchildren. Relatives said donations can be made in Duke's memory to the Harbor House Hospice of Odyssey Health Care, 4011-A McLeod Drive, Las Vegas, NV, 89121.