Bouton, longtime journalist, seniors advocate, dies

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006 | 12:34 p.m.

Several weeks ago, an ailing Ken Bouton lamented to his family that there were so many columns he wanted to write regarding senior issues, but so little time.

The former publisher of the Senior Times and Nevada Senior World, Bouton had written extensively on many senior issues, including the high price of prescriptions and the lack of some needed medications.

"My father was a man of good character," Marla Bouton of Kearney, Neb., said. "He cared about the quality of life for seniors and how seniors had suffered because he felt the government often treated them like they did not exist."

Kenneth A. Bouton, who for 13 years served as administrative assistant to the Las Vegas mayor's office and was co-author of the book "Nevada Trivia," died Saturday at a local care center following a lengthy illness. He was 84.

Bouton was writing nearly to the end, his family said, noting his last column for the monthly Lovin' Life News of Gilbert, Ariz., was published late last year. That newspaper's predecessors were the Senior Times and Nevada Senior World, which Bouton published locally in the 1980s and '90s.

The other papers for which Bouton worked as a reporter or columnist included the Lebanon (Ore.) Express in the 1950s, the Denver Post in the late 1950s and early '60s, the Las Vegas Sun from 1963 to 1965 and the now-defunct Valley Times in North Las Vegas from the late 1970s to the early '80s.

Bouton, who did not attend college, often wrote with a wry wit. Once in Nevada Senior World, he wrote about how so many items had become computerized and how many seniors were not quite ready to embrace the new technology.

From 1965 to 1978, Bouton served as administrative assistant and City Hall spokesman, first under Mayor Oran Gragson, then under Mayor Bill Briare.

A longtime collector of statewide trivia, Bouton, along with his wife, E. Lyn Bouton, wrote the 192-page book "Nevada Trivia," which was published in 1999 by Rutledge Hill Press of Nashville, Tenn.

Ed Koch can be reached at 259-4090 or at koch@lasvegassun.com.