Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

JAYN MARSHALL: 1929-2010:

Activist, philanthropist who helped build Las Vegas dies

Family’s Marshall-Rousso stores reflect her artistic sensibilities

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Jayn Marshall

Jayn Marshall was guided through her life by a strong sense of spirituality, a knack for knowing and doing the right thing.

She knew it was the right thing to accept her future husband’s marriage proposal just four days after meeting him. Their union lasted 56 years.

She knew it was right to design the interiors of the upscale retail outlets that her family built in Las Vegas for more than half a century to complement the fashionable casual outfits, glamorous evening gowns and top-of-the-line handbags and shoes.

And she knew it was right to give a lot back to the community, becoming a leader in local Jewish causes and, indeed, in the growth of Las Vegas.

Jayn Saltzman Marshall, who helped her husband and brother-in-law build the Marshall-Rousso clothing-store chain into a retail success story and used the fortune amassed by that company to assist numerous local causes, died Wednesday night at her Las Vegas home surrounded by family members. She was 81.

Marshall was diagnosed with breast cancer six months ago, her family said.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 62 years will be at 1 p.m. Monday at Congregation Ner Tamid in Henderson.

“Jayn was first and foremost dedicated to her family and instilled in them the need to sincerely care about people,” longtime friend Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said by phone from his New York office.

“She was a good listener and an empathetic person who taught those around her to understand how things like bigotry hurt people. When she stood behind a cause she gave all of herself to it — a total commitment.”

For her philanthropic efforts to support the Southern Nevada Jewish community, to secure justice, civil rights and fair treatment for all and to fight anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, Jayn Marshall, along with her husband, Art Marshall, was presented in October with the Anti-Defamation League’s Americanism Award.

“Honesty and integrity were ideals by which my wife lived her entire life,” said Art Marshall, a longtime local businessman, banker and former Nevada Gaming commissioner.

In March 2006, the couple were honored for their many community contributions with the Hank Greenspun Founders Award by the United Jewish Community/Jewish Federation of Las Vegas at the organization’s fourth annual Champions of Freedom Dinner Gala at the Venetian.

Causes and organizations that benefited from the Marshalls’ philanthropy included, among many others, the Sheldon G. Adelson Educational Campus and Rock for the Cure, benefiting the Nevada Cancer Institute.

Born in Cleveland on May 6, 1929, Jayne was the youngest of three daughters of Sara and Abe Saltzman.

The family moved to Las Vegas in 1945. In 1948, Jayn graduated from Las Vegas High, then the only high school in the valley.

Jayn attended Woodbury Business College — now Woodbury University — in Burbank, Calif., using skills from professional arts courses to help decorate the sales floors of the Marshall-Rousso stores in Strip resorts.

Jayn returned to Cleveland to visit friends in 1953 and met then-auto salesman Art Marshall. Three days later, he asked her to marry him, and the next day she said yes. They wed in December of that year.

In 1959, the Marshalls moved to Las Vegas, where Art and his partner Herb Rousso took over a store on Las Vegas Boulevard run by Jayn’s parents and renamed it Marshall-Rousso. (Rousso had married Jayn’s sister Estelle, who died in 2006.)

Early on, Jayn became a Jewish community activist, joining the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas at its birth.

Jayn also was an original member of the local chapter of the distinguished Lions of Judah and was a life-member of Hadassah, a volunteer women’s organization, whose members are motivated to strengthen the United States’ partnership with Israel.

Jayn, a talented amateur artist, worked primarily in inks and acrylics and turned down showings in London and Paris.

In addition to her husband, Jayn Marshall is survived by a son, Todd Marshall; a daughter, Cari Marshall; a sister, Malvene Rowe; and three granddaughters, Jessica Marshall, Alexis Marshall and Dana Marshall-Bernstein, all of Las Vegas.

The family said donations can be made in Jayn Marshall’s memory to Nathan Adelson Hospice.