If you haven’t lived here more than 10 or 15 years, you probably don’t know who E. Parry Thomas is.
But more than anyone else – more than the Mormon settlers, more than the mob -- E. Parry Thomas is probably the reason you live here, go to college here or have a job here.
Thomas was a banker in Las Vegas who, through vision and hard work, did what many thought was impossible.
He legitimized Las Vegas.
Thomas died last week at age 95.
Las Vegas author Jack Sheehan wrote a book about Thomas, “The Quiet Kingmaker.”
Thomas was a banker, and a brilliant mind, Sheehan said, who was asked to see why the company’s bank in Las Vegas wasn’t doing so well.
After getting the lay of the land in Las Vegas, he saw the chance to invest in the hotels and casinos – other banks in town wouldn’t touch them.
Sheehan said Thomas was the key to brokering deals between the mob and billionaire Howard Hughes in the 1960s to purchase the Desert Inn.
Hughes bought more hotels. In doing so, he turned heads in corporate America. Chieftains of industry began to think, if Hughes is investing in Las Vegas, maybe we should, too?
In addition, Sheehan said, Thomas believed that no city could be great without a great university. At the time, the tiny campus in Las Vegas, which would eventually become UNLV, was scattered in buildings all over the city.
Meanwhile, land in the area where UNLV now exists was owned piecemeal by handfuls of investors. Thomas convinced all of them that not only would they get a fair price for their land if they sold, but they would be contributing to the greater good of Las Vegas. That, in turn, would help their respective businesses.
Jack Sheehan, author, "The Quiet Kingmaker"
