Friday is Richard Bryan Day at the City of Las Vegas.
No doubt most everyone in Southern Nevada knows his name. He was the Clark County's first public defender in the 60s before going to hold almost every political office in Nevada.
Bryan has been attorney general, governor, assemblyman, state senator and U.S. senator.
And now he's receiving an ACLU lifetime achievement award.
Bryan has been working to protect individual civil liberties since he was a young lawyer in Las Vegas.
He doesn't see a specific threat to civil liberties right now but he is concerned about the loss of civility.
“What concerns me is a rising level of intolerance with views that one doesn’t particularly agree with,” he said, “It strikes me as one of the key element in a democracy the right to express yourself and to do so and to have your views if not agreed to at least to have the other person say, ‘look, I don’t agree with that at all but I respect your right to have a difference of opinion.'”
He said our country has become more polarized and he is not sure how we're going to get back to a more civil tone.
Bryan has served in just about every area of government, starting in the late 60s. But even then, he was known for hiring women to fill important positions.
“I just saw people that had a lot of talent and to give them an opportunity. They exceeded my expectations,” he said.
He said his decision to appoint and hire women for key positions was sometimes met with some reluctance but he said all the women he hired were smart, hardworking and right for the job.
One woman who stood by his side through most of his political career was his wife Bonnie. She passed away in 2016.
“She was an extraordinary public servant in the sense that she supported my efforts and she liked it,” Bryan said.
He said that in any marriage someone ends up going to an event she doesn't want to go to but with his wife it was different.
“Bonnie genuinely loved being out there in the public and in the political arena. She absolutely loved it,” he said.
The former senator said his wife's openness certainly helped him in his career.
“She was certainly more popular than I ever was where I went," he said, "I don’t know of anybody that had a harsh word to say about her. The same could not be said of me.”
Bryan left the Senate in 2000. One of the big reasons he left was the endless task of raising money to run for office.
He said he learned early in life that he hated raising money after he had to panhandle for more change to get into a movie at the Huntridge Theater when he was a young kid.
While Bryan represented people who really needed it as a public defender and has long fought against plans to bring nuclear waste to Nevada, he views his legacy in much simpler terms.
“I like to think that my people said, ‘he’s an honest man. He tried to do the right thing. He was not perfect, by any means, he made his share of mistakes. But he loved public service. He had a passion for it. Felt that it was an honorable undertaking and has encouraged others to pursue that,” he said.
Richard Bryan, former Governor and U.S. Senator