Tuesday, Oct. 8, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
When Mary Cobeaga was growing up in Ely during the Depression she helped her mother ply her profession -- bootlegger.
Young Mary and her brothers would stand lookout for revenuers while thirsty hombres slipped into the dusty eastern Nevada mining town to sample Catherine Harriet's illicit whiskey.
Despite such notorious beginnings, Mary earned a college degree, became a devoted military wife, inspired her children and grandchildren to excel in school and developed a reputation as an excellent golfer.
Mary Sala Cobeaga, matriarch of a pioneering Basque family who as a newlywed in Hawaii witnessed the sinking of the USS Nevada at Pearl Harbor, died Sunday of lung cancer at Desert Springs Hospital. She was a nonsmoker. She was 76.
"My mother was most proud of being a housewife and native Nevadan," said J. Mitchell "Mitch" Cobeaga, a noted Las Vegas attorney. "She was strong on education. You can't find many women who were born in Ely in 1920 who got college degrees."
Services for the 28-year Las Vegan will be 11 a.m. Wednesday at St. Viator's Catholic Church. Visitation will be 1-7 p.m. today at Palm Mortuary, 7600 S. Eastern Ave. A rosary will be said at 7 p.m.
Shortly after Mary married Mitchell A. Cobeaga, a star athlete at the University of Nevada, she accompanied him to Hickam Field, Hawaii, where he was stationed as a pilot in the Army Air Corps.
On Dec. 7, 1941, she watched through a window of her harbor-side home as Japanese planes sank the ship that was named for her home state.
Immediately after the attack, Mary and Catherine returned to Ely, while Mitchell flew bombing missions in the South Pacific for the next three years.
Cobeaga's brothers, John Sala and Shant Harriet, who preceded Mary in death, served in the Navy at the time. Shant became a highly decorated aviator.
Born in Ely, Cobeaga was orphaned as a child. En route to an orphanage at Ogden, Utah, she and her brother were secreted off the train by Harriet, who raised the children. Mary and Catherine remained close until Harriet's death in 1964.
Cobeaga put herself through the University of Nevada in Reno by working at Doc Broadbent's drugstore in Ely. As a teenager, she babysat his son, Bob Broadbent, who today is director of aviation for Clark County.
During her school days in Ely, Cobeaga's friends and classmates included such future noted Nevadans as former Supreme Court Justice Jon Collins, Northern Nevada attorney Pete Echavaria and local Catholic priest Caesar "Father C" Caviglia.
At the university, her friends and classmates included former Gov. Grant Sawyer and a longtime local attorney, the late Louis Wiener.
Cobeaga's strong belief in education is evident in her children graduating from college and eight of her grandchildren either graduating from or attending college. She also was a schoolteacher.
Mary took seriously her role as a military wife. For 15 years, she was the hostess for the B-52 bomber group that Mitchell commanded. In addition to World War II, Cobeaga saw action in Korea and, with Mitch, in Vietnam.
After his retirement from the Air Force in 1968, Mitchell became a vice president at Nevada State Bank. For several years, Mary worked as a transcriptionist and office manager for local orthopedic surgeons.
She was an avid golfer, winning the Black Mountain Women's Golf Association title in the early 1970s.
For many years, Cobeaga and her family were regulars at Basque festivals in Ely and Las Vegas.
In addition to her husband and son, Cobeaga is survived by a daughter, Catherine Cobeaga of Las Vegas; a daughter-in-law, Sylvia Cobeaga of Las Vegas; a sister, Josephine Gezelin of Reno; and 10 grandchildren.
DONATIONS: In Cobeaga's memory to the St. Viator School Endowment Fund.
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