Friday, Jan. 11, 2002 | 4:26 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
Myram Borders is living, breathing Las Vegas history -- the kind that should be taught in local schools, but probably never will be.
On events running the gamut from the serious to the bizarre, Borders was on the spot, notebook and pen in hand, to break Las Vegas stories for United Press International.
At the 1986 racketeering trial of the infamous "Hole in the Wall Gang," prosecutors accused the burglary ring's leader, Tony Spilotro, and his aide, "Fat" Herbie Blitzstein, of "walking and talking" in front of convenience stores because they feared their homes and offices had been bugged.
"On the night the jury began its deliberations, I pulled into a convenience store parking lot on Eastern Avenue near The Coachman's Inn and there was Spilatro and Blitzstein," Borders said. "I said to them, 'What are you guys doing? Walking and talking?'
"They held up their doggie bags and said they had just had dinner at The Coachman's. Spilotro told me he was confident they would win the case. Days later, a mistrial was declared."
Before he could be tried again, Spilotro was found slain mob-style in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield in 1986. Blitzstein was killed in 1997 by fellow mobsters who were trying to muscle in on his local loan-sharking operation.
Borders' Jan. 4 retirement after three decades with UPI and 10 years as head of the Las Vegas News Bureau, culminates a career that included coverage of everything from the rise and death of billionaire Howard Hughes to the growth of Las Vegas into a world gaming and entertainment capital.
"I got to grow up with Las Vegas and, as a reporter, got to look behind doors that most people do not get to see," said Borders, 65, who arrived in town in 1940 from Kentucky's Appalachia region, graduated from historic Fifth Street Grammar School and was a member of the Las Vegas High Class of 1954.
Borders knew early on that being a newswoman was the life for her. She attended the University of Nevada in Reno on a Harold's Club scholarship and graduated in 1958 with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism.
"My husband and I knew we had made a great decision to help put Myram through college with one of our scholarships," said Jan Smith, widow of Harold's Club founder Harold Smith. "She is one tough lady and a great reporter."
But Borders does not see herself as being all that great or important.
"Some news reporters tend to believe that what they are writing is going to make a change," she said. "But of the millions of words I wrote, very few brought about any change. What I wrote did more to inform people."
One of the times Borders did make a major change was in the mid-1970s, when she joined a small group of local reporters to encourage the Nevada Legislature to pass the state's first open meeting law.
"We were seeing things in local governments like zoning laws being changed without residents receiving notices about them and agendas not being posted in advance of meetings like they are today," she said.
"On the last night of the session the bill passed, and Gov. Mike O'Callaghan immediately signed it into law because he saw the great value in it."
After he left office, O'Callaghan became executive editor of the Sun and worked closely with Borders, whose UPI office was in the old Sun building on Martin L. King Boulevard.
"Myram is one of our nation's finest and most accurate journalists," O'Callaghan said. "Political people never had to worry about what she wrote because it was exactly what they said or did.
"I've always said she was Nevada's Helen Thomas (the venerable UPI White House reporter). Myram earned the respect of readers over the world when reporting for UPI from Nevada during the 1960s, '70s and '80s."
Borders covered the gaming career of Frank Sinatra from his early days when Sands casino boss Carl Cohen knocked out the crooner's teeth after Sinatra tipped over a gaming table in response to having his credit stopped.
"Sinatra (was forced to surrender) his gaming license after (Chicago mobster Sam) Momo Giancana was treated like a king at the Cal Neva, in which Sinatra owned 5 percent," Borders said, recalling the 1963 Northern Nevada incident.
"Years later (in 1981), Sinatra went before the Nevada Gaming Commission to get a key casino employee license, and everyone from actor Kirk Douglas to Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun testified -- it was really something."
Before the hearing, Borders obtained a copy of Sinatra's investigative report and thought she really had a big scoop -- that is, until she read it.
"The report was rather shallow, and after the hearing all of the copies were collected and never seen again," Borders said. "I believe Sinatra never had intentions of getting back into gaming. He was just looking for an endorsement from the commission that years earlier took away his license, and he got it."
Also in the early 1980s, Stardust hotel executive Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, upon whom the movie "Casino" is based, was a big newsmaker. Borders just happened to be driving by on the night the mob blew up his car.
"It was in the parking lot between Marie Callender's and Tony Roma's on Sahara Avenue, and I heard this huge explosion and pulled in to see this car on fire," Borders said. "Rosenthal was running around, smoke puffing off his clothing, yelling 'They are trying to kill me, they set me up!'
"I asked, 'Who's trying to kill you, who set you up?' and he got real quiet. As accessible as he was to the media and as talkative as he was, Frank knew when to keep his mouth shut."
But it wasn't just casinos and mobsters that Borders covered. She also enjoyed reporting on the glitzy and unusual. That included the arrival of the Beatles at the Sahara hotel in 1964 and Elvis and Priscilla Presley's wedding at the Aladdin in 1967. And then there was Nuclear Ned.
"He was a nuclear-afflicted frog that supposedly was captured at the Nevada Test Site," Borders said, recalling that 1960s story. "They decided to take him to the Calaveras County Frog Jumping Contest, but the story of him being nuclear had gotten so out of hand, they decided to give him a nuclear implant.
"On the day of the contest, Ned was feeling poorly and didn't jump very far. But upon his return to Las Vegas, they were still clamoring for more stories about Nuclear Ned. Those kind of stories were well read and fun to do."
But the fun came to an end for Borders with the demise of UPI in 1990. She became head of the state's consumer affairs office and soon became discouraged with a legal system that meted out minor penalties to rip-off artists.
"After 18 months, I needed to find a job where I could once again speak the English language, because I was having a tough time learning and speaking the language of the Nevada Revised Statutes," Borders said.
In 1992 Borders answered a newspaper ad for executive director of the Las Vegas News Bureau, a photography agency that long promoted Las Vegas.
"That job was closer to what I had done as a reporter," Borders said. "I liked the fact that having grown up here and having worked here for so long I was familiar with the history of Las Vegas. That helped me a lot."
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Executive Director Manny Cortez, a classmate of Borders at Las Vegas High, said Borders was the logical choice to head the revamped news bureau.
"When we took over the News Bureau from the Chamber of Commerce, hiring Myram gave us instant credibility because she had the respect of journalists from all over the world," said Cortez, a former Clark County commissioner.
"Her experience in dealing with reporters was vital in getting the news out about Las Vegas."
As for her retirement plans, Borders said: "I'll probably do some more writing, but not a book."
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