What’s in a name? Everything!

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021 | 2 a.m.

Welcome to Harry Reid International Airport.

This week the name change to Las Vegas’ airport will be official. McCarran’s name comes down and Harry’s goes up to signal Clark County’s move forward into a more enlightened future and away from the hatred, racism and bigotry of its past that was amply represented by its prior namesake.

Thanks to Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom’s leadership and the overwhelming following of Clark County residents, the brand name of 20th century antisemitism will no longer be the first thing many millions of tourists and residents see when they land in Las Vegas.

There has been much written and said over the years about Nevada’s Sen. Harry Reid and his incredible career in public service — a service that has inured to the benefit of current residents and will to generations of those yet to come. And there will be much more to read and learn about this Nevadan of first stature as the airport changes names and tomorrow’s history is written.

My thoughts at this time have returned to another era — a time when McCarran ruled our state — when McCarran was our state. Or, at least, he and far too many others actually thought that was so.

And why what he stood for, what he represented, must no longer find a home in Nevada.

I am somewhat familiar with the McCarran of the 1940s and 1950s because his life was inextricably entwined with my father’s, and not in a good way.

My dad didn’t like antisemites and bigots. He liked to call them out for their racist tendencies and didn’t much care about the consequences. In that regard, he and Harry Reid had much in common. But, like too many cases today, their kind of courage was in short supply.

McCarran was probably this country’s single biggest supporter of the infamous Sen. Joe McCarthy. McCarran’s “friend” should tell you all you need to know about the kind of man he was.

Nevada’s “silver-haired” senator represented everything my father despised, so it is no surprise the two of them were constantly doing battle.

McCarran, from his perch in the safety of the U.S. Senate where he championed legislation that codified his small and evil-mindedness, and my Dad from his perch as the publisher and editor of the Sun, the only Las Vegas newspaper not in the clutches of McCarran and his mobbed-up friends.

The history between these two men is fascinating. If you can find a copy of Hank’s book, “Where I Stand,” which he wrote 55 years ago, it is well worth the read.

For brevity’s sake, I will skip to the end of their time together in Nevada.

Ironically, part of their combat included an antitrust lawsuit my father filed against McCarran and a whole bunch of gambling hotels on the Strip.

McCarran tried to silence Hank and my father resisted. (Funny how history tends to repeat itself.)

McCarran relented. And the Sun still publishes today.

But the senator didn’t forgive or forget. On Sept. 28, 1954, he was giving a speech in Hawthorne, Nev. It was typical of McCarran to vilify his enemy (my father) at every turn. And this was no different.

Except that his last words in that speech were “Greenspunism must be defeated.” And those were also his last words. He dropped dead from a heart attack immediately thereafter.

In his “Where I Stand" column the next morning, Hank was most gracious toward the man who had spent a lifetime in service to Nevada. But he finished in typical Hank fashion: “I cannot be false to my principles and, because of death, do the man honor. I can less afford to write frankly and bring dishonor to myself.”

This week, the good people of Clark County finish the job that started so many decades ago. They will not do McCarran further honor by leaving his name on our airport. The dishonor he did to himself.

Instead, they will honor a most deserving man.

In the coming decades, among the millions and millions of people who will fly into and out of Las Vegas’ airport, a child will ask “who is Harry Reid?”

The answer will be simple and honest:

He is a man who has led an incredible life of public service while at all times fulfilling an unbreakable commitment to family, to community and to country.

His is a life worth emulating.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.