Council pauses to remember Wendell Bunker

Calling Wendell Bunker "a great Las Vegan," the Las Vegas City Council on Monday called for a moment of silence in memory of the former Las Vegas city commissioner, who helped found the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and Las Vegas Valley Water District.

Mayor Jan Laverty Jones paid a brief tribute to Bunker at the start of Monday's public meeting, acknowledging his death Saturday in Las Vegas. He was 87. Bunker was a city commissioner from 1949-59.

Services for the 73-year local resident were to be held this morning at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints East Stake Center, Gateway Road and Wyoming Avenue.

As city commissioner, Bunker helped form the fairgrounds board that became the LVCVA, which oversees the international promotion of Las Vegas as a tourism center.

The native Nevadan also was an original member of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, who as a councilman oversaw its transfer from an arm of the Union Pacific Railroad to its establishment as a local government agency.

He was the father of Richard Bunker of the Nevada Resort Association.

A. Wendell Bunker was born in the Southern Nevada Mormon settlement of St. Thomas on Aug. 18, 1911. The town was flooded to create Lake Mead after Hoover Dam was built. He moved to Las Vegas in 1925 and graduated from Las Vegas High School four years later.

Bunker, who worked for the Union Pacific Railroad and was one of the founders of Nevada Savings and Loan, was an Army veteran of World War II. He later served as chief deputy recorder and auditor for Clark County.

Among his civic duties, Bunker was a member of the Boulder Dam Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America and the Las Vegas Kiwanis Club.

In addition to his son, Bunker is survived by his wife, Marion Bunker; two other sons, Gary Bunker and Robert Bunker, all of Las Vegas; a daughter, Susan Johnson of Boulder City; seven grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren.

__DONATIONS: In Bunker's memory to the Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City.

archive