Longtime advertising executive Felesky loses fight with cancer

Edward Felesky came to Las Vegas in 1969, a seasoned advertising executive from New York City whose clients included the Wall Street Journal, Proctor & Gamble and Revlon.

Yet, as Felesky trudged up and down the Las Vegas Strip, his impressive portfolio under his arm, he could not convince a major hotel to hire him.

It was their loss. The persistent Felesky was hired as a senior artist by May Advertising, a company that would become the genesis of many of today's top Las Vegas ad executives.

Felesky went on to design logos for many businesses and oversee commercial artwork for major clients including Sunrise Hospital.

Edward R. Felesky, a former longtime partner at Joyce & Associates Advertising, which created the "Dusty Mac" logo for McCarran International Airport's expansion, died Thursday of colon cancer at Nathan Adelson Hospice. He was 77.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 30 years will be 10 a.m. Monday at Palm Mortuary Downtown.

"Ed was a pioneer in local advertising -- a warm person in a tough and demanding industry, and a very creative guy," said longtime Las Vegas advertising mogul Sig Rogich, who worked with Felesky at May Advertising and later hired him to do special projects.

"I never saw him lose his cool. Whether he was working on political campaigns or commercial projects, Ed was very capable."

Felesky's former partner, Mary Dean Martin, of what was once Joyce & Martin Advertising, said she and the late Jim Joyce, a former May Advertising executive, lured Felesky away from May in the mid-1970s to their new firm.

"Ed was one of the town's first good commercial artists," said Martin, who today runs Mary Dean & Associates. "The logos he designed are still seen all over Las Vegas."

Felesky's Dusty Mac logo is the image of a gold miner that appears wherever there is construction at the airport. A story connected to the logo to explain the construction says Dusty Mac is working the lost mines under McCarran.

An avid golfer who in his prime had a single-digit handicap, Felesky played for many years in the same foursome at the Las Vegas Country Club with Nevada Gaming Commission member Augie Gurrola, former Clark County School Superintendent Charlie Silvestri and contractor Robert Smith.

"I've never seen anybody who could putt and chip as well as Ed," Gurrola said, noting that Felesky last played with his friends in late June. "He never complained about the pain he was in (from the cancer). He faced his mortality with great courage."

Silvestri, a friend of 20 years, agreed, noting: "Ed was always a gentleman and always able to recover quickly after making a bad shot. He brushed things off real well and went on with his game."

Born March 27, 1922, in Export, Pa., near Pittsburgh, Felesky was the third youngest of seven children of Mary Felesky and her coal miner husband, Matthew.

After graduating from high school in Export, Felesky joined the Army Air Corps and was trained as a pilot at Lafayette School of Aeronautics in Louisiana.

He served as a B-24 co-pilot in the 376th Heavy Bombardment Group, which flew missions over North Africa and Italy and earned a presidential citation. Felesky left the service in 1947.

He attended West Virginia University and graduated from the Art Student's League in New York City.

Felesky worked for several top New York firms, including Grey Advertising, J. Walter Thompson and McCann Erikson, before he started Advertising Creations Inc. His clients included RCA, 20th Century Fox, United Artists and Seagrams.

In 1951 Felesky met attorney Marilyn Romanelli when they were put together in the same foursome at a public golf course in Staten Island. They married in 1953 and moved to Las Vegas in 1969, where she became a prominent family law attorney and served as a deputy attorney general in the early 1970s.

In addition to his wife, Felesky is survived by a daughter, Dee Felesky of San Francisco; four sisters, Madeline Bongard of Sterling, Va., Wilma Franke of Bethel, Pa., Helen Valentino of Smithville, N.J., and Matilda Picciano of Delmont, Pa.

The family said donations can be made in Felesky's memory to Nathan Adelson Hospice.

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