Former mayor of Henderson faces death with courage

A Feb. 25, 1995, doctor's report on former Henderson Mayor Cruz Olague grimly read: "Extensive metastatic disease" -- incurable, terminal prostate cancer.

Given three to five months to live, Olague -- the first Hispanic to be elected mayor of a Nevada city -- put his deep faith in God. A miracle occurred when a June 20, 1995, oncology test result read: "No bone metastasis." The cancer was gone.

"I can only attribute it to Jesus Christ," said the 65-year-old former Catholic, now a member of the Calvary Community Assembly of God Church. "I was lying in bed on morphine for the pain one minute. The next minute I knew I was going to be well. Everything that happens is God's will."

That's why when Cruz recently was diagnosed with myelodys plastic syndrome, a rare and terminal blood disease, he accepted his fate with dignity and courage. Doctors say he has less than six months to live. This time he believes they will be right.

"It's different this time, I can feel it," Cruz said. "But I don't want people feeling bad for me because I know where I am going and I know it's going to be a great place."

Dorothy Olague (pronounced O-log-ee), Cruz's wife of 23 years, also is deeply religious and accepts that soon Cruz will leave her.

"When Cruz got cancer, I prayed that he would get well," she said. "But this time I prayed by telling God that I would accept whatever His will is. After that a peace came over me. I don't know how people can deal with something like this if they don't have faith.

"We are not morbid about Cruz being terminal. We even joke about it. The other day I told him that because he is disabled, we get the best parking spots and that I am really going to miss them when he is gone."

Cruz Olague has led a remarkable life. As mayor of Henderson from 1973 to 1975, he was instrumental in pushing through the approval of the sale of a large parcel of land to late Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun for the development of Green Valley.

"When I drive through Green Valley today, I feel such great pride because I know I played a role in it being here," Olague said. "It was my proudest accomplishment as mayor."

Olague also was co-founder of the Nevada Association of Latin Americans and a candidate in this year's race for mayor of Las Vegas -- his first bid to hold public office in nearly a quarter of a century.

"I missed being in office tremendously," he said. "Every time there was an election over the years, I wanted to be a part of it."

But the late 1990s is a far different time than the early 1970s when Olague, then a bookkeeper in Nathan Adelson's Marketown grocery store in Henderson, won with a war chest of less than $3,000.

"I didn't have the money to win this time and there was no great unifying support from the Hispanic community as I thought there would be," Olague said. "However, Oscar Goodman was the best man for the job and the best man won."

In 1971 Henderson voters felt Olague was the best man to be city councilman. In the primary he got 53 percent of the vote and was awarded the post without going through the general election. Two years later he became mayor.

"I didn't realize it before I decided to run, but I was campaigning during the 12 years I was working at Marketown," Olague said.

"I got to meet nearly everyone in town. I let poor people buy food on credit and I bought shoes for children who came into the store barefooted in the winter because their parents did not have enough money to buy them shoes."

But Olague also admits that when he came to Las Vegas in 1957, after growing up in Winslow, Ariz., and spending four years in the Navy, he was nowhere near the mild-mannered man many Southern Nevadans came to know and love.

"Where I grew up we fought all the time, and we did not back down from fights," said Olague, the son of prizefighter Jesse Olague, who died when Cruz was 3 months old.

Olague says longtime Southern Nevada businessman and boxing judge Art Lurie "straightened me out" when Lurie was his boss at Marketown.

"Art took me aside and impressed upon me that it was wrong for me to do things like beat up the meat department manager for doing something wrong," Olague said.

"I encouraged Cruz to run for the Henderson City Council," Lurie, father of former Las Vegas Mayor Ron Lurie, said. "He really cared about the people. He cared about the issues and he thought he could make a difference."

And make a difference he did.

In his short time as mayor, Olague was a driving force behind moving the proposed U.S. 95 freeway expansion away from Boulder Highway south to its current location. He believed such a move would bring a large flow of traffic to a new part of Henderson that he had envisioned.

"I had never met Hank Greenspun, but I was a longtime reader of his Where I Stand column in the Sun, and I thought he had a great idea for the use of 5,000 acres to create Green Valley," Olague said.

Because of the addition of Green Valley and other developments, Henderson now is the state's third largest city.

"Cruz was a low-key but effective mayor of Henderson," said former two-term Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, publisher of the Henderson Home News and executive editor of the Sun. "He has successfully approached every challenge in life in the same quiet manner and has always had time to help others."

When Olague decided not to run for re-election in 1975, he moved to Las Vegas and worked many years as a corporate consultant for Greyhound Exposition Services, a company that builds displays for the major conventions in Las Vegas.

Longtime friend Al Ramirez, former local director of Manpower and a co-founder of NALA, said he admires Olague for being "a truthful person. He has led a straight life and he would do anything to help people get ahead."

Today the father of six, grandfather of 14 and great-grandfather of two, spends his precious remaining days in the company of his family and his three dogs and enjoying his northwest Las Vegas home.

"I suppose my one major regret was that I did not finish college and become a professional man," said Olague, who in the late 1950s attended Nevada Southern College, now UNLV. "I think I would have made a real good lawyer.

"But I haven't been dealt a bad hand at all. I've had a wonderful life and I look forward to my next one."

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