Wednesday, March 15, 2000 | 10:01 a.m.
Recently, Cruz Olague arrived late at the Calvary Community Assembly of God Church to talk to the congregation about his losing battle with a rare blood disease.
Olague, the former mayor of Henderson, took the pulpit and told his wife, Dorothy, who had arrived at the church earlier in the day, and about 400 other parishioners the reason for his tardiness.
"A good thing I'm dying or my wife would kill me because I just had an accident driving her car here," Olague said.
On a more spiritual note, Olague, a Southern Nevada resident of 43 years, told the faithful that he was not afraid to die because he was joyful that soon he would be with the Lord.
Cruz Olague, the first Hispanic to be elected mayor of a Nevada city and the driving force in convincing the Henderson City Council to approve the sale of 5,000 acres of city-owned land to late Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun for the development of Green Valley, died Monday. He was 66.
Services for the man who served as Henderson mayor from 1973 to 1975 and ran for mayor of Las Vegas last year, will be 2 p.m. Sunday at the Calvary Church at 2900 N. Torrey Pines Drive.
Olague, a co-founder of the Nevada Association of Latin Americans, first shared with Sun readers that he had a terminal illness in a story that ran last Nov. 6.
"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," he said. "My one regret is that I did not finish college and become a professional man. I think I would have made a real good lawyer."
Olague was a cancer survivor. Diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer in February 1995, Olague was given three months to live. However, a test that June revealed that the cancer had disappeared.
But last year, Olague (pronounced O-log-ee) was diagnosed with myelodys plastic syndrome, a rare and terminal blood disease. Doctors gave him six months to live.
"Cruz never once said why me?" said Dorothy, who described her husband of 23 years as "a totally unselfish man" who accepted his fate with great courage and dignity.
"When most people are told they are going to die, they go through denial and several other steps," she said. "Cruz went right to acceptance and lived each day to its fullest."
Friends remembered Olague as a man who constantly gave of himself to others.
"He was always doing things for people, helping them get housing or jobs," said longtime friend Al Ramirez, the former local director of Manpower and a co-founder of NALA. "If you were in need, Cruz would be there to listen to you."
Rudy Salazar, another longtime friend and past president of NALA, said: "Cruz had such a love for his fellow man. He urged people to do their best every day because any day could be their last. He was such a good man."
Olague told the Sun that pushing through the Green Valley project "was my proudest accomplishment as mayor."
"When I drive through Green Valley today, I feel such great pride because I know I played a role in it being here."
Olague was elected to the Henderson City Council with 53 percent of the vote in the 1971 primary, eliminating the need for a general election. Two years later he became mayor.
"Cruz was a low-key but effective mayor of Henderson," two-term Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, publisher of the Henderson Home News, said in the November story. "He has successfully approached every challenge in life in the same quiet manner."
On March 11, 1997, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., read into the Congressional Record: "Cruz Olague has spent his life tirelessly fighting on behalf of minorities, the elderly and the poor. He has used his abilities for those who often lack a voice in our society."
Born Feb. 26, 1934, in Winslow, Ariz., Olague was the eldest of three children of boxer Jesse Olague and the former Edwina Montanno. Jesse died when Cruz was 3 months old.
Cruz served four years in the Navy and came to Las Vegas in 1957, where he attended Nevada Southern University, now UNLV.
For 12 years Olague worked as manager at Marketown in Henderson, where he routinely let poor people buy food on credit. Olague often reached into his own pocket to buy shoes for the children of customers who could not afford such necessities.
When Olague decided not to run for re-election to the council in 1975, he moved to Las Vegas and worked for many years as a corporate consultant for Greyhound Exposition Services, the company that builds displays for major conventions in Las Vegas.
Olague recently gave a videotaped oral history to UNLV. That tape and other materials will be used in a book about NALA that is scheduled to be released Aug. 15.
In addition to his wife, Olague is survived by two sons, Jesse Olague and David Marsh, both of Las Vegas; four daughters, Toni Boveda, Dawn Conklin and Bethany Olague, all of Las Vegas, and Gail Ashworth of Toronto; a sister, Alice Armijo of Henderson; 12 grandchildren; and two great grandchildren.
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