Friday, March 5, 2004 | 11:57 a.m.
As Nevada's governor from 1971 through 1978, Mike O'Callaghan:
Mike O'Callaghan, a war hero who became one of the most influential Nevadans of the20th century during two terms as governor and 25 years as chairman of the Las Vegas Sun, died today. He was 74.
O'Callaghan suffered an apparent heart attack at St. Viator Catholic Church, 2461 E. Flamingo Road, where he regularly attended Mass before going to work. He was taken to Desert Springs Hospital where he died, Sun Editor and President Brian Greenspun said.
Services are pending for O'Callaghan, whose real first name was Donal. He adopted the name Mike as a young boxer in the amateur ranks because it fit better with his last name.
During his storied life, O'Callaghan worked many jobs, including rancher, ironworker, teacher, boxing coach, railroad worker, soldier, probation officer, state director of Health and Welfare and federal Job Corps official.
O'Callaghan, a Democrat, served as governor of Nevada from 1971 to 1978.
"The one big rap against me was that I was never able to hold down a job for very long," O'Callaghan said in the Sun's 50th anniversary issue on July 2, 2000. "The years I spent as governor and those I have spent at the Sun are the longest at any job I've had.
"But I never had a job I didn't like. My success as a teacher is seen in any of my students you talk to. I felt I made a lot of progress as governor. I feel a lot of satisfaction when I come here to work every day."
One of those students was Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who holds the No. 2 position in the Senate Democratic leadership.
"He has been my inspiration since I was 16 years old and it's never changed in all those many years," Reid said. "I cannot describe my love for the man. He just has been my friend."
O'Callaghan taught Reid at Basic High School.
"He taught me how to fight, to box," Reid said. He also arranged scholarships for Reid for college and law school. "When I came back to take the bar exam, he met me at the airport with a $50 bill. I'd never seen one before."
Reid served as lieutenant governor for O'Callaghan.
The two talked to each other often, sometimes twice a day, Reid said, telling jokes, sharing family stories, talking about the war and other experiences. They last talked Wednesday night.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., first met O'Callaghan when she was an 18-year-old student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
"Of all the giants in the state of Nevada, he was head and shoulders above them all," Berkley said. "I've never known a finer man in my life.
"He was my mentor since I was student body president at UNLV. For whatever reasons, Mike O'Callaghan saw something in me that I didn't see in myself."
Berkley served in his administration as the deputy director of the state Commerce Department.
Flags at the Capitol in Carson City were at half staff. A congressional subcommittee hearing in Las Vegas this morning started with a moment of silence, and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman opened the City Council's special meeting by memorializing O'Callaghan.
"Anybody he touched will not forget him," Goodman said.
U.S. District Senior Judge Lloyd George said that he had been planning to go out to lunch with O'Callaghan and the two men's sons.
"I had great affection for Mike," George said. "He was always honest and bright and he treated everyone the same.
"He always had time for everyone."
When told of O'Callaghan's assistance to a Las Vegas resident and Vietnam veteran who needed help getting federal disability pay, George commented, "there must be thousands of people out there that he has helped over the years."
George said he remembered O'Callaghan as always being supportive of the community and as a very competent leader.
"I just couldn't see any wrong in him," George said. "He could have been governor for as long as he wanted, and if he wanted to I think he could have become a senator."
Jim and Betty Rozzi were at church for the 6:45 Mass this morning when O'Callaghan strode down the aisle to take his usual seat in the pew in front of them.
"He said, 'Morning, Jim,' and I said, 'Morning, Governor,' and he tapped me on the shoulder like he always does," Jim Rozzi said.
O'Callaghan suffered his apparent heart attack before Mass started.
That O'Callaghan would be stricken with an apparent heart attack in church left Rozzi, 86, pondering God's message.
"Isn't that something, that he would be taken that way," said Rozzi, his voice breaking into sobs. "The good Lord wanted him to pass away at church, he needed him back. It's a shame, a terrible shame. Everybody loved him."
The Rev. Richard Rinn, pastor at St. Viator, was working in his office this morning when he heard ambulance sirens come to a stop. He ran quickly into the church and found paramedics and parish members working frantically to revive O'Callaghan.
Rinn said he had the opportunity to anoint O'Callaghan before following the paramedics to Desert Springs Hospital.
"I told the O'Callaghan family, he's at home with God, and we're stuck with the tears," Rinn said. "He was the governor, but he was also your friend."
Bill Bible, president of the Nevada Resort Association, said he was "just dumbstruck."
"This is the passing of a giant in Nevada politics," he said.
Bible, a former Gaming Control Board chairman, said O'Callaghan gave him his first job in state government when he hired him as his deputy budget director in 1971.
"Working for him was a true joy," Bible said. "He set the standard as to how a governor should conduct himself. He always had compassion for the little guy and the people who are less fortunate."
Gov. Kenny Guinn said, "Nevada has lost a treasure today. I lost a friend and a role model."
Former Assembly Speaker Joe Dini, D-Yerington, said, "Mike was the best governor we ever had." He was tough but he was a "people governor. I enjoyed serving with him."
O'Callaghan pushed through an equal rights bill for housing and was a strong advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment.
O'Callaghan was a highly decorated soldier and was often honored for his community activities. As a soldier he was awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star with a V for valor and the Silver Star.
In the Korean War, O'Callaghan lost his left leg in battle. A humanitarian, O'Callaghan often visited local hospitals to talk to recent amputees.
Once, to a teenager who had lost a leg in an auto accident, O'Callaghan showed the boy his prosthetic limb and said: "This never stopped me from doing anything I wanted in life. Don't let it stop you from pursuing your dreams," according to a story published in the Sun's 50th anniversary issue.
"Even on one leg, Mike O'Callaghan stood heads and shoulders of other men," Sun Publisher Barbara Greenspun said. "He was a very dear man. I will miss him terribly."
A local junior high school and the federal hospital at Nellis Air Force Base are named for him.
But O'Callaghan long maintained that "Perhaps the greatest honor I ever received happened thousands of miles from here when the regimental rifle range in Korea was named for me."
O'Callaghan served in three military branches -- the Marine Corps as part of the post-World War II occupation forces, the Air Force as an intelligence specialist and as an enlisted man in the Army during the Korean War.
When he was governor, critics labeled O'Callaghan as a liberal because he strongly believed that after prisoners paid their debts to society, companies should hire them and give them a chance to turn around their lives. But O'Callaghan was quick to note he also was the governor who brought the death penalty back to Nevada.
In 1957, O'Callaghan, a teacher and boxing coach at Basic High School, met late Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun. After two terms as governor, O'Callaghan could have written his ticket anywhere. But when Greenspun came to him with a lower-paying job, O'Callaghan took it.
"I had refused to take any job in gaming, I didn't want to go to Washington," O'Callaghan once said. "I had experience writing a sports column for the Henderson Home News and I had written for the Foreign Service Courier. I liked writing and (liked) Hank."
At age 49, O'Callaghan became a newspaperman. He always said he made the right career move.
Born Sept. 10, 1929, in LaCrosse, Wis., O'Callaghan during the Depression attended a one-room schoolhouse where his mother taught.
He joined the Marines at age 16, was discharged as a sergeant in 1948 and returned home, where he graduated from high school in Winona, Minn.
After working as an ironworker and serving in the Marine Corps reserve from 1948 to 1950, O'Callaghan joined the Air Force as an intelligence operator and was assigned to the Aleutian Islands. In 1952, he joined the Army infantry.
Among his honors was the U.S. Air Force Exceptional Service Award for Meritorious Service.
After his military career, O'Callaghan attended the University of Idaho and in 1956 was among its top 10 graduates. A member of the University of Idaho Hall of Fame, O'Callaghan received honorary doctorates and the St. Martin's College Martin of Tours Medal.
O'Callaghan did post-graduate studies in economics at Georgetown University, Claremont Graduate School, Colorado State at Greeley and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
O'Callaghan taught high school economics and history for five years before serving as Las Vegas' chief probation officer, from 1961 to 1962, and the first director of Nevada Health and Welfare from 1963 to 1964.
O'Callaghan went to Washington, D.C., to serve as Job Corps Conservation Centers Program management director from 1964 to 1966. He also was regional director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness for Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and the Pacific Trust Territory from 1967 to 1969.
As governor, he was Western Governors Conference chairman twice. He headed a committee to develop the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In addition to writing columns for the Sun, O'Callaghan also was longtime publisher of the Henderson Home News, now published by two of his children.
As part of his Sun duties -- or at the request of U.S. presidents -- O'Callaghan went to history-making places to lend a hand, often under difficult circumstances.
In February 1990, O'Callaghan went to Nicaragua to monitor the elections that brought down the Sandinistas' government and ushered in democracy to that nation.
He returned many times over the years to assist the Miskito Indians of that nation, bringing baseball equipment to the children.
O'Callaghan often visited Israel and volunteered to work in the country several times. He was a strong supporter of Israel and was recently recognized by the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas for his work. He was a member of Sar-El and made more than a dozen visits to Israel since 1985.
He was also called on several times by the U.S. government, including recently, to serve on panels dealing with military affairs. He was part of a panel that investigated an alleged massacre at No Gun Ri during the Korean War, and he was recently appointed to a panel to study federal compensation of veterans.
Internationally, O'Callaghan was a member of the Carter Center's Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government, where he was an observer for the registration of voters, campaign and election in Nicaragua in 1996.
Shelly McConnell, senior associate director of the Americas program at the Carter Center in Atlanta, had worked with O'Callaghan on numerous occasions.
McConnell said O'Callaghan had become interested in the elections because of work he was already doing with an orphanage in Nicaragua.
"He took a personal interest in the orphanage and trying to get them some financial resources," McConnell, who had spoken with O'Callaghan last week, said. "He always struck me as a very caring human being, who always insisted on high standards and fair play in the elections he observed."
O'Callaghan also was an observer of Kurdish elections in northern Iraq for the National Endowment for Democracy and Iraq Foundation in 1992.
As a civic leader, O'Callaghan served at different times as president of the Golden Nugget Scholarship Fund and the Nevada Gaming Foundation for Education Excellence and as a board member of the Board of Visitors of the USAF Academy, the National Judicial College and the Nevada State Press Association, where he was past president.
Mike O'Callaghan Junior High School was named for him in 1992 and the Mike O'Callaghan Federal Hospital in 1996. A park in Henderson also is named for him.
Among his many awards are the 1994 International Communication Service Award from the Republic of China, the 1987 Anti-Defamation Award, the 1989 Nevada Judges Association Award and the U.S. Department of Defense Outstanding Public Service Award.
O'Callaghan also was selected by Time magazine in 1974 as one of 200 promising young Americans.
As a newsman, O'Callaghan saw government as a necessary tool for our society to survive. In his columns, O'Callaghan was tough on politicians who didn't meet the high standard of public service that he helped set.
"I never attack individuals -- I take issue with what they do," he said in 2000. "I don't see anyone as being really evil. But I see mistakes being made and I write about them."
O'Callaghan is survived by his wife, Carolyn (Randall) O'Callaghan; five children, Michael, Colleen, Teresa, Brian and Tim; and 15 grandchildren.
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