Las Vegas renames two city parks to honor community leaders

By Dave Toplikar

Thursday, May 17, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Two Las Vegas city parks were renamed Wednesday to honor longtime community leaders.

The Las Vegas City Council decided to rename Freedom Park, located a 850 N. Mojave Road, as Gary Reese Freedom Park. And the council renamed Doolittle Park, 951 W. Lake Mead Boulevard, as the Kiango Isoke Palacio Park at Doolittle Complex.

Freedom Park, which was originally constructed in 1972 and named for those who have served in the military, was given its new name to honor former Las Vegas Mayor Pro Tem Gary Reese.

Reese retired from public office last summer after having served 16 years as a city councilman for Ward 3, where the park is located. Community members canvassed the neighborhood around the park and collected 1,500 signatures in favor of the name change. The city’s Parks and recreation Advisory Commission recommended the name change at its May 1 meeting.

Doolittle Park, constructed in 1965, was named after James Harold Doolittle Sr., an Air Force General and an aviation pioneer. He was also a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading the first carrier-based bomber attack on Japan in 1942. His family donated the land where the current center, senior center and park are located.

The names of the Doolittle community center and senior center were not changed. However, at the May 1 Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission meeting, a new name for the park was recommended to honor Palacio, who was very influential person in the West Las Vegas community.

Palacio co-founded S.I.S.T.A’s (Sisters in Society Taking Action), a mentoring and Rites of Passage program for girls base out of the West Las Vegas Arts Center. Palacio died in 2009 after a three- year battle with breast cancer.

Along with those two renamings Wednesday, the city council decided April 4 to rename the Justice Myron E. Leavitt Family Park, located at 2100 East St. Louis Ave., to Justice Myron E. Leavitt and Jaycee Community Park.

That park, construction in 1966, was named after the Jaycees, or Junior Chamber of Commerce, organization. Over the years, the Jaycees’s disbanded in Las Vegas. The park had been renamed after Justice Leavitt in, a lawyer, judge and chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court, who frequently visited the park, where he also coached football and other sports.

However, at the March 6 Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission meeting, the commission decided to bring back the Jaycees name to the park because they were very instrumental at getting the park built.