Carmella Koch
Friday, May 14, 2021 | 6 p.m.
Carmella M. “Millie” Koch, Sam’s Town’s first Employee of the Month when the program was instituted in the early 1980s and the resort’s 1991 Employee of the Year, died today at a hospital in Pahrump. She was 94.
She was my mother and, though, she was proud of me being a newspaper man for six decades, she was always quick to quip, “So, when are you going to get a real job?”
The immediate cause of death was complications of old age.
Services for the Southern Nevada resident of 43 years will be private at the Veteran’s Cemetery in Boulder City in a crypt beside the cremains of her late husband, Edward B. Koch Sr., who died at age 90 on Veteran’s Day in 2019.
“She was a typical 1970s working mother who was always home for her two children when we came home from school,” said her daughter Susan Vess, also of Pahrump, who was at Mom’s side when she passed peacefully at 2:30 a.m.
Though my mother suffered through dementia in recent years, she readily recognized Susan during a Tuesday visit and repeatedly told her, “I love you.”
When I visited her recently on Mother’s Day, she slept from the medication she had received earlier in the day. When I took her hand and expressed my feelings she squeezed it several times in acknowledgement that she somehow understood.
My mother cherished her Italian heritage and loved the Boston Red Sox, having attended several games at Fenway Park from 1940-1977, and having had her heart broken in 1946, 1967, and 1975 when the Sox won the pennant but lost all three times in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
She attended games in the “Impossible Dream” 1967 season World Series.
She loved Ted Williams and Rico Petrocelli among her favorite players.
Though living thousands of miles away, she was elated when Boston won the World Series in 2004, 2013 and 2018. Each time she thanked God for letting her live so long to see it.
My mom was born Carmella Marie Didonato on Sept. 8, 1926, a few years after her mother and father arrived by ship from Italy.
She graduated from Boston Girls High School — no longer in existence — 1n 1942, at age 16. A whiz with numbers, she got a job that year at the prestigious stock firm of Charles A. Day. In her spare time, she wrote letters to sailors and soldiers overseas fighting in World War II. She also volunteered at the USO dances.
My mom also was gratified to have worked for Sam’s Town from 1979 to 1997, retiring at age 70. She was the counter attendant in the deli across from the sports book and poker room for many years.
She was Sam’s Town’s first Employee of the Month when the resort initiated that award. In 1991, at a gala at Sam’s Town she was awarded Employee of the Year.
For many years at her homes in Las Vegas, Boulder City and Henderson she displayed the oversized copy of the check in her living room. She also was awarded an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii, which she and my Dad took later that year.
In a postcard to me from Hawaii, she wrote upon her arrival, “Trip was great. Boeing 747 big sucker!”
In addition to Susan, and her husband Bob of Pahrump; and Edward Koch Jr., and his wife Rita of Las Vegas; she is survived by two granddaughters, Nikki Stoker, and her husband Ryan of Tucson, Ariz.; and Jenny and her husband Lane Lawson of New Braunfels, Texas, and four great grandchildren.
Ed Koch, a former longtime Sun news reporter and obit writer, wrote this for his mother, Carmella.
