Rollan Melton Oral History

Rollan Melton Oral History

Rollan Melton Oral History

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

October 6, 1992

Analog Cassette Tape, .docx File, Mp3 Audio

English

Audio Cassette

1:00:50, 57:17

CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM & ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

an interview with

ROLLAN MELTON

October 6, 1992

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewer and interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Churchill County Museum or any of its employees.

This interview was conducted by Marian LaVoy; transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norine Arciniega and Rollan Melton; final typed by Pat Baden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myr] Nygren, Director of Oral History Project/Assistant Curator Churchill County Museum,

PREFACE

Low-key, sincere, wonderful sense of humor, generous, ever-observant, loving; each word or phrase describes Rollan Melton-Nevada's state treasure. Rollan arrived at my home, stepped from his car to walk across the lawn to shake hands and chat with my husband, John. He patiently underwent the boisterous greeting of my huge airedale dog, walked into the house, sipped a cup of coffee and sat at my dining room table to record his oral history, and a fascinating and inspiring story unfolded.

Rollan converses with and touches the lives of famous people as well as little-known common men. He can move from a white-tie and tails dinner at the White House where he guides Ginger Rogers through the "Fallon two-step," to the small town of Fallon where he walks the back streets by himself looking for the houses where he lived as a poor teenager or where he visited a teacher or classmate. He can dial his phone and talk to a Wall Street executive, or he can call and console an elderly and infirm person that was kind to him as a boy.

He talks about his first "real" job that paid the whole sum of fifty cents an hour with the same enthusiasm that he discusses his year as a senior vice-president of the huge Gannett Corporation. Why? Because he is talking about his love of journalism--a love that still produces three eagerly read columns each week. The researcher who reads this oral history will find a wealth of material on a very talented man who cares for his fellow man and never ceases to be amazed at his phenomenal life and success.

Interview with Rollan Melton

LaVOY:  This is Marian Hennen LaVoy of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project interviewing Rollan Melton, columnist, editor and newspaper executive at her [LaVoy’s] home 4325 Schurz Highway, Fallon. The date is October 6, 1992. Good morning, Rollan.

MELTON: Good morning, Marian.

LaVOY:  What a pleasure it is to have you here finally for this interview. We'll get right started. Tell me, where and when were you born?

MELTON: I was born in Boise, Idaho on July 24, 1931.

LaVOY: Tell me the name of your father.

MELTON: Rollan Melton.

LaVOY:  And where was he born?

MELTON: He was born in Boise also, on March 23, 1909.

LaVOY:  And your mother?

MELTON: My mother was born at New London, Iowa, on March 31, 1912.

LaVOY:  And what was her maiden name?

MELTON: Williamson.

LaVOY:  Her first name?

MELTON: Beulah.

LaVOY:  How did they meet?

MELTON: My mother came with her mother, who was a single parent to Boise in probably the late 1920's, and my folks met at a dance. My mother would have been, I believe, eighteen when they were married. They were married in 1929

LaVOY:  And shortly after- well, when were you born?

MELTON: July 24, 1931.

LaVOY:  And where?

MELTON: Boise, Idaho.

LaVOY:  Your sister arrived soon after, and what was her name and her birthday?

MELTON: Bronna Melton, and my sister was born September 26, 1932.

LaVOY:  Why did they decide to come to Fallon?

MELTON: My folks were divorced when I was four and my sister was barely three, so it was kind of tough. My mother had to go to work and find a job. It was during the Depression, so she worked mostly cleaning homes and restaurant work around Boise area and a little place called Emmett, Idaho, and other small towns. Hermiston, Oregon. My sister and I moved with my mother. My sister always stayed with my mother, but I kind of moved around with different relatives, grandparents, my father, my mother, friends. So by the time I was graduated from the eighth grade, I'd gone to eighteen grammar schools in two states, so I was a fairly nomadic child without many roots. In the meantime, my mother couldn't find work in Boise as the forties arrived. Her mother and her stepfather had moved to Babbitt, Nevada, and he was employed at the military depot out there, and so my mother thought, "Well, I'll join my mother and stepfather in Nevada." So she came to Babbitt, and then she wound up here in Fallon where she found work in the cafes and the restaurants as a server.

LaVOY:  Regressing just a bit, what were the names of your grandparents?

MELTON: On my paternal side it was Isabelle and John Melton. However, divorce is epidemic in this family. They didn't stay together too long. They had to stay together long enough to have six children, my father being the last born. My mother's people were Daisy and… I’m going to have to think on my maternal grandfather’s first name [Hugh] Williamson. They were also divorced. He took off on one dark night and never reappeared until decades later. So, as I say, divorce was a big problem in this family.

LaVOY:  When you came to Fallon, where did you live?

MELTON: Let me count the places here. (laughing) The first place was on LaVerne Street. I think it was an eightplex. As a matter of fact, not long ago I was here for a press convention. I walked the town, and it's still there. That's where we lived--my mother, my sister, and I. And we're talking the summer of 1945.

LaVOY:  I noticed that you stayed only three months in 1945 and then you left and returned about nine months later. Where did you go during that period of time?

MELTON: I entered high school here in September of 1945. The War had just ended--World War II--and I was six weeks into my freshman year. My mother found it was very difficult economically to support both my sister and me, and so it was decided that I should return to my father who then lived in Bend, Oregon. So, after six weeks at Fallon High School, I Left and went to Bend and re-entered the high school there and went nine weeks. Then my father, who was a baker, decided he would move to Boise, Idaho, so I moved to a third city in my freshman year and decided that school wasn't for me. I decided I'd just drop out, not go anymore, being a wise, young punk thinking I could get along without an education, so I laid out of school for possibly fourteen weeks. Then my father moved again--this was all in my freshman year--to Twin Falls, Idaho. Then, by coincidence, my mother's mother lived in Twin Falls at the time, and she learned that I hadn't been going to high school, so she raised eighteen kinds of hell and said, "You've got to get this kid back in school." I re-entered school probably at the eleventh hour of my freshman year at Twin Falls, but they said I just hadn't been to school long enough to merit passing on to the sophomore year, so I flunked the grade. I just couldn't cut it. Then in the summer of 1946, my mother was kind of on her feet, had steady work in Fallon restaurants and so she sent for me, and I returned to Fallon for a second and the last time. I was here to stay at last, and so at that point I just went all the way through school. Up until that time I'd never gone to one school more than one year--consecutive years. So Fallon was my first permanent roots and my first lifetime friends and my first opportunity to really get acquainted with my school mates and everything.

LaVOY:  What school did you attend in Fallon?

MELTON: Only one. Churchill County High School.

LaVOY:  Tell me something about the school.

MELTON: It was a fantastic experience with great young people, a great faculty, great role models. Let me talk first about some of the teachers and the administrators. Anne Gibbs Berlin I'd put at the top as far as a role model--somebody to really look up to and someone who genuinely cared about all of us.

LaVOY:  Is that what made her so special--her caring?

MELTON: Yeah, she's just like radar. She's goes right into the mind and she can relate to youngsters' needs and she was very smart. She didn't do it for you. She just inspired you and made you believe that all things were possible if you worked hard enough.

LaVOY:  And the subjects she taught?

MELTON: She was an English teacher, and I had four years of English. She also gave me my first experience in journalism. Anne was the advisor to the Greenwave Flash. That was our little school newspaper. And she was also the advisor to the Lahonton, the school yearbook. So I took journalism, I think, as a sophomore in high school because I heard it was easy. It was something I could crack, not knowing that if you really applied yourself you're going to work hard and learn a lot of things, but I didn't know that then. Let me get on with some of the others. Hattie Brown was a Spanish teacher. Marvelous teacher. Jenny Johns, educated at the University of Nevada, taught here at Fallon those years. Wilma Woodburn was a wonderful history teacher. Byrd Sawyer, the wife of Dr. Harry Sawyer and the stepmother of future Governor Grant Sawyer, was just a fantastic teacher. If we had teachers like this in every place and every school in America, we wouldn't be singing the blues about education problems. The principal was Wallace S. Smith, Pat Smith. He was just a great guy. The most influential male role model that I had on the high school faculty was Wes Goodner, the football coach and vice-principal. Wes was and is a tremendous person. He now lives in Daytona Beach, Florida, and I see him, probably, every two or three years. He and his wife, Helen, befriended me early on. I remember one time Wes called me over to his house, and he said, "I've got these old clothes that just don't fit me anymore, and they're ragtag clothes. I got these shoes." Well, he knew that I was just really bereft of any good clothes, and I remember he gave me two pairs of shoes. He had described them to me beforehand as worn out and impossible, but they looked to me like brand new shoes, and gave two suits, and a pair of slacks. This guy was really a benefactor.

LaVOY:  There were caring people then.

MELTON: Yeah, and, in addition, this man was a fantastic football coach. He had been a great football star, an all-America type end at the University of Nevada where he played with Marion Motley, the greatest of Nevada football players, and Wes was just a tremendous factor in my life. I should interject here that these Fallon years--we're talking 1945 to really 1953 because even after I went to the University I still came back in the summer. Even after I was married, a young married person, I would come back and see my friends, and I worked on the Fallon Standard part time. Even while I was in college I'd come home on weekends. This was the most significant period of my life. Even though I was young, I was impressionable and I needed positive role models, and I got them.

LaVOY:  You certainly had to work while you were going to school. Where did you work?

MELTON: I did riot work as a freshman, but, when I was a sophomore taking that journalism class from Anne Gibbs Berlin, Claude H. Smith, co-owner of the Fallon Standard, a weekly newspaper, came to our class to speak. I've often thought as most probably do, "What is the most significant single day of your life?" and I would say that was the day Mr. Smith came to speak to our class. I was sixteen years old, and it was on an April day in 1948, and there were eight of us in the class. There were seven girls and myself. As I said earlier, I was taking the class 'cause I thought it was easy and it was something I could pass. In those years I looked for easy things that I could slide by on. But I was very interested in what Mr. Smith said to us that day. He talked about what the newspaper business was like--you get a chance to meet people and learn new things. Even though I was very shy at that time—it was hard for me to look anybody in the eye, never speak up in class, never ask a question--for some reason, on that day I asked a couple, three questions. What I did not know and why that day was so significant is that Mr. Smith and his colleagues at the Fallon Standard were looking for a young boy to work at the paper part time, clean up, sweep up, run the presses.          So, Mr. Smith, a few weeks later, sent his chief aide, Ken Ingram, back to the high school to talk to the vice-principal, Wes Goodner, and the question was, Who was that young man in journalism class and would that young man be interested in a fifty cent an hour job on the Fallon Standard?" Mr. Ingram was in Wes Goodner's office, and Wes called me into the office. I was scared to death 'cause I figured I'd done something wrong and I'd probably be expelled. So I met Ken for the first time, and as of this moment I've known him since 1948, so we're talking forty-four years. Big, big role model. Anyway, Mr. Ingram asked if I was interested in this job, and I said, "Gosh, yes!" Fifty cents an hour was a big deal, so I went to work at the Standard in May of 1948, and this began my career in journalism. It's just been an exciting voyage, but it all started sort of by accident. I was swept up in the euphoria of working around a newspaper. It so happened that even though it was a small weekly with a subscription list of possibly nine hundred people-pretty small--it was staffed by extraordinary people with compassion and ethics and all the things that you want in role models and that a young person ought to have. There was Ethel Smith and Claude Smith, husband and wife. They were just like my mother and father. There was Ken Ingram who was like a slightly older brother. Tom Lusk was one of our great printers. Richard Pedersen was an old time, old line printer who came out of Minnesota and wound up in Nevada. In those years we were on what we called hot metal, so we had linotype operators, and Ida Gibson was our linotype operator. Swift, accurate, great. We used high school girls to fold the papers. This was a manually-fed flatbed press, which I wound up running for three, four, five years. These girls would come in on Monday evenings when I was running these papers off, and they'd fold the papers, so it was a professional organization, but it was peopled by high school kids to a degree.

LaVOY:  What did you think was Claude Smith's philosophy as a newspaper man?

MELTON: Mr. Smith believed that nothing succeeded like telling the truth. He believed in local news. The Fallon Standard used no boiler plate. No stuff from other communities or states. It was strictly Churchill County commentary. He had a passion for telling the people what was happening in their community and inviting them to comment through letters to the editor. Even though he had a small newspaper under his command, he was very influential in political ways, and the state political leaders sought his judgment, curried favor hoping that he would back them up in the elections. He was a terrific writer, and he had no fear of anything. He just pursued the truth, and he let people who worked for him do their work. He didn't interfere. He was a good delegator. Mrs. Smith sort of handled the business operations, and she wrote what we call personal items, little tidbits about people in the community. That kind of writing never wins any Pulitzer prizes, but it's very important. It's sort of the bread and butter of good stable newspapers. Tremendous lady.

LaVOY:  You mentioned that political people tried to curry his favor. In doing my research, I came across a wonderful article about you and your first meeting with [Senator] Pat [Patrick] McCarran [in 1948]. Would you please tell us about that?

MELTON: Senator McCarran was a U.S. senator and powerful guy-the author of the McCarran Immigration Act--and he periodically came through town. The reference to my first meeting probably would have been about 1949. Senator McCarran dropped in the office, sort of unannounced, and I remember that he had a blue suit on. Very dapper. Stocky man, but very well clothed, very well groomed. He had a shock of white hair, and he just had a great presence about him. I was working out in the composing room, and I looked up and there he was talking to Mr. Smith up in the front office. I was, as I said earlier, very shy and it was hard for me to meet people, especially celebrities like this.           I'd rather be caught dead than to be confronted with the need to talk to anybody like this. But I had to leave the composing area and walk through the office to get downstairs where we had another work area and so, sure enough, Mr. Smith stopped me and introduced me to Senator McCarran. He was very gracious, and so it was one of those days that you always remember.

LaVOY:  That's very interesting. I know that you read all of the Nevada papers, probably daily. Do you think that the present-day Nevada newspapers are as community oriented as the Fallon Standard was?

MELTON: Not all of them are, but I think by and large they're mostly committed to community coverage. They realize that that's the reason why they exist. If you don't give readers a good agenda about what's happening in their own home town, there's no reason for you to survive because if you don't do it, somebody else is going to come in and do it for you. The dailies serve another audience and another need, but in a small community nobody can serve as well as a weekly newspaper. There's another factor that I'd like to mention, and that is that we had intense competition in Fallon among newspapers in those years. We had on the one hand the Fallon Standard and on the other hand the rival Fallon Eagle, also a weekly. These papers were owned by different families, and they were intensely competitive. The competition boiled to bad tempers, ill will, but it all prospered the reader because both newspapers were intently committed to doing a good job for readers and advertisers. The Eagle was owned by the Williams' family, and Bob Sanford who later became a great newspaper person over in Yerington was the editor of the Fallon Eagle.

LaVOY:  Where was the Fallon Eagle located?

MELTON: It was in a building that still stands to this day. It was near the corner of Williams Avenue and Maine Street. It would be about a block west of the court house. It's in a brick building on the south side of the street. [42 East Williams Avenue]

LaVOY:  And where was the Fallon Standard located?

MELTON: The Fallon Standard was near the corner of West Center Street and Maine Street, and the building still stands. It's a sturdy old brick building with a basement and an upper level, and it's occupied by a Basque restaurant at this time. [60 West Center Street]

LaVOY:  Called the Wool Growers.

MELTON: The Wool Growers restaurant. I had lunch there a few years ago, and it brought back some tremendous memories, all good. Matter of fact, ironically, several years ago before whoever owns the building now, bought the building, a real estate person in Fallon called me, asked me if I'd be interested in buying the building for old times’ sake. Well, I would love to have had it for old times’ sake and for other reasons, investment reasons, but I was a little short on cash at the time, so I was unable . . . But I was interested.

LaVOY:  That sounds very, very interesting. Regressing just a little bit, I'd like to have you tell me about your high school graduation and what was your reaction when you heard that you had won the Harolds Club scholarship?

MELTON: I was graduated in the early June of 1950, and about six weeks before graduation I was informed that I'd won the scholarship. It was the biggest scholarship in the state and certainly the biggest in Fallon High School.

LaVOY:  Tell me how much it was.

MELTON: It was four thousand dollars. It was given by the Smith family which owned Harolds Club. Today's reader or person might think four thousand is a pretty paltry sum because we've had a lot of inflation since then, but I had an economics person at UNR do a computation of what that four thousand would translate to. They figured in the early 1990's it would be worth about between thirty five and forty thousand right now. In those years it was a full ride, room, board, books, tuition. I remember my freshman year at the University of Nevada my total cost was $950, something like that. 'Course I got married when I was a junior, so that weighted my needs quite a bit.

LaVOY:  Did you get to know Mr. Smith in later years?

MELTON: I did. I did.

LaVOY:  Was this Harold Smith?

MELTON: No, it was Raymond I. Smith, Pappy Smith, who had founded the Harolds Club back in the thirties. I'll come back and respond to your questions about what did I feel like. There were eight candidates for the scholarship, and I prevailed. The faculty voted on who would get this year after year in Fallon. You'll never know quite why any vote goes your way, but I later learned that one faculty person voted against me and all the others went for me, so that was pretty good. (laughing) Pretty good margin. I've never won any election by such a commanding margin since then.

LaVOY:  Well, I'm certain you deserved it.

MELTON: I remember I learned about winning it when I was working at the Standard one afternoon, and Charlotte Sanford, one of my beloved teachers at Fallon High School, was the one that came to tell me. I was running the press at the time. I immediately stopped the press, got the news from Charlotte Sanford, and ran to my house which was about one and a half blocks away-we lived on center Street--told my mom about it, and she was floored. This was revolutionary, pivotal thing. By that time I was eighteen years old. I'd decided I would go on to college. I would major in journalism. I loved it so much, and I was counting on a football scholarship, possibly at the University of Oregon. I had communicated with a coach there, but this was too good to pass. It meant that I would be able to stay in Nevada. It was a guaranteed deal.

LaVOY:  So then you worked for the newspaper the rest of the summer and then started at the University in the fall.

MELTON: I enrolled at the University of Nevada in Reno in September, 1950.

LaVOY:  Where did you live?

MELTON: I lived in the University dormitory called Hartman Hall. I had been cautioned before enrolling by my friend Ken Ingram of the Standard not to pledge a fraternity too quickly, to make up my mind and be deliberative, and so I heeded his advice. I was hotly recruited by fraternities but decided I would wait a while, so I moved right into Hartman Hall. I lived there a year and a half.

LaVOY:  Now, Rollan, I'm trying to remember where Hartman Hall was.

MELTON: Hartman Hall was on a kind of a bluff overlooking what was then Mackay Stadium where we played football. It is now the site of the ROTC headquarters on the campus. It was a converted army barracks, and it possibly had maybe thirty little apartments. You roomed two men to an apartment. It was not a coeducational dormitory, all males.

LaVOY:  Who was your roommate?

MELTON: He was from Las Vegas. His first name is Paul, and his last name escapes me.

LaVOY:  What courses did you take at the University?

MELTON: I decided to go full blast into journalism, and I . . initially you don't take too much journalism in the early years, but I just took a general course--arts and science liberal education. Took me five years to get out and a summer session, but that was no problem.

LaVOY:  Well, certainly, you knew old Prof A.L. Higginbotham?

MELTON: Alfred Leslie Higginbotham was a very significant person in my life. He was chairman of the journalism department. It was not then a school. It was a two-person faculty. Keiste Janulis was the other instructor, and in tandem they were a real good team. Professor Higginbotham had founded journalism at Nevada on the Nevada campus years before, and he produced some tremendously successful young men and women. Sent them off into the newspaper business.

LaVOY:  That's very commendable. Did you play sports there?

MELTON: Yeah, I did. I carried my love of football from Fallon High School right into University. Signed up as a freshman, played freshman football. [End of tape 1 side A] I was fortunate to get a football scholarship. It was awarded to me by the coach at Nevada, Joe Shekeetski. Joe Shekeetski had been an undergraduate football star at Notre Dame under Knute Rockne and Joe later coached at Holy Cross University and then came out to Nevada to coach in 1946. He was an offensive minded coach and had a good football mind. He built some powerhouse teams in the late forties in Nevada, especially in 1948. Nevada dropped its big time football program in June, 1951, and so all the people who had scholarships lost them. So we were without an organized football program in the season of 1951, but we resumed organized play in 1952 and went into the Far Western Conference. I played four seasons at Nevada and made lifetime friends.

LaVOY:  What position did you play?

MELTON: I was an offensive center and a defensive nose guard. I should mention Jake Lawlor was a great friend and great coach. He succeeded Shekeetski after we resumed football after that one year, and Jake became a great role model for all of us and a great friend of mine. In later years when I was sports editor of the Reno  Evening Gazette I would cover Jake's teams. So he was always a great source for me.

LaVOY:  You've always had a very fine voice, Rollan. Did you sing with any vocal groups at the University at that time?

MELTON: Yes, I did. I joined the Theta Chi fraternity as a junior, and I sang on their song teams for a couple of years. I had done a few things at high school assemblies in Fallon, and then I continued my interest in music and in singing, especially, at Nevada, and entertained at assemblies a few times.

LaVOY:  What about in 1952, you fell in love? Tell me your girlfriend's name?

MELTON: Marilyn Royle was an art major and we met and she invited me to a Tri Delt [Delta Delta Delta] dance, and I liked her instantly and respected her, and so we started dating.

LaVOY:  Where did you go on some of your dates?

MELTON: That first date was at a Tri Delt shipwreck dance. Then it was the usual movies and lunch, dinner, but mostly campus events. We'd go to dances--fraternity or sorority events. Marilyn, I remember, was the chairman of a World University Service carnival. It was a fund raiser, and so I sort of hung around the fringes of that watching her do her magic. Wonderful person.

LaVOY:  Rollan, you eloped with Marilyn March 25, 1953, to Minden. Tell me about that.

MELTON: Marilyn's folks didn't want us to get married--Bill and Dorothy Royle--while we were still in school. They wanted us to get our degrees, and I thought that was a rather unreasonable request at that time.

LaVOY:  You were a young man in love!

MELTON: Yeah. Later when you have your own kids, you can understand how much wisdom they had and experience, But anyway, we decided we'd go ahead and get married. So we married on the date, and we stayed initially at her folks' house, and then we moved to University housing at the campus--Victory Heights it was called.

LaVOY:  Getting back to this elopement, where did you honeymoon?

MELTON: We didn't honeymoon. (laughing) In fact, we were so broke, we had to break into her piggy bank to buy a ring. I think the ring cost about twelve dollars. It was a gold wedding band which we bought at a hock shop on Virginia Street.

LaVOY:  I think that's wonderful!

MELTON: In those years elopement occasionally was done, and I guess the critics all said this was a marriage that wouldn't last. Right now we're heading for our fortieth anniversary. It's been a marvelous…

LaVOY:  Who married you in Minden?

MELTON: We were married by Bert Selkirk, and there's an irony here, Marian. Bert Selkirk was not only the Justice of the Peace in Douglas County, but he also owned the Gardnerville Record Courier, so I've always been pleased to tell people I was married by a newspaper man. (laughing)

LaVOY:  That's a wonderful story.

MELTON: I wasn't thinking about it at that time. And there's another thing, a funny thing. Years later we were having an anniversary and we were out to dinner, and I said, "Marilyn, what do you remember most about the wedding ceremony in Mr. Selkirk's house in Minden?" She said, "I remember that he was wearing bedroom slippers." (laughing) We took our best friends with us to be our witnesses. Sue Casey was Marilyn's Tri Delt friend, and Bill Griggs and I were on the boxing team at Nevada, so there was Mr. Griggs, Miss Casey, and Marilyn and me and Bert Selkirk and his wife. There were six of us there.

LaVOY:  And his bedroom slippers.

MELTON: And his bedroom slippers. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture. You don't think of all these things when you're young, and unfortunately we did not get a photograph.

LaVOY:  Knowing Dorothy and Bill Royle, what was your reception when you told them that you had married?

MELTON: They were very upset. I think the mother was a lot more upset. She was jarred by this. I remember she said I deprived her daughter of a church wedding. In later years she relaxed on that and felt that it was probably a lot less expensive to do it the way we did it. (laughing) Although Bill was filled with trepidation--whenever your daughter marries somebody you want it to be a good marriage. He probably didn't know me that well, but he was very acceptive of me and always was my great friend, as Dorothy has been, too. Wonderful people-became like my parents. Earlier I said that Claude and Ethel Smith were like my parents, well Dorothy and Bill became even more so, so I just was sort of adopted by these people. Marriage to Marilyn was just the most significant thing in my life overall, without a doubt.

LaVOY:  That's wonderful. Where did you and she live after you moved from your in-laws' home?

MELTON: Went to Victory Heights, the University married student housing.

LaVOY:  Where was that located?

MELTON: It was in the north part of the campus over by the U.S. Bureau of Mines building.

LaVOY:  Who were some of the other people who lived in that housing?

MELTON: Jeanne and William Ireland. Bill later became football coach at UNLV and the athletic director down there. Buddy Brooks, who later became a school teacher in Virginia City. Bill Griggs, whom I mentioned earlier, our best man. Stan Drakulich, now a prominent insurance guy in Sparks and Reno. Walt Ryals, whom I first met through football. Ron Einstoss and his wife, Pat. Gotta go back to Brooks for just a minute. He and his wife, Ruth, were terrific people and they became noted among the students because they had three sets of twins.

LaVOY:  Oh, my!

MELTON: I guess largely because of their prolific ways, Victory Heights became known as Fertility Heights. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing)

MELTON: Our first born, Royle Melton, was born while we lived at Victory Heights. He was born June 29, 1954, so all the young marrieds up there were starting their families about the same time, so we all hung up the diapers, and the wives were exchanging ideas on how to cope with these new young people who were being brought into the world.                (laughing)

LaVOY:  Was Marilyn going to school at that time, or had she dropped out at that point?

MELTON: No, she stayed in school and then she became pregnant with Royle, and she kept going until it became very difficult for her to stay in there, so she left class. She did not formally get her degree. She has gone back and picked up some credits, so she's not too far away from formally getting it. I tease her because she has an honorary doctoral degree from Nevada, but she doesn't have the real life sheepskin as an undergrad.

LaVOY:  Well, that's wonderful. When did you graduate?

MELTON: Graduated June, 1955.

LaVOY:  Was graduation on the quad?

MELTON: No, it wasn't. It was in what is now the old gymnasium. Can't tell you exactly how many people we had in our class. We only had six or seven graduate in journalism, so there weren't that many. They were high quality students, though. All did well in their professions.

LaVOY:  Who was the keynote speaker? Do you recall at all?

MELTON: No, I don't really. (laughing) One of those things. When I'm a commencement speaker now I always take note of that. There's no reason why you should particularly remember what I'm going to say or even who I am. I remember a few things about that day. My father and mother came for the graduation. It was the first time I'd seen them together for twenty some years, and it was the first time we had ever been photographed together. My mother, my sister, my father, and myself.

LaVOY:  Oh!

MELTON: So that's a historic picture that I covet, and I love it.

LaVOY:  I can understand that. What was the first job offer that you had?

MELTON: The first job offer was from the U.S. Army.

LaVOY:  (laughing)

MELTON: (laughing) I had received an ROTC commission as a second lieutenant, so Marilyn and I went right in the Army. We left Reno in August of 1955, with our one year old son, Royle, and drove across country to Fort Benning, Georgia, in an old Buick that I bought from Marilyn's folks and were down in Fort Benning for four and a half months at basic infantry officers' course and then transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas, where I finished up my two-year obligation with the military as a public information officer. A great learning experience. In July, 1957, we returned to Reno having been discharged, and I went right to work for the Reno Evening Gazette as a reporter, and I was off and running. As of this moment, I'm working on my thirty sixth year with the company.

LaVOY:  Where was the Gazette-Journal plant located?

MELTON: The Reno Evening Gazette and the Nevada State Journal were two separate newspapers then--morning and an afternoon--and we were on Center Street in the block where the Club Cal-Neva now is located. In those years an old city hall was on the corner, First and Center, and Western Union was right next to us on Center Street. Our newsroom was on the second floor of the three-story building.

LaVOY:  Who was the editor of the Reno Evening Gazette at that time?

MELTON: John Sanford was our editor.

LaVOY:  What was a typical day for you?

MELTON: I didn't stay in that reporting job too long, Marian. I stayed in there about two months, and then I was promoted to sport editor, so for the next two years I was sports editor. A typical day was to arrive to work about six in the morning and work whatever hours were necessary to get my job done. I was putting in ten or twelve hours routinely and billing the company for eight.

LaVOY:  Oh, I see.

MELTON: My starting salary was a hundred dollars, and I took home about seventy three dollars as I remember.

LaVOY:  A hundred dollars a week or a month?

MELTON: A week.

LaVOY:  A hundred dollars a week. And where did you and Marilyn live then?

MELTON: We bought a house at 905 Yori Avenue when we got out of the Army. We stayed with her folks for a few weeks, then we found the place and bought it. It's a little three-bedroom, one bathroom home. Remember when we got out of the Army we had two sons, Royle, and then Wayne. We were in that home for ten years. By the time we left we had four kids so we outgrew the home.

LaVOY:  You outgrew the house. Do you remember Newt Crumley's mug hunt golf tourneys since you were a sports editor?

MELTON: Yeah, I covered that event.

LaVOY:  Tell me about it, will you please?

MELTON: Newt Crumley was the owner of the Holiday Hotel on Center Street, great entrepreneur, native of Elko, very creative person, and energized. He would bring in great celebrity sports heroes, and they'd all make great newspaper copy and radio and television copy. I remember some of the people he brought in included Johnny Weismuller, the great Olympic swim champion, and the Tarzan of the movies; Elwood "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, the Los Angeles Ram football star; Rocky Merciano, who had been the heavyweight champion came in after he'd left the ring. People like that.

LaVOY:  Well, Rollan, why they'd call it the "mug hunt"?

MELTON: You've got me on that. (laughing) I don't remember the genesis of that. I really don't.

LaVOY:  It was a golf tournament, was it not?

MELTON: It was a golf tournament and always had celebrity players and a keynote celebrity speaker.

LaVOY:  I understand that instead of a trophy that they got a mug, but I have no idea what kind of mug because my research didn't say.

MELTON: I don't know. It was one of things that just (laughing) came into our language. I can't remember what the genesis was.

LaVOY:  You mentioned that Sanford was the editor of the Reno Evening Gazette at that time. Was he followed by Joe Jackson or was Joe Jackson prior to him?

MELTON: They were contemporaries, Marian. Joe Jackson was the managing editor, so he was the number two man under John Sanford.

LaVOY:  Tell me something about Joe Jackson.

MELTON: Jackson came out of Sparks. His father once owned the Sparks Tribune. He went to Nevada and studied under Al Higgenbottom, as did John Sanford. Joe was the guts, muscles, and eyebrows of the Gazette. He was a tremendous newspaper person. Honest in every way. Couldn't ask for a better role model. Gave you latitude to do your work, was a sharp editor. When you got off base and didn't do well, he'd pull you up straight. Unfortunately for John and Joe it was decided that the owners of the newspaper, Speidel Newspapers Incorporated, wanted to make a change in leadership.    

LaVOY:  Did Speidel own the Gazette and the Nevada State Journal?        

MELTON: They then owned the Reno Evening Gazette and the Nevada State  Journal. We operated out of separate newsrooms. We were two distinctly separate newspapers. Speidel wanted to make a change in the leadership, and I was picked as a successor to John Sanford. So I became, at a very young age, thirty-two years, the boss of John and Joe Jackson who had hired me back in 1957, fresh out of the Army.

LaVOY:  That must have been difficult for you.

MELTON: Well, it was a real challenging time, a time of unsureness on my part initially, but both of them stayed. Joe Jackson continued as my managing editor, and John Sanford left the editor's job which I succeeded him as. John moved over to editor of the editorial page. But, what made it easier, Marian, was that these guys were both collegial. They were professional in every respect. They gave me a hundred and fifty per cent of their allegiance and their commitment to journalism and to me. So what I thought would be a traumatic period was made much easier by the quality of these people.

LaVOY:  When you got this position then you must have become the boss, too, of Paul Leonard who had been the editor of the Nevada State Journal.

MELTON: Not at that time because we continued for some years as two newspapers, so the Journal under Paul Leonard had its own staff, its own executives, its own colleagues, as did the Gazette. But I two years later became the publisher of both those newspapers – excuse me, three and a half years later, I was editor three and a half years. And so January 1, 1968 I became publisher of both newspapers, so then I became Paul's boss.

LaVOY:  Tell me something about Paul Leonard.

MELTON: Paul was just a terrific guy and a great editor. A great editorial writer. He actually was born in Fallon and moved at a very young age to Reno and then, as a young man, after the war wound up in Ely and then Elko where he worked for Newt Crumley at the Stockman's Hotel, I believe it was.

LaVOY:  Commercial or the Ranch Inn, one of the two.

MELTON: Commercial Hotel sticks in my mind now. Speidel needed a person to groom for editor of the Nevada State  Journal, so they asked Paul to move from Elko to Reno, and he did, I believe in the early fifties, and he succeeded as editor when his predecessor retired. Terrific guy.

LaVOY:  Another person who probably worked for you was Ty Cobb.

MELTON: Ty Cobb was really one of my first bosses. When I was a young Fallon High School kid, I would call into Nevada State Journal to Ty Cobb results of semi-pro baseball games that were played in Fallon--what we then called the Sagebrush League, so that was where I met Ty on the phone for the first time.

LaVOY:  I did not realize that Fallon had semi-pro baseball.

MELTON: They were called town teams in those years. You had Lovelock and Fernley; you had a couple of teams from Reno; you had Fallon, Carson City, and it was called the Sagebrush League. Then I worked for Ty later when I was in college, Marian and I both worked for him on weekends part time as a sports writer, and he was and is a great gifted, giving person. In still later years, I became his boss when I was publisher. I intensely competed against Ty. When I was sports editor of the Gazette and he was sports editor of the Journal, we really went at it just as in those early years in Fallon when we had competition between Eagle and Standard. The competition between the Gazette and the Journal was very healthy for years and stimulating for those of us who were (laughing) confronted with competition.

LaVOY: [audio in this section distorted] In doing my research I read with a great deal of amusement your interview with a mentalist named Dunninger. You were sports editor of the Reno Evening Gazette then, and you filled in for a vacationing entertainment editor. Can you describe your reaction to that?

MELTON: Well, Dunninger was an amazing guy. I used to be very skeptical of Dunninger 'cause I'd heard him on the radio over the years. People of that era--we're talking 1950's--remember his name quite well. He was playing at the Riverside Hotel, and I decided I would interview him.       Actually, I think ultimately, I did a column on him for the sports page, but I was skeptical, and I wanted to see what this guy was made of. I thought he was probably a cardboard guy full of hot air and I went to interview him. I was accompanied by Don Dondero, the photographer--great friend of mine--and Dunninger, Don and I sat down for lunch. The first thing Dunninger said to me, was, "You're very unsure of my great mental powers, aren't you?" and I said, "Yeah, I'm really unsure. (laughing) I don't believe any of this stuff." He said, "Well, think of some numerals. Don't think of too many. No more than four and write it down and don't let me see what you're doing, and then I'll tell you what you wrote." So I thought, "What I can lay on this guy that there's no way he could figure out what I've thought up here?" So I thought of the worst beating I ever took on the football field, the most humiliation I ever suffered, and I thought it was the Fallon-Reno High School football game played in 1949, so I wrote 33-0. That's how bad Reno beat us that day, and there was no way Dunninger could see what I was doing. He thought a while and pondered and he went through this hocus pocus, and I thought, "This guy's a fake. This guy's a big faker." And so he took out a pencil and a piece of paper, and he wrote "33"--he didn't have a dash, he just put "three, three, zero." He made a real (laughing) believer out of me.

LaVOY:  (laughing) I'm so amused because Don Dondero's comment was, "I didn't look the man in the eye for the rest of our meeting for fear he'd know what I was thinking." (laughing)

MELTON: Oh, is that right?

LaVOY: Yes. (laughing)

MELTON: You've done your homework so well!

LaVOY:  In 1962, you were parked at the Donner Trail Ranch hoping to get a picture and a story on Mary Todhunter Rockefeller who was just divorcing her husband then New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Could you tell me something about that?

MELTON: I was freelancing for several New York dailies. Mary Rockefeller was out here to obtain a divorce from Nelson. It was a huge story in New York and worldwide, actually, because he was governor and everything. She was sort of reclusive and hadn't been photographed for years, so Don Dondero and I staked out the Donner Trail Guest Ranch then owned by the Drackert family, Joan and Harry. We were hoping for a picture of her, and I was trying to produce whatever copy I could to phone to these New York papers to make a few bucks on the side. One Sunday morning we were in Don's Volkswagen. It was a muddy, rainy, wintery type day, and we saw these three riders approaching us, and one of them was--I recognized Mary Rockefeller. I'd seen photos of her from years before. She was with Harry Drackert and a woman.

LaVOY:  Her sister, I believe.

MELTON: It could well have been.

LaVOY:  Mrs. Philip Wallis.

MELTON: We were both in the front seat. I said, "That's her!" Don's camera was in back, so he yelled, "Give me my camera." So I grabbed it, and he got a sensational picture of Mary on horseback. She was spooked and could see the camera, so she was trying to get away from us, and we got a great picture. He sold it to Life Magazine and to the Associated Press.

LaVOY:  And didn't Mr. Drackert literally run over your Volkswagen with his horse to block the picture?

MELTON: Yeah. Drackert was armed that day, had a sidearm, and he was very angry. He was always good with his guests who were here for divorces because he always tried to guarantee their privacy, and so he was acting in behalf of his client. It gave me a bad feeling to have to do something like that because I respect privacy, too, but she was a public figure and was sought after by the media.

LaVOY:  Don made money on that. Did you make any money on the story at all?

MELTON: I believe I did. I'm certain that I phoned in the episode getting this picture because it was immediately on the wires, the AP and so forth, and I probably did make a few dollars.

LaVOY:  That must have been exciting doing things like that.

MELTON: Well, it was. The adrenalin flowed. Now as I get longer in the tooth and I see young people in our newsrooms occupied in the pursuit of news, I'm sure their enthusiasm and their appetite to do good, be honorable and to do good work because I've been there myself for a long time.

LaVOY:  I don't know whether you worked with him, but I believe that you knew Guy Shipler who was the stringer for Time Incorporated.        

MELTON: I've been a friend of Guy's since the late fifties when I first met him. He does live in Carson. He's the most senior of all news writers in Nevada. Before he came here he was with Time Magazine and is a great professional. Wonderful guy as well as a great writer, great reporter. 

LaVOY:  Is he still working?

MELTON: Yes, he is. Right now he's in his late seventies, but he covers the Nevada State Legislature. He's covered the legislative sessions longer than any other active newsman.

LaVOY:  Were you or Marilyn not responsible for getting his son to come and speak for the writers' hail of fame for the fund raising dinner for the Friends of the University Library two years ago?

MELTON: Marilyn was president of the Friends at that time, or had just left office, and I'm not sure that she actually was the lead person in getting him. We had discussed it in years past and we had a social event at our house honoring David Shipler.

LaVOY: Oh, I remember that. We attended that.

MELTON: People come over to our house to meet this very nice guest.

LaVOY:  He gave an excellent talk on life in Russia. I believe he lived in Russia for a long time.

MELTON: Yeah, he did. He wrote a great book about that period of his life.

LaVoy: Now, the camel races and the ostrich races and whatnot have not been going on forever, but I understand that you were one of the first people to cover the camel races in Virginia City in the 1960s.

MELTON: [long pause] I- [end of tape 1]

LaVOY:  When did Speidel Newspapers decide that it was going to merge with Gannett?

MELTON: Speidel had gone public, become a public company in 1972, and I was then president of Speidel.

LaVOY:  Excuse me, you were the publisher of the Reno Evening Gazette and the Nevada State Journal. Then you became president of Speidel. Is that correct?

MELTON: I was publisher for two years, 1968 and 1969.  In 1970, I became vice-president of Speidel, a group of thirteen dailies. I was vice-president for three years, and then in 1972 I became president of Speidel. Then I was president, then chairman of Speidel from 1972 'til May 11, 1977.

LaVOY:  Was that chairman of the board?

MELTON: Yeah. We, the board of directors of Speidel, decided that we were so small that we weren't growing externally. We were growing internally pretty well, but we didn't feel safe. We felt that we were vulnerable to an unfriendly take-over by hostile company, so we sought safety in numbers. We wanted to go to the bigger company that offered wonderful opportunities for our share holders and our executives and our employees, so we sifted over candidates quietly for a couple of years. Then we decided that Gannett Company was the best bet, and we agreed in principle to merge, and we did in May of 1977. The Gannett Company was the surviving corporation so Speidel went out of business. I continued as the senior vice president of Gannett. I ran the western part of the Gannett Company. I was president of Gannett West Region from May of 1977 to spring of 1978. Then I moved to Rochester, New York, then the headquarters of Gannett, and I was senior vice president for corporate. However, I didn't like living in the East. I didn't like that part of the country, and I was kind of out of gas. I'd worked real hard as an administrator and executive for a long time, and I didn't want to fight my way back to the top with a second company, and I did genuinely want to get back to writing which I'd left years before to become an administrator. So Marilyn and I had some serious talks and decided that we were in a position financially and psychologically to make this change. I think I did very tough hard duty and accomplished a lot as a leader of Speidel and as an executive with Gannett.

LaVOY: One thing I want to ask you if it is correct. I understand that you and Marilyn had discussed this but she had taken a trip to Europe with a friend, and you were back in New York--it was on the Fourth of July-and you were sitting there thinking, "I don't want to be in New York. I want to be back in Nevada," and you called Marilyn in Europe and told her you had made this decision. Is that correct?

MELTON: No, it didn't go quite that way. She was touring Europe with two of our youngsters, the younger two, Kevin and Emelie. I did talk to her, and I told her I was very unhappy in this situation and I wanted to consult with her about making a change. So when she got back, we had a very animated discussion about this. She wanted to make sure that I was on the right track.

LaVOY:  Marilyn has always been interested in your welfare.

MELTON: Oh, yeah, she's the wisest person I've ever known or will ever know. Just a fountain of common sense and doing the right thing. So this was not a one-person decision. We did have a good give-and-take on it and decided that I would take three months off--kind of a leave-of-absence. Worked out an arrangement whereby I would continue on the board of directors of Gannett after I joined in 1977, and that I would start writing a column for the Gazette-Journal. So I took three months off, and on October 8, 1978, I wrote my first column for the Gazette-Journal. Initially, I was doing four columns a week. In another two days I'll reach my fourteenth anniversary writing this column.

LaVOY:  Well, it's a well-written one. Always very interesting.

MELTON: Well, thank you very much.

LaVOY:  Something that I just wanted to ask you about. Marilyn told me that at one point in time, and I know you did it many times, but this particular time she said that you were flying from Reno to New York in the corporate jet that is owned by Gannett and that you had called her from the plane. Now, you as a small-town boy growing up in Fallon, what was your reaction to that? What did you feel about being up in the air calling from a corporate jet to your wife?

MELTON: If I had envisioned ever doing such a thing as a high school boy working at the Fallon Standard, I would have said somebody was dreaming. In fact, I was in charge of the Gannett airplanes. We had four or five of them at the time. That was one of my areas of responsibility, so I would commute from west coast to east on weekends during that three-months period I was back with corporate New York state. And I don't know. It was something that you just do and you don't think that much about it. Technology and sophisticated equipment is a way of life, especially with Gannett Company. Real top communicators. But I've always been humble about--I mean, I haven't taken any of this for granted. It's much more important than technology or the trappings of influence or power. More important is doing the right thing and playing square and doing your job as well as you can. I think that philosophy took root and flowered, blossomed for the first time on the Fallon Standard and was nurtured by those role models I talked about, whom I met in high school, my high school faculty, and my coach and Principal Wallace Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Claude Smith, Ken Ingram, all of the colleagues I had at the Standard. And the role models in the neighborhood . . . I didn't mention them and I should. In the Fallon neighborhood they included Vine Woods who ran a little news store there on Center Street and Danny Wood who ran the shoe store--son, Dan, Jr., later, was our police chief in Fallon--Danny Evans, who was our mayor, ran the Texaco station at Center and Maine Street. People like that. Dana Coffee, the wonderful jeweler who bought me a suit because I managed to win the Harolds Club Scholarship. All the people who my mother worked for in these various restaurants, very supportive people. I'm just kind of a product of all those people who always kind of rooted for me and gave me a good chance to learn and a chance to make mistakes without being penalized. (laughing)

LaVOY:  That's a very humble comment on your part, Rollan. Being an executive with Gannett you had a lot of wonderful opportunities to attend things and would you tell me about when you attended a gridiron dinner and saw President Carter for the first time? Where was that?

MELTON: That was in Washington, D.C. I think it was at the Capital Hilton Hotel. I believe that might have been the first time I ever saw President Carter. Been around him a lot of times since at various social events.

LaVOY:  You, as a small town man, what did you feel when you saw a president for the first time?

MELTON: I was impressed. So much of our present and future rides on our leaders in the White House. You read about them; you see them on television; then when you meet personally, or hear them personally, why, it's pretty impressive. More interesting than the first meeting is the chance to see them head-on-head up close and to get to know them as people which I have with Carter.

LaVOY:  Now, the Gannett newspaper people were invited to the White House for an interview with President Carter. Can you tell me about that because you were one in attendance?

MELTON: Yes, I was then a member of the board of directors of American Newspaper Publishers Association, and actually, it was President [Gerald] Ford who was in the White House at that time, not Carter. This was in 1976. I went there, met President Ford, and I did a story for the Gazette-Journal about that encounter with the president in the White House, and it was one of my better works. I really worked hard on it. I wrote it in my hotel room in Washington, and I phoned it back to Nevada. Then I sent a copy of it to President Ford. It was called White House Diary. I sent it to President Ford never dreaming that he'd even see it; that it would probably be intercepted by an army of aides. Actually, he did see it, and he liked it very much, and so, lo and behold, not long afterwards, Marilyn and I were invited back to the White House-her first visit to the White House. It was a state dinner for Emperor Hirohito of Japan. So here a couple of kids from the small towns of Reno and Fallon wind up at the White House in white tails and rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi. It was memorable.

LaVOY:  Describe the dinner to me.

MELTON: It was about an eight or nine-course dinner. The White House is actually fairly small. They don't have room for a huge gathering so I think that they must have held this to, I believe it was a hundred guests. There were famous people there.

LaVOY:  Did you sit at table for ten or-?

MELTON: They sort of varied in size, but you probably weren't at a table of more than ten persons.

LaVOY:  Who sat at your table? Do you recall?

MELTON: Yes, I recall some of them. Martha Graham, the famous dance leader and instructor. She was at our table. Robert Mosbacher who is now one of President [Geroge H.W.] Bush's chief aides trying to get him reelected was at our table. He's from Texas. Marilyn and myself. Marilyn could recite chapter and verse. She's much better on that.

LaVOY:  Well, women are more interested in these things than the men are. Do you remember the menu at all?

MELTON: No, I don't really remember. They had several kinds of wines--white, red. I was so caught up in the moment listening to the toasts of the president and of Hirohito and seeing their wives. Seems the military was a big part of this. They had a military honor guard.

LaVOY:  First, the Marine band played, I'm sure.

MELTON: That's right, and they were very big that night. Lot of memories, but one of my most vivid memories, they had a dance afterwards at the White House, and I danced with Ginger Rogers. She was there.

LaVOY:  Oh, my! Did you trip the light fantastic?

MELTON: I did. I went over and asked her to dance, and she said, "Sure, I'll be glad to dance with you." But I remember the first thing she said when we went out on the dance floor is, "Don't swing me around," meaning-she didn't have to tell me this--but what she meant was that she probably had a lot of jokers get her out on the dance floor over the years thinking they were Fred Astaire. I do the Fallon two-step quite well, but I'm not Fred Astaire. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing)

MELTON: But she was very pleasant, very nice. I saw President Ford a few times in ensuing years and corresponded with him a little bit. Had a significant part in bringing him back to Nevada after he left the White House as a speaker at a UNR foundation dinner, possibly twelve years ago.

LaVOY:  And I believe that you also had Vice-President [George H.W.] Bush at your home in Reno for dinner. When was that?

MELTON: Well, let's see, about 1986. He was campaigning in anticipation of running for president at the time, and Jim Santini was running for the U.S. Senate from Nevada, and Santini called me and asked if Marilyn and I would be willing to host Vice-President Bush at our house for dinner. I don't like to get into these partisan situations and appear to be backing a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent. As a newsman I don't like to be in that position, but when it's the vice president of the United States, it's really tough to say no, so we thought it was quite an honor for Reno, for Nevada, to have him and for us as a family, so that's the background of how that came about.

LaVOY:  Tell me how the security guards immediately surrounded your home.

MELTON: The security was very impressive. You feel good about the way they protect our leaders. There were a lot of them, and they were very thorough in checking out the house; mostly they dealt with Marilyn. She was really good, tolerant of these people because they can be a nuisance. They wanted us to do all kinds of things to kind of disrupt our lives and our house to insure communications. We had just remodeled our house; it took us two years to do it, so we explained to them what we already had. Phone jacks and all kinds of security measures ourselves, but they nonetheless pursued the security, making sure the vice president was taken care of, It was a great day. I did a column about it, and we had a lot of attention from the neighbors with the flyovers of the helicopters checking the roof tops and so forth. But we were glad when it was over. It does put a little pressure on you.

LaVOY: I believe there was a funny story that resulted from it. Didn't you have someone in attendance--I don't remember the first name, the last name was Riviglio?

MELTON: Thomas Riviglio. He's a Reno businessman, and he kind of got into an informal exchange with George Bush. He called him stud, and he was actually a little too informal. Then he told George Bush that he loved his cuff links and he sure wished he had some, so Bush took off his cuff links and gave Tom Riviglio his cuff links. Riviglio, as I remember, told Bush that he thought he was okay but he liked Laxalt a lot better and thought he'd make a lot better president.

LaVOY:  He'd like to see Laxalt in the White House.

MELTON: Yeah.

LaVOY:  That must have been embarrassing to you.

MELTON: It was just Tom. He meant no harm. It was no malice, but it's just his style. Bush handled it. He's dealt with a lot of Tom Riviglios in his life, so he knows how to handle them. It all turned out okay.

LaVOY:  That's great. Then a few years ago, you had a corporate meeting, I believe, at your home, and on the board of Gannett at that time was Rosalynn Carter. Did she stay with you and Marilyn?

MELTON: Yes, she did. Rosalynn came to the Gannett board probably about ten years after the Carters left the White House. She's still on it to this day. Very valued friend and a great board member. And we had her come out to Reno to speak to a Nevada Women's Fund meeting. She stayed in Reno two days, and she stayed at our home in what used to be our daughter Emelle's bedroom. She was accompanied by two secret service guys. When you leave the presidency, your spouse and the former president still has--you're entitled to the security for the rest of your life. Rosalynn has security wherever she goes. When she goes to Gannett meeting, when she visits the Meltons' house, wherever she is. Rosalynn's an excellent speaker. Always does her homework and she made a wonderful impression on Nevadans who met her, and they've been after us ever since to have her come back. With her schedule and President Carter's schedule it's kind of difficult to get them. She's a wonderful person.

LaVOY:  I think the two of them have done a marvelous job working with that Habitat for Humanity, and I notice that that is coming to the University of Nevada now.

MELTON: Yes, it is. People are pretty excited about it. I might mention in the Hurricane Andrew midyear 1992--I guess it was August, September--eighteen of those houses were in the path of Hurricane Andrew, and none of them was extensively damaged. They're so well built they withstood the intense battering while houses all around them were falling down, so that tells you something about the Carters' commitment to do quality work for people in need. Really outstanding people.

LaVOY:  Those are not pretentious homes, but they certainly are well built, and they serve a wonderful purpose for giving poor people a chance to live their lives with dignity.

MELTON: Know a lot of affluent people, Marian, who would rather forget about the trappings of wealth and have a well-built home like that. They'd trade places with them in a minute as far as quality.

LaVOY:  I should say so. The University is starting that project at what point in time? Are you aware?

MELTON: I think they hope to get it up and running in full gear in 1993.

LaVOY:  That'll be a real asset. Now, speaking of the University, you've had very close ties with the University, and am I correct in recalling that you were appointed regent?

MELTON: I was appointed a regent to succeed Robert Cashell when he became lieutenant governor, and I served about a half a year. I had to step aside because my health was kind of on shaky grounds, and the stress kind of caught up with me, so I stepped aside reluctantly. I enjoyed being on the board, but it wasn't in the cards at that point.

LaVOY:  What were some of the things that came about as a regent at that point in time?

MELTON: One of the major issues during that period was the cost of the athletic program at UNLV, particularly the football program, and that was a major consideration during those months I was on the board.

LaVOY:  Well, you had stint of bad health that frightened everyone. Would you please go into that?

MELTON: (laughing) Well, I've had a couple of episodes that have had a maturing effect on me and kind of scared the family. The first was a heart attack in 1982 that hospitalized me for ten days, but I got back up and running. I got on a good health program, and then about a year and a half later I came down with lymphoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. I underwent a program of rehabilitation, chemotherapy and radiation that lasted about a year. I came out of it good. My annual checkups since then have showed that I've had no recurrence. I continue to be in remission and count my blessings.

LaVOY:  Well, we're all very thankful, too, that you're in remission. You were also appointed head of the journalism department at the University, if I recall. When was that?

MELTON: I was acting dean for a very short time in the early part of 1991 and served long enough for them to get another acting dean in place, David Seibert. Then Seibert carried on the acting deanship until they got a permanent dean from the University of Missouri, name of Jimmy Gentry, and so now I think the school is in great shape with a permanent leader. Gentry's a young man but very capable. Had a lot of experience. He's off to an impressive start, and I have high hopes that he will make this school of journalism the most prestigious one west of the Mississippi.

LaVOY:  The new building that is being constructed right now. What is the name of that?

MELTON: It's the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Building. Reynolds is the chairman and founder of the Donrey Media group based in Las Vegas and Fort Smith, Arkansas. He gave two and a half million dollar matching grant to erect this building. The balance of the money came from state of Nevada funds and from private gifts. It's going to be an impressive facility, and it's going to be a kind of a crown jewel of journalism facilities in the far West. It should help our recruiting. It should help the program overall. It's a marvelous building. It's well-laid out. It's tremendous architecture and good construction, so it'll make a lot of difference in our program.

LaVOY:  It is indeed very impressive and wonderful for the University. The University has awarded you interesting--I won't say degrees. You were awarded what I have coveted all my life, the distinguished Nevadan Citation. How did you react to getting that?

MELTON:  I was thrilled. It's a great honor and (laughing) In fact, when people ask me if I'm a native, they assume that I'm a native Nevadan, and I never let them know any different unless they pin me down. I'm proud of my Nevada heritage, and I think of all the honors that the University can give someone I would place that at the top. I received it in 1978, so I've been most grateful to my friends and colleagues at the University.

LaVOY:  Since then you've received other honorary degrees, honorary doctorates. Would you tell me where?

MELTON: The University of Nevada at Reno gave me an honorary doctoral degree about the mid 1980's, and I've received honorary associate degrees from Truckee Meadows Community College, Western Nevada Community College, and Northern Nevada Community College. Three of them. There's a total of four honorary degrees which is really (laughing) astounding for a little kid from Fallon who was going no place except maybe dropping out of school one time.

LaVOY:  You've earned every one of them, Rollan. You also sit on a foundation. Would you please tell me which one?

MELTON: It's the John Ben Snow Foundation, I've been a trustee of that foundation which is based in New York state since 1982, so it's about my tenth year. It's a charitable foundation that was created by Mr. John Ben Snow. He was a founder of Speidel newspapers, and we do charitable good work across country. It's included quite a bit in Nevada and quite a bit in Fallon. I've been able to get some good grants for Fallon causes.

LaVOY:  In fact, I think that we wouldn't have this oral history program if it weren't for your generosity in this John Ben Snow Foundation.

MELTON: That's right. I've been a very enthusiastic proponent of oral histories for a long time, and when I learned of the opportunity to create an oral history program in Fallon, it increased my appetite to go to John Ben Snow colleagues and ask if we could give them some money to help on training and helping set up this program in Fallon. I've been really excited about what you and your colleagues at the Churchill Museum have done with respect to this program. Already done many, many important histories that wouldn't have been done otherwise.

LaVOY:  On behalf of Myrl [Nygren] and the head of the museum, we certainly want to thank you for your generosity with that. Now I want to get back just a little bit to some of your funny columns, and one of the funniest ones that I ever read was your write up about Bob Cashell and Ed Allison and the fat department.

MELTON: Oh.

LaVOY: Will you comment on that because when I read that Bob Cashell was so hungry he ate a cake of soap, I couldn't believe it. I thought, "Rollan has got to explain this to me."

MELTON: In the column writing I've done more than three thousand now in the last fourteen years. I'm always on the lookout for humor; I don't think newspapers spend enough time dwelling on the lighter side of life, so this particular column appeared the first year I was writing the column, probably in the fall of 1978, I believe. I learned that Cashell and Ed Allison had just returned from La Costa, California, a so-called health spa and I got to questioning Cashell on how he managed to live on four or five hundred calories a day, and he said he got so hungry he almost ate a bar of soap. In describing them being wrapped in olive leaves and baked under sun lamps and everything; I thought it was really a riot and a scream. So I got a picture of Cashell looking very slender. Ordinarily he doesn't look slender at all, but he was in one of his thin modes then, so it was a column that produced quite a bit of reaction.

LaVOY: It was absolutely hysterical. Was he lieutenant governor then or was he still the owner of Boomtown [Casino]?

MELTON: He was the owner of Boomtown. This was prior to becoming lieutenant governor. It was also prior to becoming chairman of the board of regents which he served two years. Did a great job. Wonderful job.

LaVOY:  You've had a bit of a weight problem yourself for many years. How did you get in control of that?

MELTON: Marilyn and I went to St. Mary's Hospital's Optifast program of weight management. [End of tape 2 side A] A program that combines intelligent approach on the number of calories you consume everyday and implements a good exercise program. So on a follow-up basis Marilyn and I've been able to maintain our weight pretty well. We feel good about what we've achieved so far.

LaVOY:  You're doing a wonderful job with it. Now before I go into your authorship of books, I just want to regress a bit and ask you about your children. You mentioned your son, Royle. What is Royle doing?

MELTON: Royle is an attorney, and he helps in the training seminars, of the National Council of Family Court Judges. It's based on the University of Nevada campus. Royle is thirty-eight years old. Wayne is thirty-six, and he's a veteran reporter with the Gazette-Journal, presently writing the business news.

LaVOY:  Excuse me. Tell me when Wayne was born.

MELTON: Wayne was born on April 13, 1956, at Fort Riley, Kansas.

LaVOY:  He is writing business news, you say? Will you explain that?

MELTON: He's a Nevada journalism graduate, and he's been with the Gannett Company. He's been based in Florida and then Reno for the last eleven or twelve years. Been with the Company a total of about fourteen years, and he writes for the business page in the Gazette-Journal. Very good writer.

LaVOY:  Following after his father, of course. Did I not read that when he was in Florida he found your father?

MELTON: Found my mother's father. The grandfather who disappeared who dropped out and left his family in Iowa. Deserted my grandmother, my mother, and her two siblings. All at once he re-emerged in the family and came forward and said he was sorry and he was very contrite about it. Here was this guy we thought was dead. He suddenly re-appeared very much alive.

LaVOY:  And where was he living?

MELTON: He lived in Miami, Florida. We're talking about the late 1970's when son, Wayne, and his young wife and their little family were living in Fort Myers, Florida, on the Gulf Coast, and we learned that this grandfather was living in Miami--fellow who was actually Wayne's great-grandfather. Wayne went over and visited him, struck up an acquaintanceship with him and got to know him.

LaVOY:  What was his name?

MELTON: Mr. Hugh Williamson, and Wayne liked him very much. Wayne did a wonderful story about finding his long lost great-grandfather and that was the story you're referring to. It appeared in the Gazette-Journal.

LaVOY:  It was an excellent story. Then you have another son.

MELTON: Yes, son, Kevin. Kevin was born September 11, 1959. Kevin is married to Candith, and they have a son and a daughter, Breann and Jaime, and they live in Reno. Kevin is employed as a dealer in the Horseshoe Club in downtown Reno. It's a Bob Cashel] casino in Reno. He's a Manogue high school graduate. Went to a junior college near Auburn, California, for a while. Then our last born and only daughter is Emelie. Emelie's got a lot of ability, great writer, graduate of Manogue and Santa Clara University, is the director of public relations at John Ascuaga's Nugget [Sparks, Nevada]. At the age of twenty eight she's progressed beautifully in her career, is happy, loves her job, and likes her colleagues and likes what she's doing.

LaVOY:  She was born March 29, 1964?

MELTON: Yes.

LaVOY:  She's the last of your children?

MELTON: Yeah. She was born on Easter Sunday which that particular year was one of the earliest Easters in the twentieth century.

LaVOY:  I just want to catch some little bit on Marilyn. Marilyn has headed many philanthropic and civic groups always doing a marvelous job. She is currently head of which important group?

MELTON: She's immediate past chairman of the Nevada Humanities Committee, a state-wide committee. She had that chairmanship three years. Before that she was chairman of the Friends of the Library at the University of Nevada for two years. Very innovative, very creative thinker. Came up with a lot of programs. She was the one who came up with the idea of a book nook. Take in books and re-sell to the consumer at the library. She was a creator of the Nevada Author's Hall of Fame [Nevada Writer's Hall of Fame]. It was Marilyn who dreamed that one up. One of her great attributes is that she--although she's very innovative and creative-she doesn't worry about who gets the credit. It's not important to her to be put upon a pedestal or anything.

LaVOY:  I believe that she's quite an artist in her own right, too, isn't she?

MELTON: I think she's one of the great ones. Presently working on a one-woman show which will be seen in Reno in November, 1992. She'll have something like forty art pieces in it. She's very versatile. She doesn't do the same thing over and over like a lot of artists. She's into portraiture and landscaping and just all kinds of subjects. Oils and watercolors and is beginning to think more and more about sculpting. think you'll see her get into sculpting before very long. She's had some marvelous teachers over the years. Craig Sheppard, chairman of the University of Nevada art department, the late Craig, was her mentor at the University and a role model. George Carlson, the famous sculptor. She studied under George. John Meyer. He's a very prominent artist from South Africa. He's had a great influence on Marilyn. And she studied--perhaps the most profound formal training she had came in late 1991 in New York City where she went to the Students Art League and studied there under great conditions. Took a life drawing course there on Fifty-seventh Street. Her work is really taking off in quality since she did that which I think Nevadans are going to see when they see her next show.

LaVOY:  Good. I believe she was also asked by our Friends of the Library board to select readers for a function they are having in February. Can you speak to that?

MELTON: This program is going to--I think they're calling it "Choices" or something like that.

LaVOY:  I'm on that board but I can't remember the name.

MELTON: They're asking people to pick some of the great things in literature that they're fond of and do some readings publicly, and it's to be February of 1993.

LaVOY:  I have seen the list that she has selected, and it's a very, very impressive one. I hope that the people really realize the great time that she has put into that. Now moving on to you. Your first book, Nevadans, in 1988 was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Now, how long did it take to compile that?

MELTON: I did it over about a six-months period. It was a collection of eighty-eight columns that I had written for the newspaper. Mainly what it boiled down to was re-editing it and getting it in shape for- book publication. The toughest part of it was selecting from the hundreds and hundreds of things I've done. They wanted me to keep it under a hundred columns for space reasons, and it was a situation where I had to pick and choose. I wanted to be representative. I couldn't have them all on sports or all on people who died. I had to have a variety of things that talk about different parts of Nevada. I talked about rural. I had to have something representing metropolitan Nevadans. I had to have humor; I had to have pathos; I had to show what life's all about. It's a balance. It's a kind of a cafeteria, offering different things, different emotions. It was interesting. Marilyn designed the cover and suggested the cover. My hope is to do another one of those, and then I'm working on another book about world championship fights in Nevada.

LaVOY:  Yes, I going to get into that in just a moment. Has your Nevadans been reprinted?

MELTON: It's in its second printing. It's kind of running out of steam right now. The sales are pretty sluggish, and so it's dying a natural death as most books do. (laughing)

LaVOY:  It must have been very interesting for you to contact all the people you did and talk to them before putting this together.

MELTON: I read the columns that appeared originally in the Gazette-Journal, so I picked eighty eight to appear, and some of the people I used in the book have died. Died before I used them, but I didn't actually ask anybody if they minded being in a book. I just assumed that they wouldn't mind because everything I do is positive. I'm not out to hatchet anybody or be the village scold. The next one I do will be a comparable thing.      I'll pick eighty-eight or nine, maybe a hundred columns. Hopefully the University Press will be interested in doing that again.

LaVOY:  I certainly hope so. How long does it take you to write your weekly column?

MELTON: I do three a week. Sunday, Monday, and Thursday presently. It varies. The writing of them doesn't take that long. Probably an hour, hour and a half, but it's the research. The preparation of material, extracting it, checking it for accuracy and everything. It takes a lot more time than the actual writing, so I'd say, on the average, I probably spend a day on each column, total.

LaVOY:  Where do you get your news tips?

MELTON: I get news tips from mail, from reading other newspapers, from reading my own newspaper, from telephone calls, from visits with people, going to meetings, attending social events. Some of them I even dream up on my own (laughing) without prompting from the audience.

LaVOY:  (laughing) You told me that you were working on a new book about the early major prize fights that were held in Nevada the first quarter of this century. Would you comment on that?

MELTON: This will be a book focusing on about eight fights for the world title in different weight classes from 1897 to about 1930. It will include the fights of famous fighters like Max Baer, Jack Johnson, who was the first Black heavyweight champion. He won his title in Reno in 1910. James J. Jeffries, Bob Fitzsimmons, Joe Ganns, Battling Nelson, people like that. Jack Dempsey, the famous heavyweight title holder, did not fight for the title in Nevada, but he spent a lot of time in Nevada. He fought in Nevada mining camps before he became famous as a world champion.

LaVOY:  He worked up in Elko, too, on some of the ranches.

MELTON: Did he?

LaVOY:  Did a lot of boxing up there, too.

MELTON: And he came to Reno for a divorce one time, and there are still a lot of people around who remember Jack Dempsey, so I hoped to interview some of them. I think that it'll be heavy on illustrations. A lot of pictures in it and maybe two thirds pictures and one third text.

LaVOY:  Did you do research when you and Marilyn were in New York this past year?

MELTON: I did some. I made a few contacts. I went to the New York Public Library, research library, on Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. I've got some people who I can go back to in New York for help on pictures and facts about these fights.

LaVOY:  Well, we're certainly looking forward to that one. Will that one come out prior to your second Nevada type one?

MELTON: Probably my first commitment to the University of Press is to do the boxing thing first, and we're looking at late 1993 or 1994 for publication on that boxing book.

LaVOY:  We'll be looking forward to seeing it. Now, Rollan, you've never lost your touch with the common man. You've donated a great deal of money to worthwhile projects, and Fallon, of course, has received its share of your largesse. Tell me about the high school scholarship that you set up here.

MELTON: Marilyn and I set up a high school scholarship fund in probably about 1983 or 1982. I think it's about ten years old. We gave, I think it was eighty thousand dollars in Gannett stock to get it started, and I stipulated that the income off this corpus would be used for these scholarships. I worked with the late Mike Evans. He was the attorney on this. He was functioning on behalf of the school board, and he was very instrumental. So we've had some great young people who have gone on to college because of this. It's helped them go to school, and we've been real pleased with the results. Fallon's responded really well to it.

LaVOY:  The teachers chose the recipients just as you were chosen as recipient for the Smith scholarship?

MELTON: Right, and I didn't stipulate that they had to stay in Nevada. I left that open so that wherever they want to go to school they will.

LaVOY:  And how much money do they get?

MELTON: At the outset they were getting a thousand dollars a year, two scholars each year, but the stock market hit rough times and it diminished the value of the corpus, so they haven't been doing as well. They had to drop it to one student until they can rebuild the resources of the scholarship fund right now.

LaVOY:  Didn't you also give the seed money for the Channel 25 here?

MELTON: Yeah, I'd forgotten that. We did. We gave them about eight thousand dollars. Can't remember exactly.

LaVOY:  You're very generous. You're being very humble about this whole thing and being very evasive, I might say. (laughing) You come to Fallon for many events, and one of the two where you were keynote speaker was for the dedication of the new gymnasium at the new high school as it was named after Elmo Dericco. Would you comment on that?

MELTON: Well, it was a great event honoring a great Nevadan. Elmo is a favorite friend of ours and a longtime education leader and inspirational character, ex-Marine, ex-Nevada athlete. Made a profound impact on education in the state as well as Churchill County, so when they named the gymnasium after him, they did ask me to be the speaker, and I was really thrilled that I would be picked to do that.

LaVOY:  And just recently you were the speaker for the dedication of the English wing for Anne Berlin.

MELTON: One of the influential role models of my life, Anne Gibbs Berlin, and so, again, I was asked to participate in that program and made some remarks about what a glorious lady she is. It's always a thrill to be asked to participate in Fallon events.

LaVOY:  What was your reaction when Anne stood up and passed out a list of spelling words?

MELTON: (laughing) Well, that was vintage Anne Berlin. She's up to her old tricks, and a number of those words I don't think a lot of the people in the audience could spell them to this day.

LaVOY:  You've heard the joke about that because they had made the list of words and checked the list over and found one word misspelled, so they had to do the entire list again.

MELTON: Yeah, I heard it was the word receive. They had i and e reversed. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) One time you came out here and you were the speaker for the Churchill Council of the Arts, and you had everyone in the audience in absolute hysterics. Do you remember that?

MELTON: Yeah, I remember I had a good night that night. I did a lot of homework. I'm not a spectacular speaker, though I always try to do well, but I do research. I always try to figure out who's going to be in the audience ahead of time and speculate on how I can turn them on and turn them off, make them laugh, give them something to think about.

LaVOY:  Well, you were tremendous that night. You had everyone laughing, and no one knew who you were going to pick on next. (laughing)

MELTON: (laughing)

LaVOY:  You also did the same thing at a Rotary function not too terribly long ago. Speaking of Rotary functions, I don't mean to embarrass you, but I want to ask you something. You and Don Dondero came out to give, he was to give, a slide presentation on his Dateline: Reno book, and when he got here, he said he did not have the projector. But now I've heard from sources that he'd forgotten the pictures. Is that true?

MELTON: He protested that technical difficulties would make it impossible for him to show these slides. Actually he forgot the slides. He left them at home in Reno, so we made this awful discovery so late in the going we couldn't call for help and have them rush these slides out, so it was embarrassing. I felt sorry for Don.

LaVOY:  I thought it was very funny, though. (laughing)

MELTON: (laughing) Yes. Then I did a column about this and said we'd probably never be invited back. It all worked out. People have amnesia. They invited us back anyway.

LaVOY:  (laughing) Well, that's good. Just kind of as a wrap up for this. We hear so much today about the actions and the writings of some of today's reporters. A lot of the comments are derogatory, especially about the sensationalism and whatnot. What's your current philosophy on the role of the media today?

MELTON: I think it's incumbent on us to do as good a job as we can in covering news, the meaningful news. A lot of times you have to put up with careless reporting and sensation reporting, but it would be a terrible mistake to ever stifle freedom and do anything to cut down on the flow of information from presses and from broadcasters to the consumer, to the reader. I think the more coverage, the merrier. Those who protest loudly about news coverage often have things to hide, so I think good news men and women always have to remember that the hallmark of America's very existence is the free press. You can't be an unenlightened, ignorant nation and also be free, as Jefferson said. We must keep the gates open. I think it's important, too, that we, in the media, keep reminding Americans how important it is for them to back us up because in the quest for openness it's their freedom that's at stake. We're not really talking about the media's freedom, but the bottom line is the freedom for all Americans, and it's an unending battle, but we gotta keep up the good fight.

LaVOY: One thing I just want to ask you about the current Presidential campaign. There's so much negativism going on with it. What are your feelings about that and with the three candidates?

MELTON: The candidates are [George H.W.] Bush, [Bill] Clinton and [Ross] Perot. I think it's unfortunate that the candidates, whether they be on Presidential level or running for commission or the council or whatever, feel it's necessary to be so vindictive and so mean spirited. I hate to see that become the American way, but it is a fact of life. Unfortunately, the media's in a position where we have to convey or transmit this ill will to the consumer. When I see people behaving like these three guys are, I keep going back to the great leaders the United States has had and say why can't this happen again and why can't we have a Washington-like person or a Jefferson or Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, but it's not in the cards right now. I'm hoping along with millions that somehow, some way, there will emerge new great leaders men or women who will carry us through our travail and make it possible that we once again have an educated prosperous nation that's really on the move. Right now we're trying to find ourselves, and whether we have a candidate who will become President who can lead us out of the darkness, we'll have to wait and see.

LaVOY:  Thank you so much, Rollan. Thank you so very, very much for taking the time to drive out to Fallon for this interview, and on behalf of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project I want to thank you very much for this interview.

MELTON: Thank you. I think it's important to remember our roots where we came from and who it was and why it was that we amounted to anything or whether we were to be successful. Often times it doesn't depend on us as individuals but the people around us. One reason why I've been so committed to coming back to Fallon and participating in things in the community is because I think I owe a great deal to the community. Without the support of the people here, people who are no longer with us, people who still are, I recognize that I'd really be no place. I was heading no place when I got here when I was fifteen, and suddenly I found this place that cared about me and provided the setting for learning, for advancement. Those are things that aren't forgotten, shouldn't be forgotten, and I carry them on. I try to encourage this among the young people I deal with. Not to forget that somebody helped you along the way and don't get big headed about any successes. There's too much at stake and people come to believe in you, why we have to believe that it was a lot of people helped us advance to where we wanted to go. (laughing) I just thought I'd close with that thought.

LaVOY:  That's a wonderful closing statement, Rollan. Thank you so much.

Marian LaVoy

Rollan Melton

4325 Schurz Highway, Fallon, Nevada