Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

JOHN L. SMITH: To the end, preacher's son kept faith in gospel of legalized gambling

Si Redd was the son of a Mississippi preacher and was proud to say the gift of gab had rubbed off on him.

He started his amazing business career as a shoeless 7-year-old in the farming town of Philadelphia and walked across cotton fields and clay flats to sell Grit newspapers and Cloverine salve to bone-poor sharecroppers. Within a few years, he'd angled his way into the jukebox racket and placed the first of many penny-a-play record machines in rib joints and road houses.

By the time Redd finished his life's long walk Tuesday morning at age 91, he'd become a multimillionaire and had strolled all the way into modern gambling's Hall of Fame as a founder of International Game Technology, an early developer of the video poker machine, and the builder of Si Redd's Oasis resort and casino in Mesquite.

Until the very end, which came at his vacation home in Solana Beach, Calif., just off the back stretch at Del Mar, the irrepressible Redd preached the gospel of legalized gambling.

A visit with Si was a trip back in a time machine to his Philadelphia youth. He grew rich in the Nevada gambling racket, but his youthful heart never left Mississippi.

He loved to tell tales about his father, Marvin, who was a freelance preacher. The street corner was his church, the sidewalk his lectern, and curious passers-by his congregation. Marvin was out to save souls even if his own children lacked soles of their own.

Marvin kept a Bible in his hands, which sometimes prevented him from holding a farmer's humble tools.

"My father would go on the street and preach," Si recalled. "He would say that the Good Lord spoke to him and told him to spread the word. He never had an education. He didn't go to the eighth grade, but he was a jack-leg preacher.

"One day he told my mother that the Lord had spoken to him.

" `What did he say?' my mother asked.

"My father said, `Well, he didn't actually speak, but he gave me a sign: the letters GPC written up in the sky. He was telling me to Go Preach Christ.'

"And my mother said, `Well, Marvin, maybe he was trying to tell you to Go Plow the Corn.' "

The corn went fallow, but even as a boy Si looked after his mother and was responsible for keeping a tar paper roof over his family's head. He sold newspapers and remedy cream for a while, but when he landed his first jukebox he thought he'd gone to heaven.

At a hash house in Decatur, he checked the machine after just one week in operation and was stunned to find $32 in pennies collected from all the plain folks playing their favorite tunes. Si Redd never went barefoot again, but he never forgot his simple start.

Although he'd risen through the ranks of the jukebox and slot machine industries at a time both were riddled with reborn racketeers, Si kept his self-deprecating manner and his country boy's sense of humor. He was a gentleman first and last.

"Everyone says, `Si Redd was a genius to think of the video poker.' Well, that's not true," he said. "The truth is, we had no idea that video poker would be half as good as it turned out to be. We started out with video keno and then blackjack. But what makes the poker work is the fact that it is more or less as liberal as a slot machine. People play the same amount of money, but unknowingly at first, we made the poker machine different. There are more buttons to push. It takes you a little longer to play, but you're getting a better entertainment value."

Over the years, the unabashed promoter of gambling as entertainment became enlightened about the dangers overexposure to video poker had on some players. It bothered him so much that at one point he called me, and we talked about it at length. He was in his late 80s at the time.

"We are selling amusement, but some people get addicted to it," Redd said. "We should add a $1 or $2 tax to each slot machine to help people who are addicted to it. It exists. The best way to handle it is to meet it head-on."

He was right, of course, as he was about many gambling issues.

A country boy at heart, a millionaire in life, affable Si Redd never lost his common touch.

John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.