Saturday, March 06, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

'Governor Mike' dies

State mourns man of courage, generosity, determination

Mike O'Callaghan sits in his office at the Las Vegas Sun in this photo from 1999. Review-Journal file photo. Mike O'Callaghan accepts a plaque from the National Park Service in this photo taken during his two-term tenure as governor of Nevada. Review-Journal file photo.

Teacher, boxer, Korean War hero, newspaperman, humanitarian and the most popular governor in state history: Nevadans remembered Mike O'Callaghan, who died Friday at age 74, as someone who filled each of those roles but remained a regular guy who never forgot his humble origins.

Known to many simply as "Governor Mike," he was renowned for his generosity as well as his impatience with incompetence. He told all types of people to call on him anytime for assistance, and when they did, he often delivered with a single letter or phone call.

O'Callaghan was pronounced dead Friday morning at Desert Springs Hospital, where he had been taken after suffering what is believed to have been a heart attack at the 6:45 a.m. Mass at St. Viator Catholic Church.

"My first thought in hearing he had died was the Lord must have encountered some problem that he could not have handled by himself," said Las Vegas attorney Robert Faiss, who worked with O'Callaghan in the 1960s when both served on the staff of Gov. Grant Sawyer.

A Democrat, O'Callaghan served as governor between 1971 and 1979, winning his second term by a record 4-to-1 voting margin. After leaving the governor's office, he joined the Las Vegas Sun. At the time of his death, he served as the newspaper's executive editor and chairman of the board.

Funeral arrangements were not yet completed. The former governor is survived by his wife of 49 years, Carolyn; sons Michael, Tim and Brian; daughters Colleen O'Callaghan-Miele and Teresa Duke; and 15 grandchildren. All live in Southern Nevada.

Michael O'Callaghan said the funeral probably would be held Thursday in the Church of the Holy Redeemer near the Las Vegas Strip. Arrangements are being handled by Palm Mortuaries. A viewing probably will be Wednesday. Details will be announced later.

He added that family members hope well-wishers will make contributions to their favorite charities in his father's name, although flowers are acceptable.

"We are still trying to get over what happened," Michael O'Callaghan said. "You can't put it into words. He was a good man, a man who has been around the world helping people. He didn't go for vacations. He went to help people. He was the ultimate public servant."

A fellow worshipper tried to help O'Callaghan after he collapsed at the Mass, but he never regained consciousness, his son said.

News of his death quickly spread through political circles, including a congressional hearing in Las Vegas on nuclear waste transportation.

"We're all in a state of shock here," said Richard Bryan, a former Nevada governor and U.S. senator. "I saw him last week, and he looked hale and hearty."

State Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said O'Callaghan "more than anyone" helped shape the future of Nevada and was "one of the best governors with whom I served."

"He was a hands-on guy who always took his responsibilities seriously and dealt with them decisively and fairly," Raggio said.

Harriet Trudell, who ran his Las Vegas office during part of his time as governor, said, "When he went into a room, everybody had to touch him, men and women alike. People sparkled in his presence."

His understanding of state government was deep and included knowledge of even seemingly insignificant details. He knew how to ask the right questions to check that state employees were producing, she said.

"O'Callaghan was a workaholic," Trudell said. "He believed you got to heaven by working constantly."

He brought that ethic to the Sun. As a columnist, O'Callaghan frequently wrote compassionately on veterans' affairs, prison issues and the need for affordable housing.

He also traveled all over the world, filing dispatches from Israel, Kuwait and other war-torn regions.

Upon reaching his 70s, O'Callaghan had not slowed down. Every morning, he worked out in a gym and attended Mass before putting in lengthy days at the newspaper.

O'Callaghan's office was more akin to that of a museum curator than a newsman.

A diorama depicting a Korean War battle, complete with toy soldiers and model military vehicles, was under glass on one end. He didn't carry a cell phone and never used a computer. Books and legal pads scrawled with his hand-written columns cluttered his desk. His phone was the only modern technological apparatus.

His assistant, Sheila Dillon, was left with the task of interpreting his handwriting.

He always encouraged reporters with his familiar phrase, "You're good people." Reporters who passed O'Callaghan on the way out the door heard, "Go get 'em, kid."

"He was a giant in every way," said Michael Kelley, managing editor of the Sun. "He's irreplaceable. You can't replace a giant."

O'Callaghan, born Sept. 10, 1929, in LaCrosse, Wis., had simple beginnings. He was named Donal O'Callaghan, but he adopted "Mike" as a young boxer.

His family raised cows and sold cream but lost their mortgaged farm during the Depression.

O'Callaghan joined the Marine Corps at age 16, but by then it was too late for him to see any combat during World War II. Desiring to study new technology, O'Callaghan soon joined the Air Force. He trained as an intelligence officer and was assigned to Alaska.

But during the Korean War, he left officer candidate school to go into the Army as a private so he could see combat. He became a platoon leader, though he was still a sergeant after three successive lieutenants were killed or wounded.

He was awarded the Bronze Star, with a V for valor, on Dec. 24, 1952, but his gallantry would cost him a limb in a battle less than two months later.

A military document notes, "While his company was being subjected to a barrage of heavy artillery from Chinese Communists forces during a night attack, Sgt. O'Callaghan was informed that men on an out-guard post had been cut off by this enemy action. Immediately ... he voluntarily exposed himself to enemy fire, located the men and brought them, together with a wounded member, safely back from the trenches."

He took a direct hit in the left leg from an 82 mm mortar round shortly afterward. The blast killed his squad leader, and O'Callaghan's leg was amputated below the knee.

Despite intense pain, he rigged a tourniquet from telephone wire and used a bayonet to twist it tight around his mangled leg.

"He crawled back to the command post," a subsequent military account notes, "and from that position, controlled platoon action for the next three and one-half hours, giving orders over the phone. Not until the enemy had withdrawn did he permit himself to be evacuated."

O'Callaghan was awarded the Silver Star and went home a war hero.

Despite suffering a broken hip during the ordeal, the amputee was back working construction by summer.

He graduated from the University of Idaho with a master's degree in teaching in 1956 and moved to Henderson, where he taught economics at Basic High School and helped found and run the Henderson Boys Club.

One of his students and boxing pupils was U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. O'Callaghan later helped Reid get a scholarship to college.

Reid said that other than his wife, he had no closer friend in his life than O'Callaghan.

"He always cared about me and always kept in touch with me," Reid said. "Whatever he could do to help me, he would."

Sawyer tapped him in 1963 to gather seven related departments into what later became the state Department of Human Resources. The next year, President Lyndon Johnson named O'Callaghan regional director in the Office of Emergency Preparedness over Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California, Hawaii and the Pacific territories.

He unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor in 1966, losing in the Democratic primary.

In 1970, he won the gubernatorial primary as a dark horse and ran as an underdog against Lt. Gov. Ed Fike for the governor's post. Campaigning on downtown street corners, he then shocked Fike and took the state's top elected post for the first of two terms O'Callaghan would hold in Carson City.

"When he ran for governor, nobody gave him much of a chance. But O'Callaghan had one of those infectious personalties. He pulled one of the great upsets," Bryan said.

"I figured I could do as good a job," O'Callaghan recalled of his opponents during a 1999 interview. "I knew I could make government run."

And he did.

As governor, O'Callaghan increased funding for special education programs; created a state Consumer Affairs Office, the Division of Aging Services, the Environmental Commission and the state Energy Department; started the Nevada Housing Division to provide low-cost loans for home buyers; and took actions that greatly contributed to the growth of the Community College of Southern Nevada and increased the number of women, minorities and the disabled holding state jobs.

As governor, O'Callaghan was famous for checking first-hand what was wrong with state agencies. He simply would show up unannounced.

"You learn little things that way," O'Callaghan said in a 1999 interview. "If you go into a state institution and it smells like urine, you know it isn't being run right."

He was the last governor who legally could have sought a third term before the Legislature passed a law limiting the governor to two terms, but he decided not to seek re-election in 1978.

"Four years wasn't enough. Eight years is about right," he told the Review-Journal before leaving the governor's mansion.

Stories about O'Callaghan's propensity for work have become legends in the capital.

Former Assembly Speaker Joe Dini, D-Yerington, recalled how O'Callaghan had a problem with the Equal Rights Commission back in the 1970s and scheduled a 7 a.m. meeting the following day. The agency director lived in Las Vegas and protested that there were no airline flights he could take to reach Carson City in time.

"I remember Mike said, 'You will be here at 7 a.m.,' " Dini said. "He was."

Despite recurrent pain from his leg wound, O'Callaghan showed by example the importance of work to everyone around him, former Las Vegas Sun City Editor Chris Chrystal said.

"He respected people who were hard workers and had the guts to tell it like it is," added Chrystal, now spokeswoman for the state Tourism Commission. "All politics aside, he set the example for everyone who knew him of virtue of hard work and the importance of religion in life."

Although O'Callaghan was very much an Irish Catholic, he had visited Israel a dozen times since 1985 as a member of Sar-El, the Israeli volunteer defense force. Last month, O'Callaghan won the Jewish Federation's David L. Simon Bridge Builder for Peace Award.

Jan Smith, who ran O'Callaghan's Las Vegas office for most of his time as governor, said O'Callaghan's compassion inspired handicapped people.

"I don't think there was a person in the state who lost a limb when he was governor who he didn't visit in the hospital," she said. "He cared about people politicians normally don't pay attention to."

In 1991, a new Las Vegas middle school was named in his honor. In 1994, the federal veterans' hospital at Nellis Air Force Base was named in his honor.

He was inducted into the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame in 1998.

Review-Journal writers Erin Neff, Adrienne Packer, Henry Brean and Michael Squires and columnist Jane Ann Morrison contributed to this report.