The weeping and wailing over the recent closing of the Boardwalk seemed a bit excessive. The implosion of the Castaways (aka the Showboat) didn't call for any gnashing of teeth and tearing of garments.

But the loss of the Stardust is a piece of history that I hate to see go, even though it's a smart business move by Boyd Gaming Corp. to create the more upscale Echelon Place, a $4 billion center featuring four hotels, a casino, convention and retail operation.

Stardust memories are among the best, and not just for me. For some reason, all you have to do is ask for someone's Stardust memories, and it's like taking a time machine back 30 (or more) years.

Channel 8's Bob Stoldal's first job was as a busboy at the Stardust, the very year it opened, 1958. "I smoked my first cigarette there. I once got drunk and fell into the Stardust pool," the newsman remembered.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., was best friends with the daughter of one of the top executives. She and Debbie Cohen spent a lot of time at the Stardust pool starting when they were 14 or so, hoping to catch the eyes of boys.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and his wife, Carolyn, had good times there. "It was the first place we saw Siegfried and Roy (part of Lido de Paris), and saw it, and saw it, and saw it," Carolyn Goodman said. "We took every single member of our family to see it."

For me (and maybe this is why Boyd Gaming is losing the name), the Stardust is always associated with skimming by the mob. FBI officials always contended that from its opening in 1958 until the Boyd Group bought it in 1985, the Stardust was Skim Central, where untaxed monies were taken from the casino and diverted to the mob. Sometimes the feds proved it, sometimes they merely suspected it.

One of my favorite Stardust skimming memories was the time the FBI had been watching two men they thought were couriers exchanging the money skimmed from the hotel. Month after month outside a grocery store, a package is exchanged. Somehow, the one time the FBI obtains a warrant and moves in to seize the package supposedly containing thousands of dollars, the package contained: just cookies.

Despite the cookie caper, the government did prove that in the 1970s, the mob was skimming from the count room, and the money was heading back to mobsters in Chicago, Kansas City and Milwaukee.

These were the years (1974-79) that Allen Glick from San Diego was the official owner of the Stardust (as well as the Fremont and Hacienda), and the hotels were like the mob's personal candy store.

Glick was the mob's frontman, but Frank Rosenthal was the guy calling the shots, and the depiction of how he did it has been memorialized (with some degree of accuracy) in the 1995 movie "Casino."

Some of the trial testimony in 1985 surpassed the movie in drama. Glick, who was 32 when he bought the Stardust with the help of a Teamster loan, testified he gave Rosenthal a job at the request of a mob boss without realizing Rosenthal was the real boss of the Stardust. Glick said Rosenthal told him early on: "If you interfere with what's going on here, you will never leave this corporation alive."

For years, it's been a mystery why Rosenthal was never charged with skimming, nor did he testify for the government. Maybe he had a good lawyer.

Rosenthal was one of the major clients of then-defense attorney Oscar Goodman, who, as always, offered a quip. "I wish I knew what I knew after I saw the movie 'Casino.' I wish I knew the people I was representing, who they were, because I would have charged them a lot more."

Goodman hopes that when Boyd Gaming demolishes the Stardust in 2007 to make room for Echelon Place, some part of the history is saved. "We're not celebrating the things that happened in there, but at the same time, I hope they leave a little reminder of it. Those happenings should be remembered."

The Stardust sign should be saved to remind everyone of their own Stardust memories.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.