All in family: mobster dad, governor son

I’m used to reading about infamous mobster characters from Las Vegas’ past.

Bugsy Siegel, Allen Dorfman, Carl Thomas, Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo and Gus Greenbaum are to casino-era Las Vegas what Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and John Hancock are to revolutionary America.

But now comes the new book “Son of a Gambling Man” by former Nevada Gov. Bob Miller to weave these characters into an engaging reflection on how he, as the kid of a real-life mobster, grew up to become a crime fighter and then the longest-serving governor in the history of Nevada.

It’s an absolutely charming reconciliation.

Not only does the former governor give readers a personal account of a Las Vegas boy in search of his “working” father, he also offers a blueprint for a Las Vegas community in search of reconciliation with its own past — “it is part of my heritage that I neither shun nor embrace. It simply is.”

As a memoir of a man who led Nevada during the blow-and-go years of the 1990s, it’s remarkably straightforward and absent of the “get-even” quality that plagues the genre. Yes, it’s self-serving at times, as political autobiographies can be, but all in all it’s a reasonable perspective on his political life and times.

But the best attribute of “Son of a Gambling Man” rests with the parts that offer a melancholy glimpse of a law-and-order son in search of a mobster father.

If you’re a Vegas freak, you’ll find many enjoyable passages detailing Miller’s boyhood in Las Vegas. As a 10-year-old, Miller lived off San Francisco Street, which later became Sahara Avenue, and played Hopalong Cassidy with the neighborhood kids.

If you’re a bent-nose aficionado, you’ll find something in this book to satisfy your mobster cravings. If you don’t know what the casino cheating scam called “Chipmunking” is, this book will tell you.

If you’re a political junkie, Miller gives his detailed spin on his time in Carson City and his thinking as he moved up the political ladder in Nevada.

And, if you’re just someone who loves a son-finds-dad story, “Son of a Gambling Man” makes for about as good, and as odd, a story as you can find.

When it comes to his dad, Ross Miller, and the mobsters of Las Vegas’ yesteryear, Bob Miller doesn’t sugarcoat who they were or what they did.

“In 1955,” Gov. Miller writes, “my father would be offered an opportunity ... to buy into ... the Riviera.” Ross Miller took the opportunity for a minority share. But the real owner was Accardo, who immediately became unhappy when the casino lost money for 90 straight days. So Accardo took charge and asked Greenbaum to come out of retirement and run the casino.

Greenbaum refused. When his sister-in-law was murdered in her bed a few nights later, Greenbaum reconsidered the offer.

“This was my father’s world, a world he successfully kept hidden from me,” Gov. Miller writes.

On the other side of the ledger, Ross Miller was a man of his word, as all successful bookmakers tend to be.

Ross Miller married a Roman Catholic woman. At the baptism of his son, the priest asked Ross if he would see to it that the boy was raised Catholic. Ross promised and, as Bob Miller writes, he remained true to his word.

Bob described his father as “a man of few words and decisive action who, I would later learn, was an illegal bookmaker who consorted with underworld associates. My father was not in the mob, but he was of the mob.”

Bob Miller’s story is the story of Las Vegas. Be it personal or community, we all must find a bridge from the mobster days of Las Vegas to the shining city that is now a worldwide destination.

I enjoyed every page of “Son of a Gambling Man.” To my fellow Nevadans, I say read it.

Don’t force me to make you an offer you can’t refuse.

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/sherman-frederick.