Doctor, coroner, soldier, spy: That was Otto Ravenholt

Dr. Otto Ravenholt could have gone anywhere and done just about anything in his life. He was that intelligent.

Locals will remember Ravenholt, who died March 18 after suffering a heart attack at age 84, as the longtime head of the Southern Nevada Health District and the community's first physician coroner.

But did you know he was also an Army spy?

I didn't until I spent several hours with him in 2010 at his quiet Las Vegas home. Although the passing years had slowed him physically, he remained a formidable intellect and a gifted storyteller with an encyclopedic memory.

The remarkable Ravenholt joined the Army after World War II and rose to become an officer in the Counter Intelligence Corps. He learned Japanese and went to work gathering intelligence in reconstruction Japan. Before leaving the service, Ravenholt captured a North Korean spy in Japan in the days leading up to the start of the Korean War.

But when it came to political intrigue, his decades spent in Las Vegas would rival anything he experienced overseas.

He became Clark County's top health officer at a time when the regulations had yet to be modernized for everything from basic commercial sanitation to the office of the coroner. Booming Las Vegas was held tightly in the soiled mitts of a loose collection of good old boys, for whom no function of government was bad as long as they had a piece of it.

With a work ethic that echoed his Wisconsin farm boy roots, Ravenholt gained a reputation for intelligence and professional ethics in Southern Nevada. For a generation, whenever county officials had a health-related challenge, it wound up on Ravenholt's crowded desk.

If the county hospital needed fixing, Otto was assigned the task. Restaurant sanitation? Otto again. Immunizations for Clark County schoolchildren? That was Otto's department, too.

Always politically active, Ravenholt became so popular that friends and admirers encouraged him to run for public office. In 1970, Ravenholt's progressive political leanings led him to challenge the entrenched and staunchly conservative Democratic incumbent Walter Baring for Congress. Ravenholt lost, but he learned a valuable lesson in Nevada-style politics.

"As it turned out, I was naive when it came to understanding about money raising and having a campaign," he said, adding that he spent his pension during that campaign. "I understood the process, but I was naive when it came to real politics."

Shortly afterward, he rejoined the county health department and continued a career that arguably had a far greater impact on the daily quality of life of Southern Nevadans than anything he might have accomplished in Congress.

By far his greatest challenge was in dragging Southern Nevada's Old West coroner's system into the light of the 20th century. It wouldn't be easy.

When Clark County Manager Robbins Cahill handed Ravenholt that formidable task, he not only had to push for changes in a statute that allowed justices of the peace to appoint their own political supporters as special coroners but also create an office properly equipped to conduct a professional medical examination.

One judge-appointed coroner kept reports on the deceased in the trunk of his Cadillac. Ravenholt managed to improve the office's filing system, too.

He also created the Clark County coroner's inquest system to review police officer-involved fatal shootings. Although he admitted it wasn't perfect, it was a vast improvement over the black hole such shooting cases fell into.

"I started out with the coroner's program and several times tried to get out of it," he recalled. "I stayed in that role for 26 years."

He paused for effect.

"They never paid me a goddamn dollar in 26 years!" Ravenholt roared, filling the quiet living room with laughter.

Otto Ravenholt never got rich serving Southern Nevada, but his contributions to this community were priceless.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.