Ex-commissioner, Canter dies after lymphoma battle

When former Clark County Commissioner Thalia Dondero remembers David B. Canter, a colleague on the commission, she remembers a man who worked to enlarge McCarran International Airport and to improve the governance of the county hospital that would become known as University Medical Center.

"And when we wanted someone out there to explain what we were doing, he was the man we would put out front because of his public relations background," said Dondero, now a member of the Board of Regents for the Nevada System of Higher Education. "He was very bright and came across to the public very well."

Canter, 70, a Democrat whose eight years on the commission began when he first won election in 1974, died Friday after battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for five years, his wife, Bonnie Gail Canter, said Sunday.

"We went through chemotherapy, radiation, all kinds of treatment," she said. "It was a tough fight."

David Canter, who served from 1970-1974 on the Board of Trustees of the Clark County School District, died at the Nathan Adelson Hospice.

Dondero said Sunday that the work done by the commission he served on in the 1970s and '80s was sometimes met by skepticism.

"I can remember when state legislators couldn't understand why we wanted to build a baggage area that they described as bigger than three football fields," Dondero said. "As it turned out, we didn't build it big enough."

Dondero said he also saw the need to ensure that the then-Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital be equipped to handle the most difficult of medical cases and that the institution, which became UMC in the 1980s, be under the control of the commission.

David Canter, she said, was concerned with accountability.

He was an attorney who owned his own advertising agency, Canter Advertising Agency. His clients included homebuilders and hotels, his wife said.

Political consultant Kent Oram, who ran Karen Hayes' successful 1982 primary campaign that would keep David Canter from running in the general election, was surprised by how the defeated candidate reacted.

"He ended up raising money for Karen," Oram said.

Perhaps the most difficult part of David Canter's life, his wife said, was son Murphy's death from kidney disease in 1998.

"Murphy was only 27 when he died, and David spent as much time with him as he could when he was sick," Bonnie Canter said.

In addition to his wife, David Canter is survived by his daughter, Kaycee.

Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at King David Memorial Chapel, 2697 Eldorado Lane. Interment will follow at Palm Valley View Cemetery.