Ralph Lamb’s favorite stories revolved around his family
Ralph Lamb’s storied law enforcement career would carry him into the history books as Clark County’s cowboy sheriff, but in a quiet moment, his thoughts almost always returned to his roots in Alamo and how he got his start as a deputy.
When we got together at his house to chat off the record, or for a notebook interview, or just to play a game of “Remember him? Remember when?” Lamb’s memory never traveled far without a tale about his brothers and sisters, his double-tough mother, or his ranching and rodeoing father back in the days when the road to Alamo was little more than a wagon rut. Our families had known each other 65 years and reached back to when Henderson was a factory town and he wasn’t yet considered the most powerful political figure in the state.
He occasionally ran with fast company in law enforcement and in the shadow world of the casino industry back in the day when some people with mob jackets were arrested and others were named the Man of the Year. Lamb was himself a skilled investigator who once left the sheriff’s office to work for Howard Hughes, then returned to become not only the most progressive lawman in local history but also a controversial one.
He combined the city and county departments to form Metro, improved investigative capabilities and started the first forensics team. He also was the iron fist behind the department’s organized crime task force that was known to write its own laws and occasionally fold and spindle the Constitution.
More than anything, a man of Lamb’s fierce loyalties and calloused toughness was the only type capable of surviving in the office of sheriff in a place as wild as Las Vegas.
He saw his department shut out of an intelligence-sharing association because of real and perceived internal corruption. He survived a tax evasion indictment, and he saw his friend John Moran serve three terms in office. The department continued to modernize, and future sheriffs would have college degrees and training courtesy of the FBI Academy, but there would be only one Ralph Lamb.
During one meeting I memorialized in my book “Vegas Voices,” Lamb ambled around his clean but modest home using air from a nasal cannula attached to a long oxygen hose and an unseen machine. He suffered without complaint from a host of age-related maladies. Photos of a younger man with his children, dignitaries and celebrities lined the walls. For all the world it was reminiscent of an old rodeo cowboy coiling a rope.
Lamb served in the Army in Korea, then returned to Southern Nevada with one goal: to pitch in and feed his family any way he could. With a military background, he gravitated toward law enforcement with hat in hand.
“After Korea, I came back to work and help take care of my family,” he recalled. “I needed a job and went to see the Sheriff, Glen Jones. And Pearl Brown, that’s Sen. Mahlon Brown’s mom, was his secretary. She said, ‘What can I do for you?’ I said, ‘Mrs. Brown, I need a job. I got two brothers, little ones, and a sister at home in Henderson. I need a job.
“She said, ‘Wait a minute. What kind of work do you do?’ I said, ‘I just want to be a deputy sheriff. What kind of jobs do they got here?’ She went back and talked to Glen. He came out in a few minutes and gave me a badge and said, ‘Go ahead over there and work in Henderson. Go see (deputy) Hayward Milligan. Report at 4 o’clock. Milligan always wore those big cross-over holsters. He looked like Tom Mix. I went walking in there with no clothes, a pair of Levi’s, a gun stuck in my belt. Old Milligan, he left and went home. And I went to work. I must have been 21 at the time because you had to be 21 to be a deputy, and I’m sure I told Glen Jones I was 21, and I don’t want to lie twice.”
He laughed and sipped his coffee. Thus began a wild ride.
It was only fitting, and in keeping with a Nevada legend, that the cowboy sheriff would ride off into the sunset on the very day in July that his father had been mortally wounded trying to rescue a kid on a runaway horse many years before in a Tonopah rodeo.
Some folks will dwell on his flaws, others will wallow in his legend. Hero or horse thief, take your pick.
I prefer to think about where Ralph Lamb came from, and how far he traveled in one remarkable lifetime.
Riding hard for the brand, and always tall in the saddle.
John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. Find him on Twitter: @jlnevadasmith
