EDITOR’S NOTE: A new “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes every Monday, with a bonus Flashback Friday edition. Today’s edition originally ran on Apr 21, 2023.
Nevada’s US Senator Key Pittman died a few days before the November 1940 reelection that he was pet to win inward a landslide. His organic structure was preserved inward a tub total of sparkler so his seat could remain Democratic. Or, so the story goes.
This was the second busted myth of this series bolstered past authors Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris inward “The Green River Felt Jungle.” Their 1963 New House of York Times bestseller was the number one rule book to exhibit the secret crook ownership behindhand to the highest degree of the Las Vegas Strip casino resorts, but it got a ton of its facts wrong.
According to the myth, Pittman’s aides and Democratic political party officials kept his personify on sparkler at the Mizpah Hotel inwards Tonopah during the 1940 election. That way, a coroner wouldn’t live able-bodied to ground a preelection time of death, and Nevada’s governor, Edward VIII Carville, could nominate a fellow Democrat as Pittman’s replacement.
In their 1995 book, “A Short History of Reno,” authors Barbara and Myrick Land traced the myth of the frozen senator to a effortless input made by I of his aides, who allegedly told a newsperson that the ground the senator made so few personal appearances inward the utmost years of the run was because his staff was “keeping him on ice.”
Senator Steve-O
Pittman, a tall and skimpy solid Southern gentleman who retained the drawl of his Mississippi upbringing, rosaceous to chair pro tempore of the US Senate and chairman of its prestigious foreign dealings commission during the first-class honours degree and endorse administrations of President Franklin Roosevelt. Several pieces of legislation hold the senator’s name, including the Pittman Act of 1918 and the Pittman-Robertson Federal soldier Aid inwards Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937.
But what really defined Pittman’s life and vocation was his alcoholism.
While portion of a delegation representing the US at the Greater London Economic Conference in 1933, which included President Roosevelt, Pittman behaved to a greater extent similar Steve-O from “Jackass” than a US official. One night, he was reportedly discovered by waiters at Claridge’s Hotel sitting stark raw in a kitchen sink, pretending to live a fountain. Another night, Pittman entertained himself by walking downward Upper Brook Street and shooting out street lamps.
Pittman’s understanding for attending the conference was to advance the cause of silver, the cornerstone of Nevada’s pre-tourism excavation economy. He took this directive a smidge too far, judging past a write up of what occurred after a buster American delegate dared to challenge Pittman’s judgment that Ag be remonetized. Pittman pulled a gun on the poor guy wire and chased him through and through the hallways of Claridge’s.
The Chilling Truth
Having go customary to concocting insure stories for his drinking, Pittman’s aides told rightfully inquiring reporters on Election Clarence Day 1940 that the senator wasn’t around because he was hospitalized with exhaustion. The 68-year-old was really hospitalized for a terrible nerve onrush he suffered on Nov 4 at the Riverside Hotel inwards Reno.
“He had come in plunk for to Silver State to safari and was imbibition a lot,” Michael Green, a UNLV chronicle professor, told Casino.org. “At ane head before the election, he wasn’t feeling well, was drinking heavily, and he suffered a pump attack.”
Though his wife, Mimosa Pittman, visited him on Election Day at Washoe Hospital and wrote in her journal that he seemed “happy,” she had already been told past doctors that his dying was imminent – that the senator wouldn’t even out endure the spark plunk for to Washington, DC. Indeed, on Nov 10, Pittman slipped into a coma and died betimes the next morning. Having won his 6th election evenhandedly since Pittman was technically live for the vote, the governor got to appoint a heir after all.
Despite its debunking by to a greater extent than a dozen dependable cyberspace story blogs, and despite the true up story existence only if slightly less umbrageous than the myth, confederacy theorists turn down to unbelieve the tale of Nevada’s reelected “Senator on ice.”
“Nevadans did not elite a deadened piece to the Senate, but they did elite a dying man, with no more chance of surviving, and whose shape was beingness kept a secret,” Green River said. “The facts are interesting sufficiency without any legends.”
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