N AT I V E By Candice Wiener
Juice
A Legacy to be Honored Despite a Tarnished History. Herbert Gerson’s Contribution to our City will Remain Celebrated and Intact.
W
e recently had the opportunity to catch up with a dear friend, Rebecca Raymond, who’s family also has long time history here in Las Vegas. We asked Rebecca about her
Grandfather, Herbert Gerson, who was the Executive Housing Director of Las Vegas for purposes of urban renewal. Herbert Gerson, aka, Shorty, was born in Ohio in 1893. When he was young, he and his brother were sent to live in an orphanage. The boys decided to run away to escape the orphanage and ran west until they eventually landed in Lincoln County, Nevada. Herbert became head of the Housing Authority there. Pat McCarran learned of the work he was doing in Lincoln County and liked what he was doing with the housing projects and development. He invited and welcomed him to come to Las Vegas and head the Housing Authority in Clark County. That was in 1946 and when Herbert was appointed, Clark County didn’t have any housing authority commissioned yet to date. Herbert implemented and went on to build several low-income housing projects all over Las Vegas. Prior to his arrival in Clark County, Las Vegas had no housing developments being built for low-income communities. In the 1960’s, Herbert worked
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directly with John F. Kennedy and successfully lobbied for things like air conditioning units inside the low-income housing projects, instead of swamp coolers or no air conditioning at all. Us locals know how brutal our temperatures can be in summer and how vital air conditioning is. Although swamp coolers may be sufficient in cooler climates or on the East Coast, it was and is imperative to have air conditioning units is all the houses in Las Vegas. Rebecca remembers her Great-Grandfather fondly. She stated “his nickname was Shorty; he was a little Jewish man, and I was 10 when he died. I seem to remember almost being just as tall as him at that time; he couldn’t have been more than 5 foot 4,” hence the nickname,
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Shorty.
