AGA Fireside Chat – Wed., May 25, 2022

AGA Fireside Chat
May 25, 2022
5 – 5:30pm Wine and Cheese Reception
5:30 – 6:30pm Fireside Chat

Program title: A Reporter’s Notebook on Nevada Gambling

Join us for our first in-person AGA Fireside Chat with Brendan Riley, who will talk about his coverage of Nevada gambling over many years as the AP’s correspondent in Carson City. Serving as Moderator for the evening is Howard W. Herz, American Gaming Archives (AGA) Curator for the Nevada Historical Society.

Retired Associated Press writer Brendan Riley will talk about his coverage of Nevada gambling over many years as the AP’s correspondent in Carson City. Highlights will include Howard Hughes, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, Allen Glick, Morris Shenker, Donald Trump and others; and the state Gaming Commission under Harry Reid. Besides the news accounts, Brendan also will weave in some details of his introduction to gaming — growing up in the shipyard town of Vallejo, Calif., known in its heyday as “Little Reno” because of its widespread illegal gambling.

Guest Speaker Bio:
Brendan Riley was raised in Vallejo, Calif., graduated from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., served in the Navy in Vietnam waters, and had a 39-year career as a political and government affairs writer for The Associated Press. Most of those years were spent in Nevada, as the AP correspondent in Carson City. That involved, among other things, covering the Gaming Control Board and Gaming Commission and also covering important gambling-related matters before the state Supreme Court and in the Nevada Legislature. He retired in 2009 and since then has writing extensively about the history of his hometown of Vallejo. He and his spouse Maggie Tracey live in Genoa.

Moderator Bio:
Howard W Herz is a native of Reno Nevada and attended Reno schools through high school. After attending the University of Nevada for two years he transferred to Stanford University and graduated with a degree in civil engineering in 1969. Throughout his teenage years he worked for Harvey’s Resort Hotel in the summers and managed Harvey’s coin collections. In 1967 Harvey’s began collecting gambling chips. This collection stimulated Howard’s interest in the history of gambling in Nevada and later the history of gambling throughout the United States.

In the late 1990s Howard was able to visit several gambling manufacturing companies in the Chicago area. When these companies closed, Howard was able to preserve many of their records that now constitute the basis for the American Gaming Archives at the Nevada Historical Society. Howard’s interest in gambling history continues to this day as he catalogs the Society’s substantial gambling records and artifacts. Of special interest are the records and artifacts of what the industry termed to be “special work” – cheating devices and methods.