ML - Vegas Magazine

2013 - Issue 6 - October

Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.

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"IF YOU WALK WITH A SECRET LONG ENOUGH, IT BECOMES A SECRET TO YOURSELF." the Godfather films, so they view this story within a certain mythology without seeing real people. When you think of the creation story in Las Vegas, what is at its core here? It's a bunch of gangsters who came out here in some process, and they built the Flamingo, and one gets shot in the eye. More guys come in another wave and start building hotels, and so there's that piece that the public thinks of as the beginnings of Vegas. So people say, 'I saw a picture of Bugsy in the museum. Which one was your father?'" D alitz's career with her husband is a far cry from those gangster days of yore, but her trailblazing instinct makes her very much her father's daughter. A human rights activist, she is president of the Santa Fe, New Mexico– based Angelica Foundation, a small player in the debate over US social and environmental policies. In 2011, the nonprofit reported assets of $4.3 million, with grants and contributions totaling $301,370 going to a variety of environmental and human rights organizations throughout the country. She and her husband, James Gollin, a retired investment banker and current president and chairman of the Rainforest Action Network, also use the Angelica Foundation to advocate for drug policy reform in Mexico. Dalitz sees the toll that US drug policies have taken on tens of millions of Americans, their families, and their communities, and she can't help but notice the parallels to her father and his bootlegging, crossroading pals of the 1930s and '40s. 104 ABOVE: Moe Dalitz enlisted in the Army during World War II hoping to serve with General Patton, but he was deployed stateside designing laundry systems and eventually rose to the rank of captain. RIGHT: Moe had a sense of humor about his notoriety, as seen in this staged photograph. Born in 1899, Moe Dalitz grew up helping his father in the family laundry business, and was in fact a successful laundry operator most of his life—although he expanded into the illegal liquor and gambling operations for which he was best known. Dalitz was never simply a gangster—the list of his legitimate businesses was long, with interests in the Michigan Industrial Laundry Co., the Detroit Steel Co., Dalitz Realty, and even a piece of the Rock Island Railroad. But when his other businesses—illegal casinos among them— felt the heat during Cleveland's liquor wars, Dalitz moved west, where Vegas casino owners were among the pillars of the community. "I see complicated guys who were immigrants," Suzanne says. "They weren't ever going to get into Harvard Law or medical school. They were entrepreneurs, and they were willing to see human nature as it was, to see drives and addictions as opportunities. You know the old thing, 'Give the people what they want.' They didn't necessarily make a moral evaluation about the evils of alcohol, gambling." You've been introduced at events as a "mob daughter." How does that make you feel? It's a cliché. It's an inability to escape the shadow and identity of the father. It's got cachet—a dirty, prurient cachet. It's disempowering. You can't really have another identity once you're introduced as a mob daughter. The conversation stops, or people tell you about The Godfather, which they always do. I'm not the only one who kept it as a secret, and if you walk with a secret long enough, it becomes a secret to yourself. When you talk with the children of others portrayed in the museum, do you have this conversation? When your father dies violently and does not get to reinvent, does not get to go legitimate, it's a different story, and the story you want to tell is about their humanity. I'm grateful I don't have it at that level. A significant number of the children did not want to have anything to do with the law enforcement [section of the museum] because law enforcement persecuted their parents. They saw law enforcement as "the other" and were not going to give it a moment's credit for the destruction of their families. Do you understand that narrative, the law enforcement perspective on the story? I sat here recently in the basement [of the museum] and for the first time read his Freedom of Information Act [government file]—2,000 pages, his FBI reports. It starts in the 1930s, ends in the 1980s. For 50 years he is pursued, never brought to trial, never convicted, never serves a day in prison, but they never let it go. So I'm looking at that—generations of FBI agents pursuing his case—and he was audited by the IRS all the time. He felt hounded and pursued. So to the degree that I can understand what that's like from the inside, yeah, it's terrible. Plus the dude was going legitimate. He's building hospitals in cities [he built Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center and the Las Vegas Country Club and was a frequent donor to Vegas institutions and community organizations]. My aging dad wasn't committing VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 102-105_V_F_Reportage3_Oct13.indd 104 9/17/13 5:03 PM

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