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Newsletter issued by the Las Vegas Rotary Club

Mayor Oran K. Gragson attending the groundbreaking for a new research facility for Edgerton, Germeshausen & Grier (EG&G), May 1963. Pictured are U. S. Nevada Senator Howard Cannon (3rd from left), U. S. Nevada Senator Alan Bible (4th from left), and Las Vegas Mayor Oran K. Gragson (far right). The sign behind them reads "New Research Facility for Edgerton, Gereshausen & Grier Airport Industrial Tract Development of E. Parry Thomas-Jerry Mack and Haas-Haynie Corp." Oran Kenneth Gragson (February 14, 1911 – October 7, 2002) was an American businessman and politician. He was the longest-serving mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada, from 1959 to 1975. Gragson, a member of the Republican Party, was a small business owner who was elected Mayor on a reform platform against police corruption and for equal opportunity for people of all socio-economic and racial categories. Gragson died in a Las Vegas hospice on October 7, 2002, at the age of 91. The Oran K. Gragson Elementary School located at 555 N. Honolulu Street, Las Vegas, NV 89110 was named in his honor. Howard Walter Cannon (January 26, 1912 – March 5, 2002) was an American politician. He served as a United States Senator from Nevada from 1959 until 1983 as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1956, Cannon ran for the United States House of Representatives to succeed Republican incumbent Clarence Clifton Young, who ran for the U.S. Senate, but lost the Democratic primary to former Congressman Walter Baring, who then won the general election. In 1958, he was elected to the United States Senate, unseating Republican Senator George W. Malone with 58% of the vote.. Cannon was nearly defeated in his first re-election bid in 1964, holding off Republican Lieutenant Governor Paul Laxalt in one of the closest Senate elections ever. Alan Harvey Bible (November 20, 1909 – September 12, 1988) was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Senator from Nevada from 1954 to 1974. He previously served as Attorney General of Nevada from 1942 to 1950. In 1952, Bible was narrowly defeated for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, losing to political newcomer Thomas B. Mechling by 475 votes. However, after the death of Senator McCarran in September 1954, Bible was elected to the Senate the following November to fill the remainder of McCarran's term. He defeated Republican Ernest S. Brown, who had been appointed to McCarran's seat by Governor Charles H. Russell, by a margin of 58%-42%. He was reelected in 1956, 1962, and again in 1968 and represented Nevada in the United States Senate from December 2, 1954, until his resignation on December 17, 1974. During his time in the United States Senate, he was chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia (Eighty-fifth through Ninetieth Congresses), the Joint Committee on Washington Metropolitan Problems (Eighty-fifth and Eighty-sixth Congresses), and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Small Business (Ninety-first through Ninety-third Congresses). He is buried in Reno, Nevada.