MARY HAUSCH

Mary was interviewed July 1, 1999. She is currently an Assistant Professor and teaches in the Hank Greenspun School of Communication at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She teaches courses in journalism writing, and media ethics, among her numerous other university activities.

If you saw where I lived when I first moved here, you wouldn=t believe it. I lived off an alley on N. 9^th Street. I was making $145 a week, and I lived in this dumpy place off an alley and my dilemma was would my bed be in my kitchen or my living room? After a couple of dates with guys who liked the idea of my bed being in my living room, I moved it in my kitchen, which is incredibly convenient because you can lay in bed and open the refrigerator.

About three Sundays after I was here, I got a call on Sunday morning and this guy who says, AThis is Mike O=Callaghan, I don=t think we=ve met yet, but I wanted to tell you how much I liked your Sunday feature onY@ whatever it was on, AIt was so interesting.@ I=m thinking, this is the governor of the state, Mike O=Callaghan, and the governor is calling me at home to tell me he likes my story? How can this be? In Ohio, I had never seen the Governor anywhere. How could he be calling me up? It really hit me what the town was like and Mike O=Callaghan was extraordinary in that regard, but Kenny Guinn is the same kind of person. Richard Bryan was the same kind of person. I got to know O=Callaghan really well. I=d go to breakfast with him sometimes at the Union Plaza. He always wanted to have breakfast at 6 a.m. and he=d already been to mass. He would talk to all the waitresses by name. Maybe he was looking at the name tags to see, but it was an awful lot that he would make a point of talking to them by name. It was just so small-towny to me that I could hardly believe it. Everybody back then really knew everybody and the most popular place to have lunch was Benny Binion=s Horseshoe in the coffee shop. I loved to go to lunch at the coffee shop because you saw everybody. You saw the Oscar Goodmans, the Harry Claibornes, these were the prominent attorneys in town. They were in there all the time. You saw the judges, you saw the mayor and the city council people, and they were just all around us in this incredibly good old boy town, and that=s where they did business. That=s where the reporters could sneak up on them.