From left Parry Thomas with Steve Wynn after receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Gaming Summit in 1996; The sculpture of Brentina by Stephan Weiss, a gift from the Wynns, graces the entrance of Thomas’ River Grove Farm in Hailey; Parry with Olympic champion equestrian Brentina; Parry Thomas in 1969 as president of the Bank of Las Vegas; Decending the steps at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center.
“Father of the Megaresort,” to jump in. Public ownership enabled Vegas “Strip” developers to access previously unimaginable sums of capital, the rocket fuel that set off the late-20th-century Las Vegas boom. “For about 25 years, Parry Thomas was Eeny, Meeny, Miney and there was no Mo,” Wynn said. “If you wanted to build a building, if you wanted to build another tower, if you wanted to buy a casino or you wanted to get a bankroll loan for working capital, he was the one guy.” By the late ’60s Thomas had become a mentor to Wynn, a young up-and-comer whose family had owned bingo parlors on the East Coast. The kid had a creativity and hunger Thomas found intoxicating. So when Wynn’s first casino deal played out—he had a small share in the Frontier when Howard Hughes bought it in ’67—Thomas insisted Wynn remain in Vegas and advised him on his next move. Recalled Wynn: “His exact words: ‘This is a growing town, they need young people, you’ll end up owning the place.’ I thought that was so funny. My God, that was 43 years ago.” Thomas’ impact seldom drew fanfare. There was a Business Week cover in the ’70s with the headline, “Frank Sinatra Gives Las Vegas Its Glitter, Parry Thomas Gives It Its Gold.” In 2000, the Las Vegas Review-Journal included him as one of the 100 most influential Nevadans of the 20th century. Then, in 2009, Thomas was the subject of a biography, “The Quiet Kingmaker,” the result of his own children lobbying him to share stories of his role in the rise of Las Vegas. Thomas gave it the okay despite his long-abiding belief that the relationship between a banker and borrower ought to be as confidentially ironclad as that of a doctor and patient or priest and confessor. Yet most Las Vegans today only know the Thomas name because of the Thomas & Mack Arena, where the University
of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) basketball teams plays. They have no idea that he and Mack assembled the land and raised the money to get UNLV off the ground. prizes from those early days—his first Sun Valley sojourn with the Thomas family. Peggy and Parry Thomas began bringing their five children to horseback ride and ski in the early ’60s, buying one of the first Cottonwood units. Other families who bought in that round of development included, according to Roger Thomas, the Pritzkers, the DuPonts and the Fords. The Thomases became close personal friends with, among others, Olympic skiing superstar Gretchen Fraser and her husband Don. “We were the first Las Vegans to go there a lot and spend a lot of time there,” Roger said. It was customary for the Thomases to bring important Vegas movers and shakers to their Sun Valley digs, and it was on the slopes of Baldy and Dollar Mountain in January of ’68 that Parry introduced Wynn to the Nevada inner circle. “I ended up there for the first time in ’68 at age 26, with Hank [Greenspun], Bud [James] and Herb [Jones],” Wynn said, referring to a trio that included the state’s most prominent real estate and media magnate, a gaming executive who’d go on to become chairman of ITT Sheraton, and the most influential attorney in Las Vegas. “They’re in their mid-40s, I’m 20 years younger, but I’m there at the invitation of Parry, who was the most important person there,” Wynn recalls. “I was hanging out with the parents, not the kids. And that really was the most important moment in my introduction to the Las Vegas society and its power structure.” And yet, Sun Valley was decidedly a place where Vegas business continued on page 106 did not—and still does not—get done.
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