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SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY The calm before the fundraising frenzy at the 2006 Keep Memory Alive gala. Lenny Kravitz lets love rule at the 2012 gala. ���My father was my best friend.��� TOM KAPLAN Senior Managing Partner, Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group ���LARRY RUVO The first night we all got together, we shared stories about Lou. It was a celebration of his life. It wasn���t somber. We remembered the guy who never forgot a customer���s favorite dish or bottle of wine until the day his memory failed him. To me, he embodies what a restaurateur should be to be successful. I remember well the warmth that was exuded in the restaurant from him and his staff. If the mark of a passionate restaurateur is an owner who treats working-class customers like A-list celebrities, Lou Ruvo fit the profile. Sometime during the evening, John Paul DeJoria stopped Larry on the Spago stairwell and offered a $5,000 donation to Alzheimer���s research in the name of Lou. Others followed. In all, the people gave $35,000, and Larry approached Wolfgang and said, ���Let���s do a real dinner next year, a fundraiser for Alzheimer���s research.��� He reached out for help from casino executives Bobby Baldwin and Kenny Epstein and business figure Maddy Graves. In September 1996 we held the first Keep Memory Alive dinner in the main dining room of Spago. That second Spago dinner was an extension of the first. You can���t talk about one without the other. More than 250 people attended that event. Executives from the city���s largest businesses purchased tables, with the money earmarked for Alzheimer���s research. There was a raffle. Expensive meals, show tickets, and a luxurious trip were donated. The bidding began: $2,500, $5,000, $7,500, $10,000���up it went. It hit $15,000, $20,000, $25,000. Each of the tables wanted to one-up each other, in good-spirited competition. Mirage didn���t want to have Caesars beat them; MGM wanted to outbid Coast. 58 The 2012 gala was a tribute to ���The Greatest,��� Muhammad Ali. John got up. He said that he wanted to raffle off nothing you could eat, watch, or touch. The crowd laughed. DeJoria went on: He was offering nothing. The prize was ���nothing,��� and the bidding was to start at $5,000. A bidding war began. The exact number raised isn���t that important. It was the sentiment that enveloped the room. That first dinner raised $375,000. DAVID ROBINS Managing Partner for Operations and Corporate Chef, Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group Larry is always working, always has something on his mind. He never rests his passions for family, work, and entrepreneurship. He tries to tie in what he does on the nonprofit side to his other work on a daily basis. There���s nobody else I know who���s more generous or philanthropic. It seems like you name the charity and he���s involved. He���s a very smart businessman who is constantly fundraising. With Keep Memory Alive, he not only inspired people to open their pocketbooks, but first inspired them to open their minds. He believes in Las Vegas. This city was a small town when he first came here, and I think it still has that small-town mentality to him. In that way, Larry���s the kind of quintessential old guard of Las Vegas. We were very proud to host that first dinner in 1995, the gathering of friends that spawned what is now this. Keep Memory Alive and the Lou Ruvo Center have definitely changed Las Vegas for the better���bringing in a major player like Frank Gehry designwise, creating a major player in healthcare, and, most importantly, the influence and sensibility of philanthropy that it���s gifted to this city. continued on page 60 PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE LOU RUVO CENTER (KRAVITZ, ALI), BY DAHL PHOTOGRAPHY (ROOM) continued from page 56 center. Frank is involved with the fight against Huntington���s disease himself, and it was his support for our cause that persuaded him to finally build in Vegas. The final success was, of course, being able to attract Cleveland Clinic to run this facility. Because it���s such a very complex disease, we have to have the very best people. What would my dad think? My father was my best friend in the world. I saw him almost every day. If he knew he had to sacrifice his life in order for us to do what we���re doing and change this many people���s lives, my father would have sacrificed his life. We���re now the number-one place in the US for clinical trials into Alzheimer���s disease. My mom sometimes drives by that building and cries. To hear my mother tell me how proud she is of that facility with the name of my father, her husband, on it, that means everything to me. VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 054-060_V_SP_SpiritofGen_Spring13.indd 58 2/12/13 3:40 PM