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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LEFT: Suzanne enjoys the Grand Canyon with her parents in the late '50s. RIGHT: Suzanne at the Mob Museum, to which she donated much of the memorabilia collected by her father. A DIFFERENT KIND OF PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN CUTRONA (DALITZ); LEILA NAVIDI (MUSEUM); COURTESY OF SUZANNE DALITZ (GRAND CANYON) ROYALTY MOE DALITZ WAS A ONETIME BOOTLEGGER, RACKETEER, AND MOBSTER. BUT SUZANNE DALITZ, AUTHOR AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, KNEW HIM AS "DAD." IN A GRIPPING PERSONAL STORY, SHE DESCRIBES THE COMPLICATED DYNAMICS OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO BUILDING LAS VEGAS. BY DAVE BERNS S uzanne Dalitz remembers the day she first saw her father's name alongside those of the men considered the kings of the East Coast crime scene. It was 1970 and she was an innocent 14-year-old. While working a summer job in showroom reservations at the Stardust, she purchased a glossy magazine from the hotel coffee shop, and there was her daddy, his name next to those of Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Albert Anastasia, major players in what came to be known as the "national crime syndicate." She put the magazine in front of her father. "Is this you?" she demanded. Moe Dalitz didn't flinch. "I knew those people," he said. "I was no angel. I liked to walk between the raindrops with- out getting wet, and I can't tell you much more than that." The teenager wasn't sure what to make of it, but she believed that her father feared losing her, his only child, if he shared any more details, as if he wanted Suzanne to see him in a positive light, to love him the way he loved her. "I guess there was some part of me that knew those would be the terms, and I would accept those terms," she says. "It was a shame. Now I wish I could ask him, 'What was it like to run illegal liquor during Prohibition for the Little Jewish Navy? You mean you really drove across Lake Erie with a truck full of booze? Really? Cool. Tell me more, much more.' But that wasn't meant to be." Moe Dalitz, the Boston-born bootlegger, racketeer, and casino owner, died at the age of 89, having spent years as a legitimate businessman, and is today one of the featured characters in the Las Vegas Mob Museum, largely because of his daughter. She provided museum curators with numerous photos of her father and mother, as well as much of the memorabilia he collected through his decades as a developer of the old Desert Inn and the Sundance and as a financier of Sunrise Hospital, the Boulevard Mall, and nearby residential developments. Well before the museum's February 2012 opening, Suzanne Dalitz spoke with curator Kathy Berrie about Berrie's vision for building a highly respectful institution, one that accurately depicted the lives of the men and women it featured. "She was looking for a story without the biases that everyone has," Dalitz says. "So many have seen VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 103 102-105_V_F_Reportage3_Oct13.indd 103 9/17/13 5:02 PM

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