Ferrarri Club of Las Vegas

It may seem odd to modern-day Ferrari owners, but Enzo Ferrari, founder of the epic luxury race car company, was a reserved man. It is one of the odd dichotomies of our world that a man whose personal life was marked by quietness would create one of the most obvious symbols of wealth and excess.

Yet therein lies one of the secrets that makes Ferrari one of the most misunderstood of all brands, while equally contributing to its near century long success.

Ferraris have become a symbol of excess; a clear demarcation line is drawn between those who have and those who have not. Or so popular, jealous convention would have us believe. Ferraris, along with their Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin brothers, conjure jests involving fears of sexual inadequacy or mid-life crises.

While these cultural biases may have some basis in fact, most Ferrari owners would smile and laugh the light chortle of someone who knows differently.

For Ferrari owners, it is about the majesty of the machine and the artistry of design. Get behind the wheel of one of these machines, be it a classic 275 GTS or a modern F512 M, and you will begin to understand why organizations like the Ferrari Club of Las Vegas exist.

Originally founded 50 years ago, the Ferrari Club of America brought together “like-minded individuals to preserve the automobiles and keep them original,” says Paul Hesselgesser, president of the Las Vegas chapter of the club.

“YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TO OWN A FERRARI TO JOIN. ALL THAT IS REQUIRED IS A LOVE AND APRECIATION FOR THE AUTOMOBILE.”

“We are friendly and low-key and make every attempt to limit politics,” says Hesselgesser. “You don’t even need to own a Ferrari to join. All that is required is a love and appreciation for the automobile.”

Appreciation and love for the amazing craftsmanship of the Ferrari is easy to acquire, and once the bite has taken root, it is natural and healthy to want to socialize with “like-minded individuals.”
The modest annual membership fee grants members three distinct benefits.

“First, we hold monthly socials at various restaurants around the Valley,” explains Hesselgesser about gatherings at which members can watch Formula 1 races and cheer on their favorite drivers.
Secondly, the club also organizes “technical sessions with our friends at Penske-Wynn Ferrari,” where owners can learn about their automobiles and network on all aspects of owning, preserving and caring for these stallions of the roadways.

Lastly, the organization meets several times a year for drives to Mount Charleston, the Valley of Fire and other scenic locales. After all, Ferrari’s are meant to be driven.

Members even can take part in Track Days at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch, where they can drive their own cars and even drive authentic Ferrari racing cars. That perk alone may be worth the annual fee.

Golfers have their country clubs, doctors and lawyers have their professional associations and Ferrari owners have the Ferrari Club of America.

But the organization is about more than just the cars. It is about the people, and when passionate people of means gather, good things often can result.

“In celebration of the Ferrari Club’s 50th anniversary, we have made a push to get more involved with charitable organizations,” says Hesselgesser.

The organizing principles behind the club offers proof that stereotypes and popular beliefs often cloud reality. Far from being snobby and exclusive, the organization is a place to share and learn, a place to express passion and discover the thrills and joys of life.To that end, the Las Vegas chapter of the Ferrari Club of America has chosen the Ronald McDonald House as its charity.
Despite his quiet life, one has to believe that Enzo would be proud.

POSITIVE ATTITUDE

Nov 2012

Life is not always fair. As adults, we accept this bitter truth. We have lived our lives through loss and triumph. Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, can trace our current circumstances to past actions. In many ways, we have made the life we are living. Random chance and misfortune may enter our lives, but for the most part, we are the product of our past decisions. We have made the world we live in.

But for the children afflicted with life-threatening diseases, such as cancer, sickle cell anemia, AIDS, immune disorders and blood diseases, their lives have become the victim of extreme injustice. Through no fault of their own, they have become sick, and the devastating truth is that some of them will not get better.

The Nevada Children’s Cancer Foundation does not cure the cancer or beat the immune disease. That job is left to the amazing doctors and nurses of the various hospitals that dot the Las Vegas Valley. But what the foundation does do is equally as important and critical.

The NCCF “works side by side with the medical community to help children and their families emotionally, financially, socially and through education,” says Jeffrey Gordon, president of the NCCF.

“Medical science has made great strides in the past 15 years. Cancer and other diseases that once had a 53 percent cure rate now have an 80 percent cure rate,” Gordon says.

Studies have proven “how important attitude and the stress level is in getting better.” These factors play an incredibly powerful role in healing and help create an environment in which the amazing can occur.

“IT’S THE ATTITUDE WE BRINGTO LIFE THAT SERVES AS THE CATALYST TO MIRACLES HAPPENING.”adds Gordon. “A positive attitude is more important than facts, money, failures and successes and the past.”

But for families devastated by the news that their child is sick, a positive attitude is not easy to achieve. That is where the work of the NCCF comes in.

“WE LET THEM KNOW THAT THEY ARE PART OF OUR FAMILY,”
According to Gordon, within 24 to 48 hours after a life-threatening diagnosis, the child and their family are shown that they do not have to tread “the troubled waters on their own, and that there is hope.”

“We let them know that they are part of our family,” says Gordon. “We see where they are financially, and our programs never cost them a thing. Many families survive on two incomes, and when a child gets sick, one parent must quit their job.”

Through its 35 programs and services, the NCCF provides the children, as well as their moms, dads and even siblings, with counseling and educational services to help bolster a positive attitude, so that the healing can begin.

While the work the organization does is unquestionably amazing, it does not come cheaply. To help spread the word and raise much-needed funds, the NCCF has numerous events throughout the calendar year. The most important of these is the Profiles of Courage Gala being held on Saturday, Nov. 17, at the Bellagio Las Vegas.

Held annually “to celebrate courageous children fighting a daily battle against disease, special adults touched by cancer and members of the community who help provide hope and triumph in the fight against disease” the Profiles of Courage Gala is responsible for much of the NCCF’s annual operating budget. “In life, we cannot always do magnificent things,” Gordon says, “but we can do small things with great love.”

As the old saying goes, love (and some great medical care) can cure all ills. Help give these kids some much-deserved love and choose to do a small and wonderful thing.

Apollo Jets

You own your own company, or perhaps you run a fortune 1000 firm. You’re a jetsetter, traveling across the country and the world to make business deals and create the future. You need the ability to get from Las Vegas to London, New York, Sao Paulo, Brazil, or Hong Kong at a moments notice.

To make this all possible you must own your own private jet. That’s the conventional wisdom at least. But you know that to succeed in business and in life sometimes you must buck convention.

The people at Apollo Jets are here to help you think outside the box by providing you with all the benefits of private jet owner ship without the cost, hassle and liability. Sure, owning your own jet brings a level of prestige unmatched by any other purchase and grants you the freedom to come and go at will, but it comes with significant costs.

The amount to purchase, house and maintain a jet alone can be staggering. Add in the numerous costs related to hiring a pilot, the grounds crew and a support staff, and the outlay of capital be comes hard to justify, especially during unstable economic climates.

That’s where on demand flying comes into play.

“If you are flying 400 to 500 hours a year, then a private jet is often a wise idea,” Andrew Drykerman, executive vice president of Apollo Jets says.

“But if you fly less than that, or if you need supplemental lifts when your plane is in for maintenance or your pilot is in recur ring training, then an on demand carrier like Apollo is the way to go”

Private on demand flying has numerous advantages that are unavailable to those who either own their own plane or belong to a fractional ownership program. They can all be summed up in one word—flexibility.

Perhaps you and your family want to fly to Park City for a long ski weekend. Apollo can provide you with an eight seat Citation Encore and get you to the slopes in hours.

Then, the following week you and your board of directors need to be in Singapore to close a big deal so you fly in luxury aboard a 13seat Falcon 900B. Having your own jet, you are bound by the limitations of that aircraft. With on demand flying you have options. Better yet, you pay only for what you need.

As Drykerman went on to say, “It (owning your own jet) is like buying a boat. Your two happiest days are the day you buy the boat and the day you sell the boat.”

All the costs aside, the truly great thing about on demand flying is the level of service. Companies like Apollo Jets know that you can take your business elsewhere whenever you please. With fractional ownership programs or outright private jet ownership, you are locked into a monthly recurring bill. It all comes down to incentive versus disincentive. If a company already has you money it doesn’t need to work as hard to earn it.

“With Apollo you’re not locked into anything, “explains Drykerman. “I work my butt off to win your business every time.”here whenever you please. With fractional ownership programs or outright private jet ownership, you are locked into a monthly recurring bill. It all comes down to incentive versus disincentive. If a company already has you money it doesn’t need to work as hard to earn it.

“Whatever your mission is we will get it done,” he says.

“Private, on demand flying is the ultimate luxury,” Drykerman says. “Once you fly our way you’ll never—provided you have the means—fly commercial again.”

So maybe you’re now thinking about having a happy day of your own and maybe you’ll sell your own jet and enter the world of on demand private flying. Happy globetrotting.

Julie Murray: Making a Difference

Making a Difference

Aug 2012

When I first hear Julie Murray’s voice as she answers with a hello, greeting me like the oldest of friends, I instantly am awash in a sense of wellbeing. I feel safe. She cannot know my worries; the big and small things that allow stress to injure my day, but somehow it seems that she does. Instantly, I am aware that she is one of those far too rare individuals who have a real ability to inspire. I want to know more about this woman, and I want to know what I can do to help her make the world better.

“Just do one thing,” Murray tells me when I ask what the average Las Vegas resident can do to help. Too often when confronted with the massive social problems facing Southern Nevada and the country at large many of us freeze. There’s nothing I can do about (insert social issue here).

This attitude is easy to understand. Childhood hunger is a massive and difficult problem in America. Access to quality healthcare, despite or perhaps because of Obama care, remains an issue that can destroy families and devastate lives. The education system in the United States has sunk considerably in world rankings, coming in as “average” in one recent study. Any one of these problems alone seems staggering. Combine them into a fierce juggernaut of social destruction and they seem positively insurmountable.

Yet Julie Murray doesn’t see it that way, and for a woman who has been a fierce social architect for over two decades, building and guiding numerous charitable and philanthropic organizations, her vision deserves attention. She provides a glimmer of light at the end of the proverbial tunnel and she strives daily to bring that illumination closer. She provides hope. She will be the first to tell you that she has not done this alone. In truth, she emphatically states that it is impossible to do alone. Throughout her career she has been blessed to work with some amazing and diverse people who all share in her desire to leave the world a better place than she found it. To her, this is the core of charity and philanthropy.



A native of Apple Valley, California, Murray’s family moved to Las Vegas when she was just six years old. In a city that has become famous for its transiency that more than qualifies her as a lifelong resident. She counts her parents and grandparents as her earliest and most strident mentors. It was through them that she first got the hunger to improve the world around her. She quickly learned that she was good at it, and that she could inspire people and rally them to come together.

One of her earliest endeavors was the I Have A Dream Foundation, which “adopted” 55 at risk children and “committed to stay involved in their development through high school and beyond.” Over $225,000 was secured annually by the efforts of Murray and her team. The program has also seen an 83 percent graduation rate—three times higher than their peers. It has been lauded as one of the most successful K-12 education models in the country.


She was also heavily involved with the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation and helped secure $36 million in funding for the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, a K-12 charter school that gives Las Vegas students from the city’s most at risk neighborhoods a great education.

While Murray remains involved with both groups in an advisory capacity, she moved on to co-found a truly revolutionary organization in Three Square that would become a model for food bank organizations across the country. Conceived at her dining room table, Three Square (as in three square meals a day) reinvented the food bank concept by approaching previously untapped sources, such as grocery stores and hotel chains. With the help of these businesses, she was able to take food that otherwise would have been wasted and used it to feed the estimated 210,000 Las Vegas residents that do not get enough to eat.

Just five short years after conception, Three Square now distributes 16,000,000 meals a year through 600 partner programs.

It was through Julie Murray’s fundraising acumen that Three Square was able to grow from a simple idea to the model for food banks nationwide.

Recently, she has taken on what may be her biggest challenge to date with the Moonridge Foundation, a consulting firm that partners charitable organizations with philanthropic donors in order to “get the biggest impact for their philanthropic giving.” Murray understands that to be truly effective, a charity doesn’t just need money or volunteers, but a passionate partnership between those who do the daily work of change and those capable of funding it. Murray even went so far as to suggest that if philanthropists begin to look at their giving as an investment, the rewards will be greater with a monetary outlay that will have a more positive impact on their communities.
That is what it is truly all about. If a sense of community can be built where we all feel like we are home then we may all find ourselves inspired. “It has been difficult in Vegas to build a culture of community,” Murray says. There are few longtime res

When I ask her about her proudest achievement thus far she immediately says her children. “When somebody tells you that your children are compassionate, smart human beings it is difficult not to feel proud,” Murray says. This proves one of Murray’s core beliefs, that if you start small and can inspire just one other person to make a difference, the world will grow better.idents, and many people come and go without ever really calling Vegas home. If those who simply live here can come to call it home then the first step toward improving not only our city, but also our country and our world, will have been taken and our world will have been taken.

t is a surprise to no one that one of her core philosophies can best be described as pay it forward, and that she is particularly proud to see those she has helped do just that. “I recently ran into one of my Dreamers who started in the projects and now is on her way to be a teacher,” Murray tells me.


With the Moonridge Group, Julie Murray hopes to create new ways to connect and engage philanthropists to help solve the biggest social ills this country has. “Healthcare and education are the two biggest social problems we face today,” Murray told me.

“If you can give people the means to feed themselves and help keep them healthy, especially at an early age, then the problems of hunger and crime will be reduced.”

What makes her so good at her job is her deep understanding of the interconnectedness of all people. When children are hungry, lack medical care and have no access to education it damages not only the child, but also all of those around them. She is passionate about helping to create systems that will ensure that these problems disappear one small, inspired step at a time.

“Just do one thing,” Murray tells me. “Whether it is volunteering an hour to feed the hungry or a million dollars to help build a school, we are all capable of inspiring others.”

Good Deeds: VOLUNTEERS IN MEDICINE

Sep 2012 Article by: chris carney | Photography by: lucky wenzel

The amazing people that run charitable organizations all have the same major issue: lack of awareness. In a world where there is so much need, where there are so many worthy causes and deserving programs, the most difficult task facing these organizations is awareness.

It was this hurdle that Dr. Florence Jameson, founder and CEO of Volunteers in Medicine, stressed to me above all others. She didn’t focus on the crippling difficult organizational processes or the massive stress involved with acquiring funding or the heartbreak volunteers face when they realize how much still needs to be done. It was awareness. In a sea of amazing causes Dr. Jameson’s cites Volunteers in Medicine’s main problem is “making the public aware we are here.”

“Volunteers in Medicine is about bringing together two groups of people: the medically needy that desperately need access to healthcare, especially those with chronic illnesses, and those possessing the expertise and great desire to run a clinic.”

In January of 2010 the very first Volunteers in Medicine free clinic opened in Paradise Park in Southeast Las Vegas. Before then, this valley of nearly two million people was devoid of a place where the uninsured in desperate need of medical care could turn. “It is such a duh, a no brainer that every city needs a clinic like this one,” Dr. Jameson tells me. Before Volunteers in Medicine that type of clinic did not exist in Las Vegas. And before Volunteers in Medicine awareness of the need was also non-existent.

To make Las Vegas stand up and take notice, Volunteers in Medicine holds an annual Volunteers in Medicine Ball to raise both awareness and funding. “The Ball raises almost two thirds of our annual operational budget for the upcoming year,” explains Dr. Jameson. Without the Volunteers in Medicine Ball the clinic would have remained a wisp of a dream.

This year’s festivities will be held at The Palazzo on Saturday, Oct. 6. Not only does the Ball bring together those capable of giving with those who do the organization’s work, it is also a place to “honor three shining stars who work tirelessly to make an impact on health care in our community.”
The Community Service Honoree, Aurora Wong, is an attorney by trade who “leads the charge” of the HepBFree community outreach program that provides screenings, vaccinations and treatment to Asian Pacific Islanders who are at highest risk for the disease.

The Volunteerism Honoree is Mary Adler. Adler has been with Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada as a volunteer since its inception. As unit secretary for the clinic, Adler processes numerous patient assistance applications. “She is an all-round hero to the success of VMSN.”

This year’s Lifetime Achievement in Medicine will be awarded to Dr. Jerry Cade, an immunologist, currently serving as the Director of Viral Treatment Specialty Service at UMC. For over two decades, he’s been active in the Las Vegas community helping those affected with HIV/Aids. “When others were afraid to lend a hand, Dr. Cade was there.”

At Volunteers in Medicine “750 volunteers create a beautiful symphony of loving acts of kindness.” For Dr. Jameson awareness leads to action, both in the donation of desperately needed funds, as well as the volunteering of time, equipment, medications and skills.

I’ve been lucky enough to interview numerous influential people in the Las Vegas philanthropic community, and I have found the one trait they all share is gratitude. Dr. Jameson is an amazing, giving woman. At the end of our interview she thanked me—a simple journalist—for giving her my time. These astounding words of heartfelt gratitude truly bring home the main issue that organizations like Volunteers in Medicine face: awareness. Perhaps, in a small way this article will help to raise that awareness and inspire action.

 

Good Deeds: Warren Moon

By Chris Carney

For record setting quarterback legend Warren Moon, it has always been about dreams. He dreamed of playing quarterback in the NFL. He dreamed of one day joining the ranks of the legendary in the Hall of Fame. He dreamed of making something of himself. He dreamed of giving others the helping hand to do the same.

Now, dreams are not uncommon. We all have them. They come in different forms, take varied paths and result in wildly different returns. Some dreams fail due to lack of effort, some fail due to lack of ability, but most tragic are those that fail due to lack of opportunity.

To help bridge the gap and help give a boosting hand of opportunity to those without it, Moon and some of his business partners at Sports 1 Marketing created the Sports Dream Bowl. The annual event benefits the Urban Scholarship Fund that awards higher education scholarships for deserving kids who have demonstrated the character, dedication and ability to pursue their own dreams, but whose financial situation makes a higher education otherwise unlikely.

On June 22nd and 23rd the 12th Annual Sports Dream Bowl, a celebrity bowling tournament that occurs each year in Las Vegas, took over the hardwood at Texas Star Lanes at Texas Station in North Las Vegas and The Cosmopolitan to raise money for the Urban Scholarship Fund and to honor the students who won this year’s awards.

Proving his business acumen as well as a deep understanding of human nature, Moon set his sights on Las Vegas for the annual fundraising event. What better city to attract top name sports starts like rookie sensation quarterback Cam Newton, soon to be Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis, sure handed wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald and a host of other current and former NFL, NBA and movie and television actors?

“Las Vegas is an exciting place, with great restaurants, shows and clubs,” Moon stated, and is a natural draw for people at the top of their game.

The event also drew past scholarship winners who have gone on to highly successful careers, as engineers for top companies, highly successful real estate agents and even established a foundation that helps to fund other charitable foundations.

For Moon, the achievements of these past scholarship awardees are the most satisfying gift. For a man whose accomplishments include being one of only two men to have been inducted into both the NFL and Canadian Hall of Fame and who has gone on to a highly successful and influential post football career, these are high words of praise.

This year’s event celebrated the ten deserving kids who have proven their worth both through academic achievement and community involvement. Winners were awarded scholarship money to use at a higher learning institution of their choice.

“This year’s event was one of the most successful we’ve ever had,” said Moon. Moon believes in paying back those communities that give, and this year’s crop of deserving scholarship winners
feature four young people from the Las Vegas area.

The four young women from Las Vegas who were selected this year by Moon and his associates share many common traits. They all excelled at academics, were the recipients of numerous awards for community involvement, refused to let their own dreams be derailed by adversity and, in an application essay, all proved their dedication to improving the lives of those around them.

Ours is a world built on dreams and when people with the ability, drive and courage to pursue those dreams are given the assistance needed to achieve them we are all better off.

“I believe that those who have more than they need should help those in need,” Moon said. “I believe we should all pay it forward.” With the annual Sports Dream Bowl Warren Moon is doing just that.

Originally Published in the July 2012 Issue of Diamond Cake Magazine .

Mark Twain In Nevada

Mark Twain

The writer, curmudgeon, social commentator, and humorist we all know was born in Nevada.

By CHRIS CARNEY | November/December 2011

Photo:

In a very real way—tossed with a healthy dose of ironic hyperbole—Mark Twain, the writer, legendary curmudgeon, social commentator, and humorist—was born in Nevada. While it is a historical fact that Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, the nom de plume for the man many claim is the greatest of American authors was first used in February 1863 in Virginia City.
Clemens had come to Nevada to find his fortune, whether it came from silver, timber, or political largesse. Had these ventures not failed spectacularly, Mark Twain may never have been born, grown rich, become poor, and then grown rich once more. Nor would this country, which had no assurance of surviving the Civil War intact in his time, have been blessed with one of its defining voices. Many say that Twain represents the spirit of America in the 19th century. Without the individualistic, frontier spirit still embodied by Nevada, Clemens would be a mere historical footnote and Twain nothing but a glint in the muse’s eye.
While his youth spent in Hannibal, Missouri, as well as his oft-documented adventures in San Francisco, Connecticut, and in the larger world abroad, are well-told tales, Clemens’ time spent in Washoe, as the Nevada Territory was often referred to in those days, has strangely received far less attention. Like Athena bursting forth from Zeus full-grown, Twain emerged from the mind of Clemens in Nevada. Yet even in 1861, his destiny as the greatest of American writers was far from a certainty.
It was not the written word, but a need for freedom and wealth that brought Clemens to Nevada. While he claims to have published numerous letters during his time on the Mississippi, he was in no way a professional writer when he crested the hills into Carson City in 1861. That would come nearly a year later when he accepted a reporter position for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. For now, Clemens was running.
Back in St. Louis he had “somehow found himself” a member of an improvised militia known as the Marion Rangers. Unaffiliated with any official Confederate unit and stuck between his Southern heritage and a love of the Union, Clemens soon resigned citing that he was “incapacitated by fatigue through persistent retreating.” As it did with many Americans of his time, the Civil War refused to leave him to live his life. Under continued threat of conscription by both Union and Confederate forces due to his highly valuable skill as a riverboat pilot, Clemens felt the need to escape.
Fate, or luck, in the form of his older brother, Orion, stepped in and provided Clemens with just the opportunity he needed. Through connections with Lincoln’s cabinet, Orion had secured the prestigious position of Secretary of the Nevada Territory, under Tammany Hall politico Governor Nye. Orion, a notoriously honest man and terrible businessman, was in need of Clemens’ funds, and Clemens needed to get away.
Sam and Orion journeyed 20 days by stagecoach and arrived in “the insignificant village of Carson” City, a journey detailed in Twain’s travelogue/fictional narrative Roughing It. Sam was unimpressed with the 1,500-person mining provincial capital but believed that he would strike it big within three months and head back home laden with Nevada silver.
From September 1861 to April 1862, Clemens heartily undertook the backbreaking and laborious life of a miner and nearly claimed his long-sought-after wealth in a rich mine dubbed “Pride of Utah,” before losing the claim due to jumbled communication between he and his partner, Higbie, to whom he would later dedicate Roughing It. By April, the physical labor took its toll, and, as historian Fred Kaplan details in The Singular Mark Twain, “he took frequent opportunities to sharpen his poker skills, practice his penchant for swearing and cultivate a western swagger, including carrying a pistol, which he had no skill at using.” Wealth from a vein of silver seemed forever lost to Clemens.
Once more providence stepped in, and Clemens moved to Virginia City to replace an Enterprise reporter off to visit his family. The job paid $25 a week, hardly a fortune, but a job that sent 27-year-old Clemens on the road that would see him earn more wealth and fame than any silver mine could ever provide. Photo: Virginia City today
It was at the Enterprise that Clemens first took the pen name Mark Twain, from “the Mississippi leadman’s call meaning twelve feet.” In a town whose chief recreational activities were “drinking, card-playing and fighting,” (Kaplan, pg. 105) the pen name, inspired by fellow reporter Dan De Quille, offered Clemens some protection from the controversial, and often fictitious, claims made by Twain.
By 1863, Clemens and Twain had essentially become one man. Sam began referring to himself as Mark, and the mustache that would become his trademark first took root. While his reporting would most certainly not hold up under the rigors of modern-day journalistic ethics, his time at the Enterprise, coupled with Nevada’s individualistic nature, “were formative in his development as a writer and in the emergence of a distinctive personality.” (Kaplan pg. 108)
It was this distinctive personality that soon got him into life-threatening trouble when on May 21, 1864 he rashly challenged the editor of a rival paper to a duel. A man was not able to “thoroughly respect himself so long as he had not killed or crippled somebody in a duel or been killed or crippled in one himself,” Twain wrote. When the challenge was accepted, Twain, who was a notoriously inept shot, felt death staring down on him. He rose early the morning of the duel and spent time “in practicing with the revolver and finding out which end to level at the adversary.”
Despite extensive practice on a fence rail that was “to represent Mr. Laird…who was longer and thinner than a rail.” He missed every shot and was shown up by his second Stephen Gillis, who shot a bird dead at 30 yards.
Only subterfuge and luck allowed Twain to avoid the duel, as Mr. Laird arrived right at the moment while they were examining the dead bird and was told that Twain had made the shot. Mr. Laird flatly refused to duel and Twain “won.” His prize, and ours, was a long life well lived, replete with many successes and a few failures.
While the duel had been avoided, word came to Twain that he was to be the first victim of a newly passed anti-dueling law demanding a minimum two-year prison stay. Twain felt it was time to move on. Clemens had come to Nevada to find freedom and earn a fortune and now, to once again find freedom, he fled Nevada for San Francisco. From then to the years of his death in 1910, Twain found his fortune, lived as free as any man can, and became the most famous American of his generation.
Twain once described Nevada “as the damndest country under the sun,” and, while he spent less than three years here, it is a surety that without Nevada, Sam Clemens would never have become Mark Twain.
The Mark Twain Cultural Center at Incline Village
In Roughing It, Mark Twain details his first view of Lake Tahoe as “surely the fairest picture that the whole earth affords.” It is easy to appreciate Twain’s take on the wonders of Lake Tahoe. From the mirror sheen of the water to the crown of snow-capped peaks, Lake Tahoe is one of Nevada’s true treasures.
He charms the reader for several more pages before confessing, like a guilty child head hung low, to being the accidental architect of a hellish forest fire. “Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding tempest of flame!” Twain wrote from the relative safety of a small canoe on the lake.
Twain and his cohorts watched for hours in horror. When the “crimson spirals” and “tangled network of red lava streams” had burned themselves out, untold acres of pristine woodlands had been destroyed in a “conflagration” of a “reflected hell.”
It is with an appropriate sense of irony that the Mark Twain Cultural Center at Incline Village on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, may just be built upon a faint layer of ash, a geological reminder of the folly of man.
Within the modest building the Ghost of Mark Twain is kept alive in the person of McAvoy Layne. “It’s like being a Monday-through-Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American,” Layne says.
Featuring readings form Twain’s works, the center transports us back with a puff of cigar smoke, the twist of a mustache, and a southern drawl to the very beginnings of Twain’s legend and is a unique celebration of a man who without question can lay claim to the title one of a kind.
CONTACT
The Mark Twain Cultural Center
760 Mays Blvd., Incline Village, NV 89451
marktwainculturalcenter.org
ghostoftwain.com
775-831-2820
Editor’s Note: The Mark Twain Cultural Center closed on December 30, 2011, citing financial factors.

Published in Nevada Magazine Nov/Dec 2011