Las Vegas gaming entrepreneur Bob Stupak died Friday at Desert Springs Hospital after a long battle with leukemia. He was 67.
Stupac, whose health has deteriorated in recent years and largely disappeared from the public eye, will be remembered not only for his failure to own a hotel, build a giant tower or run for office, but also for the talent he brought to these and other endeavors.
“Without Stupac, there would be a big hole,” said Sandy Bluman, his ex-wife and mother of two of their three children. “No one is messing around. It’s just boring now.”
Stupac died with his family at 1:15 p.m., a family spokesman said.
“Bob was the master of the ring that came within a promotional framework that made Las Vegas the great town it is now,” said Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. “His ingenuity sometimes got him in trouble, but it happens to people who want to grab a crown ring.”
“I will miss his haste.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Stupac a 35-year acquaintance.
“Few people personified the town like Bob,” Reed said. “He was a true Las Vegas character.”
Stupac was good at publicizing himself and his business, and he seemed to stick to the principle of good publicity, too. His achievements continued to make headlines.
He held a press conference knowing that his new casino site was 4.5 miles north of the strip and declared that the strip had been extended to include his property under his authority.
He slapped a television reporter asking if he was drunk when he lost the 1987 mayoral election.
He bet $1 million in the Super Bowl and won.
He first bet pennies on numbers when he was 8 years old. In the Army, he played crab games at barracks in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He also found that he could make money from something simple, like a lottery. 바카라사이트
“I realized that people were prepared to gamble a little bit if they had a chance to win a lot,” he said in a 1989 interview. “I understood the principles of gambling and the basic elements of greed that everyone has.”
When he was discharged from the military, he entered the restaurant coupon business, producing and selling 2-1 dinner packages. In 1965, young Stupac took his business to Australia, where he became a huge success.
He also met Annette Suna, who was married for a while. They had a daughter, Nicole, but they separated soon after.
While living in Australia, Stupac also met Blumenthal (then Sandra Joyce Wilkinson), who eventually brought him to Las Vegas.
“He said, ‘There’s a place called Vegas, and one day it’s going to be,'” Blueman recalled. “He always had a vision of things.”
The couple had two children together, a son, Nevada, and a daughter, Summer.
Stupac remained fascinated by the idea of Las Vegas, at least Las Vegas.
“He was a young man with no money and he fell in love with the city,” said Ralph Denton, a longtime lawyer from southern Nevada who met Stupac in the early 1970s.
That’s when Stupac opened a restaurant on Desert Inn Road, promoting it as “the greatest restaurant in the world of the greatest city in the world.”
The restaurant was popular, but it didn’t make any profit and he soon gave it up for the coupon business.
He later returned to Las Vegas to open “Bob Stupac’s world famous historical gambling museum & casino.”
The museum was burned down, and speculation arose that arson was the cause. Nevertheless, the insurance company eventually settled the claim.
Stupac finally achieved his dream. In 1979, he opened Vegas World.
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