A native Nevadan who bridged the old and new in the state's history, Ruthe Deskin was an influential Las Vegas journalist for almost half a century. She was born in Yerington (which she insisted on calling by its original name, Pizen Switch) to Jim Goldsworthy, a mining engineer, and Viola West, of a Mason Valley pioneer family.
Deskin graduated from the University of Nevada, where she worked on the Sagebrush, the school newspaper, and later was the Reno Evening Gazette's women's editor. She married Jim Deskin, later executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and moved to Las Vegas in 1950. She worked for radio stations before joining the Las Vegas Sun in 1954 as assistant to publisher Hank Greenspun.
Until Greenspun's death in 1989, and then afterward, Deskin wrote columns under her name and others, while also handling myriad administrative details. In 1955, she helped start the Sun Youth Forum, an annual all-day discussion program for local high school students. Later, she helped to found Child Haven, Clark County's home for displaced children, and the Sun Camp Fund for underprivileged children. She was honored as a Distinguished Nevadan and she became the namesake of a Clark County elementary school and Child Haven's activity center. Deskin was inducted into the Nevada Journalism Hall of Fame and, in a bow to her favorite sports activity, is a member of the Las Vegas Women's Bowling Association Hall of Fame.
Onetime Sun sportswriter-turned-Las Vegas Review Journal columnist John L. Smith wrote, "She accomplished more with a few kind words in her weekly column than half the state's blow-hard politicians combined."
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