MICHAEL STEVEN ENSIGN

1937 - 2016

Michael Steven Ensign died December 7, 2016, at home, with family by his side, from complications of prostate cancer. He was 79. Mike was born August 4, 1937, in Cadillac, Michigan. His parents were Astrid Mary Jane Levine and Keith Steven Ensign. His father Steve (as he was always called) had a degree in forestry and worked at the Ensign-McGovern Lumber Mill that his father Clyde owned. In 1940 the mill caught on fire and burned down. There were seven fatalities. Clyde and his partner Milne McGovern gave all of the insurance money to the surviving families rather than rebuild the mill. Clyde died two years later at the age of fifty-four. The family always said he died of a broken heart. This tragedy coupled with the loss of Mike's grandmother Mila Porter Levine to ovarian cancer in 1946 at the age of fifty-four propelled the family to move west, settling in the small town of Hubbard, Oregon in 1948.

Mike's father Steve went to work for the Longbell Lumber Company as a salesman. When that business sold Steve opened a small retail lumber company where he began financing some of the smaller homebuilders in the area. When these small homebuilders couldn't pay the money back that they had borrowed from Steve, he ended up going bankrupt. Steve then went to work for the Oregon Department of Revenue as an industrial appraiser from which he eventually retired.

Life was anything but smooth for the family. What money Steve earned, he either drank up in the local taverns or gave away to those in need while his own family was left in the lurch. Mike's mother Mary Jane (as she was always called) went to work as a clerk at Canby High School. In the summer she and their three sons, Mike, Craig and Steve would pick berries in the fields to try to make ends meet (sister Penny was too young and fragile to work with the family.)

Mike was always industrious. His first job at age seven was delivering newspapers in Cadillac. In Oregon he picked all kinds of crops and later began driving his dad's truck to the fields at night to haul whatever was needed – potatoes, onions, drainage tiles for the fields, etc. Mike bought his own truck at age fifteen to continue his hauling business. Every kid Mike knew also worked in the fields as they all bought their own school clothes and earned their own spending money. In addition to all the work he did, Mike found time to bird hunt and fish. He and his brothers did a lot of fishing but never with their dad. Mike played all the sports at North Marion High School. He lettered in football, basketball, and baseball. He didn't really like school and kept his grades up just enough to play sports. Mike had a love affair with the automobile which most teenage boys in that era also had. He could usually be found with his head under the hood of a car. Mike was very mechanically minded. He knew electricity and plumbing and how to weld. He could fix just about anything. After high school Mike entered Oregon Institute of Technology to study diesel engineering and heavy equipment but only lasted one semester.

Mike then joined the U.S. Army in 1957 and was stationed at Schofield Barracks in Honolulu, Hawaii for eighteen months. His MOS (military occupational code) was heavy weapons infantryman. When he got to Hawaii, the officers' personnel department was short-handed. Mike told them he could type one hundred words per minute without errors. So he was transferred to the officers' records branch in the personnel section where he finished his tour of duty. He didn't really care for administrative work. His unit also did monthly field training. When he finished his time in Hawaii, he was on a troop transport ship going to Oakland, California and was very seasick. But not so sick that he couldn't gamble. He had saved $1,200 and lost it all playing dice on that ship. He had to hitchhike home to Oregon from Oakland.

He couldn't find work there so went to live with his aunt Kay Ensign Pace and uncle Ed Pace and their family in Novato, California. Ed was in the U.S. Army and was stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco. Mike got a job as a millwright in Sonoma. He didn't really like the work so looked daily at the want ads in the San Francisco Examiner newspaper. He made weekly trips to the Cliff House in San Francisco where he would scour the paper and contemplate his life. It was there that he saw an ad for summer help as a slot machine mechanic at Harrah's Casino in Reno, Nevada. Harrah's had an employment office in San Francisco so Mike went down and applied for a job and was hired.

When he started his first shift at Harrah's the supervisor saw that he didn't know a thing about slot machines and how to fix them. Mike told his boss he was a fast learner and really needed a job. So his boss hired him to wear a change belt and change money for customers playing the slot machines. (This was at a time when casinos used real silver dollars to play the machines so the belt was very heavy.)

While in Harrah's employees break room one day he saw a sign posted for an in house dice dealing school. He went to that school and learned how to deal craps. He worked for a while as a craps dealer, then learned to deal all of the table games and eventually became a floor supervisor.

Mike was fascinated with airplanes (spurred by his uncle Ed Pace during his time in Novato) and began hanging out at the airport. He met the Piper airplane dealer, Lee Warren who also had an FBO, Air Neva, at the airport. He told Mike about this old Air Coop that he could buy if he just paid the storage fee. Lee told Mike that a guy came to Reno, lost his money and left the airplane in storage. So Mike bought the airplane and then decided to take flying lessons since he was now the owner of an airplane. His flight instructor was Gary Gardner.

Then Lee had another proposition for him. Lee who owned a supermarket at the Y intersection in South Lake Tahoe, California was going to buy two casinos, the Bank Club and the Nevada Hotel in Ely, Nevada with two partners from Lake Tahoe. These partners were Mike Milovich, owner of Cecil's Market and Deli and Norm Gohringer who owned the Pony Express Restaurant and some beauty salons. Lee asked Mike if he would like to move to Ely and manage the Bank Club. So in 1962 Mike and his new bride, Denise Patricia "Patty" Bamford packed up and moved to Ely. Ely was a rough mining town, and of course, Mike had no experience managing a casino. On top of that the employees of the Kennecott Copper mining company went on strike shortly after they moved there. Mike and the casino owners thought this was the end of their new venture, but just the opposite happened. The mineworkers spent all their time in the casinos spending their unemployment checks and business boomed. But after about a year the partners got in an argument over money, which eventually led to them parting ways. Mike Milovich and Lee Warren sold their interests to Norm Gohringer. Another partnership dissolved, that of Mike and his wife Patty. They split their assets and Mike's brother Craig drove to Ely and picked up Mike and his dog and took them back to Oregon.

Mike decided he wanted to be a building contractor. So he took the money he had saved in Ely and bought a lot. He and his brothers Craig and Steve and his uncle Richard "Dick" Ensign built a house on the lot, which took about a year. Well, there were no buyers for the house so Mike ended up giving it to his parents, which they lived in until his dad died.

Mike looked around the area for work but couldn't find any so he drove to Reno, found his old boss Wayne Martin and asked him for a job. Wayne was a gruff man but liked Mike. He told Mike Harrah's had a no-hire policy once an employee left the company. So Wayne gave Mike a job on the graveyard shift (so less people would see him,) and told him that if anyone asked where he had been, he was to say that he had been on a long medical leave. So Mike worked his first shift back at Harrah's on Christmas Eve 1963. Once he came back in to the casino business, Mike realized he missed it and really liked it and had found his true home.

It was also at Harrah's that Mike would meet and marry Sharon Cipriani Mueller, a Blackjack dealer. They married April 16, 1967. By the time they married Mike had switched companies and was now working for the Del Webb Corporation at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino and was living in South Lake Tahoe. When Mike and Sharon married they both moved to Carson City with Sharon's 3 children Deborah, William and John. Mike's son David was already living with his mother Patty. Sharon commuted to Harrah's in Reno from Carson and Mike commuted from Carson to his job in Tahoe. They did this for two years until Mike got a promotion as a shift manager, which required him to live at Lake Tahoe so the family moved to the lake. Sharon was able to transfer to Harrah's Tahoe. Mike worked for the Del Webb Corporation at the Sahara Tahoe and the Primadonna Casino in Reno until 1974.

During his stint at the Sahara Tahoe he bought a vending machine business in Eugene, Oregon with Dave Brower, a pit boss he worked with at the Sahara Tahoe. They expanded the business and owned it for four years. They sold it to Ralph Mohler who owned several vending machine companies in Oregon.

In 1974 Mike moved the family to Las Vegas and took a job at the Circus Circus Hotel & Casino. His former boss at the Sahara Tahoe, Angel Naves, Sr., had joined the company and many other executives and dealers alike all left the Sahara Tahoe and went to work at Circus Circus. Mike started out as the assistant casino manager to Angel Naves. Even though Mike took quite a pay cut when he left the Sahara Tahoe, there was the promise of a bonus program at Circus Circus if the property did well. Bill Bennett and Bill Pennington had just bought the company and gave Angel Naves 10% of the company to come and manage the casino. Bennett and Pennington were able to buy the casino because the Nevada Gaming Commission wanted to clean up the property as it had been built partly with money borrowed from the Teamsters pension fund, and it had some shady characters owning and operating it.

Before too long Angel Naves and Bill Bennett butted heads and Angel ended up selling back his ten percent of the company and leaving the company and Las Vegas. Mike took Angel's position as casino manager but was not offered ownership, which is what Mike wanted.

Shortly after Mike moved his family to Las Vegas, Ralph Mohler paid him a visit. The timber business had tanked in Oregon, and Ralph couldn't pay his notes to Mike and Dave Brower. Dave wanted to foreclose on Ralph as Ralph had put his vending machine business, several taverns and properties up as collateral on the notes. Mike wouldn't do it. Before they sold the business to Ralph they each looked at each other's books and operations and Mike had the first right of refusal and had elected to sell the business. But he said later, "You don't know how close I came to buying." So he couldn't in good conscience foreclose on Ralph. Mike bought Ralph's notes from Dave and Dave never spoke to Mike again. In 1976 Ralph made another trip to Las Vegas. He paid Mike back all the money he owed him as well as interest on interest.

As Mike started his new job at Circus Circus, he and his wife Sharon bought a house in Las Vegas. Their next-door neighbors were Bill and Linda Richardson. This turned out to be quite a fortuitous move for both sets of neighbors. Bill Richardson was part owner of the Gold Strike Inn. The Gold Strike was a small property near Hoover Dam that had slot machines, a gift shop, a bar and a snack bar, but they had a lot of land that the property was located on. As Bill and Mike's friendship grew, Bill told Mike that one of the owners of the Gold Strike wanted to sell his interest in the business and asked Mike if he wanted to buy it. Mike had never seen the property so they took a ride out to Boulder City to look at it. On the way back they stopped at O.L. Rainey's house (the partner aforementioned.) By the time Mike and Bill left his house they had a handshake deal.

To buy interest in the Gold Strike Inn, Mike had to liquidate everything he and Sharon owned as well as borrow money from Mike Milovich (from the Ely days.) He even took money from the equity of his parents' house as he still held the title to the house.

He then went to his Circus Circus employers Bennett and Pennington and told them of his plans and that he needed to resign from the company. The owners decided that as long as Mike and his partners were not in direct competition with them that they thought he could continue to work at Circus Circus. So in October 1979 Mike became an owner of a gaming property. Mike was the only one of the Gold Strike partners that had gaming knowledge and experience so he led the way. He expanded the building, and put in table games and eventually a coffee shop and hotel rooms. Gold Strike Enterprises began acquiring and partnering with other smaller casinos - Pioneer Club and Railroad Pass. They then went on to build the Gold Strike Hotel and Gambling Hall and Nevada Landing both in Jean, Nevada.

At the same time Circus Circus was expanding and doing very well. They expanded the Circus Circus itself as well as bought the Silver City Casino, Slots of Fun and two properties in Laughlin – Edgewater and Colorado Belle. They also built a second Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Reno, Nevada. In 1983 Circus Circus went public and began selling stock in their company. This allowed them to continue their expansion.

Mike kept getting promotions but was never offered ownership in the company although he was given a lot of stock options and other perks when the company went public. Mike rose to Vice President and General Manager and was eventually named the Chief Operating Officer of the company. In 1984 he wanted to concentrate fully on Gold Strike Enterprises so he left Circus Circus. When he left, he also left all of his stock options, which were worth a lot of money. He felt they should go to the employees who were left behind and worked hard to build the company. He never knew whether his options were given to the other employees or not.

Gaming was expanding across the nation, and Mike was looking around the country for places that Gold Strike Enterprises could expand to. He wanted the tenth and last riverboat casino license in Illinois but knew his company didn't have the financial or the political clout to vie for that license. So he made a cold call to Nick Pritzker, whose family owned the Hyatt Hotel chain. They ended up partnering and building the Grand Victoria Riverboat Casino in Elgin, Illinois, which opened in 1993. It was a huge success.

With that success under his belt Mike went after his big dream, owning a Las Vegas Strip hotel. Gold Strike Enterprises partnered with Mirage Resorts, Inc., and built the Monte Carlo Casino, which opened its doors in June 1996. It was another big success. While the Monte Carlo was being built, Circus Circus whose company was in disarray, made an offer to Mike to merge with Gold Strike Enterprises, which they did.

With Mike at the helm he turned Circus Circus around and changed the name of the company to Mandalay Resort Group after the successful building of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in 1999.

In 2004 Kurt Kerkorian from MGM Resorts contacted Mike. His company wanted to acquire Mandalay Resort Group. They met privately and negotiated a deal which took one year for the government to determine that there were no anti-trust issues. There were ninety lawyers on each side. It was the largest deal ever negotiated in the state of Nevada up to that point. So Mike was there at the beginning when the first Circus Circus public stock offering was made, and he was there at the end when the company was sold. Circus Circus was worth $270 million dollars at the time of the first stock offering in 1983. When he sold the company in 2004, Mandalay Resort Group was worth $7.9 billion dollars.

Mike retired after the sale of the company. He played more golf, spent time with his wife Sharon, kids, grandkids and great grandkids and helped his family and countless others financially. Mike and Sharon gave most of their money anonymously.

Mike lost his wife Sharon in 2014 to ovarian cancer. He is survived by his son David, his adopted children Deborah, William and John, his grandchildren Jason, Eric, Trevor, Siena, Michael, Blake, Brett, David Jr. and George, great grandchildren Jeremy and Enzo, his brothers Craig and Steve and their families, many cousins, and his sister-in-law Judy Padilla and her family. His sister Penny Ensign Peters preceded him in death in 2000.

A funeral mass for Mike Ensign will be held Friday, March 24, 2017 at 10:00 AM at Christ the King Catholic Church 4925 S. Torrey Pines Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada.