Preston Q. Hale

1914 - 2011

Preston Q. Hale, 96, a business executive and community leader who helped shape the face of modern Reno and the economic and cultural development of all of Nevada for more than a half century, died Saturday, January 22 at his home in Reno.Hale led an effort called RENOvation in l968 as America's downtowns tried to save themselves from crumbling in competition with sprawling suburban shopping centers. Hale was quoted in Reno's View Magazine about the need to revitalize the downtown: "You can't expect people to come here for muli-million dollar entertainment and then put up with two-bit surroundings. Reno is in trouble and the trouble's getting worse."

Hale headed the Downtown Development Commission that called for a new Reno by covering the railroad tracks, creating a Truckee River recreation area and diversifying the economy away from heavy reliance on gaming. All came to fruition. The West Street Plaza, linked to Wingfield Park by a bridge over today's white water rafting venue, is a follow through development by the River Beautification Committee which Hale chaired l0 years after creation of the original RENOvation Project master plan.

The RENOvation Project involved dozens of business, professional, social and cultural leaders, key downtown hotel, motel and other property owners who raised $360,000 and hired a major San Francisco consulting firm to lay out the master plan for the area from north of the railroad tracks to south of the Truckee River, west beyond Keystone Avenue, east beyond Wells Avenue.

Hale, an Eagle Scout at 13, helped develop many Nevada youth and education programs including Scouting and Little League baseball. The University of Nevada honored him as a Distinguished Nevadan in l990 for his service to the state. He was named Realtor of the Year in l964, Civic Leader of the Year in l968 and recipient of the Summit Award for Lifetime Achievement in Real Estate in 2007.

Hale, whose forbearers emigrated from England to America in l637, was born June 9, l914 to Heber Quincy Hale and Bessie Gudmundson, in Boise, Idaho. His father's mother, Anna Clark Hale, was a descendent of Abraham Clark, a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Hale's father traced their middle name, Quincy, back to John Quincy Adams. Many in the Clark and Hale families served as leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Hale's grandfather, Solomon Hale, traveled by horse and wagon from the Midwest to Utah in the l840s with Brigham Young to establish the new home for the Mormon Church.

Hale grew up in Boise, attended Boise Junior College which later became Boise State and honored Hale as a distinguished alumnus. Hale transferred to the University of Idaho in Moscow, then moved to Salt Lake City to attend medical school at the University of Utah. Lacking the $900 per semester tuition, he went to work for the Civil Conservation Corps's (CCC) Biological Survey.

Hale married Norma Virginia White whom he had met in Vernal, Utah, where she was working in a drug store and he was working as a government trapper and biologist for the CCC. Hale's father performed the l938 wedding ceremony in Salt Lake City. The couple had two children, Susan Virginia in l939 and Robert Quincy in l942. Robert Quincy Hale died in an automobile accident in l963 when he was a 21-year-old University of Nevada student.

Hale's CCC job sent him to Reno in l948 where he bought the family's first house for $12,000 in Westfield Village adjacent to an open field of sand and sagebrush, the location of the present Reno High School on Booth Street. When the CCC wanted him to take a promotion in a move to Washington D.C. in l951, westerner Hale resigned from government service and opened a real estate office in Reno. He began selling houses, including nine in Westfield Village.

Hale founded Hale Day Gallagher Co. in l955 with partners T. J. Day and Frank Gallagher and developed it into the largest commercial and industrial real estate firm in Northern Nevada serving clients throughout the West, nationally and internationally.

Hale and business colleagues John Dermody and Frank Bender led the development of Reno as a major distribution center in the l960s attracting nationally prominent companies such as J.C. Penny Co. to build giant warehouses that could ship products overnight throughout the western states. Hale helped spearhead legislation to create Nevada as a "free port" for warehousing of goods without daily inventory taxes, a move to diversify the state's economy that included bringing light, environmentally conscious industry to Reno.

Hale, Dermody and Bender helped form Western Industrial Nevada (WIN) to bring national business to the Reno area and served as its first three presidents. Hale also was a leader in creation of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDAWN).

Hale's scores of clients ranged from General Electric Company to United Parcel Service (UPS) to Home Depot, K-Mart and Harley Davidson. Hale and partners convinced Porsche Cars of North America to re-locate from the eastern United States to Reno. They built the Porsche Building as its headquarters at West Liberty and Sierra Streets with plans to air freight the sports cars directly from Germany to the Reno/Tahoe International Airport. This would enable overnight delivery of the expensive cars from Reno to Porsche's key West Coast markets.

Hale believed in returning personal, voluntary good works to the Nevada communities he helped build as a business executive. At one point in Hale's civic volunteerism, l968, he served as president of three different organizations at the same time - the Greater Reno Chamber of Commerce, Project RENOvation and the Friends of the University of Nevada Library. He served as vice president of the Nevada Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America which presented him its Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in l969. He served as president of the Nevada Association of Realtors in l964 and as a director of the Nevada State Bank and the Colorado River Commission.

Hale and his fellow Colorado River commissioners took on the State of California in the l980s in a battle over rights for electricity generated by Hoover Dam. Hearing that California planned to sue Nevada in a Los Angeles courtroom, the Nevadans filed a preemptory suit in Las Vegas to move the fight to their home turf in a Nevada courtroom.

California immediately settled rather than fight it out in Nevada.

Nevada had become the Idaho native's true home. In l970, Hale reached out to Elko County and bought the sprawling Tent Mountain Ranch in Starr Valley and four years later acquired the adjacent William D. Hylton Ranch. Combined, they became one of the largest ranches in Elko County with more than l,200 cows grazing over 7,000 acres of land that produced 2,000 tons of hay and wheat a year.

Nevada's mining heritage came into Hale's life when he bought an historic house on Arlington Avenue known for a 30-pound lead Bullfrog sculpture attached to its roof. Built in l906 by Bullfrog Mine owner Ed Arkell, the house and its adorned Bullfrog became celebrated as a symbol of Nevada's mining age. Hale replaced the house with a building for his real estate offices and put the Bullfrog on a platform on the roof for all to see - including thieves who stole the Bullfrog. That made national wire service and newspaper news as reporters called Hale for the Bullfrog story.

Hale, though quiet in demeanor, was a story teller who loved books and gathered volumes of literature about the American West for his home library. As he moved from active business life he took up writing both fiction and non-fiction.

At 84, Hale wrote the saga of Two Toes, “a wily coyote pursued by trappers in the sheep country of northeastern Utah in the early 1940s”. The publisher, Black Rock Press, noted that, while fictional, it was based on actual events in Hale’s life—“The book explores the mystique of the often maligned coyote…showing it to be an animal of great intelligence, a stealthy hunter dedicated to its mate and pups”.

In 2004, at 89, Hale published Caleb Main, the fictional but realistic story of a young man who struck out for frontier America in the 1830s and settled near Idaho’s Snake River, starting a western family that would carry on for generations.

In 2003, Hale published the first of two volumes entitled From Coyotes to Corporations, Pages from My Life in the West. He dedicated the book to “My wife and partner for 65 years.” The autobiography pulled no punches and told of his encounters with a cast of characters ranging from gaming pioneer Dick Graves to financier Norman Biltz, brothel operator Joe Conforte, aviation visionary Bill Lear and author Robert Laxalt. Volume two continued the stories two years later.

To honor Robert Laxalt after his death in 2001and continue the advance of fine writing for new generations, Hale joined business leader Ben Dasher, Laxalt friend Bill Bliss and journalist Warren Lerude in a partnership with the Reynolds School of Journalism to create the Robert Laxalt Distinguished Writer Program. Leading authors now visit the University Nevada annually to work with students and professional writers in a tribute to Laxalt. Laxalt had turned to Hale in l981 to help create the Friends of the University of Nevada Press to enable others to write and publish books.

In another venture with Laxalt, Hale led an international cultural effort to create a tribute to Basque immigrants with a 20-foot bronze sculpture representing the symbolic life of the sheepherder. Hale and Laxalt welcomed 2,500 visitors from France, Spain and across America to the dedication of the statue in 1989 at Rancho San Rafael Park in the foothills of Peavine Mountain overlooking Reno where Basque herders had tended to their sheep.

Hale, who traveled throughout the West as an avid hunter and fisherman, was a member of the LDS Church, the Prospectors and the Hidden Valley Country Club.

Hale was predeceased by his wife, Norma, and son, Robert. He is survived by his daughter, Susan Stewart, and grandchildren Scott Shanks, Tracy Sanders, Melissa Rimassa, and great grand children Bryan Sanders, Cody Sanders, Tyler Sanders, Quincy Shanks, Kylee Shanks, McKaila Cecil and Brennan Cecil all of Reno.