Blood's a rover

18

(Las Vegas, 8/19/68)

The service was brief. The minister rushed. Storm clouds meant rain any second. The eulogy featured heaven-golf course metaphors.

Janice Hartnett Lukens Tedrow: 1921-1968.

Carlos Marcello and Dwight Holly attended. Farlan Brown was there. Dracula sent five grand in flowers. Half the caddy crews from the Dunes and the Sands showed up.

Wayne stood at the back. The dry air started seeping. The cemetery was segregated. A road bisected the white and Negro sections. White diggers worked the white side. Negro diggers worked the Negro side. The Tedrow-service diggers were off-duty blackjack dealers. They wore red vests, bow ties and eyeshades. The rain threat made them fidget.

The heaven-golf course shtick was protracted. Wayne looked across the road. A large service was beginning. Limousines, a hearse, a flatbed truck filled with roses. Scores of black people in black.

Wayne walked over. The people paid him no-nevermind. He saw a sign affixed to an easel. It stated the date and the name of the decedent: the Reverend Cedric D. Hazzard.

The hearse was parked nearby. Four men removed a casket. A minister walked up and opened the passenger door. A Negro woman got out. The minister fawned over her. She put him off with small smiles and gestures.

She wore a black crepe dress, a pillbox hat and no veil. She glanced at the road and saw Wayne. They shared a look for one second.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/20/68. Seattle Post-Intelligencer headline and subhead:

Ex-VEEP LENGTHENS LEAD OVER PROBABLE DEM CANDIDATE HUMPHREY

DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/20/68. Milwaukee Sentinel headline and subhead:

”EXPECT HIPPIE TROUBLE AT CONVENTION,” TOP CHICAGO COP TELLS ROTARY

DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/21/68. Des Moines Register subhead:

”HIPPIES,” “YIPPIES,” “SCHMIPPIES”: BEAT COPS SAY THEY’RE PREPARED

DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/21/68. Las Vegas Sun article:

Janice Tedrow was laid to rest at Wisteria Cemetery Monday morning. The flags at every country club in Las Vegas were lowered to half-staff in honor of the woman who was the Thunderbird ladies’ club champion 9 times, the Sands ladies’ club champion 6 times, the Riviera ladies’ club champion 14 times and the winner of the Clark County Polio Drive Scramble every year from 1954 on.

“Janice Tedrow played near-scratch golf even as she suffered from terminal cancer,” her physician, Dr. Steve Mandel, said. “That’s talent and willpower.” And when the mourning ranks at her funeral service swelled to the seams with local caddies, you know that they came because the woman was a true champion with the common touch.

Janice Lukens hailed from small-town Indiana. She married investor/real estate entrepreneur Wayne Tedrow in 1947 and soon made her way to the Queen City of the Desert, where she served on numerous charitable committees and played the meanest woman’s golf game the state of Nevada has ever seen. 1968 has been a tragic year for the Tedrow clan. Wayne Tedrow died of a heart attack in June, and now the 46-year-old Janice’s untimely death.

“God works in mysterious ways,” the Reverend G. Davis Kaltenborn told this reporter after the funeral service. “That’s why I chose golf as the central theme of my tribute. Life is an unpredictable trek toward an uncertain conclusion. I shared this insight with Mrs. Tedrow’s stepson after the service, and he told me he understood that very well.”

R.I.P., Janice. The starter at the Dunes told me you got six birdies the very last time you played golf on this earth. I see lots of sub-par rounds up there in the clouds for you, as well.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/21/68. Las Vegas Sun article

Sylvester “Pappy” Dawkins was 48 years old, a two-time convicted burglar and a reputed drug addict. The Reverend Cedric D. Hazzard was 52 years old and was the pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in North Las Vegas. A stalwart of the Negro community in the Queen City of the Desert, he was as respected as Pappy Dawkins was disdained.

Yet the two men were friends of sorts. They would often meet at Dawkins’ unkempt little house in West Las Vegas and talk until the wee hours about all manner of things. Now, in its grief, Las Vegas Negroes are wondering what the topic of conversation was right before it all went so terribly wrong on the night of August 10.

“We don’t really know what precipitated this horrible tragedy,” Lieutenant Byron Fritsch of the Las Vegas Police Department told reporters. “We only know that Pappy shot the Reverend Hazzard and then turned the gun on himself.”

Horrible tragedy indeed. For many members of the Reverend Hazzard’s congregation have movingly described their late pastor’s diligent efforts to bring the word of God to Pappy Dawkins and to help him restore his moral equilibrium. “Ced was just that kind of a guy,” Kenneth S. Wilson, a deacon at New Bethel Baptist Church, said. “Ask anyone who knew him.”

“My late husband was a brave and true man who led with his heart,” the Reverend Hazzard’s widow, Mary Beth, said. “He was committed to goodness and social justice.” Mrs. Hazzard, 44, is the lead steward for the Las Vegas Hotel Workers’ Union, and has spearheaded many charitable drives in the local Negro community. She is doubly bereft now. In December of 1963, her son Reginald, then 19, vanished and was never seen again. Reginald was a former straight-A student at Seminole High School and had won science-fair awards in chemistry. The trials of Job have visited themselves upon Mrs. Hazzard, but she remains optimistic. “Yes, my son is long missing and my husband is dead,” she said. “I considered Cedric’s mission to reform Pappy Dawkins to be rash and imprudent, however heartfelt, but he died in the act of dispensing compassion. I revere him for that. As for me, no, I will not succumb to defeat or despair. I have duties to discharge, and I will not be deterred.”

The Reverend Hazzard’s funeral drew over 300 mourners. An estimated $10,000 in floral tributes was received at Wisteria Cemetery. Mrs. Hazzard and members of the New Bethel congregation distributed them to patients at local hospitals.

The Reverend Cedric Douglass Hazzard: 1916-1968. Rest in peace.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/22/68. Las Vegas Sun headline and subhead: