Marjorie Adaline Forbuss
Born 28 Oct 1917 Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana, USA
Died 10 Feb 1994 Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, USA (age 76)
DETAILS: BIRTH. Margorie [sic] Adeline Keas is recorded on a Montana Certificate of Birth as being born 28 Oct 1917 in Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana to Arthur M. Keas (laborer, born Plainville, Kansas) and Frances Marie Crane (born Frankfort, Michigan), and was the second child of the mother. She later used the first name Marjorie instead of Margorie. She used the middle name Adaline instead of Adeline in her US social security records. Perhaps the Montana Certificate of Birth has typographical errors. The Nevada death certificate for her father, Arthur Michael Keas, records her paternal grandmother as Adeline Gentry.
DETAILS: OBITUARY. “Longtime Las Vegas entrepreneur Marjorie Forbuss dies at age 76. Las Vegas businesswoman Marjorie Forbuss died Thursday at her home at the age of 76. Forbuss was born Oct. 28, 1917, in Wisdom, Mont., a farming community where her father was the sheriff. At the age of 23, Forbuss decided to leave Montana with a girlfriend and travel to Las Vegas. “She didn’t want to be a farmer. She always told me that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She was very entrepreneurial; she thought she could do better out West,” said her son, Robert Forbuss, president and chief executive officer of Mercy Ambulance. Forbuss arrived in Las Vegas, where she would spend the rest of her life, in the 1940s and began her career at the Golden Nugget Hotel as a waitress. A few years later she was hired as a manager for The Green Shack restaurant. She saved her money and by the 1950s was prepared to open her own business, but she encountered problems getting loans from banks. “I remember my mother making the complaint that women couldn’t borrow money from banks,” said Robert Forbuss. Undeterred, Forbuss borrowed from friends and in 1953 opened Fashion Cleaners. Forbuss sold the business in 1971 and retired a few years later, battling arthritis until her death. In her 52 years in Las Vegas, she saw the city grow from 15,000 to nearly 1 million people. “She was a pioneer and she believed in the city and stayed with it,” Robert Forbuss said. She is survived by her son. Private services were handled by Palm Mortuary. The family requests donations to Aid for AIDS of Nevada or the Arthritis Foundation.” Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, page 10B, 13 Feb 1994, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
DETAILS: SON ROBERT FORBUSS COMMENTS ABOUT MARJORIE FORBUSS. “{from page 3}Well, that’s a good story. Let me back up and give you a little history of [my] family. My mom [Marjorie Forbuss] was a farm girl, sort of like a small-town girl from Montana who decided early on in her youth that she didn’t want to live in Montana any longer. And so my mom and her girlfriend traveled west and they looked around in different places and came to Vegas; so in 1941 my mom came here, probably during World War II. And she liked it, she stayed here, she became a cocktail waitress at the Golden Nugget [Hotel and Casino]. My mom married, then divorced, and decided she was going to go buy her own house. So she sat down with a guy by the name of Mr. [Tom] Oakey and cut a deal to buy a Huntridge home, which at that time was a pretty difficult thing for a woman to qualify for a loan on a house. But she did; my mom had made enough money that she did have enough down payment. The house was something like five thousand dollars. She put five hundred dollars down or something like that. Her monthly payments were forty-three dollars a month. She saved every receipt. My mom passed away. I have a box literally of every receipt for that house that she bought in 1944 from Mr. Oakey. That house was for her. So my mom bought the house. I wasn’t born until many years later. {from pages 11-13} DID YOU GUYS DO SOCIAL ACTIVITIES, YOUR FAMILY, DID YOU DO NEIGHBORHOOD THINGS? Some. Yeah, my grandmother {Frances Keas} was quite a neighborhood lady, and that’s the other thing. My grandmother lived with us, so my grandmother was more social. My mom worked. My mom worked her whole life, essentially. AND DID SHE STAY IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY? No. No. In 1954, my mom decided to open her own business, which at that time was pretty difficult to do for a woman as well. I was about five years old. And she opened a dry cleaning business with my uncle {Omer Elmer Hamel}. My uncle and my mom together, fifty-fifty, opened I think it was maybe the third dry cleaning store in Las Vegas. She gathered the money together. At that time you couldn’t get bank loans, so she figured out how to launch it, and essentially it was the business that I grew up in, as a child. WHERE WAS IT LOCATED? It was located at Charleston [Boulevard] and Eastern [Avenue], right on the corner there. So my mom was always working. My grandma stayed at home. My mom was divorced from my dad {Elmer Lloyd Forbuss} when I was very young, a couple of years old, so I grew up as a single child. My grandma was the more social one in the neighborhood. She got very involved in elections and stuff like that. We knew all the neighbors, of course. I don’t recall any times where we’d go over and eat at their house or they’d come to our house and eat. Maybe that did happen in the neighborhood, but I don’t remember that, per se. I just remember close friends with everyone. Everyone knew each other. I GUESS I’M CURIOUS MORE TO KNOW HOW THE NEIGHBORHOOD INTERACTED OR WAS SITUATED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STRIP AS IT HAPPENED. OF COURSE, DOWNTOWN WAS KIND OF MORE THRIVING, I SUPPOSE, AT THAT POINT. You have to go back and time it out to see what was happening when but the El Rancho [Vegs Hotel and Casino was the first on the Strip]. Actually, that’s another place my mother did work before she worked in the dry cleaning business. As a matter of fact, I have some of the original paraphernalia from that hotel. But the El Rancho [built in 1941] was the first product on the Strip, if you would. It was located at what today is called Sahara [Avenue]—but that was originally called San Francisco Street—and Las Vegas Boulevard [previously Los Angeles Highway or Highway 91], which at that time was the Strip essentially. The El Rancho was the first property built, and subsequent to that there were several others that developed. Originally when my mom came to town, none of those existed. What she saw in terms of gaming was Downtown, and what she got as a job as a young woman was a job at the Golden Nugget. And I can’t remember the name of the guy she claimed to work for, but he was the owner of the Golden Nugget. [Note: Guy McAfee built the Golden Nugget in 1946. See Eugene P. Moehring and Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: A Centennial History, University of Nevada Press, 2003, p. 139.] She was very proud. I have a picture of my mom in her Golden Nugget work attire, this twenty-one-year-old girl.” An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
DETAILS: SON ROBERT FORBUSS COMMENTS ABOUT LLOYD FORBUSS. “[from page 3-4} My dad [Lloyd Forbuss] met mm mother when he got out of the war and came to Las Vegas as a bartender. AND WHERE WAS HE ORIGINALLY FROM? He was from Oklahoma. [In] ’47 they met. WHAT ARE YOUR PARENTS’ NAMES? Lloyd Forbuss and Marjorie Forbuss. My dad was from Oklahoma and it actually turns out he was a hero in World War II, I didn’t even know it, which is kind of ironic, not until he got close to dying. He came here in 1945 at the end of World War II and went to work at the Green Shack [Restaurant] and met my mom and eventually they were married. And my mom already owned her Huntridge home, two doors away from John S. Park Elementary School. AND WAS SHE STILL WORKING AT THE GOLDEN NUGGET? Either she was at the Golden Nugget or at the Green Shack at that time. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Green Shack. It’s sort of a famous place. When I was born, there’s a photograph of me, my mother, my dad, and they’re holding me in front of the Green Shack, in 1948, that little baby there. And my grandmother {Frances Keas} was working there, too. So my grandma was the cook, and my mom was the waitress, and my dad was the bartender, when I was born, at the Green Shack. An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
DETAILS: 1920 US CENSUS. The 1920 US Census for Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana shows a household including Arthur M. Keas (age 36, born Kansas, livery stable proprietor), Frances Keas (27, Michigan, wife), May B. Keas (5, Montana) and Marjorie A. Keas (2 and 3/12, Montana).
DETAILS: 1930 US CENSUS. The 1930 US Census for Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana shows a household including Arthur M. Keas (age 46, born Kansas, blacksmith), Frances Keas (38, Michigan, wife), May Keas (15, Montana) and Marjorie Keas (12, Montana).
DETAILS: FINDAGRAVE MEMORIALS. The following memorial pages on findagrave.com are related or associated with Marjorie A. Forbuss (with the memorial ID number):
202008525 Marjorie A. Forbuss
102232272 Elmer Lloyd Forbuss (former husband)
96697447 Robert Forbuss (son)
201952688 Arthur Michael Keas (father)
105448789 Frances Marie Keas (mother)
112598594 Mae Belle Hamel (sister)
202020903 ·Omer Elmer Hamel (brother in law)
DETAILS: COMMENTS ON RECORDS.
The data in this form may not be entirely correct, and additional data may be later discovered.
SOURCES. US census and state birth indexes from www.familysearch.org.
11 Aug 2019 Prepared by Randall Glenn Wick
IMAGE CAPTIONS
Marjorie A. Forbuss 1917 - 1994, Niche 62, Tier J, Garden of Eternity, Palm Downtown Cemetery, 1325 North Main Street, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
Marjorie A. Forbuss (1917-1944) wall plaque for cremation urn at Palm Downtown Cemetery, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
The cremation remains urn for Marjorie A. Forbuss is located behind a marble plaque in the wall of the Palm Downtown Cemetery “Building of Eternity”; entering through the main door and walking to the third open-ceiling atrium, turning to the right about 30 feet to the a recess in the facing wall, with the niche being five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left, at about eye level. The cemetery is sometimes referred to as Palm Desert Memorial. The GPS location for the cemetery building is N 36.18506, W 115.13648.
Cremation urn plaque in “Building of Eternity”, third inside open-ceiling atrium, recess on right-hand wall, niche five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left (Niche 62, Tier J)
Marjorie Keas 1936 yearbook, “The Bitter Root 1936”, page 26, annual publication of the senior class of Missoula County High School, Missoula, Montana, USA. She was age 18.
Marjorie Forbuss 1994 obituary. Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, page 10B, 13 Feb 1994, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
Marjorie Adeline Keas 28 Oct 1917 Certificate of Birth, Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana, USA. Parents were Arthur M. Keas and Frances Marie Crane.
Comments of Robert Forbuss concerning his mother, Marjorie Forbuss, pages 3, 11-13, in “An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
Robert Forbuss (born 31 Jan 1948, died 12 Aug 2012) comments concerning his mother Marjorie Forbuss, made in a 12 Feb 2009 oral history project interview for the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Born 28 Oct 1917 Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana, USA
Died 10 Feb 1994 Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, USA (age 76)
DETAILS: BIRTH. Margorie [sic] Adeline Keas is recorded on a Montana Certificate of Birth as being born 28 Oct 1917 in Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana to Arthur M. Keas (laborer, born Plainville, Kansas) and Frances Marie Crane (born Frankfort, Michigan), and was the second child of the mother. She later used the first name Marjorie instead of Margorie. She used the middle name Adaline instead of Adeline in her US social security records. Perhaps the Montana Certificate of Birth has typographical errors. The Nevada death certificate for her father, Arthur Michael Keas, records her paternal grandmother as Adeline Gentry.
DETAILS: OBITUARY. “Longtime Las Vegas entrepreneur Marjorie Forbuss dies at age 76. Las Vegas businesswoman Marjorie Forbuss died Thursday at her home at the age of 76. Forbuss was born Oct. 28, 1917, in Wisdom, Mont., a farming community where her father was the sheriff. At the age of 23, Forbuss decided to leave Montana with a girlfriend and travel to Las Vegas. “She didn’t want to be a farmer. She always told me that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She was very entrepreneurial; she thought she could do better out West,” said her son, Robert Forbuss, president and chief executive officer of Mercy Ambulance. Forbuss arrived in Las Vegas, where she would spend the rest of her life, in the 1940s and began her career at the Golden Nugget Hotel as a waitress. A few years later she was hired as a manager for The Green Shack restaurant. She saved her money and by the 1950s was prepared to open her own business, but she encountered problems getting loans from banks. “I remember my mother making the complaint that women couldn’t borrow money from banks,” said Robert Forbuss. Undeterred, Forbuss borrowed from friends and in 1953 opened Fashion Cleaners. Forbuss sold the business in 1971 and retired a few years later, battling arthritis until her death. In her 52 years in Las Vegas, she saw the city grow from 15,000 to nearly 1 million people. “She was a pioneer and she believed in the city and stayed with it,” Robert Forbuss said. She is survived by her son. Private services were handled by Palm Mortuary. The family requests donations to Aid for AIDS of Nevada or the Arthritis Foundation.” Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, page 10B, 13 Feb 1994, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
DETAILS: SON ROBERT FORBUSS COMMENTS ABOUT MARJORIE FORBUSS. “{from page 3}Well, that’s a good story. Let me back up and give you a little history of [my] family. My mom [Marjorie Forbuss] was a farm girl, sort of like a small-town girl from Montana who decided early on in her youth that she didn’t want to live in Montana any longer. And so my mom and her girlfriend traveled west and they looked around in different places and came to Vegas; so in 1941 my mom came here, probably during World War II. And she liked it, she stayed here, she became a cocktail waitress at the Golden Nugget [Hotel and Casino]. My mom married, then divorced, and decided she was going to go buy her own house. So she sat down with a guy by the name of Mr. [Tom] Oakey and cut a deal to buy a Huntridge home, which at that time was a pretty difficult thing for a woman to qualify for a loan on a house. But she did; my mom had made enough money that she did have enough down payment. The house was something like five thousand dollars. She put five hundred dollars down or something like that. Her monthly payments were forty-three dollars a month. She saved every receipt. My mom passed away. I have a box literally of every receipt for that house that she bought in 1944 from Mr. Oakey. That house was for her. So my mom bought the house. I wasn’t born until many years later. {from pages 11-13} DID YOU GUYS DO SOCIAL ACTIVITIES, YOUR FAMILY, DID YOU DO NEIGHBORHOOD THINGS? Some. Yeah, my grandmother {Frances Keas} was quite a neighborhood lady, and that’s the other thing. My grandmother lived with us, so my grandmother was more social. My mom worked. My mom worked her whole life, essentially. AND DID SHE STAY IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY? No. No. In 1954, my mom decided to open her own business, which at that time was pretty difficult to do for a woman as well. I was about five years old. And she opened a dry cleaning business with my uncle {Omer Elmer Hamel}. My uncle and my mom together, fifty-fifty, opened I think it was maybe the third dry cleaning store in Las Vegas. She gathered the money together. At that time you couldn’t get bank loans, so she figured out how to launch it, and essentially it was the business that I grew up in, as a child. WHERE WAS IT LOCATED? It was located at Charleston [Boulevard] and Eastern [Avenue], right on the corner there. So my mom was always working. My grandma stayed at home. My mom was divorced from my dad {Elmer Lloyd Forbuss} when I was very young, a couple of years old, so I grew up as a single child. My grandma was the more social one in the neighborhood. She got very involved in elections and stuff like that. We knew all the neighbors, of course. I don’t recall any times where we’d go over and eat at their house or they’d come to our house and eat. Maybe that did happen in the neighborhood, but I don’t remember that, per se. I just remember close friends with everyone. Everyone knew each other. I GUESS I’M CURIOUS MORE TO KNOW HOW THE NEIGHBORHOOD INTERACTED OR WAS SITUATED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STRIP AS IT HAPPENED. OF COURSE, DOWNTOWN WAS KIND OF MORE THRIVING, I SUPPOSE, AT THAT POINT. You have to go back and time it out to see what was happening when but the El Rancho [Vegs Hotel and Casino was the first on the Strip]. Actually, that’s another place my mother did work before she worked in the dry cleaning business. As a matter of fact, I have some of the original paraphernalia from that hotel. But the El Rancho [built in 1941] was the first product on the Strip, if you would. It was located at what today is called Sahara [Avenue]—but that was originally called San Francisco Street—and Las Vegas Boulevard [previously Los Angeles Highway or Highway 91], which at that time was the Strip essentially. The El Rancho was the first property built, and subsequent to that there were several others that developed. Originally when my mom came to town, none of those existed. What she saw in terms of gaming was Downtown, and what she got as a job as a young woman was a job at the Golden Nugget. And I can’t remember the name of the guy she claimed to work for, but he was the owner of the Golden Nugget. [Note: Guy McAfee built the Golden Nugget in 1946. See Eugene P. Moehring and Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: A Centennial History, University of Nevada Press, 2003, p. 139.] She was very proud. I have a picture of my mom in her Golden Nugget work attire, this twenty-one-year-old girl.” An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
DETAILS: SON ROBERT FORBUSS COMMENTS ABOUT LLOYD FORBUSS. “[from page 3-4} My dad [Lloyd Forbuss] met mm mother when he got out of the war and came to Las Vegas as a bartender. AND WHERE WAS HE ORIGINALLY FROM? He was from Oklahoma. [In] ’47 they met. WHAT ARE YOUR PARENTS’ NAMES? Lloyd Forbuss and Marjorie Forbuss. My dad was from Oklahoma and it actually turns out he was a hero in World War II, I didn’t even know it, which is kind of ironic, not until he got close to dying. He came here in 1945 at the end of World War II and went to work at the Green Shack [Restaurant] and met my mom and eventually they were married. And my mom already owned her Huntridge home, two doors away from John S. Park Elementary School. AND WAS SHE STILL WORKING AT THE GOLDEN NUGGET? Either she was at the Golden Nugget or at the Green Shack at that time. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Green Shack. It’s sort of a famous place. When I was born, there’s a photograph of me, my mother, my dad, and they’re holding me in front of the Green Shack, in 1948, that little baby there. And my grandmother {Frances Keas} was working there, too. So my grandma was the cook, and my mom was the waitress, and my dad was the bartender, when I was born, at the Green Shack. An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
DETAILS: 1920 US CENSUS. The 1920 US Census for Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana shows a household including Arthur M. Keas (age 36, born Kansas, livery stable proprietor), Frances Keas (27, Michigan, wife), May B. Keas (5, Montana) and Marjorie A. Keas (2 and 3/12, Montana).
DETAILS: 1930 US CENSUS. The 1930 US Census for Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana shows a household including Arthur M. Keas (age 46, born Kansas, blacksmith), Frances Keas (38, Michigan, wife), May Keas (15, Montana) and Marjorie Keas (12, Montana).
DETAILS: FINDAGRAVE MEMORIALS. The following memorial pages on findagrave.com are related or associated with Marjorie A. Forbuss (with the memorial ID number):
202008525 Marjorie A. Forbuss
102232272 Elmer Lloyd Forbuss (former husband)
96697447 Robert Forbuss (son)
201952688 Arthur Michael Keas (father)
105448789 Frances Marie Keas (mother)
112598594 Mae Belle Hamel (sister)
202020903 ·Omer Elmer Hamel (brother in law)
DETAILS: COMMENTS ON RECORDS.
The data in this form may not be entirely correct, and additional data may be later discovered.
SOURCES. US census and state birth indexes from www.familysearch.org.
11 Aug 2019 Prepared by Randall Glenn Wick
IMAGE CAPTIONS
Marjorie A. Forbuss 1917 - 1994, Niche 62, Tier J, Garden of Eternity, Palm Downtown Cemetery, 1325 North Main Street, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
Marjorie A. Forbuss (1917-1944) wall plaque for cremation urn at Palm Downtown Cemetery, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
The cremation remains urn for Marjorie A. Forbuss is located behind a marble plaque in the wall of the Palm Downtown Cemetery “Building of Eternity”; entering through the main door and walking to the third open-ceiling atrium, turning to the right about 30 feet to the a recess in the facing wall, with the niche being five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left, at about eye level. The cemetery is sometimes referred to as Palm Desert Memorial. The GPS location for the cemetery building is N 36.18506, W 115.13648.
Cremation urn plaque in “Building of Eternity”, third inside open-ceiling atrium, recess on right-hand wall, niche five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left (Niche 62, Tier J)
Marjorie Keas 1936 yearbook, “The Bitter Root 1936”, page 26, annual publication of the senior class of Missoula County High School, Missoula, Montana, USA. She was age 18.
Marjorie Forbuss 1994 obituary. Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, page 10B, 13 Feb 1994, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
Marjorie Adeline Keas 28 Oct 1917 Certificate of Birth, Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana, USA. Parents were Arthur M. Keas and Frances Marie Crane.
Comments of Robert Forbuss concerning his mother, Marjorie Forbuss, pages 3, 11-13, in “An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
Robert Forbuss (born 31 Jan 1948, died 12 Aug 2012) comments concerning his mother Marjorie Forbuss, made in a 12 Feb 2009 oral history project interview for the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Marjorie Adaline Forbuss
Born 28 Oct 1917 Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana, USA
Died 10 Feb 1994 Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, USA (age 76)
DETAILS: BIRTH. Margorie [sic] Adeline Keas is recorded on a Montana Certificate of Birth as being born 28 Oct 1917 in Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana to Arthur M. Keas (laborer, born Plainville, Kansas) and Frances Marie Crane (born Frankfort, Michigan), and was the second child of the mother. She later used the first name Marjorie instead of Margorie. She used the middle name Adaline instead of Adeline in her US social security records. Perhaps the Montana Certificate of Birth has typographical errors. The Nevada death certificate for her father, Arthur Michael Keas, records her paternal grandmother as Adeline Gentry.
DETAILS: OBITUARY. “Longtime Las Vegas entrepreneur Marjorie Forbuss dies at age 76. Las Vegas businesswoman Marjorie Forbuss died Thursday at her home at the age of 76. Forbuss was born Oct. 28, 1917, in Wisdom, Mont., a farming community where her father was the sheriff. At the age of 23, Forbuss decided to leave Montana with a girlfriend and travel to Las Vegas. “She didn’t want to be a farmer. She always told me that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She was very entrepreneurial; she thought she could do better out West,” said her son, Robert Forbuss, president and chief executive officer of Mercy Ambulance. Forbuss arrived in Las Vegas, where she would spend the rest of her life, in the 1940s and began her career at the Golden Nugget Hotel as a waitress. A few years later she was hired as a manager for The Green Shack restaurant. She saved her money and by the 1950s was prepared to open her own business, but she encountered problems getting loans from banks. “I remember my mother making the complaint that women couldn’t borrow money from banks,” said Robert Forbuss. Undeterred, Forbuss borrowed from friends and in 1953 opened Fashion Cleaners. Forbuss sold the business in 1971 and retired a few years later, battling arthritis until her death. In her 52 years in Las Vegas, she saw the city grow from 15,000 to nearly 1 million people. “She was a pioneer and she believed in the city and stayed with it,” Robert Forbuss said. She is survived by her son. Private services were handled by Palm Mortuary. The family requests donations to Aid for AIDS of Nevada or the Arthritis Foundation.” Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, page 10B, 13 Feb 1994, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
DETAILS: SON ROBERT FORBUSS COMMENTS ABOUT MARJORIE FORBUSS. “{from page 3}Well, that’s a good story. Let me back up and give you a little history of [my] family. My mom [Marjorie Forbuss] was a farm girl, sort of like a small-town girl from Montana who decided early on in her youth that she didn’t want to live in Montana any longer. And so my mom and her girlfriend traveled west and they looked around in different places and came to Vegas; so in 1941 my mom came here, probably during World War II. And she liked it, she stayed here, she became a cocktail waitress at the Golden Nugget [Hotel and Casino]. My mom married, then divorced, and decided she was going to go buy her own house. So she sat down with a guy by the name of Mr. [Tom] Oakey and cut a deal to buy a Huntridge home, which at that time was a pretty difficult thing for a woman to qualify for a loan on a house. But she did; my mom had made enough money that she did have enough down payment. The house was something like five thousand dollars. She put five hundred dollars down or something like that. Her monthly payments were forty-three dollars a month. She saved every receipt. My mom passed away. I have a box literally of every receipt for that house that she bought in 1944 from Mr. Oakey. That house was for her. So my mom bought the house. I wasn’t born until many years later. {from pages 11-13} DID YOU GUYS DO SOCIAL ACTIVITIES, YOUR FAMILY, DID YOU DO NEIGHBORHOOD THINGS? Some. Yeah, my grandmother {Frances Keas} was quite a neighborhood lady, and that’s the other thing. My grandmother lived with us, so my grandmother was more social. My mom worked. My mom worked her whole life, essentially. AND DID SHE STAY IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY? No. No. In 1954, my mom decided to open her own business, which at that time was pretty difficult to do for a woman as well. I was about five years old. And she opened a dry cleaning business with my uncle {Omer Elmer Hamel}. My uncle and my mom together, fifty-fifty, opened I think it was maybe the third dry cleaning store in Las Vegas. She gathered the money together. At that time you couldn’t get bank loans, so she figured out how to launch it, and essentially it was the business that I grew up in, as a child. WHERE WAS IT LOCATED? It was located at Charleston [Boulevard] and Eastern [Avenue], right on the corner there. So my mom was always working. My grandma stayed at home. My mom was divorced from my dad {Elmer Lloyd Forbuss} when I was very young, a couple of years old, so I grew up as a single child. My grandma was the more social one in the neighborhood. She got very involved in elections and stuff like that. We knew all the neighbors, of course. I don’t recall any times where we’d go over and eat at their house or they’d come to our house and eat. Maybe that did happen in the neighborhood, but I don’t remember that, per se. I just remember close friends with everyone. Everyone knew each other. I GUESS I’M CURIOUS MORE TO KNOW HOW THE NEIGHBORHOOD INTERACTED OR WAS SITUATED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STRIP AS IT HAPPENED. OF COURSE, DOWNTOWN WAS KIND OF MORE THRIVING, I SUPPOSE, AT THAT POINT. You have to go back and time it out to see what was happening when but the El Rancho [Vegs Hotel and Casino was the first on the Strip]. Actually, that’s another place my mother did work before she worked in the dry cleaning business. As a matter of fact, I have some of the original paraphernalia from that hotel. But the El Rancho [built in 1941] was the first product on the Strip, if you would. It was located at what today is called Sahara [Avenue]—but that was originally called San Francisco Street—and Las Vegas Boulevard [previously Los Angeles Highway or Highway 91], which at that time was the Strip essentially. The El Rancho was the first property built, and subsequent to that there were several others that developed. Originally when my mom came to town, none of those existed. What she saw in terms of gaming was Downtown, and what she got as a job as a young woman was a job at the Golden Nugget. And I can’t remember the name of the guy she claimed to work for, but he was the owner of the Golden Nugget. [Note: Guy McAfee built the Golden Nugget in 1946. See Eugene P. Moehring and Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: A Centennial History, University of Nevada Press, 2003, p. 139.] She was very proud. I have a picture of my mom in her Golden Nugget work attire, this twenty-one-year-old girl.” An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
DETAILS: SON ROBERT FORBUSS COMMENTS ABOUT LLOYD FORBUSS. “[from page 3-4} My dad [Lloyd Forbuss] met mm mother when he got out of the war and came to Las Vegas as a bartender. AND WHERE WAS HE ORIGINALLY FROM? He was from Oklahoma. [In] ’47 they met. WHAT ARE YOUR PARENTS’ NAMES? Lloyd Forbuss and Marjorie Forbuss. My dad was from Oklahoma and it actually turns out he was a hero in World War II, I didn’t even know it, which is kind of ironic, not until he got close to dying. He came here in 1945 at the end of World War II and went to work at the Green Shack [Restaurant] and met my mom and eventually they were married. And my mom already owned her Huntridge home, two doors away from John S. Park Elementary School. AND WAS SHE STILL WORKING AT THE GOLDEN NUGGET? Either she was at the Golden Nugget or at the Green Shack at that time. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Green Shack. It’s sort of a famous place. When I was born, there’s a photograph of me, my mother, my dad, and they’re holding me in front of the Green Shack, in 1948, that little baby there. And my grandmother {Frances Keas} was working there, too. So my grandma was the cook, and my mom was the waitress, and my dad was the bartender, when I was born, at the Green Shack. An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
DETAILS: 1920 US CENSUS. The 1920 US Census for Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana shows a household including Arthur M. Keas (age 36, born Kansas, livery stable proprietor), Frances Keas (27, Michigan, wife), May B. Keas (5, Montana) and Marjorie A. Keas (2 and 3/12, Montana).
DETAILS: 1930 US CENSUS. The 1930 US Census for Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana shows a household including Arthur M. Keas (age 46, born Kansas, blacksmith), Frances Keas (38, Michigan, wife), May Keas (15, Montana) and Marjorie Keas (12, Montana).
DETAILS: FINDAGRAVE MEMORIALS. The following memorial pages on findagrave.com are related or associated with Marjorie A. Forbuss (with the memorial ID number):
202008525 Marjorie A. Forbuss
102232272 Elmer Lloyd Forbuss (former husband)
96697447 Robert Forbuss (son)
201952688 Arthur Michael Keas (father)
105448789 Frances Marie Keas (mother)
112598594 Mae Belle Hamel (sister)
202020903 ·Omer Elmer Hamel (brother in law)
DETAILS: COMMENTS ON RECORDS.
The data in this form may not be entirely correct, and additional data may be later discovered.
SOURCES. US census and state birth indexes from www.familysearch.org.
11 Aug 2019 Prepared by Randall Glenn Wick
IMAGE CAPTIONS
Marjorie A. Forbuss 1917 - 1994, Niche 62, Tier J, Garden of Eternity, Palm Downtown Cemetery, 1325 North Main Street, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
Marjorie A. Forbuss (1917-1944) wall plaque for cremation urn at Palm Downtown Cemetery, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
The cremation remains urn for Marjorie A. Forbuss is located behind a marble plaque in the wall of the Palm Downtown Cemetery “Building of Eternity”; entering through the main door and walking to the third open-ceiling atrium, turning to the right about 30 feet to the a recess in the facing wall, with the niche being five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left, at about eye level. The cemetery is sometimes referred to as Palm Desert Memorial. The GPS location for the cemetery building is N 36.18506, W 115.13648.
Cremation urn plaque in “Building of Eternity”, third inside open-ceiling atrium, recess on right-hand wall, niche five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left (Niche 62, Tier J)
Marjorie Keas 1936 yearbook, “The Bitter Root 1936”, page 26, annual publication of the senior class of Missoula County High School, Missoula, Montana, USA. She was age 18.
Marjorie Forbuss 1994 obituary. Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, page 10B, 13 Feb 1994, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
Marjorie Adeline Keas 28 Oct 1917 Certificate of Birth, Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana, USA. Parents were Arthur M. Keas and Frances Marie Crane.
Comments of Robert Forbuss concerning his mother, Marjorie Forbuss, pages 3, 11-13, in “An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
Robert Forbuss (born 31 Jan 1948, died 12 Aug 2012) comments concerning his mother Marjorie Forbuss, made in a 12 Feb 2009 oral history project interview for the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Born 28 Oct 1917 Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana, USA
Died 10 Feb 1994 Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, USA (age 76)
DETAILS: BIRTH. Margorie [sic] Adeline Keas is recorded on a Montana Certificate of Birth as being born 28 Oct 1917 in Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana to Arthur M. Keas (laborer, born Plainville, Kansas) and Frances Marie Crane (born Frankfort, Michigan), and was the second child of the mother. She later used the first name Marjorie instead of Margorie. She used the middle name Adaline instead of Adeline in her US social security records. Perhaps the Montana Certificate of Birth has typographical errors. The Nevada death certificate for her father, Arthur Michael Keas, records her paternal grandmother as Adeline Gentry.
DETAILS: OBITUARY. “Longtime Las Vegas entrepreneur Marjorie Forbuss dies at age 76. Las Vegas businesswoman Marjorie Forbuss died Thursday at her home at the age of 76. Forbuss was born Oct. 28, 1917, in Wisdom, Mont., a farming community where her father was the sheriff. At the age of 23, Forbuss decided to leave Montana with a girlfriend and travel to Las Vegas. “She didn’t want to be a farmer. She always told me that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She was very entrepreneurial; she thought she could do better out West,” said her son, Robert Forbuss, president and chief executive officer of Mercy Ambulance. Forbuss arrived in Las Vegas, where she would spend the rest of her life, in the 1940s and began her career at the Golden Nugget Hotel as a waitress. A few years later she was hired as a manager for The Green Shack restaurant. She saved her money and by the 1950s was prepared to open her own business, but she encountered problems getting loans from banks. “I remember my mother making the complaint that women couldn’t borrow money from banks,” said Robert Forbuss. Undeterred, Forbuss borrowed from friends and in 1953 opened Fashion Cleaners. Forbuss sold the business in 1971 and retired a few years later, battling arthritis until her death. In her 52 years in Las Vegas, she saw the city grow from 15,000 to nearly 1 million people. “She was a pioneer and she believed in the city and stayed with it,” Robert Forbuss said. She is survived by her son. Private services were handled by Palm Mortuary. The family requests donations to Aid for AIDS of Nevada or the Arthritis Foundation.” Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, page 10B, 13 Feb 1994, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
DETAILS: SON ROBERT FORBUSS COMMENTS ABOUT MARJORIE FORBUSS. “{from page 3}Well, that’s a good story. Let me back up and give you a little history of [my] family. My mom [Marjorie Forbuss] was a farm girl, sort of like a small-town girl from Montana who decided early on in her youth that she didn’t want to live in Montana any longer. And so my mom and her girlfriend traveled west and they looked around in different places and came to Vegas; so in 1941 my mom came here, probably during World War II. And she liked it, she stayed here, she became a cocktail waitress at the Golden Nugget [Hotel and Casino]. My mom married, then divorced, and decided she was going to go buy her own house. So she sat down with a guy by the name of Mr. [Tom] Oakey and cut a deal to buy a Huntridge home, which at that time was a pretty difficult thing for a woman to qualify for a loan on a house. But she did; my mom had made enough money that she did have enough down payment. The house was something like five thousand dollars. She put five hundred dollars down or something like that. Her monthly payments were forty-three dollars a month. She saved every receipt. My mom passed away. I have a box literally of every receipt for that house that she bought in 1944 from Mr. Oakey. That house was for her. So my mom bought the house. I wasn’t born until many years later. {from pages 11-13} DID YOU GUYS DO SOCIAL ACTIVITIES, YOUR FAMILY, DID YOU DO NEIGHBORHOOD THINGS? Some. Yeah, my grandmother {Frances Keas} was quite a neighborhood lady, and that’s the other thing. My grandmother lived with us, so my grandmother was more social. My mom worked. My mom worked her whole life, essentially. AND DID SHE STAY IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY? No. No. In 1954, my mom decided to open her own business, which at that time was pretty difficult to do for a woman as well. I was about five years old. And she opened a dry cleaning business with my uncle {Omer Elmer Hamel}. My uncle and my mom together, fifty-fifty, opened I think it was maybe the third dry cleaning store in Las Vegas. She gathered the money together. At that time you couldn’t get bank loans, so she figured out how to launch it, and essentially it was the business that I grew up in, as a child. WHERE WAS IT LOCATED? It was located at Charleston [Boulevard] and Eastern [Avenue], right on the corner there. So my mom was always working. My grandma stayed at home. My mom was divorced from my dad {Elmer Lloyd Forbuss} when I was very young, a couple of years old, so I grew up as a single child. My grandma was the more social one in the neighborhood. She got very involved in elections and stuff like that. We knew all the neighbors, of course. I don’t recall any times where we’d go over and eat at their house or they’d come to our house and eat. Maybe that did happen in the neighborhood, but I don’t remember that, per se. I just remember close friends with everyone. Everyone knew each other. I GUESS I’M CURIOUS MORE TO KNOW HOW THE NEIGHBORHOOD INTERACTED OR WAS SITUATED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STRIP AS IT HAPPENED. OF COURSE, DOWNTOWN WAS KIND OF MORE THRIVING, I SUPPOSE, AT THAT POINT. You have to go back and time it out to see what was happening when but the El Rancho [Vegs Hotel and Casino was the first on the Strip]. Actually, that’s another place my mother did work before she worked in the dry cleaning business. As a matter of fact, I have some of the original paraphernalia from that hotel. But the El Rancho [built in 1941] was the first product on the Strip, if you would. It was located at what today is called Sahara [Avenue]—but that was originally called San Francisco Street—and Las Vegas Boulevard [previously Los Angeles Highway or Highway 91], which at that time was the Strip essentially. The El Rancho was the first property built, and subsequent to that there were several others that developed. Originally when my mom came to town, none of those existed. What she saw in terms of gaming was Downtown, and what she got as a job as a young woman was a job at the Golden Nugget. And I can’t remember the name of the guy she claimed to work for, but he was the owner of the Golden Nugget. [Note: Guy McAfee built the Golden Nugget in 1946. See Eugene P. Moehring and Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: A Centennial History, University of Nevada Press, 2003, p. 139.] She was very proud. I have a picture of my mom in her Golden Nugget work attire, this twenty-one-year-old girl.” An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
DETAILS: SON ROBERT FORBUSS COMMENTS ABOUT LLOYD FORBUSS. “[from page 3-4} My dad [Lloyd Forbuss] met mm mother when he got out of the war and came to Las Vegas as a bartender. AND WHERE WAS HE ORIGINALLY FROM? He was from Oklahoma. [In] ’47 they met. WHAT ARE YOUR PARENTS’ NAMES? Lloyd Forbuss and Marjorie Forbuss. My dad was from Oklahoma and it actually turns out he was a hero in World War II, I didn’t even know it, which is kind of ironic, not until he got close to dying. He came here in 1945 at the end of World War II and went to work at the Green Shack [Restaurant] and met my mom and eventually they were married. And my mom already owned her Huntridge home, two doors away from John S. Park Elementary School. AND WAS SHE STILL WORKING AT THE GOLDEN NUGGET? Either she was at the Golden Nugget or at the Green Shack at that time. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Green Shack. It’s sort of a famous place. When I was born, there’s a photograph of me, my mother, my dad, and they’re holding me in front of the Green Shack, in 1948, that little baby there. And my grandmother {Frances Keas} was working there, too. So my grandma was the cook, and my mom was the waitress, and my dad was the bartender, when I was born, at the Green Shack. An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
DETAILS: 1920 US CENSUS. The 1920 US Census for Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana shows a household including Arthur M. Keas (age 36, born Kansas, livery stable proprietor), Frances Keas (27, Michigan, wife), May B. Keas (5, Montana) and Marjorie A. Keas (2 and 3/12, Montana).
DETAILS: 1930 US CENSUS. The 1930 US Census for Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana shows a household including Arthur M. Keas (age 46, born Kansas, blacksmith), Frances Keas (38, Michigan, wife), May Keas (15, Montana) and Marjorie Keas (12, Montana).
DETAILS: FINDAGRAVE MEMORIALS. The following memorial pages on findagrave.com are related or associated with Marjorie A. Forbuss (with the memorial ID number):
202008525 Marjorie A. Forbuss
102232272 Elmer Lloyd Forbuss (former husband)
96697447 Robert Forbuss (son)
201952688 Arthur Michael Keas (father)
105448789 Frances Marie Keas (mother)
112598594 Mae Belle Hamel (sister)
202020903 ·Omer Elmer Hamel (brother in law)
DETAILS: COMMENTS ON RECORDS.
The data in this form may not be entirely correct, and additional data may be later discovered.
SOURCES. US census and state birth indexes from www.familysearch.org.
11 Aug 2019 Prepared by Randall Glenn Wick
IMAGE CAPTIONS
Marjorie A. Forbuss 1917 - 1994, Niche 62, Tier J, Garden of Eternity, Palm Downtown Cemetery, 1325 North Main Street, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
Marjorie A. Forbuss (1917-1944) wall plaque for cremation urn at Palm Downtown Cemetery, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
The cremation remains urn for Marjorie A. Forbuss is located behind a marble plaque in the wall of the Palm Downtown Cemetery “Building of Eternity”; entering through the main door and walking to the third open-ceiling atrium, turning to the right about 30 feet to the a recess in the facing wall, with the niche being five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left, at about eye level. The cemetery is sometimes referred to as Palm Desert Memorial. The GPS location for the cemetery building is N 36.18506, W 115.13648.
Cremation urn plaque in “Building of Eternity”, third inside open-ceiling atrium, recess on right-hand wall, niche five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left (Niche 62, Tier J)
Marjorie Keas 1936 yearbook, “The Bitter Root 1936”, page 26, annual publication of the senior class of Missoula County High School, Missoula, Montana, USA. She was age 18.
Marjorie Forbuss 1994 obituary. Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, page 10B, 13 Feb 1994, Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada USA.
Marjorie Adeline Keas 28 Oct 1917 Certificate of Birth, Wisdom, Beaverhead County, Montana, USA. Parents were Arthur M. Keas and Frances Marie Crane.
Comments of Robert Forbuss concerning his mother, Marjorie Forbuss, pages 3, 11-13, in “An Interview with Robert Forbuss”, An Oral History Conducted by Suzanne Becker, Voices of the Historic John S. Park Neighborhood, Oral History Research Center at UNLV, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 12, 2009.
Robert Forbuss (born 31 Jan 1948, died 12 Aug 2012) comments concerning his mother Marjorie Forbuss, made in a 12 Feb 2009 oral history project interview for the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Gravesite Details
Cremation urn plaque in “Building of Eternity”, third inside open-ceiling atrium, recess on right-hand wall, niche five rows up from the bottom, and three columns in from the left (Niche 62, Tier J).
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