Nevada folk tale: Keeping Key Pittman on ice

Nevada is full of myths and folk tales.  There are tales from the days of the Comstock Lode when Mark Twain was a reporter in Virgina City to Highway 40 better known as the Lincoln Highway ( USA's first trans continental Highway). Clark Gable's last movie, The Misfits,  was filmed here with Marylin Monroe.   Ghost towns, failed dreams and silver beyond measure.

Even the adventures of Reno 911.

But here is one of this reporters favorites

This is among the most lurid and grotesque of Nevada's folk tales.

U.S. Senator Key Pittman died on Nov. 10, 1940, only five days after winning re-election. For years, stories have circulated that Pittman actually died before the election. His friends, so the story goes, kept his body in a bathtub filled with ice at Reno's Riverside Hotel so that his senate seat could remain Democratic (Pittman's successor would be appointed by GovernCarvilled Carville, who like Pittman was a Democrat.) The story made the rounds for years and was repeated in the sensational national bestseller, "The Green Felt Jungle" (1963), except the events tookTonopah's Tonopah'sMizpah Mizpah Hotel in that version.

AMizpah'sme, the Mizpah's Key Pittman Restaurant had a history contained on the menu, which erroneously claimed thatTonopahttman, a Tonopah pioneer, died at the hotel and that his body was kept on ice there.

The real facts, though, are more elaborate and just as disreputable. According to a 1977 interview by myself with Pittman's personal physician, and witnessed by historian Phil Earl at the Nevada Historical Society, the elderly senator suffered a heart attack whipreengaged in a pre-election drinking spree at the Riverside. The physician, Dr. A. J. "Bart" Hood, was summoned by courier (no telephones were used to avoid eavesdropping operators) and examined the senator on the evening of Nov. 4. Hood told Pittman's political lieutenants that there was nothing he could do to save Pittman.

Quietly, the senator's croniesWashoe him into Washoe General Hospital. A coronary disease specialist, who was flown to Reno from San Francisco, concluded once Pittman regained consciousness, that death was imminent.

Democratic leaders chose to keep the facts secret and issued a cover story that Pittman was temporarily ill, thus allowing Nevadans to go to the polls on Nov. 5 and elect a dying man. Reno's Nevada State Journal quoted Hood as saying that "the senator was suffering from sheer exhaustion and fatigue, and the strain of the campaign through the state has been too much for 'an already overworked condition.' The Senator's condition is not critical, but he will be kept in the hospital several days, principally for the rest."

As one of Pittman's biographers, Betty Glad reported attendinVintonician Dr. Vinton Muller, mortician Silas Ross, and St. Mary's Hospital SeraphineSister Seraphine later stated that Pittman still was alive on election day and Washoee died at Washoe General on

Nov. 10.

The senator's wife, Mimosa, arrived at his bedside on election day from Washington, D.C. Her diary (now at the Nevada Historical Society) noted that she saw Pittman alive and conscious: "Went straight to hospital with Dr. Hood. Key happy."

An embalmer further reported that Pittman's death certificate recorded no evidence of the tissue effects on Pittman's body that would have confirmed the ice story.

According to journalist Barbara and Myrick Land in "A Short History of Reno" (1995), "One political reporter, it was rumored later, asked one of Pittman's handlers why the senator was making no campaign appearances in this important final week. The handler replied 'We're keeping him on ice.' This may account for a bizarre tale that was widely repeated in the state after the election."

Guy Rocha is the Nevada State Archivist.

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