He learned to fly - it became his passion - and began scouting the state for an alternative to Las Vegas. He got a gambling license, posted “families welcome” and “steak and eggs” on the signboard and started what he said was the only blackjack game in the area.īut Mr. By 1954 he had saved enough to buy a restaurant in North Las Vegas, the 101 Club. He worked as a bartender and at night went to a school for card and dice dealers. With his young wife, he moved to Las Vegas in 1953, when Nevada was one of the few places in the United States where slot machines were legal. “I said, ‘I’m making three times what you are, so I’m out the door.’” “He said to get out of the gambling business or get out of high school,” Mr. The principal of the one-room schoolhouse he attended for high school was not amused.
As a teenager, he stockpiled cash from trapping mink and muskrat and used it to buy mail-order slot machines, installing them himself in local pubs.ĭemand was high, and before long he was making $500 a week (nearly $7,000 in today’s money).
Taking chances seemed to come naturally to Donald. Donald Joseph Laughlin was born on May 4, 1931, on a dairy farm run by his parents, Raymond and Olive (Benalleck) Laughlin, outside Owatonna, Minn., about 65 miles south of Minneapolis.
