History of SPS
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Las Vegas Friends
Names of the Vegas friends and workers pictured may be forgotten as the years roll by, but the gentleman on the left will be remembered here as former Shreveport Journal photographer Earl G. Turner, Jr. He was a Fair Park guy who played football before graduating and becoming a staffer at the Journal. He also worked as a movie projectionist at local drive-in theatres. Because those were only open in the evenings that fit nicely as a second job opportunity to better provide for his wife, nee Betty Jolly, and their children. If I finished work after 10pm near where he was working I’d sometimes drop by and chat with Earl in the projection booth. He dearly loved photography but working night and day prevented opportunity to be a founding member. He eventually left the local area to work for Halliburton in Houston, TX and after promotions he was transferred to Las Vegas where he remained.
On a Friday afternoon, while awaiting a Monday or Tuesday ship passage to Hawaii from Los Angeles, I called Earl in Vegas and invited him to join my son and I for dinner that night. He instead countered that we drive to Vegas, instead, saying there wasn’t much to do in L.A. It was only a couple of hours away so we went and Earl showed us the town. It wasn’t at all what I expected and we liked Vegas so much that we stayed and got jobs there. Never did make it to Hawaii. After I became the photolab manager at Stardust Hotel, and later opened the lab at the new Las Vegas Hilton Earl often dropped by to visit. This picture in which he appears was taken by one of my camera girls as we took a break ‘between shows’ in the Mai Tai Gourmet Room
L to R: Earl Turner, Geri Fletcher, Georgia Rose, Robert Hartmann (husband of ), Kay Hartmann, and me, with eyes partly closed! My son, Mike, is not pictured because I had left him to manage the Stardust lab when I moved to the Hilton International, so he was probably there hard at work with his camera girls.
(Photo by Camera Girl Donna Middleton)
Photo courtesy of Bob Dial
