‘A true icon in our community’: Philanthropist Joyce Mack dies at 99

When Joyce Mack arrived in Las Vegas, the city was a small frontier town with a population under 25,000. When she died on Friday, she left behind a legacy of institutions throughout the city in her name.

“My mother was a visionary. She looked at the desert and saw a city on a hill. She knew that it was going to be something special,” her daughter, Karen Mack Goldsmith, told the Las Vegas Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday evening.

Mack, a longtime philanthropist in Las Vegas, died at the age of 99 at her home in Newport Beach, California.

A Los Angeles native known for her love of the sea, Mack saw Las Vegas for the first time in 1947. She settled — for what she thought would just be a few years — at age 22 with her husband, banker Jerry Mack, and two oldest daughters, Goldsmith and Barbara Mack.

“I feel very lucky that I was here,” Joyce Mack said in a 2015 oral history interview with UNLV. “How many people have seen a city grow up under their eyes?”

Her husband partnered with businessman E. Parry Thomas to buy the land that eventually became UNLV.

“The university was my dad and Parry’s vision, and it was my mom’s dream,” Goldsmith said.

Later, the families partnered again to donate $1 million to create the Thomas and Mack Center, which opened in 1983 as home to the university’s Runnin’ Rebels basketball team, according to a UNLV press release on Wednesday.

Mack was a regular supporter of the team, cheering in her red Runnin’ Rebels sweatshirt, Barbara Mack said. Before Jerry Mack passed in 1998, the two would travel out of town with the team to see their games.

“She was a true icon in our community. Her passion and support for Las Vegas, and what it could become, helped lay the foundation for UNLV from our earliest days and throughout our evolution into the thriving major public research university we are today,” UNLV President Keith E. Whitfield said in the release.

Civic engagement

“When my father died, we were worried she would not be able to go on without him,” Barbara Mack said. “But for the last 26 years, she made a wonderful life for herself with her philanthropy and interest in politics.”

Mack was a major supporter of the Democratic Party, for both local and national candidates, Goldsmith said, including her early support for Sen. Jacky Rosen.

“She was a relentless force for good and for uplifting others around her,” Rosen wrote in a message to the Review-Journal. “I knew Joyce for more than 20 years, and it was a privilege to watch her make a lasting impact on Las Vegas as she worked to build a better future for everyone.”

Mack was also heavily involved in Opportunity Village, a nonprofit organization that serves people with intellectual disabilities in the Las Vegas community. She was also involved with Planned Parenthood and the Smith Center, and was the past president of the Nevada Institute for Contemporary Art and on the board of trustees for the Las Vegas Art Museum.

Roger Thomas, who is currently working with Elaine Wynn on opening an art museum in Las Vegas, recalled that early conversations around an art museum in the city were at the Macks’ house 45 years ago.

Thomas, the second child of Jerry Mack’s business partner Parry Thomas, said “aunt Joyce” was always supportive of all of the Thomas children.

“I will miss her smile, the knowing twinkle in her eye and her always important advice,” Thomas wrote in a message.

In addition to her civic engagement, Goldsmith recalled her mother’s adventurous spirit. At age 90, she had traveled to hike in Alaska and in the following years she traveled to France and Hawaii. Mack also went on her boat to Mexico and San Juan Island.

Jewish faith

Mack was also a supporter of Congregation Neir Tamid in Henderson, where a photo of her and Jerry Mack hangs outside a sanctuary in their name.

“She was a force who shaped the Jewish community of Las Vegas and Henderson in ways that will continue to echo for generations,” Rabbi Sanford Akselrad wrote in his eulogy, which he will deliver at the ceremony at Neir Tamid on Nov. 3 at 3 p.m.

In the early years, Akselrad said, the Macks were pivotal in building Temple Beth Sholom, one of the city’s earliest synagogues. Mack was also a supporter of the state of Israel since its inception, Goldsmith said.

‘Part of the UNLV story’

Mack joined the UNLV Foundation Board of Trustees in 1999, where her daughter, Marilynn Mack, continues to serve.

“I can’t think of anything more rewarding than being part of the UNLV story,” Joyce Mack said in 2013 when asked by the UNLV Foundation what she found most rewarding about being a philanthropist.

Mack also gave millions of dollars to support the William S. Boyd School of Law, establishing the school’s legal clinic, moot courtroom and a law professorship. In 2021, Boyd Law named her a Woman of Valor, according to UNLV’s press release.

“It’s this type of attitude — her unwavering belief in the good that UNLV could accomplish — that made Joyce so special. She has made a remarkable impact on the foundation, the university, and the community, and it is a privilege to count her as a part of our Rebel Family,” UNLV Foundation President Rickey N. McCurry said in the press release.

Mack was also a key funder of the Lenahan, Saltman, Thomas and Mack Professorship in UNLV’s College of Fine Arts. Her fund supports the work of artist and teacher Tim Bavington, who told the Review-Journal he was very grateful for the fund.

“I met her quite a few times,” Bavington said. “She was just a really lovely, awesome person. She was always so enthusiastic about the work. I’m very lucky to have had her support for the teaching position.”

On the 15th anniversary of the legal clinic, Mack said, “There is an old saying: Education is the soul of society as it passes from one generation to another. I hope all of you enjoy the university, knowing it’s the greatest gift we can give our children,” according to the press release.

Goldsmith and Barbara Mack remembered their mother’s emphasis on education growing up, including the promised $20 if they received straight A’s.

Barbara Mack also remembered the way her mother would draw on the memory of the Holocaust, telling the children: “They can take everything away from you, but they can’t take away your education.”

Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com.