Life of Robert Forbuss, who loved education, a lesson in grace

Robert Forbuss, who died in August at age 64, was the first reminder that there are civic leaders deserving credit for truly improving life in Las Vegas in lasting ways.

When 1,000 people showed up at The Smith Center on a Friday night for the center’s first memorial service, I knew I wasn’t alone in respecting this man of grace.

The lineup of speakers initially made it look like this was a Democratic rally. Even U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who had been in a car accident a few hours earlier, bucked his doctor’s advice to keep his commitment to be there.

“A few weeks before Bob died, I went to his home to express how much I cared about him,” Reid said, obviously in pain and wobbly. “I was there because of his big heart and his caring for his friends, his state, this country.”

Forbuss was a native Nevadan, the son of a bartender and a cocktail waitress. After college, he bootstrapped himself up from a schoolteacher at Bishop Gorman High School for seven years to a man of wealth who “committed to do the public good,” remembered former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan.

While a teacher, Forbuss parlayed his summer job as a paramedic into eventually owning the ambulance service, demonstrating his business talents.

Former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones, one of his closest friends, said, “Bob Forbuss moved comfortably, effortlessly actually, across so many different worlds. Political activist/protester, to president of the Chamber of Commerce. Powerful voice for gay and lesbian rights, to simply a teacher. And in each and every role he assumed, he remained comfortable in his own skin. Never strident, never hiding, never changing, ever Bob.”

Jones nailed it. Forbuss was just as comfortable with the gay community as he was the business community, just as comfortable with powerful politicians as he was with third-graders, and treated them all with equal respect.

His political career on the Clark County School Board lasted eight years from 1979-1986. After that, he focused on business, political activism and philanthropy.

Among his many passions were the Robert L. Forbuss Elementary School, which opened in 2007, and The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, where he was a founder.

Late in his illness and in a wheelchair, he went to Reynolds Hall and went on stage to look out.

“I’m happy he was able to see what he helped create,” Rep. Shelley Berkley said.

At the memorial, principal Shawn Paquette told of a student who wrote a letter to Forbuss saying when he first started school his goal was to be a mechanic. After four years, now he wants to be an astronomer.

“I want to give these kids every opportunity,” Forbuss told me in 2008, while showing off the school’s technology.

Hearing he had been diagnosed with the debilitating ALS disease, I asked whether I could do a column. He asked me not to. Friday, I learned why. Forbuss didn’t want the schoolchildren to know he was ill. When the schoolchildren sang on The Smith Center stage, I cried, knowing how much those students’ futures mattered to Forbuss.

“Bob Forbuss loved education. It was the core of who he was,” Jones said in her emotional tribute. “I believe all of his students will tell you the greatest gift Bob gave them was the gift of independent thought, and the courage to follow their inner voice rather than the voice of others.”

Forbuss was a dreamer, a visionary. So is the man in Saturday’s column: Dr. Lawrence Copeland.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call her at 702-383-0275. She also at lvrj.com/blogs/Morrison.