The lodging business provided a lot of the money that the McClaskey family has invested back into this community.
We reported last week that the Tod and Maxine McClaskey Foundation gave $2 million to Washington State University Vancouver’s hospitality business management program. The gift honors the late Tod McClaskey, co-founder of Red Lion Inn Hotels, and his wife, Maxine, who died in 2005.
While Tod McClaskey and partner Ed Pietz once had the largest privately owned hotel chain west of the Mississippi River, he also had some side ventures. McClaskey, who died in 2003, based a casino operation at a Red Lion Hotel in Elko, Nev. And he even had a side venture to that.
The Casino Express was a private charter airline that flew gamblers to Elko. To keep the five Boeing 737s full, they flew other passengers.
But not all of the people headed for a home-away-from-home were excited about their destinations. They included U.S. marshals who were escorting prisoners to their new prison accommodations.
Dave Zornes, CEO of the Red Lion Hotel and Casino, said that the Casino Express went out of business in 2006, and he helped close it out.
“Without Mr. McClaskey’s guidance, there was no wherewithal to keep it going,” he said.
Zornes also was there at the start of the charter service, he said. They initially chartered airline jets that had open spots in their schedules. Eventually, the hotel owner decided to buy his own air fleet.
“Mr. McClaskey liked total control,” Zornes said.
“I looked in Hawaii at a 737. It had too many (takeoff and landing) cycles. I passed on it. Less than a month later, the fuselage blew open and a flight attendant lost her life,” Zornes said.
Back in the 1980s, “There only was gaming in Nevada, New Jersey and South Dakota. We could fly to 100 different cities. We had the same certification as United and Delta,” Zornes said.
They also had a feature that reflected the casino business. It came into play when pilots had random drug tests, Zornes said.
“We used a keno machine to draw numbers to see who we would randomly drug test.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
