PHYLLIS FRIAS

Nov. 3, 1935-Oct. 31, 2016 Phyllis M. Frias 80, lost a valiant fight against cancer. While Las Vegas lost its transportation matriarch, Nevada lost one of its most revered citizens. The positive impact that Phyllis and her late husband, Charlie Frias, made on Las Vegas is one that few if any will ever match. Phyllis Covert, the youngest daughter of 13 siblings, was born Nov. 3, 1935, on a farm in Ohio, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1954 and met her future husband, Charlie, whom she married in 1956, while stationed in San Antonio. What was intended in 1958 to be a short trip by Phyllis to visit a sister in Las Vegas turned into a five-decade journey that helped build Las Vegas into the undisputed entertainment capital of the world. In May 1958 after the end of Phyllis’ visit with her sister, Charlie arrived with the just enough gas money to take them home back to San Antonio. As Phyllis would later recall in her memoir, “Frias with Love,” the safe bet was to return to the security of family and friends awaiting in Texas. But something about Las Vegas intrigued the couple. With nothing more than the clothes in their bags, they decided in true Las Vegas tradition that their fate should be decided by a flip of a coin. “Heads we go, tails we stay.” As thousands of southern Nevadans would later appreciate, fate was on Las Vegas’ side that day and the coin landed tails side up. Charlie found a job driving a taxicab for a small company with under 20 employees. From that inauspicious start, the couple would later purchase that cab company and begin to build Nevada’s largest transportation company which would eventually include five taxicab companies, as well as a limousine company and an airport shuttle company with a combined workforce of over 2,500 employees, a transportation company that would fuel the lifeblood of our tourism economy by providing safe and efficient transportation experiences. Grateful for the successes Las Vegas provided them and resolute in their belief that all children, regardless of background, should be afforded the opportunity for a quality education, the couple’s generosity allowed many southern Nevadans to attend college who would not otherwise have been able to do so, as well as multitudes of high school students in Clark and Lincoln counties who benefited from their generosity over the decades, whether it be by gifts of school buses, underwriting of trips to Washington, D.C. or by annually sending the fifth grade graduating class at Frias Elementary, a school named in their honor in 2003, on an all-day expense paid trip to Disneyland. In addition, several southern Nevada civic, cultural and not for profit organizations benefited from the Phyllis and Charlie’s generosity. Clark County honored the couple Oct. 8, 2012 by naming the park at S. Decatur Blvd. and W. Tropicana Ave., the “Charlie Frias Park". Situated on 32 acres, the park has stunning views of Red Rock Canyon and the Spring Mountains on the west and Sunrise Mountain to the east, with the skyline of the Las Vegas Strip in between, an appropriate tribute to a young couple who in the 1950s bet their fate on a small desert community with a flip of a coin. Phyllis was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Charles; her parents, Ray Samuel Covert and Alma Faye Chamblin; brothers, Hugh Covert, Robert Covert, Wilbur Covert, William Covert and Keith Covert; and sisters, Dorothy Dryden, Pauline McKeag and Sadie Call. Phyllis is survived by her sisters, Rosemary La Cross and Alma Jean Kleem; brother, Barry Covert; and numerous nephews and nieces. There will be a Mass in celebration of Phyllis’ life at 1 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, at the Guardian Angel Cathedral, 336 Cathedral Way. A reception will follow in the Bienville Ballroom at the Orleans Hotel and Casino, 4500 W. Tropicana Ave.