Reno Gazette-Journal from Reno, Nevada • Page 21

nci iu vacate ue-uuui i iai If you have an idea or comment, call Every Tuesday, your guide to living longer and better 324-0225, and use 6400 to reach the Prime Time hot line. The call is 11 i MiPIL Debt Reno woman remembers her Life in a haunted hoi rmi US. ft r. 1 1 IFjM' Jean DixonReno Gazette-Journal Above, Dennis and Shirley 1912 mining entries in an found in the Goldfield the early 1980s, they used a guest book recording the visitors from as far as Germany From page 1 with the highest interest rates first, said Roger Lindenken, a local accountant and business consultant. And make at least the minimum payment on each card each month to maintain your credit standing.

Make higher payments if you can pay the bills off quicker and lower your total interest cost. Some credit card companies will offer low initial rates to move your other credit card account balances over to their card, Lindeken said. Budgeting to cut back on other expenses until your credit cards are paid off is a nice thing to talk about, but it's hard to do, he said. "I try to counsel clients to use their money and their credit wisely," Lindeken said. "Sometimes that has a hollow sound when people have few alternatives but to charge on credit cards." Credit card help available Free Money Management Classes Consumer Credit Counseling Service offers these programs free through April.

Sessions are presented at St. Mary's Hospital. To register, call 789-DOCS. Men Women Money: How Can the Three of You Possibly Get 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Monday, helps couples determine their personal styles concerning finances in the relationship and how to tackle money management as a team. The Psychology of Money: 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 29 and April 8, explores the influences on our habits of handling money.

Where Does the Money 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 5 and April 15, helps participants take a realistic look at household finances and setting goals and workable spending plans. Give Yourself Some Credit, 6:30 p.m.

to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 12 and April 22, explores the world of credit: understanding, establishing and using it wisely, obtaining credit reports and handling problems. Introduction to Financial Planning, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Feb. 26 and April 29, focuses on six major areas: current financial position; protection; investments; income taxes; retirement; and estates that should be considered when developing a total financial package. The ABCs of Managing Your Money. Consumer Credit Counseling Service also offers free educational programs on various aspects of personel money management to the community at large: businesses, churches, civic groups, schools, hospitals and the agency's own clients. Workbooks are supplied.

Most classes are held on-site. Classes include those listed above as well as: Financial First Aid: Surviving a Job Loss, focuses on the immediacy of financial concerns by establishing priorities, looking at a revised spending plan, working with creditors on housing, utilities, insurance and credit payments. Information You Can Bank On, provides basic information on shopping for, opening and managing checking and savings accounts and using an automated teller machine card. Workplace Workshops features special presentations that can be designed for employees regarding any of the topics listed here or other topics based on needs and interests. By Barbara Land or Shirley Porter Dybicz, the old I baby grand piano in her Reno living room is a constant reminder of the years when she lived among Nevada's ghosts in the historic Goldfield Hotel.

Fondly, she remembers the first time she ever saw the old hotel, on a hot August day in 1959 when she and her husband and children were exploring old mining camps in the desert. As they drove through Goldfield, a dusty ghost town between Reno and Las Vegas, she spotted a survivor among the ruins. "I couldn't believe it!" she recalls. "In the middle of this windswept desert, four stories of solid brick, balconies overhanging a columned porch and massive front doors I wanted to open those huge doors and walk into the past, but the 'No trespassing' signs kept me at a distance." Next time she saw the hotel, 17 years later, a very different sign caught her eye. This one said "For sale," so Shirley made up her mind to buy the old hotel and restore it to its former elegance.

What happened after that is chronicled in the pages of "But You Can't Leave, Shirley," a first-person account published in 1991. She has some spooky tales to tell about ghostly happenings in the deserted rooms and corridors of the Goldfield hotel. Mysterious footsteps, banging doors, cold drafts and unexplained whispers disturbed Shirley, her family and their occasional visitors. In one small room, she wrote, "I encountered the fear that was to be with me all the years that I lived at the Goldfield Hotel." Yet, in spite of the fear, she felt at home in the hotel and somehow responsible for taking care of the place. Sometimes she thought she actually remembered it from a previous life.

Eventually, recalling her own childhood fear of closets, she became convinced that she was once, in another life, locked inside the closet of Room 109. She asked herself, "Did I die there?" A recent front page story in the Reno Gazette-Journal brought back all her vivid memories of initial hopes, later disappointment and eventual loss. "Goldfield Hotel looking for buyer," said the headline above an Associated Press report that the hotel was for sale through a Reno real estate firm. "One of Nevada's oldest and most historic hotels," the story continued. "Built in 1908 boasts the first electric elevator built west of the Mississippi hosted countless famous people location of several feature motion pictures and television films." Then came the paragraph that raised Shirley's eyebrows and her blood pressure: "The hotel has been closed since 1936, although it was opened briefly during World War II to house personnel at the nearby Tonopah Army Air Base.

A Las Vegas entrepreneur bought it in the early 1980s with the intent of fixing it up and reopening it. He put several million into the old "What Las Vegas entrepreneur?" she asks, indignantly. "We bought that hotel in 1976. And then we were forced into a partnership and lived there, off and on, until we lost everything! Our former partner announced a lot of plans for remodeling and modernizing, but we were there first and we would have rHDEM fib the girls were living in the Goldfield Hotel, starting to work on the restoration. Now they had business partners and investors, but often disagreed with them about plans to modernize and commercialize.

Shirley developed heart problems and was hospitalized for a while, but she refused to give up her plans to restore the hotel. By 1981, Shirley and Dennis had lost their financial interest in the hotel were forced out," says Shirley) to San Francisco developer Lester O'Shea who had ambitious plans to turn it into a casino. From time to time during the next 15 years, news reports from Goldfield announced plans to re-open the hotel, but it never quite happened. Still, Shirley likes to remember the last years she spent in the hotel. "I loved that hotel so much! When tourists would show up at the door and want to see the hotel, we'd take them through and tell them about the restored it to the way it was in the old days." Looking back, Shirley recalls the precise date when she decided to buy the hotel: June 20, 1976.

Her life had changed since that first enchanting glimpse of Goldfield in 1959. Following a divorce from her first husband, Robert Porter, she had started a California crafts business and gift shop in partnership with a neighbor, Dennis Dybicz. Her two sons and one of her daughters were grown, but two teenage girls, Lisa and Mary Lynn, still lived with her. That day in June, the partners and two girls were driving through Goldfield on their way to a Las Vegas craft fair when Shirley suggested they stop to look at the old hotel. It was locked up, but they peered through dusty windows into the empty lobby.

Dim outlines revealed a piano, leather settees and a registration desk. In Shirley's imagination, the lobby bustled with guests, as it might have looked more than 85 years ago when Goldfield was a mining boomtown, the biggest, most prosperous city in Nevada. What a shame, she thought, to leave it empty. As they walked around outside the deserted building, Shirley began to spin stories about the hotel for Dennis and the girls. Then they saw the "For sale" sign with a Las Vegas telephone number.

She wrote it down. As soon as they arrived in Las Vegas, Shirley and Dennis called the real estate broker and asked to see the hotel. Before long they were back in Goldfield. When the broker turned a key in the rusty lock, they stepped into an adventure that would eventually cost them sleepless nights, backbreaking labor and crushing disappointment. Shirley and Dennis scraped together a $10,000 down payment and waited to hear from the broker.

Two years and $15,000 later, still without a signed contract, they sued the broker for default. "He lost his license, but we never got our money back," says Shirley. Meanwhile, Shirley, Dennis and For information about other Naples, FL; Pompano Beach, toll free 1-800-421-1442. tOM. HOUSW OffOHTUHITY MEMORIES: Dybicz explore old ledger they Hotel, right.

In the ledger as names of and Switzerland. admits life is easier. But she still dreams of moving back to Goldfield some day. Sometimes, when Shirley is busy in another part of the house, she hears the lively notes of "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" drifting in from her Goldfield piano. Then she knows Dennis remembers, too.

Barbara Land is a Reno-based free-lance writer. "But You Can't Leave, Shirley" by Shirley A. Porter, is available at Sundance Bookstore, $9.95. history. We had fixed up the lobby with carpets and draperies, glass lamps we found upstairs, and the old piano.

Dennis would play some of the old tunes and sometimes I'd sing." Even now, nearly 20 years after her first decision to buy the Goldfield Hotel, Shirley says she often feels homesick for Goldfield. Now she and Dennis are married, living comfortably in a modest Reno house within reach of all her children and grandchildren. Away from the drafty corridors, the leaking roof, primitive plumbing and the ghosts she The best in retirement living starts with the Hyatt Toudi! Rental retirement living at Classic Residence by Hyatt features the best in maintenance-free living, highlighted by housekeeping, transportation services, and our renowned Hyatt-style dining experience! Without the day-to-day concerns of grocery shopping and meal preparation, residents of Classic Residence by Hyatt enjoy the taste-tempting creations of our award-winning chef and the incomparable Hyatt-style service delivered by our waitstaff. Our casually elegant dining room is complemented by a beautiful patio area that's perfect for community barbecues, adding to the pleasure of dining with friends and neighbors. Come experience Hyatt-style retirement living for yourself! Call us at (702) 825-1105 to schedule a tour today.

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