For Las Vegas aviation pioneer Florence Murphy, Dec. 7, 1941, indeed was a day that would live in infamy.
She, her husband J.M. "Red" Murphy and their partner John "Bud" Barrett were hosting a spectacular air show that Sunday morning for the grand opening of their Sky Haven Airfield -- today North Las Vegas Airport -- when a military monoplane appeared on the horizon.
"I thought, great, they are coming in to join our event," Murphy said Friday, a day before celebrating her 92nd birthday. "Instead the pilot said, 'We're shutting you down -- Pearl Harbor was just bombed.' It was awful."
Murphy, a native Nevadan who in 1938 became the first woman in the state to receive a pilot's license, said the announcement that the military pilot made over the loudspeaker to the crowd of about 2,000 was chilling.
"It was quiet -- everybody was just so devastated," she said. "He told the pilots the military would help get them transportation home but no one was allowed to fly."
Murphy said she and her partners had to be fingerprinted and the airport had to be inspected by federal authorities. It took two months to reopen her business.
"My husband (and Barrett) went off to train cadets to be pilots at Wickenburg, Ariz., and I stayed behind and ran the airport," said Murphy, the first woman in the United States to co-own, build and operate an airport.
Business initially was slow as civilian flights were limited to those who were cleared by the government.
But Murphy said the good times she had in aviation far outweighed the bad.
She would go on to serve as vice president of Bonanza Airlines -- the first woman in America to hold such a position at a scheduled airline -- and she befriended aviator Howard Hughes, the billionaire who later ushered in the corporate age of the Las Vegas resort industry.
"When I attended the Airline Personnel Relations conference, I was the only woman there and a lot of the men said, 'Oh no, now we have to watch our language,' " Murphy recalled. "But by the end of that conference, they elected me to their board of directors."
In that post, Murphy pushed through her plan that doubled the wages for co-pilots on U.S. commercial airline flights from $250 to $500 a month.
"Commercial pilots at that time were earning $750 a month and their co-pilots were doing most of the work," Murphy said. "I thought it was only fair they get more money."
Bonanza Airlines was founded as a charter service in 1945 but, by the end of the decade, was a full-fledged commercial airline, primarily flying between Reno and Las Vegas with stops in Tonopah and Hawthorne.
"Our airline was needed because lawmakers in the northern part of the state were making decisions for Southern Nevada and had never even visited the area," said Murphy, a Republican who often campaigned for Democrats including Sens. Patrick McCarran and Howard Cannon and Gov. Mike O'Callaghan.
"We flew a lot of legislators back and forth."
It was prior to her years at Bonanza that Murphy became well-known in the community for keeping the North Las Vegas airfield afloat.
One of the frequent fliers into that facility was Hughes, who one day in 1943 called Murphy to inform her he planned to fly into North Las Vegas at night.
"We didn't have lights on the runways, so he told us to line up a bunch of cars and have their headlights turned on," Murphy said. "He landed fine."
When her partners suggested that they charge Hughes more for having his plane tied down at the airport because he was a billionaire, Murphy said no -- he gets treated the same as anyone else.
"We charged him what we charged everyone -- one dollar," she said.
Murphy retired from the aviation industry in 1958, two years before Red Murphy died. She became a successful real estate investor and still works for a local real estate firm, bringing in listings. However, Murphy admits that at her age she pretty much works when she feels like it.
Of all of the changes she has seen in aviation, Murphy said she is most impressed with the quality that goes into building today's planes -- a far cry from the C-47s and DC-3s that "we used to call buckets of bolts."
In her heyday, Murphy flew the Piper Cub, Cessna 147 and similar small aircraft. Although she still has her pilot's license, Murphy has not flown a plane in 10 years because she can no longer pass the required physical.
"Oh, I miss it (flying) terribly," said Murphy, a grandmother of two and great-grandmother of three. "I used to love to fly over Sunrise Mountain and look down at the patches of colors that looked like a beautiful Indian blanket."
Occasionally, she goes to North Las Vegas Airport and marvels at how different it is from the days when Red and Bud would go out on the runway and scrape the sagebrush from the dirt surface.
In the North Las Vegas Airport restaurant they still serve the Florence Murphy omelet with spinach, sauteed mushrooms and cheese.
"They named a breakfast after me," she said. "They must have thought I was a good egg."
Here are some profiles of other noted Southern Nevada aviation pioneers:
PATRICK McCARRAN -- U.S. senator from 1933 to 1954. McCarran International Airport is named for the lawmaker who became controversial for his communism witch hunts but was revered for his efforts to promote aviation. He co-authored the Civil Aeronautics Act, under which an air safety board -- the precursor of the Federal Aviation Administration -- was created. He also helped establish the Army Air Corps Flexible Gunner School and Nellis Air Force Base. He died at age 78 of an apparent heart attack while attending a Democratic Party rally in Hawthorne in 1954.
HOWARD CANNON -- U.S. senator from 1958 to 1982. A World War II fighter pilot, he was shot down and spent 42 days behind Nazi lines before reaching Allied forces. His most significant accomplishment as a lawmaker was as Senate Commerce chairman, where he crafted legislation that resulted in deregulation of the airline and trucking industries. Airline deregulation ushered in an unprecedented era of growth in Southern Nevada. As ranking member of the Armed Services and Rules committees, Cannon helped to preserve Nellis Air Force Base when it faced the threat of a phase-out. He died last year at age 90.
GEORGE CROCKETT -- A descendent of frontiersman Davey Crockett, he opened Alamo Airport on Las Vegas Boulevard South in 1942, the precursor to McCarran International Airport. His Alamo Airways would go on to become Nevada's oldest Airport operation. In 1967, he sold his business to Howard Hughes' Summa Corp., and retired. In 1990, Crockett died. Two years later, his widow, fellow aviation pioneer Margaret "Peg" Nickerson Crockett gave a $15,000 donation and artifacts that helped create the Howard Cannon Aviation museum at McCarran.
BOB BROADBENT -- A native Nevadan and Boulder city's first mayor, he served from 1986 to 1997 as Clark County Aviation Director, overseeing billions of dollars in construction and renovation projects at McCarran. When Broadbent retired from the airport post, he took on the job of finding private money to back the Las Vegas monorail. In 2000, he attended the groundbreaking for the $650 million project. He died in August and the monorail was named for him.
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