More than 500 mourners came to St. Viator Catholic Church on Thursday to remember former Nevada first lady Carolyn O'Callaghan as a devoted family matriarch who always had time for other people and would give anyone a second chance.
The services were in the same church where her husband of a half-century, former two-term Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, died March 5 before morning Mass started.
Carolyn O'Callaghan died Saturday at Sunrise Hospital of apparent complications of surgery earlier this month to repair a dissected aorta. The longtime co-publisher of the Henderson Home News and Boulder City News was 68.
"She always had time for people," said longtime friend Lupe Gunderson, wife of former Nevada Supreme Court Justice Al Gunderson. She recalled one Halloween during the 1970s when Carolyn opened the governor's mansion to 5,000 trick-or-treaters and their families.
Gunderson remembered another friend asking Carolyn before the event if she was sure she wanted so many people walking through her house.
"This is not my house. This is the house of the people of the state of Nevada," Gunderson quoted Carolyn as saying.
Gunderson was one of three people to deliver eulogies. The others were Landra Reid, wife of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Jan Smith, a longtime friend who worked in the governor's Las Vegas office and is the mother of former Las Vegas Sun sports editor and current Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith.
Landra Reid recalled how a stray dog the O'Callaghans had taken into their home tore up the O'Callaghans' living room after it was left alone one day. She said Mike reckoned that the dog would have to go back to the pound.
"Carolyn said, 'Let's give it another chance,' " Reid said, noting that Carolyn was well known for "giving people a second chance."
Nowhere was that more evident than during the eight years the O'Callaghans were in Carson City, when on several occasions they hired convicted murderers from the Nevada prison system to work in the governor's mansion.
Among the dignitaries attending Thursday's services were Sen. Reid, who served as lieutenant governor under Mike O'Callaghan; Richard Bryan, former Nevada governor and U.S. senator; Bob Miller, former Nevada governor; Lonnie Hammargren, former Nevada lieutenant governor; state Sen. Joe Neal, D-Las Vegas; and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who came to pay his respects to the family, but left as the services started because of another obligation.
Graveside services for the mother of five and grandmother of 15 were Thursday afternoon at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City. Carolyn was interred in the same plot where Mike O'Callaghan is buried.
Carolyn O'Callaghan's casket was draped with a cream-colored shroud adorned with red, green and orange religious symbols and a crucifix.
The sides of the coffin featured engravings depicting the Last Supper -- appropriate because several mourners recalled that few were better cooks than O'Callaghan, whose pot of food for friends or strangers was seemingly endless.
"Carolyn set the standard of hospitality that other first ladies have followed but never quite equaled," Miller said after the services.
"No matter who she talked to -- whether it was the person serving a meal or the person paying for it -- they felt they were a part of her and she a part of them. That's how she involved you in a conversation."
Bryan said no matter how high a level O'Callaghan reached in life "she never lost the common touch. She was a very hospitable first lady and was a very humble woman."
Longtime Nevada businessman and friend Herb Kaufman remembered that O'Callaghan was adept at shifting gears to address varying situations.
"She could be organizing a meal for the homeless one day and be hosting the Girl Scouts the next day," Kaufman said. "Her family was close, and that is a tribute to how she held them all together."
The Rev. Gregory Gordon, who conducted the nearly two-hour Catholic Mass, recalled that after Mike O'Callaghan died, Carolyn jokingly told the priest it was Mike's way of getting out of taking a cruise for their 50th wedding anniversary on Aug. 25.
The priest offered instead that Mike simply went on ahead and used the last five months to prepare a "more beautiful, more enduring" trip to heaven.
Smith echoed the sentiment of the couple's togetherness, noting, "The best way I remember Carolyn is through Mike's eyes. ... Mike wooed and won her -- his first successful campaign."
Gunderson further described Carolyn as "caring, loving, compassionate and firm. ... As first lady she fulfilled the role with dignity and grace. (Her) quiet, unassuming way captured people's hearts."
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