RIP Ralph Lamb

A true iconic figure of Las Vegas, Ralph Lamb passed away today.
From the LVRJ:
Former Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb died Friday afternoon at age 88.
He was famous twice — once in the 1960s when his word was law in a county colonized by organized crime, and again in 2012 and 2013, when his earlier exploits were fictionalized in a television cop show.
His son Cliff said Lamb died at 2:25 p.m. at MountainView Hospital, where he had been hospitalized for more than a week.
“It’s ironic, he died the same day his father did in 1939,” Cliff Lamb said. “It was just old age. He died with thousands of friends.”
Lamb converted the Clark County Sheriff’s Department from a mostly rural force to a sophisticated urban agency, and was largely responsible for its consolidation with the Las Vegas Police Department into the present Metropolitan Police Department.
Brother Darwin Lamb, a former Clark County commissioner, said that accomplishment helped make him the top lawman the county’s ever seen.
“He was the best ever,” Lamb’s last surviving sibling said. “You could go anywhere and they’d all tell you that same thing.
“Even the crooks respected him. When he told them something, they knew he meant it.”  http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/ex-clark-county-sheriff-lamb-dies-88
RIP{ Ralph and thanks for shaping Las Vegas and helping it thrive without the mob.