?Las Vegas Sun? Publisher Barbara Greenspun Dies

Barbara Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun for the past 21 years and the matriarch of her well-known family, has died. She was 88.

The wife of the late Hank Greenspun, Barbara met and married her husband in Northern Ireland in 1943. Seven years later, he purchased a tri-weekly newspaper and renamed it the Las Vegas Sun.

Greenspun spent the rest of his life using his paper to rail against unjust powers, among them Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy. Following his death in 1989, she remained devoted to her husband and his legacy — and took on the role of the newspaper’s publisher.

And carry on his legacy she did, with great elegancy, until her death Tuesday at 88.

As the matriarch of the Greenspun family, she was the face of the family’s charitable organizations, of which there were many.

Greenspun was a donor and member of the Board of Trustees for the anti-Semitism-battling Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, and she was also a longtime supporter of Ben Gurion University in Jerusalem.

Barbara and Hank Greenspun worked to create creating the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Las Vegas, and donated millions to UNLV. In the 1990s she created the university's Greenspun Lecture Series, which attracted such names as Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Greenspun also devoted her time to as a member of the UNLV Foundation board, helped establish the Sun Summer Camp Fund and the Sun Youth Forum, and was a member of the Clark County Juvenile Board.

Greenspun Junior High School in Henderson, Nev., is named after the couple.

"As for enduring legacies, my mother would claim that her family is her legacy," Brian Greenspun, her oldest son, told the Sun for a report published today. "We know what she believed and have learned what she taught, and she will expect us to continue, just as she would if she were here."