Working Girl

The pert, pint-sized, hot-butter blonde, shuffling chips across the green felt, looked as radiant as a girl who has just graduated first in her class. To her bosses at Reno's Nevada Club, her air of achievement was not surprising. She had.

Adele Marsh went to Reno in 1943 to end her brief wartime marriage to a Navy C.P.O. While she waited out the six weeks that make divorce-seekers legal residents of Nevada, she got a job behind the roulette wheel at Harold's Club, Reno's immense, noisy gambling joint which spends some of its million-dollar profits to endow scholarships at the University of Nevada (TIME, June 17, 1946). She also enrolled at the university, which is only a few blocks from Harold's.

Adele, a journalism major, slipped in a little practical experience with the Nevada State-Journal and the United Press; nights, she worked as a roulette dealer at Harold's, and later at the Palace, the Bonanza and the Nevada Clubs. She liked the Nevada best: "They took a great deal of pride in my going to college." In the clubs, Adele always wore her wedding ring ("Some people think they should get the dealer if they lose their money"). She made $15 to $25 a night.

Last week, 32-year-old Adele graduated from the university, won the Gold Medal for her 3.93 (perfect: 4) average--highest in the university's 73-year history. Then, while she waited for a newspaper job, she went back to her roulette tables.

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