[4] Sawyer then went to The George Washington University Law School but left to enlist in the army at the beginning of World War II.

Governor Sawyer worked to push through civil rights policies and legislation, a difficult process in a state that had been accused of being "the Mississippi of the West.

By the late fifties he had come so far from his start in the conservative political machine of Senator Patrick McCarran that many powerful Nevadans considered his policies on education, the environment, and civil rights to be dangerously radical.

When he demanded meaningful regulatory control over casino gaming and took decisive action to purge the industry of its mob connections, the establishment's resistance stiffened.

Eventually, Sawyer's positions brought him into open conflict with special interests and led to a collision with the justice department of the federal government, but he never backed down.

[7] Sawyer died on February 19, 1996, in Las Vegas, Nevada of complications of a debilitating stroke suffered in 1993, at the age of 77.