Virgil Getto 1924-2014

Longtime small counties leader Virgil Getto died at age 90 on Nov. 6.

Getto was a national officer of Future Farmers of America in the late 1940s and for many years was a prominent Churchill County rancher, serving on the county school board, in the Nevada Assembly and Senate, and as a Nevada presidential elector. A Western Nevada College building in Fallon is named for him.

As a state legislator, Getto defended the state medical school's use of animal testing and helped push through legislation allowing the school to use tissue samples from about-to-be-euthanized dogs in animal shelters. He opposed water raids by Clark County on the small counties. He sponsored a $47.2 million ballot measure for wetlands preservation and state parks development that passed in 1990 with a 100,306-vote margin. “It's been 12 years since we put any money into the state parks,” he said.

Getto was elected to the Nevada Assembly in 1966 and served until 1976. In 1975, rebellious Assembly Republicans dumped Douglas County's Lawrence Jacobsen as party floor leader and forced an unwilling Getto to take the job. In 1978, he returned to the Assembly until being appointed to the Senate—again, reluctantly, because he preferred the Assembly—in December 1980 to fill a vacancy. He served out the Senate term and then ran again for the Assembly in 1982, where he stayed until 1988. Then he ran for the Senate and served until 1992 when he stepped down for good.

After all that, he had been a first termer four times, which, however, was not a record (that honor went to Horace Coryell, a first termer six times from 1889 to 1907). At one point, Getto represented a huge district that included five Nevada counties and parts of three others.