For those who don’t know, Millicent Siegel Rosen is one of the two daughters of Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, an associate of the Genovese crime family who is considered one of the founders of the modern Las Vegas (and introduced the first air conditioning to the desert with the opening of the Flamingo). Following the very shaky debut of the Strip’s inaugural resort-casino, Bugsy was fatally shot on the night of June 20, 1947, as he sat with his friend Allen Smiley in the Beverly Hills home of his girlfriend Virginia Hill.
Millicent, now aged 79, still resides in Las Vegas, but she’s kept a very low profile, seldom giving interviews until very recently. In the course of this research, we learned that she used to own a lighting design company in town called Odyssey Lighting & Design, but the phone numbers for both locations (on Dean Martin Dr. and South Pecos Rd.) were both disconnected, so we’re guessing they’re out of business.
It was the opening of the Las Vegas Mob Experience at the Tropicana that recently brought Millicent into the public eye, when she granted interviews both to the LA Times and local Las Vegas Sun newspapers; she gave her only known U.S. television interview to Clark County Television back in 2009 for Las Vegas’ centennial celebrations.
From these brief appearances and statements, Rosen reveals a different side to Siegel than the one that's been popularized by Hollywood; for her, he was simply "dad." She learned of Bugsy's death only when she and her sister stepped off the train on arriving spend the summer vacation with him, and only subsequently did she come to understand what he did for a living and that there was a different side to Bugsy than the attentive family man she'd known. To this day, however, she remains extremely private, which we can respect, and detached from the world that she grew up in.
That said, Rosen seems like a gracious lady and, should you happen to encounter her and approached politely, we imagine she'd be receptive to someone who was fond of her father. We don't know if she's scheduled to appear at the grand opening of downtown's "Mob Museum," but if so, now that her business is closed, that's probably your best chance of getting to meet her in person.
