In addition to Mr. Szczublewski’s service in the U.S. Air Force, he was in service to the reclusive, eccentric billionaire, Howard Hughes, to make sure he didn’t get trapped in an elevator.

In the late 1960s, Howard Hughes bought several casinos in Las Vegas. He had moved there in 1965 and took over the seventh and eighth floors of the Desert Inn. After five months, the casino owners wanted to throw him out because he was siphoning valuable space for gambling customers. Hughes, the second richest man in America at the time, solved the problem by buying the place.

In short order, he bought five other properties, including the Sands, the Frontier and the Landmark. He had recently sold TWA for $500 million and had to invest it so as not to be taxed.

“I worked for Houghton Elevator,” Mr. Szczublewski recalled. “Houghton’s Las Vegas branch–they ran all the elevators in Las Vegas–asked me to come out and fill in for a maintenance person at the Desert Inn. This was about 1970, and the fellow was going on vacation for two weeks. I knew the elevator system, so they sent me.

“Howard Hughes had taken over the seventh and eighth floors, and whenever he wanted to use the elevator, he demanded a person be in the machine room. Hughes had a lot of phobias, and he was deathly afraid of being trapped and made sure a man was on call and monitoring the elevator. That was me.

“I stayed on the sixth floor of the hotel the whole two weeks. The machine room was above the eighth floor. I could look down through the steel grate in the elevator shaft from the machine room and see the elevator and the people coming in and out of it.

“I got called a few times, and I would look down and see Howard Hughes, mainly just the top of his head. He always had four or five guys around him. He was recognizable because he was always wearing his signature fedora. He was the only one in the group that wore a hat.

“It was the easiest job I ever had.”