Naming Las Vegas: Meadows School facilities named for founding family

Richardson, a member of one of the private school’s founding families, served on the Board of Trustees since the school began. Her son Billy graduated in 1992, and her granddaughter is attending the Lower School. In addition to the main gymnasium, the Linda R. Richardson Hall of Athletes, also in the athletic complex, is named for her.

Richardson has lived in Las Vegas since she was 3 months old. She met her husband, Bill, while they both worked at the Frontier Hotel — she in the casino cage; he in the slots department. They have two children: Billy Richardson and Melissa Akkaway.

“Both my children were in public school,” she said, “and I ran into somebody at the grocery store who said, ‘Oh, we’re going to start this new school.’ ”

That “somebody” was Meg Jewett, a founding trustee of The Meadows School, 8601 Scholar Lane, who told Richardson about the new school that Carolyn Goodman was founding, with longtime public school principal Dr. LeOre Cobbley at the helm. Richardson recalled how it all began.

At the time, her son was 12 and going into fifth grade, and her daughter was just starting school. She and her husband attended a meeting at Cashman Field where Goodman spoke about the concept of The Meadows School and the plans to build it.

“Everything about it just intrigued me,” Richardson said. “My children had come to Seton Academy … I think the personalization and the small class sizes were what was the most intriguing part about it. At that time, public school was not as big as it is now, but it was still larger class sizes, and I thought of what kind of education my children would be getting. And as a parent, I liked that I would have easy access to the teacher, the person running it (the classroom).”

She and Bill joined the Board of Trustees in 1985, and Linda is still serving on the board, although this will be her final year. She also served as the second president of The Meadows School Parents Association and was the founder and president of the booster club.

Why was it so important to be that involved?

“For my children,” Richardson said. “The school encouraged you to be as involved as you wanted to be. I was on campus almost every single day. In the beginning, a lot of us were (there almost daily). We laid sod on the field; we moved rocks on the ground; anything that needed to be done, we were there.”

As the school grew, Richardson and her family were instrumental in the development of the school’s Summerlin campus. The first gymnasium built on campus, the Richardson-Beckley Gymnasium, was donated by the Richardsons and Beckleys (Linda’s mother-in-law, Virginia Beckley Richardson, is 98). Linda and Bill also teamed up with the Levin family to donate the track that surrounds the football field, named the Levin/Richardson Track, and donated the archway over the main entrance to campus and an entire hallway of the Upper School building. In 2010, Bill, Billy and Melissa donated the Linda R. Richardson Hall of Athletes in the Athletic Complex in Linda’s name for her dedication to the school over the years.

Head of School Jeremy Gregersen said Richardson “is as generous with her time as with her financial gifts, and to say that the school would not be what it is today without her support would be a massive understatement. The Meadows School may well not exist without (her) early and ongoing support.”

“Maybe it’s the growth, or the academics, where children are going off to college and succeeding in life after college,” Richardson said. “You know, graduation, and I think the family unit in the school, like my daughter and her class, she was one of the first ‘lifers,’ we call them. She started there in kindergarten and graduated (with) 13 other kids. And to this day, she could meet up with these kids and pick up like it was Day One. When she went to college, her classmates couldn’t believe that she had just a strong connection with her high school friends and their families.”

Richardson has four grandchildren: two granddaughters, Bianca (now a third-grade student at The Meadows School) and Gianna, from Billy, and two grandsons, Jack and Ford, from Melissa. Outside of her service to The Meadows School, she is the chairwoman of the Foundation Board of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Southern Nevada and has previously served as president of the Make-A-Wish Board of Directors and the Assistance League of Las Vegas.

To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.