Audio clip from interview with George Simmons conducted by Claytee D. White, December 13, 2013

And you were designing? Yes, I was a designer for Sproul Homes. There was Charleston Heights. That's when the town was beginning to move. Charleston Heights, we did a lot of that. Winterwood, which was called Winterwood at the time. It's out just east, I guess, of Nellis. It's out where they call it Desert Rose Golf Course. They built those homes around there. So I designed most of the houses in that housing development there. And so we did that until things just sort of dried up. I left them, I think, right around 1966, in that area, probably '66, yes. Where is Charleston Heights located? Charleston Heights is up around West Charleston. It was Jones and west of Jones, right around in that area. Okay, good. Were all of those integrated neighborhoods? No, they were not integrated. In fact, I worked for Sproul Homes and they wouldn't sell me a house, until they built the homes that we lived in over on Veronica Street, which was on the Westside. Sproul Homes built a group of homes in there. We were allowed to buy there. They had planned to build some more, but they never did. But they did that. Then they built some homes across—oh, I've forgotten the name of the subdivision. But all those homes are still there. They built those, as well. But those were the places where we were allowed to buy. They just wouldn't sell me a house. Isn't that something? Veronica Street, I think this is probably where the Goynes, that area, that neighborhood. Yes, we lived right across the street from the Goyneses. And the Pughsleys lived right next to— let's see. Yes, the Pughsleys. Okay. And the Richardsons, the Goynes, the Taylors. And all of those were educators. Yes. They lived right on that street. That's right. Okay, wonderful. Oh, that's great. Thank you for that information. I think I have seen an old ad, Sproul Homes ad in the newspaper where it said "white only." I don't remember the "white only," but that's what it was. Yes. This was a long time ago, probably a little before your time at that company. But I think the advertisement actually said that. Tell me about the evolution of your working career. Well, I worked for Sproul until, like I said, early '66. Then the housing industry just dried up with Sproul, sort of, and they started laying off. I was one of the last ones to be laid off. But I went then—I worked for the county planning department. For one month. [Laughing] And that one month, it was just a chaotic thing. But it was like the entire office, the entire personnel there pretty much changed over in the one month that I was there. It was the most chaotic situation I think I'd ever been in. What was happening? I don't really know. I know that my boss, he was in that position and my understanding was that he was really there because he had so much on all of those politicians that they couldn't do much with him. In fact, while I was there I was working—when he found out what I could do or he could use me, I was drawing stuff for him for things that were going on in California, which had nothing to do with that job as far as I knew. So I decided I needed to get out of there. Anyway, I had interviewed with Holmes and Narver, which is an engineering company. They called me in for an interview. Luckily, I didn't have to stay with the county longer than that month and I hired on with Holmes and Narver. They were a prime contractor for the Department of Energy. So I've been with that contract for 47 years. Now, different companies have taken over that contract. Holmes and Narver kept it until 1990. And then it was bid out and Raytheon took it over and they lasted for, I think, five years. And then Bechtel Nevada took it over, or Bechtel. Then Bechtel kept it for about ten years. And then it's National Security Technologies now, which the mother company is Northrop Grumman, and they have the contract now. So tell me what that contract was all about. Okay. It's evolved into more now than it was then. At that time there were three basically prime contractors. Holmes and Narver was the engineering element of that and there was EG&G and REECo. And I worked for Holmes and Narver. We did basically engineering, building structures, apparatus, all kinds of stuff. We did that kind of thing. Were you at the Test Site most of the times during this? No. Actually I started downtown. I did spend a little bit of time [at the Test Site] because I had to have a security clearance. So I did go to the Test Site temporarily until I got my clearance. But for the most part I worked there, downtown, which we were located on South Highland. I think we all moved to the Test Site around 1973, somewhere along in there. We stayed there until we—well, actually, the whole engineering company did; we started a small segment within the company that had to deal with certain issues that we were mandated to do for the Department of Energy and I headed up that group. So we had a satellite office that was basically populated by engineers and staff. But I was sort of the head of that group. We started out there on Spring Mountain and Polaris. That's where our office was located. Then we stayed there for a while. Then we moved it back to the Highland area. Then from there we moved the same office—it was the same office we moved over to Maryland Parkway and Flamingo, in a big office building there. By that time I think Raytheon came in and got the contract and then we moved from there to Summerlin off of Town Center Drive. We had a big building up there. Then when Bechtel took it over, DOE decided to consolidate and moved us all down to the North Las Vegas property, which is on Losee Road. So they were getting rid of all the lease properties that they had in town and they consolidated just about everybody that was in town at that piece of property. When we moved to the Test Site, I stayed out there for about ten years. I came back to town in around 1980, '81. So I had two offices; I had an office at the Test Site and an office downtown. And then as we got busier and busier with that new dynamic that we were dealing with, it became permanently downtown. So we were doing master planning. We had a big project; we called it revitalization. But we were going to revitalize the entire Test Site. It was a three hundred and something million-dollar project that we were going to do. Well, we never got all that money, but we got a great deal of it. So they did that. So we were doing things like that.