Transcript of interview with Cindy Coletti and David Fordham by Stefani Evans and Claytee White, October 27, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH CYNTHIA "CINDY" COLETTI An Oral History Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©The Building Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2016 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editor: Stefani Evans Transcribers: Kristin Hicks, Frances Smith Interviewers: Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Project Manager: Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of the UNLV University Libraries. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea and the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Building Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iv PREFACE The interior of the green house at the end of the cul-de-sac envelops the visitor. Every room exudes comfort and encourages conversation even as the lake, lapping quietly on three sides of the house, beckons. Cindy Coletti revels in this house and its interiors, all of her own design, especially because they are so different from the daring, opulent, and award-winning custom homes for which she is known. Arriving in Las Vegas in 1988 as a single mother, Cindy immediately submitted a successful design for the first Southern Nevada Street of Dreams event and began networking. She established Sun West Custom Homes in Nevada by applying the design and contracting skills she had successfully honed by building nearly seventy houses in California, Florida, and Colorado—all the v while grooming her son Danny—from the time he was in his teens—to eventually take over the company. In this interview, Cindy's husband, David Fordham, shares his background, his reasons for relocating to Las Vegas, work in commercial real estate, meeting Cindy, and living at The Lakes. Cindy then recalls the experiences that brought her to Las Vegas; shaped her ideas of self-help, friendship, design, and business, and instilled in her the confidence to succeed in a man's world. Cindy has retired from building and now enjoys traveling with her husband, but Sun West Custom Homes continues to thrive under the capable ownership and leadership of Daniel S. Coletti. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Cynthia "Cindy" Coletti October 27, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Preface…………………………………………………………………………………..………..iv David Fordham on early life, education, career, 1998 arrival in Las Vegas, and meeting Cindy…………………………………………………………………………….……………. 1-11 Cindy describes Long Island, N.Y., childhood; first marriage, two sons, 1959 move to California, and building first custom houses as owner-builder; divorce, brief second marriage, and self-help seminars ……………………………………………………………………….……………. 11-21 Goal-setting; 1976 move to Pasco County, Florida, with son Danny; yellow-page advertising; contractor's license, forming El Rancho West, Parade of Homes, Home Builders Association, building 30 houses, marriage; 1982 move to Colorado Springs, contractor's license, Street of Dreams, Parade of Homes, building 35–40 houses…………………….……………………. 21-28 1988 move to Las Vegas, Southern Nevada Home Builders Association, Sun West Custom Homes, real estate license, Street of Dreams, and networking; Ten Oaks, Section 10, Summerlin, Seven Hills, The Lakes, The Ridges, and MacDonald Highlands. Retracting doors; Celine Dion; El Rancho doing business as Sun West Homes; Sun West Realty, and writing her book, Building Your Custom Home Guide ……………………………….………………………………..………. 28-38 vii viii 1 S: Good morning. Today is October 27, 2016 and we are in the astonishingly beautiful home of Cindy Coletti and David Fordham. David, why don't you begin by spelling and pronouncing your first and last name for us, and then we will ask Cindy to do the same. D: David Fordham, F-O-R-D-H-A-M. S: Thank you. Cindy? CC: Cynthia, although I go by Cindy, Coletti, C-O-L-E-T-T-I. S: David, let's start with you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your early life, where you were born, what your childhood was like with your parents? D: I was born at the Naval Academy Hospital in April of 1944. During the war there was a problem at the U.S. Naval Academy in that, until the '60s, it was all men. There was no need for an OB/GYN facility at the Naval Academy Hospital. However, during the war they were running men who were married through for post-graduate education, and wives were having babies during that period of time, so I was born then. During my entire life I have run into only one other person who was born in the Naval Academy Hospital. My dad was going to post-graduate school at the Naval Academy to become a weather forecaster for the Navy, and upon graduation they sent him out to the South Pacific and put him on an aircraft carrier. He was there for the Battle of Coral Sea and a lot of the major naval battles. He had a problem, though, in that he was constantly seasick. He had suffered a ruptured diaphragm from throwing up so much. After the war he could not sit on the front porch and watch people in those gliders go back and forth without getting sick to his stomach. His degree was in physics and he had a tough time getting a job. The only job he could get was as a courier for the Army Corp of Engineers. When Pearl Harbor happened he went and enlisted the next day, as many other men did at that time. After the war was over—and since he had the weather 2 background—he immediately went to work for the U.S. Weather Bureau. He spent his entire working career with the Weather Bureau. At that point in time the only way people could get a promotion was to transfer. Up until 1997 I had never lived more than five years in one place. S: Where all did you live during that time? I was born in Annapolis, Maryland. Lived in Severna Park, Maryland. From there went to Yankeeberg, Ohio, which is outside of Marietta, Ohio, in southeast Ohio. After that we went to Cincinnati, Ohio, and then we went to Troy, Ohio, and then we went to Jacksonville, Florida, and then we went to Severna Park, Maryland, and then we went to Lincoln, Massachusetts, and then we went to Severna Park, Maryland. After that I spent four years at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. After Georgia Tech I lived in Baltimore, Maryland, then in Santa Barbara, California, and then back to Baltimore, Maryland, and then to College Park, Maryland, and then to Southfield, Michigan, and then to Pinellas Park, Florida, and then to Portland, Oregon, and then to Cleveland, Ohio, and then to Las Vegas, Nevada, in June, 1998, where I have been since: for the last 18 years and very happy. Having moved around so much, there is no place in the United States I would rather live than Las Vegas. S: Where did you graduate from high school? Severna Park, Maryland. C: How do you even remember all those places in order? I am amazed. D: Mental map. S: How did you and Cindy meet? D: I had been in town nine days and I decided that I was going to go out. I had gone through a very bitter divorce in Cleveland, Ohio. My plan was to only be in Las Vegas for a year and disassociate myself from all web addresses and drop off the web; after 12 months I was going to 3 immigrate to New Zealand. That was my plan. I used the Review Journal; they were publishing a guide of what was going on during the week. I would cut out club meetings to go to what I was interested in and paste them in my day timer. Day ninth was the Solo Singles Group at First Presbyterian Church. I confess I went looking to see if there were any eligible women; after being there for an hour I wrote it off as a complete disaster and not worth going back to. As everyone was standing up to leave I could see people at the other end of the room. Cindy stood up, and I said, "Oh my God!" I made a beeline for that end of the room, joined that conversation and made sure that when they went out to dinner that I was sitting next to her that night. She is the only woman I dated in Las Vegas. S: What restaurant was it? D: It was the Olive Garden. CC: A gal in my writers' group remembers us. She used to go to the Singles Group. Can you believe that? After all these years. D: After we got married, they asked us to stick around and host and run the group for a while there at the First Presbyterian Church. There were several marriages that came out of the group. S: What other marriages? CC: Alice Pebbles and Don Black. [Colloquy not transcribed.] S: Tell us about The Lakes: how this development came to be. CC: All of my knowledge on The Lakes is second hand. My understanding is that it was developed by Al Collins, and I believe the lake was constructed in 1985. At that point in time Sahara ended at Rainbow [Boulevard]. Collins had this concept for a community here. It is a 35-acre lake, 14 feet deep, and there are between 305 and 310 homes that are directly on the lake. 4 He needed a way to get people out here. He had to put in the road from Rainbow out to The Lakes here. The eastern half of the lake, I'm splitting it on a north/south line, ended up being production homes by KB Homes and, who else, Lewis Homes. The homes on the west side of the lake ended up being all custom homes. There are some condos here, too. D: Yes, on the south end of the lake, condos. I suggest coming back when it is warmer. S: I didn't realize there were so many different types of lakefront housing. I like that concept. So often it is just the high-end homes. CC: No, those are all production homes you see on the other side. D: Condos on the south end. Not all of them. Some of the condos are lakefront. C: Tell us about your real estate business. Did you continue that in Las Vegas? D: Yes. C: How did you get involved once you got here? D: I had a computer consulting business for over ten years in Cleveland. Towards the end of it I was teaching clients how to day trade. When I came to Las Vegas my prime reason for coming to Nevada was no taxes. S: What year was that? D: I came to Las Vegas in '98, June of '98. When I came here, I set up and I was day trading full time while Cindy and I were dating. Since I was only going to be here for a year, I had rented this apartment and I had never seen it before moving in. I just called [Broadstone] Talavera [apartments] over here on Fort Apache [Road] and Sahara [Avenue], and I gave them a deposit and said, "Call me: I want a fireplace, second floor, two bedrooms, and a view out over the swimming pool." About six weeks after putting down the deposit, I was back in Cleveland. I got a phone call, and they said, "We have an apartment." I said, "Fine. I'll take it." Then I had gone 5 to two furniture rental places. I think it was Cort Furniture Rental that I had talked to when I was out here. I told them that I had just rented an apartment at Telavera. They said, "Yes, we know that, we did the model." I said, "Fix me up." They said, "Okay, we'll take care of it." I said, "What if I don't like it?" They said, "You’ll have seven days to return it and swap it out for something else." I said, "Okay." I had a rented apartment with furniture that I had never seen. When I showed up I dropped my suitcases and I said, "Boy, it is good to be home." I needed a car, but the longest-term car rental I could get was Rent-a-Wreck, and that was for 28 days. So I rented a Rent-a-Wreck. S: Do you remember what it was? D: It was some beat-up car. It wasn't too bad. Cindy lived in Canyon Gate [Country Club]. She was apprehensive about me. She said, "Who is this guy? Everything is rented." I realized I was starting to have a credibility problem. What I did was I had my parents fly out and introduced my parents to Cindy. I later found out that she was concerned that I had maybe rented this old couple. [Colloquy not transcribed.] So things progressed a little bit better after my parents' visit, but I didn't realize that she still had this reservation. The contract was up on the Rent-a-Wreck. I decided to rent another one for another 28 days. At the end of that period, when I took the car back, they were no longer at the airport; they were someplace here in town. They said, "Can we drop you anywhere?" In the meantime, I had leased a new car. I said, "Yes, you can drop me at Fletcher Jones Mercedes." I had leased a Mercedes. Part of my problem then went away. Cindy had a friend who was a mortgage broker and after we got engaged to be married she convinced Cindy to run a credit check on me. They still were not convinced. I passed. After we got married I was still day 6 trading and then the internet bubble crashed and I lost a lot of money. Cindy said, "You better find something else to do while you still have some capital." I said, "Alright. What do you think?" She said, "Given your background, MBA in Finance, you would be a great commercial real estate broker." CC: That would get him out in the community and get to know people. D: I said, “Okay." I went to a crash real estate school. Four weeks later I went and passed the salesman/broker exam and I had my license. The normal way things were done is that you went and worked residential first, and then you moved into commercial. I didn't want to show toilets and kitchen sinks and the rest of it. I went straight to commercial with a commercial firm here. I became active in the commercial real estate community. In 2001–2002 I was elected President of the Commercial Marketing Group for the year. I got to know a lot of people. When we moved into this house in 2005 I went and activated my broker's license and started Sun West Realty. I kept that going until 2014. My agents were Cindy and her son, Dan Coletti. I didn't want the liability of other agents, so it was a family thing. C: Who was the commercial property company that you worked for? D: I first I was with Marcus and Millichap and then I went to ReMax. S: What was the real estate school you attended? D: Randy Van Reken on West Sahara. I think it was called the Southern Nevada School of Real Estate, or something like that. C: When you worked in commercial real estate before you started Sun West, what kind of properties were you able to get involved in? D: Office, industrial, retail. C: Any particular areas of the city? 7 D: All over the city. S: What were some of the new properties that were being opened up at that time? New office parks, things like that? D: I can't remember. C: You found that it was a very lucrative market? D: My undergraduate degree is in electrical engineering, my MBA is in finance. I was on the finance staff at Ford Motor Company and managed foreign exchange worldwide. I spent seven years at Intel Corporation in marketing. I have worked in every field within a corporation except for human resources. I worked as a commercial real estate agent longer than any other [job], and I made more money doing it. Las Vegas was very good to me. S: We hear that a lot. We also hear I came and intended to stay for only a year. It does seem to be a common theme. D: I remember when I got here there were 900,000 people and now there are 2.25 million. We would laugh when we used to travel, Cindy and I. We would notice two things, green and lack of construction. S: We are beige with lots of construction. D: I remember the first time I went to Phoenix I was with Intel, and I flew from Portland, Oregon, to Phoenix. I was watching the landscape and the thought ran through my mind, "God must have started in the Pacific Northwest and by the time he got to Phoenix, he ran out of materials and patience." C: Talk a little bit about Sun West before we let you go. What kind of properties you specialized in and what it was like to run your own business. 8 D: I have had several small businesses before. The way commercial real estate works is that you do leases to eat. Investment sales is where the money is, but it may take two to three years from the start to a commission check on an investment sale. I did a lot of leasing. When you do an investment sale, if it is a strip retail center, the owner is apt to [also] give you the leasing for it, if vacancies occur. That is what I did. C: Did you see any of those strip properties as clients? D: I sold the strip center and then leased the retail space. C: Which center is that? D: One of them was Bonanza [Road], on East Bonanza and the street before Nellis [Boulevard]. That was in North Las Vegas. I did some land deals for the city of Henderson. C: What were some of the changes from 1998 to 2014? What did you see? D: I remember being on a cruise about three years ago, maybe four years ago now, and somebody asked me if I was retired. I said, "No, I'm not retired. My business retired because the commercial market died." You think the residential market died. Banks would do no lending if it had the word "real estate" on the loan. Without bank financing, there were no investment sales. Retail had completely died up, people were just trying to survive. There was no business. Two years ago I hung it up and closed it down. S: That changed in 2008? D: Yes, whenever the crash occurred. I had good investors who lost properties because they couldn't bring tenants in; then they were repossessed or they needed to refinance the product. Mortgages in commercial are typically a five-year renegotiation. Banks didn't want any new ones. The only way you could get a property was all cash. And if they had cash they weren't 9 willing to put it in. When I drive around town today and look at the commercial signs up, I recognize very few people on the signs, and I used to know them all. S: About how many people were in the commercial real estate market here during the boom, in the same role that you were in? D: Probably less than 500. S: Now? D: I have no idea. The total licensees at that time was something like 18,000. And they were residential. Then membership dropped, dropped, dropped. It was very bad. S: The people who got into real estate to dabble in it, certainly didn't make it. D: No. Plus, for a new agent in residential, in that point in time, the fees to the Board of Realtors, was roughly $1,000. C: David, from what you have seen from 2014 to now, what do you think the future is in commercial real estate? D: I am completely out of touch. I feel that people in Las Vegas are obsessed with new, like new cars, you can't drive a used car. I am driving a '99 Cadillac. New space is at a premium, lease rates will lease that up, older space is much cheaper, but who wants to move into old in Las Vegas? The internet had a big impact on office space. We used to work under the assumption of a 5 percent vacancy on offices. Now my understanding is that it is 20-25 percent vacancy in an older office building. It is hard to make that pencil out. S: Do you think that is because Las Vegas is a relatively new town? We started out new, and we have that image of new being better. D: I don't know what caused it. 10 S: It is something that nobody has really mentioned yet, but I think you are absolutely right that we are obsessed with new. CC: Look at the Strip with all its implosions. That is what the world sees about Las Vegas. S: And we televise the implosions. D: We have done a lot of world travel. When we travel people always asks us, "Where are you from?" We don't even say the United States anymore. We don't say Nevada. We just say Las Vegas. Everybody in the world knows where Las Vegas is. It is fun. We don't gamble, but it is fun to go into casinos in foreign countries. When they find out you are from Las Vegas, we get free passes to get into the casinos, because a lot of these foreign ones charge to get into the casino. C: They charge to get into the casino? And then they expect you to pay money to gamble? D: Yes. And then you go and walk around these casinos and what you see are the old, obsolete slots that Vegas threw out 5-10 years ago. It is fun. C: That is interesting. Thank you so much for participating and for giving up what you planned to do this morning. D: I love Las Vegas, I really do. It is a great city. S: We love it even more hearing stories like yours. We are learning more about the people that have built this city and made it what it is. CC: One of the neatest things about Las Vegas, even though there are a gazillions of people, tourists all the time, there is still a small business community here. Banking, real estate, building, lenders, agents, chamber of commerce. I can tell you when I get to my thing too, there is still that small-town feel. 11 C: There are still small-business people, school teachers who have been here since the schools started expanding back in the '60s and '70s. They are still here. CC: Rossi Ralenkotter lived right around the corner; he just recently moved, too. He and his wife, Mary Jo, they are very nice. It is neat. D: The other great thing about Las Vegas, because it was growing and it is still growing so fast, most of the people you meet are also new. You aren't constantly trying to break into lifelong cliques of people who went to school together since kindergarten. These are all new people. I moved a lot. It makes it easier to meet people and establish new relationships. [Colloquy not transcribed.] D: My mom is still alive, she is 92. S: Where is she? D: Bloomington, Indiana. CC: And he has a brother and sister too. S: Where are they? D: My brother is living and helping my mother in Bloomington. My sister is in Valparaiso, Indiana in the northern part of Indiana. [Leaves interview.] S: Thank you so much. Cindy, tell us about your early life and what your parents did for a living. And tell us about your siblings, all about growing up. I am an only child. I was born in Mount Vernon, New York. I think Wayne Allyn Root was born there too. I listened to his show and he mentions Mount Vernon all the time. C: Denzel Washington too. 12 Oh, I didn't know that. That is cool. My parents moved down to Long Island when I was very, very young, so I spent basically all my growing up years On Long Island. S: Where on Long Island? Valley Stream is where I started school, PS 13. Funny story. When I was five or six years old, in kindergarten, the teacher asked us to draw a picture of a house. I drew this picture, I wish I still had it. It must have been an amazing picture for a five year old to do because she ran down to the principal's office to show him this picture her five year old student drew. I remember that. Funny thing is that Danny drew a picture of a house a long time ago and I recently put it on a plaque, Danny's first architectural drawing, which he has in his office. I wish I still had mine. Isn't that funny that I would build houses later? I lived there until I was about eight years old. I was a tomboy growing up. I hated dolls. I played more with the boys with make believe horses and we would ride our horses. C: I found that my dolls couldn't do anything. At that time dolls didn't cry, they didn't walk, they didn't do anything. Even to this day I don't like dolls. They give me the creeps. I love stuff animals or even a doll as a stuffed thing. Then we moved to the town of Long Beach when I was eight years old, off of Long Island. Long Beach is actually an island, one mile wide, three miles long, connected by three bridges. I was just there a couple of weeks ago. I went back to see it. I spent eight years there, pretty much from eight to 15-16 years old. I went to the grammar school there and a few years of high school. C: Did you have a job as a teenager? No. I think I babysat once or twice and I just prayed that the kids would stay sleeping. That was all I did, truly. I became a beach person. Billy Crystal lived there and he went to the same school 13 I did. You spend all summer on the beach and you become a beach person. I love the water and the sand. I always would bring my camera with me and one time, when I was about 15 years old, one of the kids said, "Guess who is sitting over there. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme." I grabbed my camera and asked them if I could take their picture. They would come out from the city to relax on the beach. They were working on the Steve Allen show at the time. When Eydie Gormé died recently I sent in the picture to Norm [Clarke, seventeen-year gossip columnist for the Review-Journal; retired in 2015] and he printed it in the paper and said that I had taken it. They lived here for a while, and I was hoping I would run into them and show them the picture. Do you want to see the picture? C: Yes, please. That is the picture I took of them in 1954, I think. Norm published that in the paper. One of the gals that went to our school, her name was Judy, and I became friends with her. Her mother was Judy Garland's sister and they lived in town. Her father did music for Tommy Dorsey's orchestra. Judy Garland's sister: isn't that amazing? Then they moved back to California, and I remember getting a letter from her from Sunset Boulevard in California. Long Beach is mostly a Jewish community, about 95 percent Jewish, which is fine. I learned a lot. The Jewish people are very pro education, which is why I feel I got a very good education, even in the high school there. Downside is that we lived in an apartment. I had no room of my own. I slept on a pull-out sofa in the living room until my parents finally bought a house when I was 16 years old. I had to wait for company to leave so I could go to bed. My friends there had their own room. I used to dream about having a room of my own, a closet, and a dresser to put things. I didn't have anything like that, and here I am, an only child. My parents finally bought a house in the town of Seaford, on Long Island, inland a little bit. You have probably heard of Jones Beach. It was close to Jones 14 Beach. I remember them asking me," You have been going to school here a long time and you have friends here. Would you rather finish school up here or move to a new school?" Seaford didn't have a high school at that time, but the town next to it did, Wantagh. I said, "I think I would rather move. If I am going to be living there, I will get to know people, and make other friends." I remember networking at a very young age. I remember going to a football game. We were playing Wantagh High School. During half time their cheerleaders were there, and I went over and said, "Hi." This was a wonderful time to grow up. Kids were nice. You didn't have this bully stuff. They came over and I said, "I just wanted to introduce myself. I am going to be moving to your school next month." They said, "Great. We will look for you when you get there." They were so nice. Sure enough, when I did make the move, I would run into them. One gal, who was a cheerleader, she and I became the best of friends. It was wonderful making the move to the new school, feeling very welcomed. I actually had enough credits, aside from four years of English, to perhaps graduate. I didn't want to do that. I liked school. I did. I would take a lot of electives, art. I was kind of interested in art. All of my classes were geared toward secretarial work for when I graduated, typing, and stenography. My parents never seemed to push me to look at colleges. Nothing was ever said; nothing was ever mentioned. Funny thing is that my uncle in Duchess County, in Poughkeepsie, New York, was the superintendent of the school system, Dr. Edwin Hunger. I always thought that I would get to go to Vassar, because it is right there in Poughkeepsie. Forget that. I used to really enjoy, when I lived in Long Beach, and even when I moved over to Wantagh, my parents would take me up to Poughkeepsie, where my aunt and uncle owned a very old, old home. It was built in the 15 1800's. It even had, underneath the staircase, a place where they hid the slaves that were escaping. It was part of the Underground Railroad. S: Do you know who built the house? I haven't a clue. They have left that house and moved into another house but it also is very, very old home. There are a lot of older homes there. I used to love the weeks that I spent in the summer time at their house, because they had two children, my cousins, and I would do things with them. I remember waking up in the morning and hearing horns from the fox hunts, and outside the door they would saddle up and ride. We used to go to a nearby pond, where you would swing on a rope and drop down into the water. We used to pick apples in the apple orchard. We would play baseball in the open field. We would muck out the stables, and we would dump one load of poop on each corn plant. I loved it. I loved being around my cousins. It was a fun time for me. I was very close to my grandparents. They actually lived in an apartment across the street from us when I lived in Long Beach. My grandmother would send me a care package to Poughkeepsie. I still have the little cinnamon-and-sugar shaker that she included in the package one time. My grandma had a wonderful sense of humor. I know I must have gotten my sense of humor from my grandma. She used to like to bake and cook. She taught me how to make good pie crusts. My grandpa was the manager of an umbrella factory in Long Beach, Cohen's Umbrella Factory. I used to go down there, and the ladies would be making the umbrellas. I would get to pick out the handle and the material, and they would make the umbrella for me. I still have some of the umbrellas they made me. Across the street was the Laurel Theater. When we were back there last month, it was no longer there; it had turned into a diner. So David and I had lunch in the diner. We sat at the counter there. I said, "I lived here in the '40s and '50s." He 16 [the young man at the counter] said, "My God, you must be ancient." Long Beach was a fun place to grow up. I actually spent more time in Long Beach than I did in the Wantagh/Seaford area. Wantagh High School had just been built, so kids came from a lot of other schools and went to Wantagh High School. I came in around January of my junior year. A lot of them didn't know each other because we all came from other schools, so I blended in very nicely and made great friends there, to the point that we have one of the most unusual classes. I just went back for my 60th class reunion, and I even helped put it together. I had stayed in touch with so many of my classmates over the years. We only had about 150 graduates; some have died, and some of them we have lost touch with, but a good many, 50-60, still stay in close contact. Some have even visited here. In 2008 we had a little class reunion here in Las Vegas, and David, bless his heart, helped me put it together. We had everybody stay at Treasure Island. We had about 30 coming. We had a great group. We put on a three-day event, which was wonderful. We told everybody that they wouldn't need a car. I have a friend here who owns Desert Cab. Through her, I was able to get a little mini-van so we would go down and pick them up at Treasure Island. We had a nice event here one night. I had Ricardo's [Mexican Restaurant] cater the affair. We had the margarita machine outside. We took them for boat rides. We had the best time. They saw Mystère [by Cirque du Soleil] the Strip. We took them for a ride in the Red Rock area. We saw the petroglyphs. They are still talking about it. Three packed days with fun things to do. Thanks to my friend Gloria. S: What is her name? Gloria Fulton. S: We don't have a lot of women in the project and we do want more. 17 She is a lovely lady. With my real estate license that I did get when I first moved here, I wound up finding a house for her. We stayed good friends all these years, and I visit her once in a while. She is eight years older than me—I just turned 78—so she is 86. Her children now own the cab company. She is retired. She woul