Transcript of interview with Charlotte M. Kelly by Terri Lynn Truesdell, April 4, 1976

UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly i An Interview with Charlotte M. Kelly An Oral History Conducted by Terri Lynn Truesdell Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2019 UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as 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. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly iv Abstract On April 4, 1976, Terri Lynn Truesdell interviewed real estate worker Charlotte M. Kelly (born July 18th, 1935 in Salt Lake City, Utah) in her home in Las Vegas, Nevada, about her memories of early Southern Nevada. The two discuss local history that Kelly had experienced as well as Kelly’s reasons for moving to Nevada. Kelly concludes the interview with a conversation on population growth and Nellis Air Force Base. UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly 1 This is Terri Truesdell and the date of the interview is April 4th, 1976. And state your name. My name is Charlotte Kelley, my maiden name is (Unintelligible), and I’m forty years old. And I now live at 5001 Sawyer Avenue, in Las Vegas, and my telephone number is 648-8503. And I was not born in Southern Nevada, but my parents came here in 1937 when I was two years old. And my father had worked in Salt Lake for an International Harvester and he was transferred down here to the International Harvester Agency, which was—or and still is Clark County Wholesale, and they’re on North Main Street, and they’ve been there, oh my god, since way before 1937. And my dad—my father worked there for thirty-five years until he retired five years ago. And he was shop foreman, and he worked on all the big diesel trucks while he was here. Can you tell me like, where you started school, and—? Well, my father bought a house in Las Vegas and we went to these schools in North Vegas—two different schools—can’t remember the names of ‘em right now, until I was in the fourth grade. And then beginning of the fifth grade, we had to go uptown and went up to the Fifth Street Grammar School. I think it was one of two grammar schools or maybe three grammar schools in the county. And I went to Fifth Street Grammar School through the eighth grade and that is now a federal building. It’s got some county offices and (unintelligible) How does it compare to schools like now, that your kids attend? Oh, well— Can you describe how it was? Well, I can remember—now there are so many schools. I think the competition is the same, because I think John S. Clark School, Fifth Street Grammar School, and then we had competition. But the schools were so much smaller than they are now. It’s unbelievable. It’s hard UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly 2 for me to even realize that the town has grown as much as it has. But I went to Las Vegas High School for four years and then I graduated in 1954. There was only one other high school, which was Gorman, and I think it had been for either one or two years. And so all of our school competition was Basic which was Henderson, and Boulder City, (Unintelligible). So what did you do when you got out of school? Well, I went to Seattle to the University of Washington. And I came home for Christmas vacation with my present husband, and we decided to get married—that was the end of my formal education. We got married, and I got my old job back. (Laughs) When I was in high school I worked for a real estate company, Campbell Realty. And I worked my—the summer of my junior year. And when I was a senior I went to school half-day and worked for half a day at Campbell Realty and I was a draftsman. I drew maps of the city of Las Vegas for them to put into their real estate transactions. And I drew maps of the county and the whole area— The maps couldn’t possibly be very big back then, right? Well, no, oh no. (Laughs) In fact, where Charleston Heights is right now, and where I am living right now, they weren’t even on most of the maps that I drew. It’s hard for me to visualize that the town’s grown and the freeway wasn’t in. I put the line—the proposed freeway where it is now on all of the maps and through the Strip area, and it was just proposed years and years ago. It’s now a reality. (Laughs) Really. Okay. So you’ve lived, like, very many places in Southern Nevada? Or just—? No. My husband and I, we bought a home the first year that we were here. In fact we got married about four months after we bought our first home. And we lived there for seven and a half years. And then we bought our present home, and we’ve been here for thirteen years, so we haven’t moved around much. UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly 3 And you said this is the second home you’ve lived in, in Las Vegas, since you were married. How does this home compare to the home you had when you first moved here? When I was a little child? Well, I’ll tell ya’ the first house that I can remember was just vaguely remember—it had a big back porch. And it was old and real, real small. But the house that I can remember the most was oh, it was two bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, and it was stucco, and it was, oh we had a swamp cooler that my father made with (unintelligible) and a band and with a water pump. But it was a homemade cooler. And in the, for our heating, instead of having central air heating like we do now, we had an oil stove in the corner of the dining room and my father would have to get up early in the morning and turn the oil on for a minute and then he’d light it and we’d all stay in bed until the house got warm. And we had no side—no we had a sidewalk. We had the only sidewalk on our street (Laughs) because there were no curves or gutters, there were not sidewalks. We had oh, I think most of the people had fruit trees in the backyard and grapes, and I imagine that a lot of people do, but I think back then, everybody did. Because all of—as I recall, all of our neighbors, they all had fruit trees and grapes, they had a small garden. Were the roads paved then? Not, no. Not down where I lived. It’s cause—now, in Las Vegas, the main part, it was paved. But then parts of North Vegas, they weren’t. Okay. How many brothers and sisters do you have? I have one sister. One sister? She’s a year older than I am. UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly 4 So when you were that age, you know, what kind of activities did you have to do around here? I mean— Well, I belonged to the Girl Scouts and we went on hayrides, and we just played with all the other kids. There weren’t the recreational activities that there are now. There was a swimming pool called the “Old Ranch,” and that’s near where the Mormon Fort is now. And this was, quick ran through there and you could go (unintelligible) and it was a swimming pool and I think it was ten cents to swim. And that was our main activities in the summertime, going down to the swimming pool. When you were little, you played around the Old Ranch, and that seems to be the only major for of activity that was around here? Did the gambling, when it was around, have any effect on you or your family? No, because my parents didn’t gamble. In fact, as a child, we didn’t—it didn’t even exist for us because—so, we weren’t allowed to go near the places, and we didn’t have anything to do with it. So it was just like living in any town, a town without gambling. It really had no effect whatsoever. Were the rules very hard? You know, you said you couldn’t go around there. I mean, there were—? Well, it was just like now. You have to be twenty-one to go into the gambling places. I mean, and we just, you know, my parents never—they just never took us near any of ‘em. Yes. Okay. In relationship to the Test Site, do you remember when they were testing the atomic bombs above ground? Oh yes, I can remember getting up in the morning to see the big mushroom cloud. But other than that, and feeling the earth shake, it was just something that was happening. It didn’t really, you UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly 5 know, have too much effect on learning. You realize what was going on because you read the papers. And our yearbook, from one of the years from when I was in high school, the cover had the atomic bombs. So that was, you know (unintelligible). Did you notice any ecological effect from it? Since you’ve been here for so long, you know, change? No, I don’t really feel that it has. I know a lot of people, they feel it, that it does, but I don’t, because I don’t know much about it. But I can personally don’t know what to think. Also another thing, with talking about the environment, do you think that the amount of pools that are here now as opposed to the ones that were here, you know, like when you said there was swimming people you went and swam at, do you think that the humidity and stuff like that has been effected? Definitely, definitely. Because the town has grown, there’s more grass and (unintelligible) it is a lot more humid now than it was. In fact, I’ve heard about not even having air conditioning. You know, the coolers when you first arrived here. And I don’t see how they existed. But then they didn’t have the humidity. So they probably were able to get along—and I don’t know if they had the extreme heat that we’ve got now. I mean because I wasn’t here then. It’s hard to visualize anybody living here in Las Vegas in the summer without air conditioning. Yes, I know. For me, it’s really hard to imagine. It is for me too. (Laughs) Okay, you mentioned when you first started growing up here, that the town was really small. When did you notice change in the population? When did the town start really growing? UNLV University Libraries Charlotte M. Kelly 6 Well, I think, well, it started growing during the war naturally, with Nellis Air Force Base being here. And then during the war and in the forties, they had a couple of hotels. And really, I think when the hotels started flowing out on the Strip in the early fifties, is when you really—late forties, early fifties, I’d say the town really started booming and really growing. And it grew so fast, and then we had recessions. I think we had about fifty-five, fifty-six, we had a recession. And then the town grew like crazy again. And then we had another recession in the early sixties. But now I feel, we’re growing at a healthy pace, and I think the town is going to continue to grow. Because it’s a good place to live, so—I’m happy here. Can you remember anything else? Like when you were growing up, any kind of events that might’ve happened? Like, you moved here right when the Dam was being finished up, so you couldn’t remember Roosevelt being here. Can you remember anything? Mm, boy, honestly, I really can’t. Alrighty. Well, would you be willing to participate in a longer interview if requested by—? Okay with me. Okay. Well, I want to thank you for helping us on this project, and in the interest of history of Southern Nevada, we really appreciate it, thank you. (Audio Ends)