Transcript of interview with Janellen Radoff by Barbara Tabach, September 26, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH JANELLEN RADOFF An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. 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 University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea 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 with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Jane Radoff?s sophisticated eye and creative energy follow her wherever she goes. Her interior designs have anonymously touched most all who have walked through many of the Strip casinos and hotels. Her working partnership with interior designer Roger Thomas for Steve Wynn properties are among the most iconic of recent era. Born 1940 in Pittsburgh, PA, to Adelaide and Meyer Sachs, Jane was destined to lead a colorful life. Her mother was a local radio/TV personality with her own show and her father was successful real estate entrepreneur. Jane attended the University of Michigan where she honed her design skills. Before moving to Nevada, Jane?s career path included Restaurant Associates, a short stint as a girl Friday for Johnny Carson, and freelance product design while starting a family. Then in 1978, her husband William ?Bill? Radoff accepted a purchasing director position from Billy Weinberger and Neil Smythe at Caesars. With her signature wry humor, she reflects on her early observations of Las Vegas, and eventually working with Roger Thomas. In time, the duo worked together to bring groundbreaking interiors to the Strip, primarily with Steve Wynn. As most Jewish transplants, the Radoffs first belonged to Temple Beth Sholom. Later she was the interior inspiration for Congregation Ner Tamid where Jon Sparer did the architectural design. She is a quiet icon of Las Vegas?s turn to elegance and warmth in design of public spaces. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Jayne Radoff September 26, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface??????????????????????????????????..iv Recalls that her father Meyer Sachs was first Jewish real estate businessman in Pittsburgh PA; able to trace her mother Adelaide?s ancestral roots to Romania. Explains that being Jewish has been mainly a cultural identity for her. Attended an Episcopal school, but confirmed Jewish. Talks about Pittsburgh connection between her Rabbi Freehof to Rabbis Sidney and Sanford Akselrad.????????????????????????????????.1 ? 3 Talks about her mother?s career as the first female voice on KDKA, a Pittsburgh radio station, where she read books to children; anecdotes about her parents and her youthful mischief. Tells of her decision to attend the University of Michigan; attracted to the design department and started in architecture rather than a Pennsylvania based university???????????.?.4 ? 7 1961 she meets Bill Radoff; marries and begins a family. Talks about one of her early jobs as girl Friday for late night TV show host Johnny Carson; Paul Anka, Ed McMahon. Her mother?s personality; her Jewish experience; talks about 1978 when her husband is offered a job with Caesars and they move the family to Las Vegas; Bill?s career??..????????..7 ? 12 Joining Temple Beth Sholom; how she met Roger Thomas; working for Yates Silverman; her early design projects in Las Vegas included Valley Bank, Henry?s Ice Cream Parlor at Stardust and joining Roger and designing for Golden Nugget; Steve Wynn expectations; mattress and friendship story from when her husband passed??????????????..??.13 ? 15 Mentions Jon Sparer, Joel Bergman; starting to work with Roger in 1978; 1985 going on salary for Steve Wynn; kindness of Elaine Wynn; left Wynn in 2005; having worked on Bellagio and Wynn properties; other firms mentioned; Kenny Wynn??????????????16 ? 21 Talks about working with Roger Thomas; Steve Wynn; being referred to as ?Jane Thomas?; Parasol Up anecdote; bathroom design story??????????????????.22 ? 26 Doing interior design of Congregation Ner Tamid; Jon Sparer architect; details of the design and how it made her feel more Jewish. Mentions other business ventures; Auntie Anne?s pretzels; jewelry designing after Bill?s death?????????????????????...27 ? 29 vi 1 Today is September 26th, 2016. I'm sitting with Jane Radoff. Stefani Evans is sitting with us on the interview. We're going to start with the Jewish Heritage since that's what this project is, pulling the narratives together of people in Las Vegas who've made a difference in some way or another. I always like to visit what you know about your ancestry. Jane, how did your Jewish family get to the United States? What do you know about that? You are asking something that is really pretty much unknown to me. I know that my father, who was in real estate, was the youngest of eight and his father had the real estate company before him. He was the first Jewish businessman in Pittsburgh. I know nothing about where they came from. I never met them. I think his name was Isaac; I'm not sure. There was very little discussed on that side of the family. I knew my father's seven brothers and sisters. They were more practicing Jews than on my mother's side of the family. My mother's side of the family: my grandmother was Romanian. My grandfather was they say Prussian, but I just say Austrian. They married in this country. I have her wedding ring; I think it says 1903 or 1907 or something. The cost of the wedding ring was like seventeen dollars. She was a dressmaker. I know really very little about the Jewish heritage. They did not go to temple. My mother and father went to temple for the High Holidays and for the special whatevers. My Jewishness has never been a really big part of my life. Would you say it's culturally been part of your life? Culturally?it's definitely part of my life. And how would you describe that? Well, you never stop learning, you have an open mind and an open heart, and you can question anything that's out there. You don't need to go into a formal place of worship in order to talk to 2 whomever you talk to. I would say it's probably the educational thing. I know that culturally I am Jewish and I couldn't be anything else. I know that I feel strongly about my education where I was one of two Jewish girls in an Episcopal school. I know that I'm very grateful for that private school education. But as far as practicing anything, I've never fasted. My father never fasted. He said it gave him a headache. It gives me a headache. I tried it once. So it's really not a part of who I am. I would certainly describe myself as Jewish, but it is not an acting part of me. Yes. I think there are different things that people identify as being Jewish. Right. I'm a friend of [Rabbi] Sandy Akselrad, but he knows I'm a semi-lost cause to true Judiasm. He's one of the people that said I needed to interview you. Well, he knows who I am and we've spent a lot of time together. I made a lot of excuses for not being more so. I don't look at what's going on in Jewish Life This Week or any of those things that come in the mail or e-mail all the time. I don't tend to necessarily gravitate towards Jewish friends. I have a lot of them. I'm comfortable with them. But I don't think it's what draws me to them. I think it's more their political beliefs. It's more their cultural beliefs. It's more their creative beliefs. It's more commonalities between us and that possibly is exclusive of Judaism. So growing up, you said you went to an Episcopal school?that was a high school or elementary? I started eighth grade. But I did go to Sunday school. I did go to Jewish Sunday school and I was confirmed in tenth grade, as was everybody, and we all gave big parties. That's what I remember about tenth 3 grade. Big party for confirmation? Yes, big parties. Nobody I knew was ever bar or bat mitzvah-ed. Really? Dr. [Solomon] Freehof was the?and Sandy Akselrad knows this?was the first Jewish rabbi to really preach the Reform part of Judaism, and his father [Sidney Akselrad] studied with Freehof, who married Bill and me. So Rabbi Akselrad's father Sidney studied with Freehof. Yes. They're Pittsburghers, too. I went to Sunday school. I remember singing in the choir and I remember confirmation class and I remember going to Hebrew class and I learned five or six sounds (speaking Hebrew) and that's as far as I got. I said to my mother, "I'm learning Latin. I'm learning French. And I don't need to learn this. I will never use it." She allowed me to pull away. Well, talk a little bit more about...You said your father was one of the first businessmen in Pittsburgh? My father's father, yes. Your father's father, okay. Was the first Jewish... And what kind of business was he in? Real estate. Yes. I remember my father saying that everybody was shocked that he was a Jewish businessman and that he was honest. They were not part of our lives. But, as I said, his brothers and sisters were. My father was?well, all the brothers were involved in the real estate company at one point, but I think that my father was the only one who stayed. I have no idea what the others 4 eventually did. They all stayed in Pittsburgh except one girl, who married someone from Detroit. Maybe they all were part of the real estate company. I don't really know. So your mother was an actress and radio personality? Right. She had three radio shows when I was little. I can remember my dad driving us downtown to KDKA. She was the first female voice on KDKA Radio; I remember that little bit of hers. What kind of show was she doing? Well, she had one show, which was just a talk show. She had another show that was an interview show. She had a show on Saturday morning that was called Children's Bookshelf where she read books to kids. I know that whatever she did on Sunday night was between Jack Benny and Fred Allen. We used to sit in the car in the freezing cold?my mother didn't drive?and wait for my mother to get finished with her show. There was a Bromeiers Taffy Shop, where they used to make taffy with those machines and the big popcorn balls. The last thing she would say?because I was a dancer?the last thing she would say as she turned and left the car was, "Mike, don't buy those kids popcorn balls." The minute she would go inside, my dad would take us out of the car and we would go get popcorn balls and we would eat them. We couldn't eat them in the car, no matter how cold it was, because every speck of it had to be off our clothing before we got into the car. So that was who my father was versus my mother who was the iron fist. Which one are you most like? Well, I'm probably like my mother. I look more like my father. I act more like my mother. My sister says I am funnier than my mother. I hear myself saying things that I don't like. I'm a lot softer than my mother, but not enough to please my children. Okay? Well summed up. 5 Yes. My father was a mush although I did see him once raise his voice. You see those nails that you can't see behind my hand? [holds her hand up] I was in this fancy prep school. You couldn't have nails longer than you could see from behind your hand. Apparently, my nails were being grown for a prom and they were a little higher than that. My father was actually called to the dean's head mistress' office in front of all the teachers about my fingernails. My father?I can remember Dad clearly saying to these people, "If you continue to want my donations to your school, you can forget about her damn fingernails." He didn't say damn. My father wouldn't say damn if he was damned. That's a good story. Yes, it is a good story. So how did you get from Pittsburgh to the University of Michigan? You went into the school of architecture and design. Right. What happened as you were growing up that led you to that decision? I was always the creative one. I had always been the prom chairman. I was always decorating chairman. I was always the artsy crafty one. I thought that I wasn't a smart aleck until I met Bill who was a New Yorker, but apparently I was. For our 50th reunion at this tiny, little girls' school, each of us had to write our memories of childhood and one of them wrote, "I remember school very well. I remember Janie Sachs almost getting me kicked out of biology. Janie Sachs was the only one who I knew who could say whatever she said without moving her lips so I would die laughing and she would be perfectly straight faced." So apparently, I've been a smartass all my life because I got together 6 with these girls?there were only about fourteen of us; four of them are still left in Pittsburgh?and I got together with them and they said, "You have no idea what you did." I said, "No, I really don't." Apparently I always did it, though. So it wasn't Bill. That's obviously what Bill was intrigued by. I was a naughty girl. How I got to Michigan was everybody else was going to Bryn Mawr and Sweet Briar and Vassar and Wellesley and I wasn't at all interested going from a prep school with fourteen girls in it to a tiny, little girls' school. It had no interest for me. Of course, I got to Michigan and I was like an uncaged animal. There were a million different classes to choose from, but the advantage of being in that prep school was I exempted English requirements. I exempted language requirements. I exempted all my science requirements. I had taken History of Art for five years. I had taken Shakespeare for five years. I didn't need that stuff. So basically I was?able to select upper class credits as a freshman. So I loved Michigan. But why Michigan out of all the places you could have gone to? I didn't want to stay in Pittsburgh. I knew Michigan had a great design department. I really didn't know whether it was architecture or product design that I really wanted, but I started out in architecture. Architecture didn't like women very much in the 1950s, late fifties. I very quickly moved to product design and did that for a semester and decided, well, maybe I really want to be in psychology. So then I took a couple of psychology classes. The advantage was that I could start doing that as a freshman so that by the time I was a junior, I had really been exposed to a lot. I took only one class in interior design and that was in my junior year. I loved that teacher and I liked the interior design. I was glad that I had had as much drafting and material as an architecture student as I had. But I ended up my last semester doing ceramics, painting in a studio off 7 campus, basically just having fun and doing everything I loved doing. I told my parents I wanted to stay there for graduate school and my parents said, "If you want to stay there, you will have to pay for the semester yourself." So I decided no and I moved to New York and I got a job with Restaurant Associates. At the time they owned the Forum of the Twelve Caesars and the Four Seasons, La Fonda Del Sol, the Newarker. It was right at the height of the lunchtime expense account thing and the unbelievable lunches people were actually paying for. It was part of what I was there for. I worked as a liaison between the interior design department and the purchasing department. When Ada Louise and Garth Huxtable, a famous architectural writer for the Times and a product designer, a couple designed tableware for restaurant associates. There was Joe Baum and Alexander Fir. That's another reason I went to Michigan, because of Cranbrook Academy of Art and their art school and most of the teachers were Cranbrook related and that was everybody from Alexander Girard to George Nelson. Anyway, they came in and taught special classes. It was long before Roger Thomas had gone to Interlochen, which was also a Michigan thing, which is one of the reasons that we tied together so well. Let's see. What else? Where do we have to go from here? Where was I? So you were talking about your first job. Okay, Restaurant Associates. I proceeded to meet Bill (Radoff) after three months. He came to the main office where I worked. We met and the rest is really history. That was in 1961, late in '61. We got engaged in December after knowing each other for six weeks. We got married in April and I got pregnant on my honeymoon. So I did not go back to Restaurant Associates. I went to an agency where I batted my baby blues and I talked a blue streak and I ended up as Johnny Carson's girl Friday. I had to wake him up in the morning and I had to make sure he got to his appointments on time. He was one of the weirdest, most peculiar people I have ever 8 known in my life. This was the end of his career with Who Do You Trust? [TV show from 1957-1962] or whatever that program was right before he did the Tonight Show. In the office two floors below us was Paul Anka and his father and his uncle; he was at that time writing the song [?Johnny?s Theme?] that always introduced Johnny. Ed McMahon was delicious, one of the most wonderful people I've ever met in my life. But Johnny Carson was one of those guys who used to walk along the edge of the corridor. Did you have much interaction with him to get to know him? Only verbally, but not enough in person. He may have grown to like people. But at that point I don't know how he got that job. I just don't know how he got that job. He was so quiet around our office, but he must have been funny. And his persona on television was completely different. Completely different. Completely different. That job must have looked good on your resume, though. I don't know. Basically, I was sort of used to a personality that changed. My mother was somebody totally different when she was on?she had a television show for years. She did all sorts of commercials. She did all of this. She was this wild woman. But at home she was this very low-key taskmaster. "Are you sure you want to say that? Are you sure you want to tuck that blouse in? Why would you go out without lipstick on? Comb your hair." Was she the stereotypical Jewish mother? She wasn't the stereotypical Jewish mother because at that point I wouldn't have known what a Jewish mother was because none of my school friends had Jewish mothers. I think of little Jewish mothers like Bill's mother. First night I went home with him, she said to me, "Here, why don't you just"?I had come home from work?"Why don't you just get undressed and put on my 9 robe and we'll have a chicken dinner?" That's the first thing she said to me. Then we sat with a chicken in the middle of the table and we ripped it apart and we had chicken. I loved that. I didn't have that. We were very, as my mother used to call us, Jew-nitarian. Which means? Which means formal, restricted, well-mannered. If we could have been Episcopal, she would have preferred it. But I think that my grandmother probably would have, too, because my grandmother was more a tailor than a seamstress and she used to do the trousseaus for the Mellons and the Scaifes and all those fancy people, and she found that when she retired nobody was really a friend of hers. She was a little old Jewish lady from Romania who was a hell of a seamstress, but she never learned to play cards. She did knit, however, and she did crochet. But she never really did have any friends when she got older, which was sad. That's too bad. She grew up in that milieu. While my mother didn't, all those people were WASPy. Everybody was trying to assimilate, I think, in the forties and fifties, don't you? Yes, and especially in the big cities Back East that was truly?yes, everyone was searching. So I cannot say that she was a Jewish mother because I never felt like that. But when I hear those things come out of my mouth and I know now what I didn't know then, I suppose she was. But I'll tell you I never wrote anything down on paper that I didn't think about thirty-five times before, which is probably why I hate doing interviews, because everything that came out of my pen or out of my mouth was always questioned. So let's move you and Bill from New York. How did you get to Vegas eventually? We had lived in New York. The last year we were in New York?we had bought a house in Dobbs Ferry. We had stayed in Englewood, New Jersey for a long time because we felt very 10 strongly that the kids should grow up in an interracial community and that's what Englewood was. There were thirty thousand people and it was very much everybody knew everybody else until...Laurie went to her first year of middle school and was followed home by two black boys who kept saying to her, "You got a sweet ass, baby; you got a sweet ass, baby." It took Bill fifteen minutes before we were moving to Dobbs Ferry and to Westchester County. So we moved to Westchester County and we were there from 1975 to 1976. Bill got a phone call. We were in a wonderful old Victorian house and we had done all the ripping out of this and ripping out of that and fixing of this. Bill got a call one day from the heads of Caesars, who was Billy Weinberger and Neil Smythe, who was in charge of whatever he was in charge of. I remember Bill calling me and saying, "How would you like to move to Vegas?" And I said to him, "You've got to be out of your mind." And he said, "Well, I'm getting a job offer and I have to fly out there in a couple of weeks." I said, "Okay." And over the next two weeks we got a bill for the oil heat. In New York they did it differently than they do it here, but they might do it here?I don't know?if you ask. You got it spread out over a ten-month period. You had degree days. Our oil heat went something like from seventeen cents a gallon up to thirty-two cents a gallon. So it was going to double. And our taxes doubled. So between our taxes and what was happening with oil heat, I knew I had to go back to work. That's really what drove us here. So you weren't in a career of your own; you were raising your kids? Well, I was raising the kids, but I was working for a product designer. I was working for a product designer named Sam Mann and I did the interiors of an AMC Pacer car and I did a Salton ice cream maker and I did?I don't know?some other things. It was a freelance job. That was mostly while I was in Englewood because once we moved up to Dobbs Ferry I stopped. 11 Who was Bill working for when he got that call from Billy Weinberger. He was working at Intercontinental Hotels and he was head of purchasing for Intercontinental Hotels. And he couldn't buy anything from any Zionist-supporting organization. So one day he showed up; he had wrapped a towel around his head and he had taken his mezuzah from childhood and he hung it over the towel and Bill had a full beard at the time. He walked in and he said, "I am here to sign the..." Whatever, in an accent. Nobody believed it was Bill. That was Bill's sense of humor. Anyway, he couldn't order anything from any Zionist supporters for any of the hotels that were in the Middle East. His Jewish last name could not be the signature on any purchase orders. Anyway, during that time when we watched the gas and the oil heat go up, and the taxes, which were?I mean, they had gone from like $5000 a year to $10,000 a year back there and the house was only worth?we had only paid $76,000 for this huge Victorian house. We kept saying to ourselves, this is insane. So when Bill came out here for his interview, it was the weekend that on the sunny, sunny day, rain came through the Caesars parking lot and sent all those cars over to the Flamingo. Oh, yes, I've seen photos of that. 1978 maybe. That may have been when we moved here. Bill walked around with Billy and Neil Smythe and I don't remember who else. He would go to his room at night and he would call me and he'd say, "There's a guy who's playing six hands at a poker table and he's playing $10,000 a hand. And there's a guy that had a heart attack on the floor. He had his white bucks on, shaking, and they're putting pads on his thing. And the people at the rest of the table are still playing cards. This is the most amazing place I have ever seen." 12 So needless to say, I went to the library instead and I got out books that said?this will be something good for you thing?well, it said that the numbers of people in the states of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico were equivalent to those on Manhattan Island. So there were like five states that were equivalent to that. That sent me over the edge. Then I took out a book on the indigenous things in Las Vegas and it said that the indigenous food in Las Vegas was the blintz. Now, this book was written, obviously, in the early seventies. The only thing I could figure out from this book and the blintz was the buffets. Yes. That's the only thing that made any sense to me. That amused me. They talked about its education being way at the bottom. They talked about virtually no commerce here other than gaming. When he came home after being in Las Vegas and told me the amount of money he was going to make versus what he had been making versus no state income tax versus no New Jersey tax, no New York tax because he worked in New York, no this, no that, virtually not much oil heat?of course, we didn't know much about the water and we didn't know much about the air-conditioning?but I said, "Okay." One of my famous quotes from this life is, "I told you I'd follow you to the ends of the Earth, but I never really thought you'd take me there." That's sort of how I felt. Of course, because of Billy Weinberger we were told, "You must join the temple." So we joined the temple. And that would be Temple Beth Sholom at that time. Temple Beth Sholom. The kids went to Sunday school for one year. I couldn't strongly enforce anything. Bill had come from...He had a grandmother living with him who was much more 13 conservative. He didn't like anything about the temple here. Although he had taken Hebrew all the way through college, it wasn't anything he particularly felt inside. So we continued to go there for the High Holidays during the time when the rabbi turned into a real estate agent, when the rabbi had an affair, when the rabbi turned out to be a gambler, all of this stuff. So he had been here at Caesars for about seven or eight months and he told me that he had met a guy named Charles Silverman who used to meet him at the ?Gonorrhea Bar,? which was the Galleria Bar at Caesars, because all of the guys and hookers used to get together at this bar. He had talked to Charlie one night to find out that Charlie was looking for somebody to take over as the person who had been with his company in town. Roger Thomas had then been running Yates Silverman. He needed somebody. He said, "Well, what background does Janie have?" And he said, "Well, she probably wants to be the president of a small company, but she has a background in this and this and this and this." He said, "Can she draw?" He said, "Yes." So he says, "Well, eventually I would like her to meet Roger Thomas. But if I know you and I know her, I suggest that she clean up her act because she's going to be introduced to a really good Mormon boy." Now, you've met Roger, right? Did Roger tell you about how scared he was of telling his parents he was gay? [Note: reference is to a 2016 oral history of Roger Thomas.] You were meeting Roger? I was meeting Roger. So Roger said to me, "Do you know who Mies van der Rohe is?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Do you know who Frank Lloyd Wright is?" I said, "Yes." He asked me two other very deep questions. He said, "Okay, you can come in tomorrow." And I said, "Well, wait a second." I said, "I have kids. I want to leave for home by two-thirty so that I'm home by three o'clock." He said, "Oh, that's fine." That was my interview. I never let him interview another 14 person from that moment on. He has since, obviously. He always believed that everybody was exactly who they said they were. I come from a school where I don't believe nothing. So it was sort of interesting. What was your first day of work like? Do you remember? I have no idea. What was the first project you worked on? A bank. I worked mostly on Valley Bank. I did Henry's Ice Cream Parlor at the Stardust. I did a lot of Stardust work. I got involved with some of the men at the Stardust and I eventually left with one of them; I left Yates Silverman with one of them. I had done a house for one of their secretaries and at the same time I was doing some work for his wife. It was very interesting. I used to have to call the showrooms and say, "I'm coming in with Mrs...Do not discuss what you have on hold for Mrs..." It was chaotic. I was a nervous wreck, by the way. I was certain that my phone was tapped because we lived catty-corner from a Spilotro family and we car pooled. My neighbor who didn't car pool with us said to me, "I suggest you do the morning and not the afternoon." And I said, "Why?" She said, "Do you know who the Spilotros are?" And I said, "No." She said, "Well, just understand that your car will not blow up in the morning; theirs could." So after that I did a little looking. Then one of the characters at the Stardust had my maiden name. The man that I was working for had grown up in Pittsburgh not too far from me. There were too many correlations there. I finally went to a lawyer because I knew my phone was tapped. He said, "Just keep going about your business. You're not saying anything that they have any reason to question and eventually they'll give up." And they did. But I was a crazy person for about a year and a half. Anyway, I left with one of those clients and did a project for him out of state for the same 15 secretary. While I was busy doing major things here and having my own business, which I started, I got a call from Roger saying, "I'm still with Steve Wynn and I can't do everything and can you please come down? They want to redo all the old rooms in the old tower and we have to work on the spa tower and..." Blah, blah, blah. "And would you freelance those?" I said, "It depends on how much money, et cetera." So I went down there and that was the beginning. Which hotel was that? That was the Golden Nugget. So I did the Golden Nugget typical rooms and Steve loved them. I think about them now and they're so dated. What did they look like? Peachy. Very much 1970s. Chrome and glass tables. So I did that. Peach, sea foamy green, very seventies. Can I ask you one thing about the rooms? Yes. In another interview I conducted, the person talked about the mattresses; that Steve Wynn insisted that the mattresses had to be special. Were you a part of that at all? Which mattresses would those be? Well, Doug Unger tells the story. He had that mattress company? Yes, I know Doug. He talked about how specific and high class Wynn's expectations were of the mattresses. That's true. I thought that was phenomenal detail. That's true. We were always detailed oriented. As a matter of fact, until three years ago I was sleeping on one of those trial mattresses because when Bill died, he died in bed and the 16 inevitable happened. And while I was outside with Susan Molasky, Elaine Wynn and all these people that came up to bring food and stuff after Bill died, my friend Doreen had called the hotel and had them deliver one of those mattresses and a new headboard. She had taken care of all of that. So I've been sleeping on that until I bought a new one. What a nice friend. That was great. Yes, good friend. Anyway, yes, Doug Unger was right. As a matter