Transcript of interview with Greg Goussak by Barbara Tabach, May 19, 2015

AN INTERVIEW WITH GREG GOUSSAK An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach The Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital 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, Stefani Evans ii 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 Community Digital Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iii PREFACE Greg Goussak is a Las Vegas native, born January 1961, just after his parents moved to the city for his father's work as an accountant. His mother was a dedicated educator, who served throughout the city as a teacher and principal, including as the director of the Hebrew Day School in the 1970s. Greg's childhood was shaped by experiences with Las Vegas' sixth grade centers, challenges with scoliosis, and especially, involvement with B'nai B'rith Youth Organization (BBYO). In 1974, Greg helped start the city's new Aleph Zadik Aleph (AZA) chapter for BBYO, and his involvement with this youth organization became a formative part of his junior high and high school years. During this time, he became very involved with AZA at the regional, district and national levels, and made lifelong friends. As a high school student, Greg participated in UNLV's Early Studies Program, earning him college credit, and there he discovered his aptitude for accounting. He began tutoring fellow high school students in accounting, and thus, simultaneously discovered his passion for teaching. After earning his bachelor's degree in hospitality administration from UNLV in 1984, Greg got a job at Dunes Hotel and Casino, then under the leadership of Moe Shenker, working as an operations analyst. Over the next decade, Greg worked as a controller at several properties around town, including Nevada Palace, the Four Queens, Fitzgeralds, as well as a project on Boulder Highway. In 1992, seeking a reprieve from the gaming industry, Greg went back to UNLV to achieve his master's degree, in hotel administration. After graduating, he worked for Riviera Hotel and Casino, and established and oversaw their auditing department as well as box office. During this time, Greg met his wife Cynthia (Cindy) Riceberg, and the two were married in 1996. That same year, Greg took a position with Sigma Game, and soon after became Chief Financial Officer for Manpower Temporary Staffing. In 2002, deciding it was time to work for himself, he bought Haynes and Thomas Printers, which he owned and operated for the next eight years. Greg started teaching in 1989 as an adjunct professor in the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration at UNLV. In 2010, having finished his doctorate the year before, Greg assumed his first fulltime faculty position as an assistant professor at the University of Southern Nevada. The next year he was hired as an assistant professor at Ashford University, where he continues to teach today in the Forbes School of Business. Greg and Cindy have two daughters: Ariel, who is seventeen years old, and Alyssa, who is fourteen years old. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Greg Goussak on May 19, 2015 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface iv Discusses family history; grandparents born in several European countries; immigration to United States, all eventually end up in California. Talks about parents meeting at Jewish youth function; marrying; moving to Las Vegas in 1960, year before his birth. Mentions younger brother, Kenny, his career, family. Talks about meeting wife, Cindy 1-4 Reflects upon role of Judaism in upbringing. Discusses at length desegregation efforts in Clark County School District; bussing and sixth grade centers; protesting. Talks about struggling with school in middle school; overcoming eye disease; attending Hebrew School. Recalls Hebrew School director being hit by mob. Describes heavy involvement with AZA youth group 5-12 More about role of B'nai Brith Youth Organization in childhood; providing social outlet, opportunities; hanging out on Strip. Shares names of BBYO friends; tragic death of Helene Gorbena. Talks about Hebrew Day School; mother serving as its director; kidnapping of Cary Sayegh. Describes being diagnosed with scoliosis; discovering gift for accounting, passion for hotel industry as well as teaching while taking classes at UNLV as high school student 13-21 Reflects on ending up at UNLV for undergraduate degree; gaining experience at Century Plaza Hotel in L.A.; getting work at Dunes Hotel after graduation. Recalls the demise of Dunes Hotel; going to work a Nevada Palace as assistant controller; soon after, managing internal audit at Four Queens, promoted to controller. Continues talking about career path, working as controller for Boulder Highway project, dealing with operational challenges; then at Ftizgeralds 22-30 Discusses returning to school for master's degree; afterwards, working for Riviera. Talks about wife, Cindy; short stint with Sigma Game, before taking CFO position at Manpower Temporary Staffing. Buys Haynes and Thomas Printers. Talks about decision to move family to San Diego; getting doctorate degree; taking first full-time faculty position at University of Southern Nevada. Becomes assistant professor at Ashford University; family moves back to Las Vegas 31-34 Talks about wife, her background, involvement with Midbar Kodesh, Jewish identity. Recalls process of hiring rabbi at Midbar. Reflects on the role of Judaism in his life, providing social network, strong values 35-38 Index 39-40 v vi This is Barbara Tabach. Today is May 19, 2015. I am sitting with Greg Goussak. Greg, if you would spell your name for us that would be a great way to start. Greg, G-R-E-G. Last name Goussak, G-O-U-S-S-A-K. And we are sitting in your home. This is a Las Vegas address? This is Henderson. This is Henderson, okay. Like I said, I'd love to hear about your family history. My father's father, Joseph, was born in Paris, France; that's the origination of the name. At some point, he and his family immigrated to Indianapolis, Indiana; I don't know when. When he was a young adult, he ended up in Los Angeles, California. My father's mother, Ada, was born in London, England. I do not know how her family immigrated over here. They all ended up in Los Angeles at some point. My grandparents met and married in L.A. I don't have dates on that. On my mother's side, my mother's father was Harry Firstenberg. He was born in Poland. He, his younger sisters and parents came over here to escape Hitler. They did leave seven or eight brothers and sisters in Poland and Germany, and that to the best of our knowledge, were exterminated in the camps. He ended up in New York and worked?I know more about him?in many, many different industries in New York, especially as a young man during World War II. He cut sweaters. He delivered ice. He used to joke that he was in every business except being an undertaker; that was one of his things. Later on, he and my grandmother had children's clothing stores. In the seventies he had a small, little liquor-grocery store that would be the equivalent of a Fresh Fancy today. My grandmother was born in Russia. There's actually some genealogy that was done on her. The family's original name was Pachenik. This goes back into the very early nineteenth century. Somebody was adopted. At some point they decided to do a complete genealogy, and 1 I've got a photocopy of a book with a family tree going back multiple generations. That's cool. There were no birth record from my grandmother; they were all destroyed when they came over. But I know she ended up in Passaic, New Jersey and then met my grandfather; and they ended up in Brooklyn, where they had my mother in 1937. My mom was a severe asthmatic. They had my Uncle Alan in New York five years later. They moved out to California because of my mom's health; she could not handle it. They told her to move out to where the climate was warmer and drier. My mom pretty much lived in Tujunga, California because it was very dry there; my dad [lived] in L.A. They met at an AZA-BBG function when they were sixteen and pretty much the story goes from there; they never left each other from that point. My parents were married in 1959. My dad was an accountant in California. He wasn't certified yet, but he was an accountant working for a firm. My mom, with her severe asthma, got deathly ill on their honeymoon and was hospitalized in Lake Tahoe. They were given a choice of four cities: Las Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque and Tucson. They selected Las Vegas because my dad's firm had a small office up here, so he could transfer. They moved here in 1960. I was born in January of 1961. We had a very small house. I still remember the address: 816 North 18th Street, in what was called Greater Las Vegas. It probably was twelve hundred square feet, but we didn't know any better. My only sibling, my younger brother, Kenny, was born in May of 1962, so we're sixteen months apart. We lived in that home until September 1969 when my parents moved into what we considered a huge home in Homewood Park, right off Desert Inn and Boulder Highway. That remained home for me until 1985 when I moved out after graduating college, got a job, and was able to buy my own home in June of 1985. My parents continued to live there until my dad's 2 death in August of 1994, and my mom remained there about a year. Then we moved her, to Green Valley Ranch for about two years, and then to Sun City MacDonald Ranch where she stayed until her death in 2001. Did your brother stay here, too? No. My brother also graduated from Chaparral, in 1980, and he went to the University of Southern California, getting a degree in biomedical engineering. He met his wife at an AZA-BBG function. They have been together since they were like fifteen or sixteen years old, also. He graduated in 1984. I finished courses in 1983, but had to do some requirements to get my degree. He went to work for Litton in Southern California as an engineer in their Defense Department area, and he's never left Southern California. He's got two children. His oldest, Jason, is a graduate of Chapman University. He's twenty-two, living in Southern California, currently working on a contract for Disney Corporation. My niece just turned nineteen and she is a freshman at the University of Oregon. So everybody stayed in the Pacific Time Zone. Everybody stayed in the Pacific Time Zone except my oldest daughter, Ariel; she's going to be starting college in August at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. So she's going across country. She's breaking out of the tradition here. Yes. what high school does she go to? She will be graduating in two and a half weeks as valedictorian from Coronado. wonderful. Congratulations on that. Thank you. 3 And you have one other daughter. Yes, we have Alyssa, who is going to be fifteen in August. She's a freshman at Coronado right now. Tell me a little bit about your wife's background and then we'll move on from there. My wife's background is interesting. And her name is Cindy. Cynthia, Cindy. She was born in Las Vegas in 1968. Her parents were Canadian. Her dad is a pharmacist, retired now, and went to the University of Arizona. They moved up here so he could open up a pharmacy. When Cindy was four years old, her parents divorced and her mother moved back to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and obviously took Cindy with her. My father-in-law stayed here in Las Vegas and she would visit. The interesting part of the story is?when Cindy would come back to visit in the summers and her dad, Harvey, was working because he had his own pharmacy, my mom would baby-sit Cindy. What's Harvey's last name? Riceberg. Okay. You have to understand that there's an eight-year age difference between us. So if Cindy was seven or eight years old, for example, when they divorced, I was fifteen and in high school. So during her trips back for a couple of years, I always remember this kid coming and staying, but I was so much older than her it didn't faze me. Then her dad remarried in 1975, and then she would stay with her stepmother, Janis. We didn't really reconnect at all until the fall of 1994 at break the fast. It was the High 4 Holidays right after my dad died. My mother, her father and myself went over to the Ricebergs' for break the fast and Cindy was there. She was attending Pepperdine University, getting her MBA. She and I started talking and we stayed in touch for a while, and things just went from there. She graduated Pepperdine in 1995 and then she moved to Boston in June. We were engaged at the end of June of '95 and I tried to go back to Boston to find a job; I couldn't. At the end of '95, she moved back to Las Vegas and we got married in May 1996. Wow. That is a great story of how things just were? Very unusual. Yes. You finally collided in the right time. Let's talk about growing up Jewish in Las Vegas. Would you say that you grew up Jewish in Las Vegas? To a point, yes. Vegas was small, probably a hundred and fifty thousand total people; there was one synagogue when I was growing up, Temple Beth Sholom, over on East Oakey Boulevard. The Jewish community centered on Temple Beth Sholom, not just the religious aspect, but the social aspect. My parents were involved in all of the adult organizations. They bowled in the bowling leagues, Men's Club, B'nai B'rith, Sisterhood; all of that. My brother and I attended Hebrew school there. That was the extent of it. My parents were not overly religious. We did not keep a kosher home. We did not really go to synagogue at all except on High Holidays. We celebrated the basic holidays, Hanukkah in the home, but it was very basic. It was more of a generic religious experience. Although we knew we were Jewish and did celebrate it, it wasn't the intense religious aspect of it. Were you able to take Jewish holidays off as a kid? 5 Yes, although the Clark County School District is quite unique because the majority of the district is part of the LDS Church. Most of my friends growing up were Mormon. There was no problem taking it off. If we wanted to take the High Holidays off, yes, [we could]. We were never given any trouble by school; [it was enough to give] a note from the parents that we were gone for religious activities. We're talking the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1960s there was still severe segregation in Las Vegas. The Westside was where blacks lived and that's what it was. Early in my childhood black entertainers were not allowed to stay on the Strip. They could perform on the Strip, but for the most part they stayed at the Moulin Rouge because that was the only acceptable place for them to stay. Growing up Jewish in Las Vegas was tough because we were different and people did know we were different. I wasn't exposed to a tremendous amount of anti-Semitism, but I was exposed to some. There's always going to be kids that are nasty and they always find a weak point and they go after it, and that happened. So they saw it as a weak point because you were identified as different. Of course, they did. In 1972, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Clark County School District had to desegregate. And the way they decided they were going to desegregate was to bus the black children from the Westside; that's what it was called. It really wasn't west; it was north, but it was called? It's referred to as the Historic Westside now. Westside. From grades one through five, they bussed these children over to the east side of town and then some from grades nine through twelve. For sixth grade they created what were called sixth grade centers, and they were bussing the white children from the east side to these sixth grade centers, in these all-black neighborhoods. It was a very difficult situation. I didn't handle it 6 very well, not because of the black-white thing; I didn't handle the transportation because we were looking at forty-five minutes to an hour bus ride each way. I skipped a large portion of sixth grade on purpose. Today I would have been held back. Wow. You just didn't go to school? Nope. I would make up one excuse after another; I was sick, I was this, I was that. They picked up on it. My mom was involved because she was heavily involved, not at the time as a teacher, but in PTA. She got to know the principal at Jo Mackey sixth grade center, where I went. Dr. Herschell Williams was the principal. He was a very, very tall black man that was incredibly educated. He knew he had a time bomb on his hands. He handled it incredibly well. He and my mom became very dear friends through the rest of her life. They recognized I was having a problem and instead of dealing with it in a discipline form, they got me involved in some classes doing some special projects and that got me attending more towards the end of the school year. But, no, I did not handle sixth grade at all very well because of the bussing. It had nothing to do with the religion; it had to do with the bussing. What else do you remember about what was going on, the community reaction to the sixth grade centers? We were being told by Judge Thompson out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that we could not live our life the way we wanted to live it. They started the process when I was in fifth grade. I attended my third elementary school because of moving around; I attended brand-new William E. Ferron Elementary. I was in the fourth and fifth grade there. In the fifth grade they started bringing children from the west side and children from the east side into social settings. I remember they took us to two movies together as a group. One of them was Old Yeller and the other was Gone with the Wind. That's how they thought they would [desegregate] the two 7 communities. It was a bust. It didn't do a thing. The kids didn't buy it. What happened at the movies? We sat with our friends, they sat with their friends, and the room got dark and we watched a movie. Was there any conversation afterwards? Nope. We got back on the buses and went back to school. The whole thing was a disaster in this town. Now, this has nothing to do with the Jewish community; this has to do with politics. We're talking about 1972. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated in 1968. There were race riots going on in Watts. There was severe segregation in Las Vegas. And the courts think that they can mandate. It just didn't work. So what happened next in your experience? I don't know how long the sixth grade centers stayed in, but I know they're not there now. I know that it wasn't very long because it didn't work. Learning wasn't happening. I think the testing scores were atrocious. I wasn't the only one that hated it; everybody hated it. Then you take these very young black children from first grade to fifth grade, and putt them on the same buses for an hour each way a day. We were sixth grade; we were the oldest of the group, but then they were the youngest of the group and they were forced to go to schools an hour from home. Well, there was a lot of protesting within the black community. There was a lot of protesting in the white community. There was a lot of protesting everywhere. It was not a topic of the Jewish community because we were all affected. The only ones that were not affected were the more wealthy Jewish kids whose parents could put them in private school, and that's what happened; they put them in the Las Vegas Day School. My parents couldn't afford it, so I went; my brother went. Got it. Your brother went to the Day School? 8 No. He went to Jo Mackey the next year, too. All right. Now, your religious education? Was strictly Temple Beth Sholom. And that was located on Oakey at that time? 1600 East Oakey. Tell me about the religious education experience. I started when I was about eight years old. In 1969, we had just moved from 18th Street over to Anthony Drive. The first year, for third grade, I went to Will Beckley because they were building William E. Ferron. Beckley was experimenting with a new idea of not having kids in the lower primary grades stay in the classroom all day; instead, they would move you from one classroom to another for each class. It was an experiment back in the late sixties, early seventies. I was having some problems, and I was attending Hebrew school on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Sunday mornings. So I'd go from regular school to Hebrew school and it was a very long day for a kid. My parents started noticing my grades were suffering. It turned out that I had an eye disease that caused a lack of perception between my eye and hand coordination. My eyes and hands did not work together. The extra pressure of all of the Hebrew school, the extra hours, was taking a major toll on me. So I got pulled out of the middle of my first year and wasn't made to go anymore. They put me in contact lenses. We were doing exercises. I had a serious problem. My reading was not up to par...When you read your eyes move back and forth. When I read?they videotaped it?my head moved back and forth. I had a problem. So we had to fix that problem, which we did. How do you fix that problem? At the time they did a lot of eye exercises. There were a lot of other physical exercises. My 9 parents bought a ping-pong table and learning how to hit a ping-pong and play ping-pong, your eye and hand have to work together. So that's how we did it. And that helped? It did. So I went back to Hebrew school the next year. Hebrew school was taught by primarily Israelis that they had hired. You may have heard this story before from other people in town. When I started in the Temple Beth Sholom Hebrew School, the director of the Hebrew school was Abe Schwartz, and the rabbi at Temple Beth Sholom was Aaron Gold. At some point in the late sixties, Abe Schwartz disappeared. He was found mob executed in the desert, two bullets to the back of the head. At that same time, during the High Holiday services, Aaron Gold, the rabbi, brought an armed bodyguard onto the bema for protection. Apparently, the two of them got involved in some real estate deal with the mob and reneged. They wouldn't hit a rabbi. What I found out many years later through some other people, somebody paid him off to save the rabbi's life, but Abe Schwartz was executed because of it. I have not heard this story. So one day Mr. Schwartz doesn't show up, and he's gone and never shows up again. It came out later. well, how do you explain this to kids? Yes. Well, you have to understand it was still Vegas. We knew the mob was here. We knew the mob was running it. We weren't afraid of the mob because they didn't do this type of thing here. They didn't hit here; that was kind of an unwritten rule. We just knew that they were here and we knew the way it was. It was very, very, very strange. Because my parents were not that religious, the only requirement I had religiously was to 10 get bar mitzvahed. I had to attend Hebrew school until I was thirteen years old. That's a significant commitment. The week after I turned thirteen I quit. I was done. But right after my bar mitzvah, I got involved with the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization, the boys' side of it, the AZA. I got involved with starting a brand-new chapter here in Las Vegas and started on the ground floor; that was 1974 and that was my big calling throughout junior high school and high school. I was involved on a regional, district, and national basis. They had some summer programs. They have a camp back in Starlight, Pennsylvania. In 1976, I attended a four-week Judaism Kallah. Now, this is non-Jewish kid that attended a four-week Judaism Kallah, then a three-week leadership training conference, and then a one-week convention. I returned for the convention in 1977 and 1978. I was really involved, especially on the regional and district levels; that was pretty my high school years. I did very little in high school. I didn't attend services, I wasn't religious; my religion was all tied to the B'nai B'rith organization. What about it attracted you? It gave me an opportunity?it was more social. It had its religious points because when we would attend different events, and it was on a Saturday, we had to have religious services; we had to do all of that. But it was a social network. In Vegas?this in the seventies?it was still pretty small. There were two or three synagogues in town. Congregation Ner Tamid was a break-off. After Aaron Gold was fired at Temple Beth Sholom, they brought in a rabbi from Winnipeg where Cindy is from, Phillip Schnairson. Schnairson, very smart and had the social skills of a fruit fly. He alienated the Temple Beth Sholom body and that's what led to people saying, "We just don't want the Conservative Judaism; we're going to break off and start a Reform [congregation]." 11 That's how Ner Tamid was started. There was also a much more religious sect that wanted to go Orthodox, and Shaarei Tefilla was started because of that and they're still in existence as well. So Schnairson caused a rift within the community. He didn't last very long because of it. The funny story was?Cindy's parents were from Winnipeg. They were married by Phillip Schnairson in Winnipeg. When Cindy's dad got remarried in Vegas, Phillip Schnairson remarried her dad and stepmom. Wow. Yes, the same rabbi. It's a small world. Yes. It was really just being a part of a group. There are different ways to identify with being Jewish, and I that was another way to identify with your Judaism. Exactly. I'll give you another example. I had a lot of very close friends in B'nai B'rith youth. Once you graduated from high school, you go to college, people go their ways. It has nothing with being Jewish; they go their ways. There was this young lady that I was very friendly with, not dating, but very friendly with. She went to UNLV, but I didn't know it at the time, and then gone. Turn the clock ahead from 1979-80 to 2009. We reconnect on Facebook. We're the best of friends and we are in contact regularly. The thing was our dads were best friends. I still do things with her father. I had dinner with her father last week. I go to UNLV ball games with him. Does he still live here? Yes. Do you want to share the name? His name is Stanley Loeb. He's remarried for forty years to another woman. But my friend 12 Sharon is in California. Our families were like this and we lived two blocks from each other. She wasn't born here, but she grew up here too. The one thing we relate to is what it's like to grow up a Vegas kid, not a Jewish Vegas kid, but a Vegas kid. Sure. What is that like? We both went to the same high school. She graduated in '78 and I graduated in '79 because she's five months older than I am; my birthday fell where they made me wait another year. What's it like to grow up in Vegas? Yes, just in general. When people find out that that you're born and raised a Las Vegan...? People stereotype us. To me there was nothing unusual. We grew up. Because we didn't know any better. First of all?and speaking for both she and I?none of us had any money. We had to entertain ourselves. B'nai B'rith Youth Organization (BBYO): AZA [for the boys], and BBG for the girls?it was all we had. We didn't know we were poor. So with Vegas our social network was BBYO and that's what we did. We would have Wednesday night meetings in the evening. We would do things on weekends. We stayed within that group. Very, very few of us broke off. My brother was in the band, but for the most part his social aspect that was it. We just stayed in that social network. Other than that Vegas wasn't for kids. What did we do? We cruised Fremont Street. That's the one thing I wish my kids could do. There's something nostalgic about that. It was a rite of passage; we cruised Fremont Street. Other than that...I mean, you didn't go to the Strip. Yes, we went to the Strip with our parents. We'd go to dinner once in a while. Circus Circus opened in the late sixties and they had their arcade group. The original MGM opened in '73. They had their little shopping mall, a movie theater, and a Swenson's Ice Cream. We moved our meetings from Temple Beth Sholom to the MGM. We'd be in the ice cream shop. We'd go to 13 the movies there. That's what it meant to grow up in Vegas. Gambling was no big deal. Everybody's got a stereotype if you grow up in Vegas; if you're a girl, you're stripper or a cocktail waitress; if you're a guy, you deal cards. In that group of friends, are there people that still live here in Las Vegas? Yes. Do you mind sharing some of those names that would have been in that same period? Mike Novick. Tom Foskaris, which is unusual because his father wasn't Jewish, but his mother was. The Steinberg family. David Steinberg was a little older. He runs Steinberg Diagnostic. Susie Steinberg Green is in town still. Faye?or her parents are. Diane Steinberg, her older sister, is still in town. Alan is not. Brian Steinberg is the youngest brother; he's an attorney in town. There are a bunch of others...Randy Chaplin. Chaplin was Southern Wine and Spirits. Randi Gorbena is still in town. That was a tragic story. She had an older sister that was actually born on the same day as my friend Sharon. She was attending K.O. Knudson Middle School in the seventies; she had to cross the street on Sahara and a drunk driver ran her over and killed her. Oh, how sad. That was the biggest tragedy I remember from when I was growing up, the Helene Gorbena funeral. That's hard. Yes. That would have been '71 or '72. Another way we were connected...My mom was a teacher. She stopped working when her children were young so she could stay home, but she went back when we were a little older and went and got degrees. She got a master's degree. She got a specialist degree. She actually started working on her EDD, but decided she didn't want to do that one; we were teenagers at the time. 14 My mom, in the early seventies, became director of the Albert Einstein Hebrew Day School. The Albert Einstein Hebrew Day School today is the Adelson School. It went from the Albert Einstein Hebrew Day School to become the Milton I. Schwartz Hebrew Academy. I'll share some real connections in a moment with that. Then we became the Sheldon and Miriam Adelson School. So it's had the three different names. The elementary school is still called the Milton I. Schwartz Hebrew Academy. Originally the high school was housed in some church; I have no idea where it was?but they moved into the classrooms at Temple Beth Sholom because Temple Beth Sholom had all these classrooms. They had a preschool on one side that I attended when I was really young. They had like eight rooms, but they were only used in the afternoons and on Sundays [for religious school]. So the Einstein School moved into Temple Beth Sholom and used their facilities. At the time, it went either to third or fourth grade; I can't remember. Well, it didn't have any money. Surprise. So when my mom was director, they had a telephone installed at our house. When the pho