Transcript of interview with Sari and Paul Aizley by Claytee D. White, November 4, 2016

i AN INTERVIEW WITH SARI AND PAUL AIZLEY 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 As Sari and Paul Aizley recall their separate childhoods and journeys to Las Vegas, their work and volunteer histories, their efforts to build a better society, and their life together they speak to each other as much as they respond to questions about their observations on the growth of the Las Vegas urban environment and their contributions to Southern Nevada's cultural development and a just society. In this interview, Sari and Paul speak to the cross-town commute and the physical UNLV campus in the late 1960s; the growth of the UNLV Math Department; the evolution of UNLV's Continuing Education; the State's North-South funding rivalry as reflected in the built environments of University of Nevada in Las Vegas and in Reno; plans to build a paleontology research facility at Tule Springs National Monument; the Review-Journal's "Ask Jessie Emmet" Real Estate column; local ACLU offices and politics; Fair Housing; transgendered persons; the Nevada State Assembly, and Class! magazine for Clark County high school students. Sari and Paul smile at each other as they recall how the editor/publisher met the bearded math professor and fell in love—despite the fact that they tell slightly different versions of their initial meeting(s). Sari passed away November 1, 2017, three days shy of one year after she participated in this interview. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Sari and Paul Aizley November 4, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White Preface…………………………………………………………………………………….….…..iv Sari's early life and anti-Semitism in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; arrival in Las Vegas in 1967, and first jobs working for Channel Five and the Review-Journal. Paul's youth and schooling in Boston's North End, college, 1968 arrival in Las Vegas to teach math at UNLV……………….……. 1-10 Las Vegas in late 1960s; development of UNLV's math department and UNLV-Reno competition over funding, and Ice Age Park Foundation and Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. How Sari and Paul met.………………………………………………………………….…...10-17 Sari as Review-Journal promotion manager, real estate column and editor and Newspapers In Education program. Southern Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Charles Bush case, fundraising and relations with ACLU National…………………………………...18-28 Paul and bills in Nevada State Assembly; Nevada Fair Housing; transgendered persons; George Rudiak. Sari and Art in the Great Outdoors and local art on telephone book covers. Paul a UNLV Dean of Continuing Education, Osher Life Long Learning Institute (OLLI), and Extended Education Center for Lifelong Learning (EXCELL)………………………………...………..28-35 Paul and Harvard Club of Nevada; Baggett v. Bullitt and ACLU. Sari as editor and publisher, Class! Publications.…………………………………………………………………...….…..35-44 1 S: Good morning. This is Stefani Evans and Claytee White. It is November 4, 2016, and we are in the home of Paul and Sari Aizley. May I ask you to say and spell your first and last names for the tape please? SA: S-A-R-I. A-I-Z-L-E-Y. S: Thank you. P: P-A-U-L. A-I-Z-L-E-Y. S: Ms. Aizley, you are from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. SA: That is where I was brought up. S: That is Mennonite country, is it not? SA: Amish mostly, with a Mennonite or two, but the highest percentage is Amish. S: You were raised Jewish in that area, so you were a member of a minority group. How was that? SA: It wasn’t particularly comfortable. My grandfather had a corner store and the neighborhood kids would gather in that area because they would be in and out, either for mischief or ice cream or something. My maiden name was Guffenberg, and they used to call me Hamburger. That wasn't fun. Then I went to junior high school, and I was the only Jew in our junior high school, and the principal was anti-Semitic. I don't know if you want to hear this detail or not. Here is one way he used to express his dislike of me. At lunch time, all the kids in each grade were sent to the auditorium to seat in rows. The principal, Mr. Fenstermacher, would come in and pass the rows and say, "You can go down to the cafeteria now." He would pick the rows and give them permission to go to the cafeteria. Whatever row I sat in was always the last row. It wasn't long before the kids learned that. I always had late lunches. High school was better. There were some 2 Jewish friends there. It wasn't a community. There was no sense of a Jewish community in the high school. C: Did you work as a young girl? The only job I ever had when I was a very young girl was helping out at a daycare school and that was just for a summer. I didn't have any job until I graduated and was married and then I went to work for a radio station as a copywriter. C: Tell me what your parents did for a living. SA: My dad came from Russia and his first job in this country was in New York for Metropolitan Life Insurance. He sold life insurance. S: Who did he sell it to? SA: Neighbors and whoever he could contact in New York City. Then he had an opportunity to work for a coat and suit company where they manufactured women's coats and suits. He worked for them as a cutter. He left there and opened a tavern and went into business for himself, which lasted a very short time. That was in Lancaster, just down the street from my grandfather's store. I was taking dancing lessons, I was about five or six, and they would give me little dancing lessons in town. My dad would bring me in when he was in the mood and stand me up on the bar and I would dance for the customers. So I was a "B Girl" for a while. After that my grandfather got sick and my dad sold the tavern and took over the store for my grandpa. My grandpa died and my dad kept on with the store, and he took care of my grandmother as well as my mother. By then I had two sisters. My sisters are 11 years and 17 years younger than I am. My mother had a bad sense of timing. I never lost any premier treatment, even after my sister Frankie was born. Then after my second sister was born I was already pregnant with my first child. You see these squirts, one calling the other one Aunt Janet. It was kind of silly. 3 C: I have always been intrigued about the Amish. I am surprised that there was any kind of discrimination, because I thought they would feel separate and apart and would welcome other people. I am surprised at that. They had their own schools. They almost never used the public schools. There was one girl in my class that was Amish. She would come to school wearing her Amish clothes. She had a locker and she would go into the girls’ room and put on her "real people" clothes, just to fit in with the rest of the girls; then she'd change and go back to her Amish life. S: So Fenstermacher wasn't Amish? SA: No, he wasn't Amish. S: Oh, I misunderstood. I thought it was an Amish community. SA: They were there, but I never felt any animosity or anything. It was very cooperative. My grandpa got along with them great. He would extend credit—although they weren’t supposed to do that—when they needed something. S: Did they do the farmer's market? Is that mostly Amish? SA: Largely Amish, but not only, because that is farm country, and they weren't all farmers. We have a great farmer's market in Lancaster. We always go there when we are in Lancaster. It’s the only place you can get real horseradish that they grind in front of you. S: The animosity you felt was not from the Amish community but from the other kids and the principal? SA: It was a factory neighborhood. We had the iron work and the tobacco factory in our neighborhood, so it was very low income, not very well educated. I think most of them, if they got through high school, just remained there and worked. Education didn’t mean much to them. 4 S: The crowd that went to your father’s bar weren’t Amish. They were the parents of the kids you went to school with? SA: Yes, pretty much. S: Paul, tell us about your background and where you grew up. P: I grew up in Boston. I never left Boston or New England until I graduated from college at age 21, when I went to the University of Arizona. S: Why University of Arizona? P: Because it wasn't in New England. I applied only to Arizona and California for graduate work, and Arizona gave me the better deal. S: What was your degree in? P: Math. My Bachelor's degree was from Harvard in Math; my Master's was from U of A in Math, and my PhD. is from Arizona State. In between, I went to the University of Washington and hated it. S: Did you hate the university or the weather? P: Both. I told Sari I would never go back there unless she paid for the tickets. We did have to go there once for the travel agency, for Prestige Travel. Anyway, we were there, and I said, "Do you want to see somebody commit suicide by jumping off the Aurora Bridge?" We went to salmon bars, but we missed the jump; they were already fishing him out of the lake. C: Tell me about your younger life. P: I went to the Boston Public Schools, English High School. The grammar school I went to, unlike Sari's, was about 95% Jewish. When we stayed out on the holidays, nothing happened. There were 47 kids in the class at the time. It was after the war [World War II], and there was a lot of population. I can think of three non-Jewish kids in the class of 47 kids. The isolation and 5 the feeling of minority didn't come until you left the school. In junior high, the Irish took over—Boston is a very Irish town. In fact, at that time, my father was running a settlement house in the North End of Boston. It was Presbyterian-owned, but the clientele was all Italian Catholic and one or two Irish; mostly Italians. I lived in the North End two years, and then we went out to Brighton. My mother grew up in North End, and she understood Italian, even though she didn't really speak it. All of her girlfriends were Italian, except for one Jewish girlfriend. S: Did you think that the non-Jews in your elementary school felt the way Sari did at hers? P: It wasn't something we were aware of. They were friendly. We knew them. There was nothing different in my mind about them. S: And they had to go to school when you didn't. P: Yes, although nothing happened when we weren't there. The middle school was not like that, and high school was one-third Jewish, one-third Italian, and one-third African-American—those are just rough estimates. S: Is it roughly that now? P: No, it has all changed. English High was a boys' school; Girls' High was the girls' school. The competing schools were Boys Latin and Girls Latin, and I understand now that they are all put together. My school, English High, was downtown. I had to take transportation to get there. There was no school bus system, like we have here, because in Boston the public transportation was adequate. They would give us car checks for a nickel, and you could ride on anything and go where you had to go. I went downtown. We would hang our lunches up on hooks in the basement, so the rats wouldn't get them, and then we'd go upstairs to the classes. The building has been condemned, I believe. 6 C: I would like you to tell us how both of you came to Las Vegas. SA: I am trying to think how to condense it, because there was so much in between. C: Tell me about college. SA: I didn't start college until I was in my forties. Actually, when I was in high school, I was given a scholarship to the State Teachers' College, but I didn't take it. I thought I'd better get married, because if I don't marry this guy that I am dating, I would go the rest of my life unmarried and lonely and all that. You grab them while they are available. So I got married when I was 17 and had my first child when I was 18. We moved to Pebble Place; then to Columbia, South Carolina; then to Florida, and then Upstate New York. While I was in Upstate New York, I started to take a couple of college courses at Utica College of Syracuse University. Now, this is not Paul I am talking about; this is my second husband I am talking about: Number Two was teaching hotel administration for the State University of New York, the SUNY system. At that time, UNLV decided to have a hotel program. They recruited a man from the SUNY system to be the director of it. He was later made dean. His job was to find two faculty members to bring to Las Vegas, and the three of them would start the hotel program. His name [the dean] was Jerry Vallen. He is priceless. Then there was another man that came out, and then they asked my husband, Boyce, if he would like to go. They gave him a trip out to Las Vegas to see if it was a place we could move to, because we hadn't been out of the East. After he was out here a few days, he called me, and he said, "This place is horrible." It was in July. He said, "Every house has a stone wall around it. There are no gardens. It is all sand. Everything is dead and hot." I said, "Okay, when are we leaving?" S: What year was that? SA: 1967. 7 S: He made it sound so attractive you couldn't wait to get there? SA: Anything was better than where we were. We were living in an old farm house in a town that had about 900 people. It wasn't bad. Looking back at it, it was very nice. Now I like it. The life there was interesting. I was the only Jew in town. That husband wasn't Jewish. My first husband was an Orthodox Jew, from an Orthodox family. The reason I mentioned going to Columbia, South Carolina, is because he was drafted into the U.S. Army, and I decided to go with him. He was at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, so I went and moved there. By then, I was pregnant, and I had my first child there. That is another horror story, and I am not going to burden you with that one. P: So now, when someone asks how old are your kids, I have to say 65. SA: Yes, I have a kid getting Social Security! It is not fair! So Boyce came out here to help start what became the College of Hotel Administration. He retired from that. I don't remember what year that was, because we were already divorced by then. Then he got sick and died. C: Tell me about Las Vegas when you first got here. Did it live up to his description? SA: We came out, and it was July 22, I believe. It was something like 112 degrees. Do you know where the Blue Angel Motel is? C: Yes, downtown? SA: Our first night in town was at the Blue Angel, because we didn't have any other place to stay. The air conditioning went out at the Blue Angel while we were there. I would put on a night gown, and my girls would put on gowns. The guys, I don't know what they wore. We would fill the bathtub with cold water; we would submerge ourselves in the cold water, and we'd go lie on the bed while the water evaporated. So that is how we found Las Vegas. C: The Blue Angel had the angel on top. 8 SA: That's right. C: They tried to save it but I don't think it was saved last year. It wasn't a neon sign, so I don't think they were able to save it. I will check. [Colloquy not transcribed.] After you left the Blue Angel where did you live? SA: I think we rented a house. Do you know where Park Vale is? It is on the corner of Boulder Highway and Lamb [Boulevard]. There used to be an outdoor theater there, and I believe there is a Smart and Final there now. It is right on the corner. There are five corners there, actually. I think Flamingo [Road] runs into it. There was a whole development of tiny houses that were all emptied out and renovated, because somebody up North in the state closed down a whole industry. I can't remember what it was—copper mining or something? It just emptied out that whole area. So they renovated all the houses, and they were nice. They were plain with no trees but with scorpions and sand. S: Do you know who did that remodeling? SA: I remember that the financing was done through Frontier Fidelity Savings and Loan, which used to be on Charleston [Boulevard] and Seventh [Street] or Eighth [Street], around there. I remember that, but I don't remember who the developer was. S: So you bought it? SA: We rented it. S: But it hadn't been occupied since it had been remodeled? SA: Right. It was really well done—shiny new. Then we had the option to buy the house for $18,000 or move out. We moved out and moved into the Winterwood area. It was on Sahara [Boulevard] just east of Nellis Boulevard. 9 C: Why that area, when he was working at UNLV, and most of the professors were probably living right around the school, right? SA: Because we could afford it. I think that was the reason. S: He had quite a commute. P: But in those days it was an easy drive. C: Did you work when you first got here? SA: Yes, I went to work for Channel Five. That was when Charlie Vanda and his wife owned it. I worked for them for about six months before I got fired for trying to start a union. S: Tell us about that. SA: I didn't actually start it myself. I think the head secretary there wanted to start a union, but then she got pregnant before it could all coalesce. So she asked me if I would take it over, because I come from a union family. We set up a meeting at IBEW [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers] to get the employees in for a meeting on a Saturday morning. We all met there, six or seven of us. I should tell you that just before that, I had received from him a personal letter and certificate of outstanding achievement, because I had done some really good things for the station. He gave me a letter of achievement. Monday morning I came in and he said, "You're fired. Your work is sub-standard, and I don't need you anymore." I went back to IBEW and sued. He had to pay me until I got a new job, and I got a new job in about two weeks at the Review Journal. That was my rabble-rousing year until ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union]. I will tell you one other funny thing about that: Charlie Vanda hated me thereafter. When I went to work at the university, which was in '74, I was the publications director in the news bureau. My office was up on the seventh floor [of the Flora Dungan Humanities building]. One day I 10 was called into the president's office, because they were starting the Vanda series for the symphony, and they wanted to introduce me to the director of the Vanda series. Guess who it was? His office was next to mine! S: Paul, how did you end up coming here? P: I was working on my Ph.D. in Tempe, Arizona at ASU and my classwork was done. I was just writing and working on my thesis. Now you call it a dissertation. Back then it was a thesis. I applied to schools "close" to ASU, because I needed to finish my thesis. I was a visiting professor my last year at ASU on a one-year appointment and applied for a job here, to Nevada Southern University [now University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)]. I heard this story; I didn't experience it: when the UNLV department chair called looking for me, I was rafting down the Colorado River with a student/faculty group from ASU. It worked out that I got the job here. When I arrived here, everything had changed. The dean of the college changed; the president changed; the name of the school changed. It was now UNLV. S: What year was that? P: August of '68. I had been to Vegas once before, about 1960 or 1961, when I was doing an NSF [National Science Foundation] summer institute at UCLA [University of California Los Angeles]. I drove there with another UCLA student. Maryland Parkway had nothing on it. I had a flat tire and went down to Sears. It was the only thing. There was no Boulevard Mall. It was the only thing on Maryland Parkway, which was dirt. S: So Sears was there before the Boulevard Mall? P: The Sears Auto Shop was the first thing. S: Just the Auto Shop? P: Right. 11 SA: When I came here, we went to the Boulevard Mall, and all that was there was Ronzone’s Department Store and Sears, and they were working on Penney's. You forgot to say what you did when they changed the name of the school. P: It was also the year that the state first allowed you to have vanity license plates. So I wrote in for UNLV, and I got the UNLV plate. I have had it since 1969. Carol Harter wanted it, so she put a 4 on hers: 4UNLV. That is pretty bad for an English teacher. C: What was Las Vegas like? Where did you first live when you arrived? P: I lived in the apartments just south of the campus, at Avanti Park. Is that what they are called? [Colloquy not transcribed.] S: You could walk to work? P: Yes, I could, but I didn't. I don't think I ever walked to work. We didn't have to pay for parking back then, and there was plenty of it. My Math Department office was in a trailer, just outside of what is now the Lilly Fong Building. S: You had quite a way to go from the south end of the campus. P: No, it wasn't that far. S: Did you just drive across campus? P: No, I would walk. Once you got to campus, you walked around. It was small. Frazier, Grant, Lilly Fong, and I think they were building the Student Union. No, it was already built when I got here. SA: You were already in a trailer back then. P: Yes, and 40 years later, when I retired, I was in another trailer. It was called the Central Desert Complex, which is a fancy trailer. Just as smelly, but much fancier. That is one of my sore points, what they have done to the Math Department. 12 C: Tell me about the Math Department and its evolution. P: When I applied, I wanted to make sure they were offering a Master’s degree, and when I got here, they were. I didn't realize it was controversial at the time, but it was, and it was approved, and we offered a Master’s degree. A lot of people in town were waiting for the Math program, because they wanted to continue their education. There were two women in particular who were great students. One was Carl Christensen's wife; I forget what her name was. The dean of Engineering was another guy named Wells—not Bill Wells; Herb Wells—and Herb's wife, Melissa, was a math student, and she was great. We had very small graduate courses, but they were good courses. We knew everybody, and we had a lot of fun learning in the classes. S: Why was it controversial? P: To add a new program at a university is always controversial, because there is limited funding. UNLV's problem has always been lack of money. They don't have money to do all the things they need to do. If Math wants a Master’s degree and Biology wants a Master’s degree, who is going to win? Well, [Donald] Baepler was president later, so they got the Ph.D. in Biology pretty quickly, because Don Baepler was a biologist. Arthur Gentile was the vice president at the time, and he was a biologist, too, so clearly Biology was strong. The College of Sciences has never had a dean with a degree in Mathematics; they have been getting the short end of the budget forever. We started the math Ph.D. program before UNR [University of Nevada, Reno] started theirs, but if you go to UNR, they have a dedicated Math Science building. UNLV math is back in the trailers. This is a whole other discussion about the politics, North v. South. In the 50 years I have been here, if you take a walk at UNR and take a walk at UNLV, UNR has beautiful new buildings everywhere. We have a few buildings. They have everything, and it is always bigger. 13 C: And they have 5,000 students, and we have 30,000. P: That is right. And they have three community colleges in the North, and we have one in the South, although ours has several campuses throughout the valley. We have one community college president, and they have three. So when the Council of Presidents get together, the North outnumbers the South. That is the politics here. The little politics in the College of Science is that Math gets the short end of everything. There is a biology building and a chemistry building. Geosciences also gets the short end now. They are in the Lilly Fong building, one of the oldest buildings on campus. I went to a presentation last night, and Steve Rowland was there doing a presentation on paleontology. Paleontology needs new space to support the research in that area, which will involve the national monument and a State park in the Las Vegas Wash area of Clark County. C: Tule Springs? P: But Tule Springs is not the right name. It has little meaning to the rest of the world. I am working with the Ice Age Park Foundation. Our new national monument is the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. C: Yes. So you know Helen Mortenson? P: Yes, she is the president, and I am the vice president. Steve is our secretary. I don't want to speak for Steve, but he is happy in his office space, and if Geoscience got new space, the move would take a lot of time. If we are going to develop the national monument with a place for research, there are 300 acres out there that belong to the state of Nevada. It is part of the state parks, and that is where we want a research facility for paleontology. That is one of our goals. The Ice Age Park Foundation is trying to find ways to make that happen. C: Would this building be part of UNLV, or independent? 14 P: It would work independently but in cooperation with UNLV. It is in our bylaws. But we are not talking about a math building. C: What is the possibility? What do you see? P: Get the money, and it will happen. C: Right now you see some people that might help? P: Well, do you know SNPLMA, Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act? Non-profits are not eligible for that money, but BLM [Bureau of Land Management] is. So we can work with the BLM and possibly get money. There is SNPLMA money now. It is starting to build up again, and there are a lot of people who want it, so there is politics, and a fight is coming. Math needs a building. The State Park will need several buildings. C: Politically, who do you see aligning with so you can get the money? P: Don't know. S: What about the City of North Las Vegas? P: The people involved with the monument itself, everybody gave approval: Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Clark County, Nellis Air Force Base, and the Paiute Indian Reservation and everybody supports that national monument. Basin and Range is another new national monument farther to the north. S: Do you see North Las Vegas being helpful? P: All five agencies are involved. "Being helpful" probably means getting some things back. There may be competition over who sells the T-shirts, etc. C: And we can't do it together? 15 P: We have to do it together. We don't want to sell the T-shirts, but someone is going to want to. Where is the entrance going to be to this park? The park is huge, 315 acres. Plans are being made now, and the State Park people are doing a great job. S: North Las Vegas is going to want one. P: Maybe. They can't go out and dig on the property. Right now we would like to fence it off and keep it, so people can't go out and trash it, but so we still can do tours and take people out. In fact they are doing that. There is another group called the Protectors of Tule Springs. They are very active on behalf of the monument. There are several different groups that are concerned about all this stuff. When they did the Big Dig—not the one in Boston, but the one here—they dug up 10,000 fossils. They are in California now, but we are bringing them back. Do you know Marilyn Gillespie at the Dinosaur Museum, the National History Museum? You know that the State Museum has moved to be adjacent to Springs Preserve? They had a building across from the Dinosaur Museum. The library is still there, but all that space is now available for Marilyn to develop. They are working on storing, and maybe borrowing, but having exhibits and putting stuff there. S: In the former Clark County library? P: No the library is still there. In the Discovery Museum. I keep saying Dinosaur Discovery so you separate the two. S: How did the two of you meet? SA: We have different stories. S: We need to hear them both. 16 SA: I was working on the seventh floor of the university, Flora Dungan Humanities building. He was working for the President. We kind of gravitated. We would go into the President's reception office and sit around and talk. I think that is where I met you, isn't it? P: The second time. SA: I don't remember the first time. He had the most beautiful beard, and I'm a nut for beards. I fell in love with him. The day we got married, he shaved his beard off. I didn't know who the heck I was marrying. S: And what is your version of this story? P: This is my second wife. When I came to UNLV, I had a history of being an ice skater—always amateur—but I was skating a lot. I took the ice skating class at UNLV and married the instructor. S: Where was this class taught? P: Commercial Center had an ice rink at one time. S: Where was that? P: It was a roller rink, and now it is a church. It would have been in the northwest corner of that whole big area. S: So you married the instructor? P: Yes. She had three children, including a little girl, Stephanie, who went to the same school that David Phillips was at. And I believe we had met there, at the Montessori School. S: Did you have a beard at the time? P: I always shave the beard in the summer. I have it in the winter and shave it in the summer. I don't do that anymore, because my skin is bad. The beard used to be red, and it was interesting. Now it has white and black streaks. It is not good. 17 [Colloquy not transcribed.] C: Tell me how OLLI [Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV] came about. P: OLLI came later. S: So the two of you met and got married and he shaved his beard? P: I shaved and then got married. SA: Just hours before we got married, he shaved his beard. I left my [second] husband back during those years, too, about 1975. P: A little bit of UNLV history. They used to produce a telephone directory, and they used to put in parentheses the spouse's name; but, usually there is a lot of spouse changing at UNLV, and they stopped doing that. SA: And it was my job to produce the directory, because it was a publication. S: So when you saw the spouse name fall off by his name, you knew he was available. P: It didn't fall off, she pushed it off. C: Tell me about your work at the R-J [Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper]. SA: I was in the Promotions Department there. This was right after I was fired by Charlie Vanda, and I went and talked to Bill Wright; he was the general manager of the Review-Journal. His son is Rick Wright, the attorney. Bill Wright interviewed me and said, "I want you to know 18 that I have talked to Charlie Vanda, and he said I should watch out for you, that you are a trouble maker. But I think we need to have a department for promotions and special events." He offered me the job, but he said, "I can't pay you any more than the highest paid woman in the editorial department." I think I started working for him at $125 a week. He put me on notice for a lot of other jobs, so I went to work for the R-J, where I was a promotion manager for a long time. I was also their first real estate editor. C: Tell me about that experience. SA: Well, when they came to tell me that I