Transcript of interview with Cheryl Leonard by Claytee White, February 12, 2013

AN INTERVIEW WITH CHERYL LEONARD An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas i ©The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2012 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editors: Barbara Tabach, Joyce Moore Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers and Project Assistants: Barbara Tabach and Claytee D. White ii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of Dr. Harold Boyer. 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 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 Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White, Project Director Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iii ORAL HISTORY RESEARCH CENTER AT UNLV Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project Rancho High School Class of'62 RAMS Use Agreement Name of Interviewer: (J-LA^ree. 7). WtilTeT Name of Narrator: Wc, llic above named, give t<, intervicw(s) initiated on lie O>rraall HHiissttoorryy Research Center of UNLV, die recorded U&nLz along widi typed transcripts as an unrestricted gilt, to be used for such scholarly and educational purposes as shall be determined, and transfer to die University of Nevada Las Vegas, legal title and all literary properly rights including copyright. This gift does not preclude die right of the interviewer, as a representative of UNLV, nor the narrator to use die recordings and related materials for scholarly pursuits. I understand dial my interview will be made available to researchers and may be quoted from, published, distributed, placed on die Internet or broadcast in any medium that die Oral History Research Center and UNLV libraries deem appropriate including future forms of electronic and digital media. There will be 110 compensation for any interviews. Signature of Narrator Dale Library Special Collections 4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 457010, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-7070 (702) 895-2222 1 Foreword First arriving in Las Vegas as an infant, Cheryl Leonard's young life included a brief sojourn in Southern California before returning to Las Vegas in 1954. After attending local elementary and middle schools, she started at Rancho High during the day, and working at the Huntridge theater in the evenings and during the summers. More than just work, though - in this interview, Cheryl recalls school activities from parades to pep club, participating in Helldorado, hanging out with her friends at the Blue Onion and shopping on Fremont Street. After graduation, Cheryl returned to California to attend school before coming back to Las Vegas and taking a job with the Central Telephone Company. This was followed by a brief stint working at the Nevada Test Site before she married in 1964 and concentrated on raising her own daughters in a rapidly growing and changing Las Vegas. 2 This is Claytee White and it is February 12th, 2013. I am at Cheryl Leonard's house in LasVegas. So how are you doing today? I'm doing very well, Claytee. Thank you for coming. It is wonderful to be here. And I had no problems and I was here in less than a half hour, so that's really good. So tell me a little about your early life. Well, I was born in Kansas. My father was in the Army Air Corps at the time during World War II, and so that's why we were in Kansas. Then as soon as he got out of the service, which was in 1945, why, we came to Las Vegas. He had always been involved in the gambling industry originally in the illegal gambling industry in California. Anyhow, but of course, here it was legal. So he was a poker dealer, twenty-one dealer and that kind of thing. So we came probably sometime in 1945. So I believe I was close to a year old when we came. Of course, I don't remember too much about that time, but I know my parents got divorced when I was about two. My mother worked as a waitress. I think part of the time she was a cocktail waitress, but by the time I really remember she was a food waitress and worked at a lot of different places here in Las Vegas over the years. Give me your mother's name. Her name is Laura Martin Ryan. Anyhow, we lived over off of Ninth and Bonanza at a place called El Encanto Apartments. They were these one-story kind of apartment buildings and they were above Cashman Field there. I know we had—not a babysitter, but a person who took care of us while my parents worked and her name was Ella. She was a black lady. My mother told me that Ella loved going to funerals. So she used to load my brother and I up into the buggy and take us down the hill, down the Fifth Street hill to Woodlawn Cemetery and we attended a lot of funerals down there. 3 Did Ella know these people? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. But it got us out of the house and occupied us. What do you mean buggy? Well, it was not a stroller. I think it was like a pram, that kind of thing. That's right because from there she could walk down to Woodlawn. Yes. We would just walk down the hill and then walk back up. What recreation [laughing]. I also know that at one point my mother entered us, both my brother and I, into the Helldorado Baby Contest. Somewhere around there's a certificate that tells that we were in this baby contest. I was a baby; I don't remember what it was like. I didn't know Helldorado had a baby contest. People have told me about everything else; I've never heard about the baby contest. Yep. Well, I'll try to dig out the certificate so you can see it. But I don't really remember. But they judged the baby on their healthfulness somehow and their cheerfulness and there was a little contest. Also, I know that my mother took—I don't know if it was a stroller—some kind of a thing that you would put a baby in. She made it look like a boat and she dressed my brother up in a sailor suit and pushed him through the Helldorado Children's Parade. At that time it wasn't so hard to get in the parade or anything; if you wanted to be in the parade, you were in the parade. My brother went to North Ninth Street School in kindergarten. But by the time I was in kindergarten we had moved down to Sun Valley, California, which is near Burbank. We lived there for about four or five years. My mother married while we were there. He owned a restaurant and I think she was a waitress in the restaurant. Anyhow, they married and then at some point the business failed. So I think about 1954 we came back up to Las Vegas. We lived in a duplex that was off of what was at that time called San Francisco, but it is now Sahara. It was near 15th Street, in that area. We went to Crestwood Elementary School. We moved quite a bit, though, during the time that I was in school. So what jobs did your parents have this time? My stepfather became a security guard at the old Las Vegas Club downtown. My mother worked at the Pioneer Club and I know that she worked at the Nevada Club. I don't remember anything else at that time period. Later on she worked at many of the hotels—the Desert Inn and the Last Frontier, the Hacienda. Was she a food waitress at this time or cocktail? Food. Food. She worked days so that she could be home at night with us; at least that was my feeling. Was she part of the Culinary Union? Yes, she was. She was a staunch member of the Culinary Union. She was just really pro-union. I don't know that she ever held office or anything like that, but she was friends with A1 Bramlet. And so I know that she was just really supportive of the union in Las Vegas. Any stories that you remember her telling about that period? Not really, no. No. I remember that she worked hard. And I could remember her coming home with her tips and we used to sit and count her tips and roll them into coin wrappers and stuff because there weren't too many dollar tips; a lot of it was coins at that time. So I can remember doing that, especially the Nevada Club because a lot of the dealers would go into the counter that 5 was in the Nevada Club and get coffee and that kind of thing and so she would get a lot of nickel and dime tips because they weren't buying too much. So there was an awful lot of coins at that time. Did she ever share with you how much she was getting a day in tips? No. I know that at that time that they never claimed all that they got; I can tell you that. That was very common practice that people did not declare fully to the IRS what they were making, but subsistence living anyway. It's only very recently that you have to do it; you're sort of forced to do it. How much do you know about your father's work in Las Vegas? Not really very much because we didn't have too much contact with him. I don't know what places he worked at or anything like that. I remember the fact that he was a dealer. A little bit older we attended the Lutheran church. What was it called? It's on Maryland Parkway about Bridger. I know where it is. I can't think of the name of it right now. Good Shepherd, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. So we lived in North Las Vegas, but my father lived right down the block from the church. So my brother and I would take the bus from North Las Vegas and go to Sunday school and church and then we would go over to my father's apartment after that and usually have a meal with him and his wife and then we would walk downtown and go to the movies. That kind of occupied us for the day when my mother was still working because she worked on that day. So I can remember doing that for a long period of time. So Bridger— And Maryland Parkway. 6 And you would walk—so that wasn't that far. You would go to the movies someplace on Fremont Street? Yes. Either the El Portal—that's the one I remember was the El Portal. I know there was a Fremont Theatre, too, because I worked there later on. Oh, good. I was going to ask you about that next. But you were near the Huntridge also, weren't you—no. You were too far away from the Huntridge. Well, we were. But the problem from there if we went over to the Huntridge, then we had a bus problem whereas if we walked downtown we could catch the bus easily to go back where we lived. How did kids know what time the movies started? Probably the newspaper, but I really don't remember. So do you remember going in and even if it just started you would just sit through the whole thing again? A No, we never did that that I can recall, no. A lot of times there were double features, and so it took enough time. I don't really remember that. What is your brother's name? James Martin. Most kids worked and you were about to tell me that you worked at one time in a movie theater. I did. I worked for the Huntridge Theater. I was actually fifteen when I started. I had to get permission from my mother to get a work permit to go to work. It was during the summer. Lloyd Katz is the one who hired me. Harry Zumar was I guess like the general manager of the corporation. I worked for them all through high school. My senior year I only took half-day 7 classes, and so I started working at the Fremont Theatre downtown as a cashier, ticket seller. So I did that my senior year. I think I continued working for them during my summer after high school. Then I went off to go to school. Where did you go to school? I went to the Lawton School for Dental Assistants in Beverly Hills, California. There were no schools like that in Las Vegas. There were no occupational schools of that nature in Las Vegas that I knew about. My mother had remarried again. My mother was married five times. Anyway, she was married to a man who was a dental technician, and so through that I became interested in what occupation I might be able to go to. And college wasn't really something I thought about doing; I don't know why, maybe money, but maybe just—I don't know. Anyhow, so I went to dental assistant school. My mother was living at Edwards Air Force Base at that time. So I came back up to Las Vegas and lived with my brother and his wife for a short period of time and tried to get a job as a dental assistant and couldn't get a job. And so I went to work for the Central Telephone Company and became a long-distance telephone operator. Wow. Now I want to go back just a minute. Beverly Hills compared to Las Vegas, what was that like? Was it culture shock? Well, I only went there to go to school. I lived with my grandparents back in Sun Valley while I went to school. My grandparents owned a duplex. So when I had lived in Sun Valley early in life, we lived in one half of the duplex and my grandparents lived in the other. And so after I got out of high school and I was going to dental assistant school, I went down and stayed with them. The school was only like three or four months long; it wasn't very long. It wasn't like years or anything. How did you get back and forth? 8 I had a car. I had a 1950 Chrysler Coupe. It was like a tank. Did you buy it out of your own earnings? I did. Yeah, I did. My brother was a little tired of driving me around and I had saved a hundred dollars and the car cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars. And so he loaned me the other twenty-five dollars so that I could get out of his hair and get my own car. I love it. Did you pay him back? Oh, yeah. My brother was an entrepreneur. When we were little kids we shared the same bedroom and we had these valances, the wooden valances above the windows. So mine was filled with these storybook dolls and I wasn't a very doll type of girl. So he had model cars on his. So I built a model car and I wanted to park it with his model cars. And so he decided he was going to charge me five cents a week to park my car on his valance with his cars until my mother found out about it. So I don't think it took too long. Do you still tease him about that today? Well, my brother is mentally ill. So no, I don't tease him about too much at all. So anyhow, we only got a quarter a week for allowance. So five cents was going to him. But you could go to the movies; the kiddie matinee movies in California at that time was a dime. And so for a quarter you could go to the movies and get a drink and get popcorn. You wouldn't need any more money than that. But when he took my nickel, why, that really cut into my movie going. Was he always mentally ill? Not until he was probably late twenties or early thirties. I see. So while you were sharing a room and everything, when he was charging you for the parking space— Oh, yeah. 9 So you came back here and you went to work for the telephone company. I'm going to jump back one more time. While you were driving the tank, did you drive back and forth on Fremont Street? Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Tell me about those days. We had a lot of fun doing that. The police occasionally didn't like the things that we did because, for instance, we would come to a stoplight and we'd have what they call a Chinese fire drill. And so you put the car in park, everybody jumps out, runs around the car once, and then jumps back in before the light would change. Nobody told me that. Yep, Chinese fire drill it's called. If the light had already changed and then you were holding up traffic, why, then the police weren't really too thrilled about us doing things like that. But that was at a time when you could still drive Fremont Street. And, of course, the Blue Onion drive-in was down at one end of Fremont Street down here, what is now Eastern, and at the other end was the train station, which had a circular driveway in front of it. So we would drive through the circle, turn around and come back down Fremont Street, go down to the Blue Onion, circle the Blue Onion and then go back up and wave at our friends and whatnot. We loved to be seen. Did you know almost everybody in the town, seemingly? Not everybody. I knew a lot of people that I went to school with. No. There were the kids from Vegas High. I knew a few from church, but that was really all. I saw a couple of people from working at the movie theater, too, because there were kids from other schools that worked there. So were the kids from other schools also cruising Fremont Street? Oh, sure. 10 Oh, okay. So everybody did it. Everybody did it. Everybody did it. I think the kids from Henderson came in and did it, too. I think everybody did. It was just common practice. I also remember one time, though, we were on Fremont Street and there was a Volkswagen parked right outside of the Horseshoe Casino. The Horseshoe didn't have doors on it; it was just wide open. It had like an air curtain they called it, so there was no pillars or anything particularly. So a bunch of guys got out and picked up the entire Volkswagen car and carried it into the casino and sat it down. We also had parades. Like homecoming parade we'd decorate our cars with little pom-poms and crepe paper and stuff with our school colors, particularly homecoming when Rancho was going to play Vegas; why, that was a big thing, a big rivalry. Although I hear now Vegas has won seventeen years in a row or something, so Rancho is not doing too good. But at that time we had a lot of good athletes and so we were winning state championships in different sports and so it was a big thing. But anyhow, I know we decorated our cars and ran up and down the street. And these are homecoming parades. Did the bands play from the two schools? I don't remember that particularly. I remember that the Pep Clubs did floats; they would decorate a float. But I can't remember the band. But they probably did, but I don't know. What about the Helldorado Parade, how long did kids usually participate? Well, I never participated in the Helldorado Parade myself. My cousin, who lived in California, came up here with the Los Angeles Police, a band of some kind when she was in high school and marched in the Helldorado Parade. And you didn't participate and you were right here. 11 Yeah. Well, I didn't belong to anything that got in the parade. Not the band, not the Pep Club, okay. I was in the Pep Club, but the Pep Club didn't get in the Helldorado Parade. At that time the casinos were really big into promoting Las Vegas and so Helldorado was a big promotion for the hotels. So they had some really fancy floats and showgirls on them and famous people. So I don't remember so much about the local people at that time. So you don't remember it being sort of a parade that brought everybody in the city together? I remember it was a big celebration and a lot of people participated in the celebration. I mean you bought your button so that you wouldn't get thrown into jail and that kind of thing. There was a lot of participation from the community, but I don't remember participating in it. Later on my mother became president of the Emblem Club, which was the lady Elks, and so she was really involved. That was much later, though, after I had already married and had children. She was really involved in selling the buttons and in promoting. There's been some photos of her in the newspaper. I think there was one with my youngest daughter and my brother's son all dressed in their western outfits and whatnot. One of the things we want you to do—in a couple of weeks, two or three weeks from now— this is going to be transcribed—you're going to get a copy of it so that you can read through it, make sure that we spelled everything correctly, and if there are things you want to change, you can make small changes in the margin. When you mail it back to us, we would love to have some photographs that we can scan or that you scan at a good resolution and send back to us. So we'll let you know about that. We can do that electronically if you like. My husband loves to do that stuff. 12 Oh, wonderful. So we'll send you a note telling you what DPI and all of that. So a photograph like that with your mom from the newspaper, we would love to have a photograph like that because I don't think I've ever seen anything having to do with the Emblem Club. Oh. Well, they were really active in supporting the Elks with that project. I know she was anyway. Good. Thank you. So getting to Rancho High School itself, I'd like to know some of your favorite classes, some of the favorite teachers there. My memory escapes me. I was always good at math, and so I really enjoyed the math classes. I remember the first name of the teacher, don't remember her last name. Her first name was Virginia. She taught plane geometry. At that time when you were a freshman—and I went to Rancho as a freshman. They don't do that anymore; they have junior high school. So junior high schools were just being built in Las Vegas. And in the area I was you went to elementary school through eighth grade and then you went to high school. So I finished my elementary at Sunrise Acres School, eighth grade graduation. We actually had a graduation ceremony and all that. So I went as a freshman to Rancho. When you were a freshman you took algebra one or general math if you weren't so inclined. But anyhow, I took algebra one. Then my sophomore year I took plane geometry. And then in junior year you took algebra two. And then your senior year you took trigonometry and—what was the other one? It was a combination. I can't remember the other one. Calculus? No, I don't think it was calculus. But anyhow, I took all of that. I did all of that. So I always liked the math teachers. 13 I remember Mr. Miller; he taught psychology. Mr. Swainston, who has a school named after him, he taught government. I really liked government. I was kind of fascinated about the way government works. Those are the things I remember. I remember a Mr. Watts who taught a math class and he wasn't very popular. The kids kind of picked on him in a way. So he was a nerd? I suppose. So they did things to him when he was not in the class where he had stepped out or something. But I thought he was fine. With that kind of a love for math and then you became a dental hygienist. A dental assistant. I can't put that together. Yeah, I know. Your life leads on and just things happen. I didn't plan very much; I just fell into things. And so I would never have dreamt of being a telephone operator, but I needed to work and I needed to support myself and my mother was in California and I couldn't live with her and mooch off her. I couldn't mooch off my brother. Because he wasn't going to have that. So I had to work somewhere. So I worked as a telephone operator. Tell me about that. You worked at long distance? Long distance, yes. So tell me about the boards and all of that. You had a board in front of you that had all these cords. Then there was a panel in front of you that had lights. So you as a customer would call in; a light lights up. You have to plug in your cord. You have a headset on and you answer as the operator. And at that time you could not direct distance dial. So if you wanted to make a long-distance call, you had to call the operator. 14 The rates for making calls changed during different parts of the day. So during the middle of the day it was more expensive than after eight o'clock at night. So when they scheduled operators a lot of times you worked split shift so that you would work during the peak hours, early in the morning, late in the evening. I can tell you when eight clock struck when the rates changed, your board would just light up. People just waited for eight o'clock and then everything would light up. Was calling Reno long distance? Oh, yes. You could call Henderson, though? Yes, you could call Henderson. And I think you could call Boulder City, but probably not Searchlight. It was probably long distance. Yeah, probably long distance. Tell me did most people have telephones at that time? No. Well, maybe by the time I was operator most people did. I remember earlier when I was maybe eleven or twelve years old we didn't have a phone. I know my father had a phone and his phone number was like eight four seven six J and it was a party line and maybe four people on the party line. And so you never knew who was listening in to your calls. And if you wanted to use the phone and somebody was already on it, why, then you had to wait until they got off and hope they didn't hog the phone too much. But I know that there was a time when we didn't have a phone because my stepfather had a stroke and we didn't have a phone and I can remember running down the street. There was a pay phone down the street in the neighborhood. Just on the corner. 15 So I ran down the street and dialed the operator. I told her we needed an ambulance. And my brother came running up with a dime because he thought we needed a dime to make a call. [Pause in recording] We were talking about phones. Oh, you were telling me about your father had gotten sick and you had to use the phone on the corner. Yeah, we had to run down to the corner to get the operator to call for the ambulance. He survived and all that. Good. How long did it take the ambulance to get there? I don't think too long. It didn't seem like it was very long; I don't remember being distressed about that or anything. Certainly enough time that he was saved anyway. So who did the painting? Actually it's a photo. Is it really? If you look at it closely, it's a group of pieces of paper put together. My husband did that. Oh, my goodness, that is beautiful. Let me get that with the camera since I have no business talking about it. Now, we actually took a photo of my husband by himself and we took a photo of me by myself, just looking sideways. Then he put them together and created that. That is a series of I think eight and a half by eleven, maybe, sheets of paper. There's maybe twelve pieces of paper that are all together. Beautiful. He has done another one—he's done several. But we have another one that's a collage of pictures of us from when we were very young all the way up to now. 16 When we get to your book it's going to be beautiful; I just know it. So also about early Las Vegas—kids worked. You went to school. Did kids actually date? Everybody seems to talk about kids being in groups doing everything, going to football games, everything. I dated. I had a boyfriend that I went steady with and his name was David. He lives up in Cedar City now. I dated a few guys, not too many. But he and I went steady for about a year. We went to prom and we went to movies. Tell me about the prom. Well, you had to go find a dress. And where did you go shopping? Well, the shops were downtown on Fremont Street. And some of those were? Lerner s was one. Oh, jeez. Ronzone's. Boy, that's the only ones I can remember right now. There was a little shop, but I didn't really get a dress there, but there was a clothing store that was down near the post office that was called KKK. Nobody told me about KKK. KKK. And I don't know if that's Ku Klux Klan. What did that stand for? That was my next question. I think it was like K and K and K or something like that. But it was on Third Street. The way I remember it, it was on Third Street right across from the post office in that area there. So near the Lady Luck? Isn't there a restaurant called George's? Triple George. 17 Triple George, yeah. I think it would be over in there somewhere, in that area there. I see. So where did you get your prom dress? I don t remember. I don t honestly remember. But the senior prom is the one I remember more than anything because I bought a dress that had spaghetti straps, so your arms were bare and your bodice was bare, not showing your cleavage, but it was a little higher. It wasn't a long dress; it went down below the knee, but it was not all the way to the floor. Oh, that sounds beautiful. But then the practice was to go and buy cloth shoes and have them dyed to match the color of your dress. There was a place called C.H. Bakers that you could do that. And you could also get purses, little clutch purses and have it dyed, too, so your shoes and your purse and your dress matched. I don't know if they do that anymore. What about after the prom, did you go to a casino? We went to a show I think. But I honestly don't remember where it was. But that would be a common thing to do would be to go out. We didn't rent limousines. At least I didn't anyway. There may have been somebody. The kids at Rancho to a great extent were in middle- and lower-class economic, so I don't remember being too extravagant. But I love that everybody worked. Almost everybody I've interviewed had a job. Yes. I love that. I think it teaches so much. And I think it does. But high school is expensive. It can be expensive. If you start belonging to clubs and different things. Even the sports, why, you wanted your letter jacket or something like that, they cost a lot of money, and maybe you're traveling a little bit and you have to have some pocket money to do that. My mother didn't have the money to pay for that kind of thing. She 18 was just making enough money to pay the expenses for the house. We lived comfortably. I can't say that I ever wanted particularly, but we were frugal. So working was really a necessity if you wanted to have anything extra. So I could provide my own clothing; she didn't have to do that anymore, and my own entertainment. So I think that helped out. My brother worked, too. He worked at a meat market, Bernard's Meat Market, which was I think on Ogden around maybe Seventh or Eighth Street, something like that. So he worked there. I m not really sure exactly he did when he was there, but I know eventually he became a butcher. So he did work as a butcher for a long time. Anyhow, I think that it was just a necessity. You just didn't have that much money or anything. So how long were you at the phone company? Not very long. Okay. What happened? Well, I decided that I might want to go back to school and become a dental hygienist, which would involve going to college. I thought, well, if I'm going to do that, I'm going to need more money than I'm making right now. The phone company, if I remember right, I made a dollar forty-five an hour. I worked at the theater; the first money I made was ninety cents an hour. Then I got a big pay raise and it was ninety-five cents an hour. By the time I left there, after a couple of years I think I made a dollar, a dollar five an hour as a cashier. So when I went to work at the phone company it was like a dollar forty-five, a dollar fifty, something like that. But then if I went to the Test Site as a clerk, then I could make over two dollars an hour. Plus you got five dollars a day per diem, three dollars of which you spent getting on the bus to get out there and back. 19 So their bus, you had to pay? Yes. Yeah, you paid a fee for the bus. But since they gave it to you as a per diem. Yeah, they give it to you as a per diem. So the five dollars I spent on the bus and lunch out there because they had a dining hall. But still, the two dollars an hour you didn't have to spend. Right. So the theory was that I was going to make all this money and I was going to manage to someday go to college and become a dental hygienist. And then I met my husband, so all of that went by the wayside. Was he working at the Test Site? He wasn't. He had, but he was working in town. He's a construction electrician, and so he was working in town. We got married in January of 1964, so that was only like a year and a half out of high school. Oh, that's right. So how long were you at the Test Site? I think about three or four months. What did you do there? I worked at the main gate and I was a clerk. We worked in what's called