Transcript of interview with Earl A. Evans by Lance Malone, March 15, 1981

UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. i An Interview with Earl A. Evans, Jr. An Oral History Conducted by Lance Malone Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. iv Abstract On March 15, 1981 Lance Malone interviewed Sears Roebuck Division Manager, Earl A. Evans, Jr., (born March 3rd, 1935 in Alhambra, California) in Las Vegas, Nevada. This interview covers the history of Nevada and Mr. Evans’s life. During the interview, Mr. Evans discusses education, sports, employment, the weather and the railroad in Las Vegas. He also discusses transportation, recreation, community involvement, raising a family in Las Vegas, the development of Fremont and the Strip, and religious activities. Mr. Evans served as a Bishop for the LDS Church in Las Vegas and in regards to education, he served on the Clark County School Board. UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 1 The informant is Earl Evans. The date is March 15th, 1981 at 9:00 P.M. The place is 4221 San Joaquin, Las Vegas, Nevada. The collector is Lance Malone, 6255 West Tropicana, Las Vegas, Nevada. Could I have your full name and present address? Earl A. Evans, Jr., 4221 San Joaquin, Las Vegas, Nevada. And the place and date of birth? March 3rd, 1935. Alhambra, California. How many members do you have in your family? There’s nine members in the family. Mr. Evans since you were born in California what made you decide on moving to Las Vegas? I came to Las Vegas in 1941 with my parents and my father received a job out at Basic Magnesium Plant during the war. We lived in, moved into Las Vegas and lived in a motor court down around the, where Las Vegas Boulevard and Main Street come together, where the old Round Up Drive-In used to be, years ago. I went to school at that time, down at Fifth Street Grammar School; walked all the way down there, from that area, and dad commuted from that area out to Henderson until we were able to move into the town site housing. Then we lived we lived out there for a few years, up to 1945. I went to school at the schools out in Henderson, and when the war was over in ’45, we moved back into Las Vegas and lived on the Mayfair Subdivision. I attended there the Mayfair Grade School, after I went through the fourth grade at Mayfair I went—then attended the Fifth Street Grammar School and graduated there in 1949. Had some of the teachers around there, Jay Jeffers at that time in grade school and ah, Mr. Flack—a few teachers have been around, D. G. Keller, was a principal at one time and K O UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 2 Knudson was the principal at that school that I was at. In 1949, dad decided to go into real estate and we moved down in North Las Vegas and he opened up an office that he and my mom worked in for many years and then at that time I graduated in ’49 from grade school and went to Las Vegas High School for four years. I played basketball and for three years and lettered in basketball and graduated in 1953. In the commuting to school from North Las Vegas we—at that time the City Transit Company would sell a monthly fare and then we’d just ride the bus to school and back home again. Traveling through the Arrowhead Acres area, making pickups and then going back up Las Vegas Boulevard, which is Las Vegas Boulevard now, which was Fifth Street School, or Fifth Street, then, and we would then get off about Fremont and Fifth Street and walk down to Las Vegas High School. Those areas, at that time it was very sparsely populated going up Fifth Street. That was the Old Ranch swimming hole at that time, when I was in high school and course Bunker Brother’s Mortuary wasn’t there. That was an Old Ranch, Stewarts Ranch was down just below that, where the mausoleum is right now—very sparse in that particular area. There used to be an old hobo village back in behind the Old Ranch swimming hole. The hobos would come into town and they had a, just kind of a camping area there that we would take chances as young kids sometimes going through and hoping that we could take a shortcut to certain areas. When I graduated from high school in 1953, I had applied to BYU and attended BYU for that first year, became interested in the LDS Church and joined the church, became a convert to that religion in 1954. I completed my year of school, my first year and went back my second year and decided I would like to go on a mission; met a young lady from Portland, Oregon, Joanne Smith, who, we fell in love and got engaged. And even at that decided to go on a mission and eventually received a mission call in August of ’55, to go to the Central States Mission, which made up Missouri and Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. I spent two years UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 3 in the mission field serving the Lord and came back in August of 1957. My wife waited for me those two years and we set a date, September 18th, and were married in the Salt Lake Temple. We had about a weekend between the time we were married, a week, to a week and a half when I had to start school, in the latter part of September. So we had a short honeymoon and went to Lake Tahoe and over to California and up the coast highway to Portland to the reception and then after the reception drove back to Provo, Utah, and attended another two years at BYU. Through that period of time, those two years, we lived in a ward that had young couples and were very active in basketball and organizations and church. Then when we graduated in ’59, when I graduated, we moved back to Las Vegas and I found a job at Sears Roebuck and Company. That was in July 31st, of ’55 and thought I would just stay with the company for a while and decided they had a pretty good program and stayed with them at that store from ’59 to ’65 when they opened a new store out on the Boulevard. Hm. Yes. And I’ve been working at the Boulevard store since 1965 until today. Those times when we went out to the Boulevard store, Desert Inn wasn’t even a paved road, going east and west and since that time there’s been a great development. I’ve seen a great development change in the whole community. When we lived on Spencer Street, which actually was Eighteenth Street in the Mayfair area, we’d go over from there to Charleston Boulevard and on Charleston Boulevard from where Charleston intersects to Fremont Street. Then from there going west until you hit about where the Huntridge area was, it was all desert. As kids we used to go out there and play in the deserts and we were out there when the big machinery, aircrew and machinery came out there and knocked everything down, leveled it out and started building the shopping centers that are in existence right there, today. The old dump, as I remember it years ago, is we’d go out there UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 4 and we’d take our bb guns, we’d go out on the dirt roads on our bicycles and hunt through the garbage there and see what we could find and collect as kids. Mm—Hm. But today that’s just above, K O Knudson’s Junior High School and there’s a city park there on Eastern and Saint Louis. So those years, we used to come from over on Spencer Street or Eighteenth and come across the desert into that dump area. There’s been many people have dug on the side of the hill before they made the park and just to try and find relics of what was in that dump area at that time. Going back to when we first came to town, Fremont Street was lined with cottonwood trees as they would pollinate in the summertime, the cotton would blow all over. It’d be just like being in the snow country, almost. Yes. They wasn’t paved, many of the streets weren’t paved and when we moved down on Spencer Street that street wasn’t paved for many years. It was a desert right in front of us, we used to go out and play and have a lot of fun and then these housing developments came and they would close in and we didn’t have as many places to hunt and roam and shoot guns and whatnot. Mr. Evans how has the gaming industry grown since you’ve been here? As I remember the resort areas when we first moved here. Course there were the hotels on the Strip and then the Strip was a very sparsely populated area. I remember the El Rancho Vegas, which has burnt down since then, the Last Frontier Hotel and the Flamingo Hotel. Yes. ‘Course what they had Downtown were the main casinos and gambling halls, which weren’t the extravagant things that we have today. But in those years out on the Strip, as I remember, another resort that came up, I think was—As I remember it was called the Bingo Palace or some name UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 5 like that later it was, as I remember, it was turned into the Thunderbird Hotel, which now is ah, Silver City, I believe is what it’s called today. And these have all built up, ah, the Sands Hotel, Desert Inn, since I was a kid. We used to, years ago, in high school, go to these hotels and they were very eager to let the young people come out to those hotels and the late show on dates from the junior prom or the senior prom or it was reversed. We’d be able to see a floor show, with the real good talent, and only pay, maybe $5.00 to $6.00 for a couple, and it was a real entertaining evening. Years ago, we used to have entertainment come to the Strip to the Wildcat Lair that was on Fourth Street and Stewart, which is now made into a parking lot. We would have Vic Damone, many big names that would come out in between the 8 o’clock dinner show and the late 11 o’clock show and perform for us at our intermission at those dances. And we were able to see many great name people without having to pay any more than the admission to go to the dance, whether you went stag or whether you took a date. Those were very interesting times, ah, you got to meet some of those people and I think it was more friendly and informal, the atmosphere in the gaming area in those particular days. It’s grown to be more of a computerized industry without too much feeling for people or individuals. That’s right. When my junior—sophomore year, I guess, after my sophomore year in high school, I was able to mingle with some people at the Last Frontier Hotel. Mr. Bob Cannon, who was the hotel manager, and also my neighbor, who I babysat for asked if I wanted a job. And I was able to go out there and be a lifeguard for that summer, which was a very interesting experience to meet people from all over the country who would come out. A lot of people I met there that would be there for a period of time, six weeks at a time, which was the residency for divorces, I met a lot of people there for divorces. People who were connecting with show people would come into the UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 6 area and come out to the pool there, and to be able to meet some of those people or the people, their backup people that you talk to. I met some of the people who worked in the hotel, very nice people, ah, people who traveled around and ended up here in Las Vegas. And all of us, I think Las Vegas is a melting pot of all of the United States and a lot of many, many nations that we have. So we have a diverse community, where a community in the Midwest may have populated that over a period of many, many generations of the same type of people. Our town has grown up for generations of people from all over the country. And now—when I came here into Vegas in ’45 and went to Mayfair, I knew a lot of the people. Bobby Lavelle and his parent and the Barretts, the Donderos, families, we didn’t have many people who were born in Las Vegas and most of the people here had not been born here. I think Bobby Lavelle was born here and he was one of the first people I knew that was born in Las Vegas and that was ’45 when I first met him. Now our children, all of our children but one child was born in Las Vegas. And almost everyone you meet has been born in Las Vegas, that is going to school here now, or a great percentage of the students. What type of job interviews were available to students? There seemed to be quite a few summer jobs, if you looked for them and you were able to be old enough to be hired. And at that time I was tall and skinny and looked a little older than I was. At thirteen I wanted to get a job and you had to be fourteen and I walked the streets up and down and I stopped at the Las Vegas sign and I stopped at the telegraph company and every time I’d tell ‘em how old I was that kind of ended the interview. But they seemed to want to hire people, looking for people who wanted to work hard. I had a paper route. I made pretty good money at that time I think, for having about a hundred and thirty-six papers. Course a paper maybe, a big paper may be twenty pages at that time and now a big paper is maybe eighty pages. So there was UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 7 a difference in how many papers you could have and how big of a route you could run on a bicycle. We, as I remember in those days, I could make sometimes forty-eight dollars a month. I had a job that I mentioned, with the Last Frontier Hotel. The pay wasn’t that good, the hours were fairly long, but it was enjoyable, it was a good experience that I had. I used to work a lot in the summer with my father in real estate. And the part where he learned how to use a surveying transit and then he would go out and survey land that he had bought or for other people to sell into smaller parcels. And we would send a, set the transit down and run a line and then we would go and clear the mesquite bush, chop it down, so we could run a transit line straight through from one corner to another corner. So that we could find the corners as they were supposed to be on a map, so if someone was buying that they would have true location of the land that they had. One year I worked in the office, my folks’ office, and met with people and took payments in on money and made deposits for him and ran errands, different odds and ends, to learn that part of the business. After I’d been to school my first year in college I came back and I got a job at the Railway Express. At that time it was managed by Ardeen Samson, who is now the manager of the Ensign Federal Credit Union, and he hired me at the time that the railroads, there was a trucking strike and the railroad, everything was being shipped by the railway. I started out four o’clock in the morning and we would unload the train as it came in each morning, and then sort it out into routes. The next week I’d work eight o’clock and on a delivery truck. Load that truck and send you out, you had to learn the route and the town and the streets without any prior assignment, which was interesting for a week. Then, the next week I’d run a work at two o’clock to eleven o’clock, meet the evening train and unload that train. What was the pay? UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 8 I really don’t remember how much the pay scale was at that time. It must have been a dollar fifty or so, two dollars. It was a union—Railway Express was unionized. I went in as not having to join the union at that particular time. But that experience was invaluable to me later on. Because after I was married and back up to BYU, my wife had graduated and she had a degree and was teaching. And I had two or three part-time jobs and it’s very hard to get a job up in a college town that pays any money. Because there’s so many people there willing to work. And most of the jobs, if they paid anything was about, the highest was about a dollar an hour. I worked construction, cement construction for a while and then I worked—another fellow and I worked for a farmer, a dollar an hour. He’d work eight to ten, twelve hours a day. And finally I, one prior to Christmas, I went down to Railway Express and told the fellow I had experience in Las Vegas and he knew Ardeen Samson, the manager down here. And he was gonna need some help for vacation and for Christmas help and I was able to hire on and I was getting two, two-fifty an hour, almost three dollars an hour in that job, which was a real high paying job, it really helped out to meet our expenses of living there. Because we were gonna have a child that coming August and I really enjoyed that experience to have that job. Then after that I came back into Las Vegas, started as Sears, I started at Sears at that time it was sixty dollars a week and a one percent commission on the sales that you had. And at that time the starting pay was, is quite a bit lower than it is today. And everything of course has improved, your cost of living has gone up and your pay scale has gone up and having to keep up with that cost of living. How was the weather? How was it different? Or was it about the same, or was it hotter or was it colder? The weather here is always been hot but it’s always been dry, and I’ve seen a change in the weather with the buildup of the population. And I think anyone that’s been here will notice that, UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 9 that the humidity is higher. We have humidity as high as thirty-three percent now. And years ago, your humidity was very lucky to get up to twelve and fifteen percent, if it got that high. Because it was no other source of evaporation in the Valley. Now we have so many golf courses, we have so many lawns and trees and everything that I think that humidity is built. But there’s a definite difference here in the climate. If you go down right now, somewhere in California for a couple of weeks and come back to Vegas, you’ll know the difference. Because you’ll be, your throat will be dry again. That’s the first thing people notice here. But I can remember it being windy, us driving back into Las Vegas from Henderson when we were moving. We had a ‘35 Chevrolet and mom was driving in one day, we loaded up the trailer we rented and the wind was blowing and it was so gusty that it almost moved the whole car and trailer off the road. And that was the old two-lane highway between Las Vegas and Henderson, which then, eleven miles between the two areas seemed like—as a kid, seemed like it was, took a couple hours to get there. So there’s been a—there’s been a dramatic change in the community. And I think the community has been good for people who have settled here and have lived here throughout their lives and they’ve been able to invest and been able to meet people as they come in. How was transportation? How was it available? Well, transportation when I was in early school—I went to school from Mayfair up through grade school at Fifth Street by bicycle; either that or you—or we walked. There was no type of bus? There was no bus. The school district did not do any busing at all. Any busing that was done was done through the local transit system. They had certain areas and kids would go from maybe a mile or two miles to gather at a place where that bus made a regular run, and it would load up, with kids going to school. There was a run from Blue Diamond and Jean area, that the school UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 10 district ran a bus in and I think the school district or the government ran a bus in from Nellis Air Force Base. We’d have people come in from there. Other than that I can’t remember too many buses coming in to high school. That’s where the buses mainly came from, from the high school or the grade school area, you either, someone took you there or you all got together and combined for rides at different times or you walked or you rode your bike, or however you could get into school. What was, you know, recreational wise, for a high school student or a college student, what did they do most? Well, you didn’t have any college students here at the time I was here. We didn’t have a university. In fact, when I graduated there was only one high school in the Valley and that was Las Vegas High School. You had Boulder City and you had Henderson. But other than that the metropolitan area we have now, there was no other high school. And I think at fifty-five it was Rancho High School opened up and then after that it was Western and I really don’t know what year Gorman opened up. I wasn’t here at the time. But that’s when the high school areas started expanded, around those years and it started growing. We didn’t really have too much, there wasn’t—there was some little league, course there was no volleyball or soccer ball that they have right now. We had football and we had basketball and we had track and baseball in high school, for activities. There weren’t any organized girl sports at that time. Ah, some boys played tennis but not many. There wasn’t much in the way of golf. Jerry Belt was in school at the same time I was. He was at the pro municipal golf course and he learned from Mr. Crosses band teacher, how to play golf. At that stage in my life, golf and tennis were two sports that I wasn’t familiar with and I wasn’t interested in. But our sports that I would like to have, if I’d known about or it had been a sport that was looked upon like basketball and football were, maybe I would have been UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 11 more interested and done more in those sports. Maybe even something in soccer or even volleyball. Volleyball’s a sport now that could be a very good sport in high school but only the girls play it and the boys would—if they didn’t look at it as a sissy sport they would found out it is a very masculine and hard sport to be able to be in-depth in and be good. We had movie theatres here, the Huntridge, the El Portal, the Fremont came later. There was a movie theatre in Sixth or Second Street and I can’t remember the name of it right now. That’s the movies we had in town at that time. We could go to the hotels, the shows and they were kind to the youth that were out there that wasn’t that much trouble. They catered to the youth a little bit. We didn’t—I guess most of us really didn’t give ‘em any trouble out there. I guess you always have trouble at different times and in any area of life. In that area there really wasn’t much to do. We would go or we might have gatherings at different people’s houses. You drove around up and down Fremont. Driving on Fremont in those days was more prevalent and easier and a lot of fun in those days than maybe more than it is today, I don’t know. I don’t know how the kids do that. I know my kids wouldn’t go up and down Fremont but Fremont’s gotten to be such a small street and so crowded that it’s really not interesting to go up and down Fremont anymore. So having fun in those days was basically the same as now, really not too much to do for the high school or college student? That’s true that my background was not very religious at that time when I was in high school. Now other people who were of different faiths and particularly the LDS faith, had mutual activities that kept them busy, once during the week. They’d put on road shows and they’d have basketball games, competitions, that kept them doing something else, that I didn’t have at that chance in my life. And my children didn’t have that opportunity since we’ve been in Las Vegas, to involve themselves in those activities, and the church has helped us as a religious group to be UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 12 involved in things that are good and uplifting, sports-wise as well as cultural plays, that the church puts on, participating in dance festivals that have been out through the region and in the community. So the church provides something that I didn’t have when I was a youth. Now you’re a Bishop of a Latter-day Saints Church, correct? Yes. I was ordained a Bishop a year and a half ago. And I’ve had the experience out here in the twelfth ward of working with people and same respect of Dan Crane, who was my Bishop when I went on my mission. He interviewed me and I went on a mission for the first ward. How prevalent was the use of drugs among the youth in the ‘fifties as opposed to the seventies? In the fifties I went to high school and started high school in ’49 in those times, from ’49 to ’53, drugs were available and there were people who participated in them but in the high school, Las Vegas High had a student body of maybe two thousand students at the most, there wasn’t that many that participated in it. Those people were the ones that were looked down upon more than anything else. Then you had the people who drank that weren’t as bad, possibly, in relationship to the drugs. And then those people who didn’t probably partake of any of those, ah, items. The—as I remember, at that particular time, there was a relatively small group of people who were known to participate in drugs. There was drug problems in high school at that time. Nothing to the magnitude that there is today. Today, drugs, and the youth in school—those people who take drugs really aren’t looked upon in a harsh manner by their fellow students, not any more so than the person that drinks. So I think there’s a greater temptation for youth, a greater opportunity for them to get involved than there was at that time, because of the attitude of the general populous of the United States, as well as our own community. People rationalize that it’s, that it doesn’t hurt that much. But if they did any studying or looked around then they would UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 13 find that it did create a problem. In delinquency, in those days, kids got involved in things that they shouldn’t—I remember some group of kids that broke into a railroad car and took some stuff out. Some other kids, it was kind of a joke—went down in top hats, trench coats, violin cases, and different things and went to a bank and asked them for the counter checks, and then left. And that created a—quite a stir. Because it was a bank and they thought it was, someone was robbing it and things like that. Mm-hm. Ah, there were fights and things but there weren’t the degree of problems and delinquency you have today, where we just have in the paper, where a youth for no really apparent great reason stabbed another youth. The value of a life is very little in a lot of people’s minds, today, as opposed to it was in the fifties and even earlier than that. People don’t have much of a goal or don’t have any respect for life. Mr. Evans, what kind of financial challenges did you have in your—in your early years, as opposed to today? As I remember in my childhood, one of the first things that I heard, overheard my parents talk about that seemed to make any serious impression on me was the time during the Second World War. We would have a sticker on our window, as we’d travel back and forth, as we lived in Henderson, we’d have to come into Las Vegas to buy groceries, and the Safeway Store on Second Street just down from the Golden Nugget was where we’d go. And every Saturday I’d come with my mom and it was an all-day thing of shopping. Well, in those days, they had stamps for different things, sugar, gasoline stamps, they call ‘em rationing stamps and I don’t remember what all they were, being that young. But I remember the conversation my parents had one time with another couple in the house, and evidently I was supposed to be in bed and I overheard it. UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 14 They were talking about that they didn’t have any stamps for anymore gas or they didn’t have stamps sugar and they were talking about someone might have enough stamps here and they didn’t need them. So they were trading the stamps back and forth. Well, as a kid, you don’t think about where the money comes from but then when you hear about that difficulty because you use sugar on cereal or whatever you use sugar for then that means something to you. And you can equate it with something. Mm-hm. Also they’d have a sticker on the windshield that would say, “Is this trip really necessary?” Because you didn’t want to wear their tires out, that you had on your car. I see. Because all that rubber and everything needed to go to the war effort. Whether you find, and I don’t really remember anything significant in my life then until I was married again, ah, on the financial part. Nothing really sticks out in my mind until we’re over here and working at Sears at Fremont and Sixth Street. And early sixties, about sixty-two, we had a recession and we had overbuilt in apartments and houses, in many cases it was mostly apartments. And we had a recession, and many of the people that were building went bankrupt or they took the money out of it and left town and some of these buildings stayed empty for a year or two, three years, before there was enough employment in Las Vegas to fill those back up. And of course all the businesses felt that. We felt that, as we’d been feeling the gas crunch, when it first hit us and all the businesses felt it and everyone felt it in the pocketbook and the gas lines. And then as we have experienced it this last year of the recession, we’ve all of the families with the recession and the continued inflation, even though we have a recession, has hurt everybody. Mm-hm. UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 15 With the paycheck not going as far as it used to, you cut back on the power bill. I remember we made a real extreme effort when these prices were going up on power to cut back on kilowatt hours. So we would use less kilowatt-hours one month as opposed to the last month but we were paying more in the bill. Because the price was going up so fast that you couldn’t keep up with it. Mm. It’s a very devastating thing, I think, to an individual and it happened to everyone in the community—if you saved fifteen-kilowatt hours and the month before you paid seventy dollars and this next month you paid eighty, you know, how can you save on something and then have to pay more for it? Yes. That’s a real crisis, and you’re having that even today. There’s real problems in our world and we need to realize that and we need to do something about it. What has your community involvement been? Well, since we’ve come back to Las Vegas, being married and settling down and starting to raise a family—I had been called to work in a couple Bishop bricks. And in those areas I’ve been active in scouting and I think most of those years up through right now in some way as a committee man or a scout master on a stake level at one time, working as a chairman of a committee. Different functions there have been related in the scouting program or exploring program, most of my life here in Las Vegas, my adult life. I’ve worked with, in conjunction with Sears on the United Way program for many years now, running our own United Way program with the company. And then two years as a loaned executive from Sears to the United Way, going out into community and holding meetings and helping other businesses raise money. UNLV University Libraries Earl A. Evans, Jr. 16 I see on your wall that you do have a number of awards and one that stands out in my mind is Sears Citizen of the Year Award. How did you come upon that? They were looking for a—end of each year they look for a citizen of the year award that they can give out in the company. And each unit nominates someone and the one—people from those units are sent into our group area and then from the group area to the territory and we’re in the pacific coast territory, which has bee