Mary Leo interview, February 27, 1980: transcript

UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 1 An Interview with Mary Leo An Oral History Conducted by Rafael Reyes-Spindola 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 Mary Leo 2 © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2020 UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 3 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 Mary Leo 4 Abstract On February 27, 1980, Rafael Reyes-Spindola interviewed Mary Leo (b. Mary Susanne Kaime Leo in 1949 in Santa Barbara, California) about her life growing up in the Las Vegas Valley and her varied career path. Leo, having moved to Las Vegas as a toddler, talks about what the city was like when she arrived, the landscape, schooling and local life in general. She remembers the construction of the University of Las Vegas, Nevada and the growth of the city and population. Through her anecdotes, Leo shares the local attitude towards the Strip that Las Vegans develop as a result of being raised in the city and focuses the beginning half of her interview on life outside of the Strip. The interviewer and Leo move their conversation towards her career path, beginning in a coffee shop at the Riviera Hotel & Casino, her time in the travel industry, as a Las Vegas showgirl in the famed Folies Bergere show, her return to the Riviera as the director of sales and catering, and the legacy she hopes to leave behind with her career. UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 5 (Telephone rings). Do you mind? Sure. Hello? (Hangs up). (Unintelligible) little kids call and they say (unintelligible) the wind blows, do you? The wind blows hard, do you? And this whistle, is pee pee there? You get younger (laughs). Okay. Here we are. Susanne and I, Rafael. Susanne being the informant. That’s Susanne, Mary Susanne Kaime Leo. Right? Mm-hmm. Okay. This is February 27th, 1980. And it’s 9:48, this precise moment. P.M. P.M. P.M. With a sip of wine here. The place is 4650 Koval Lane, 89109. And the collector is Rafael Reyes-Spindola Becerra. The project is Local History, Project Eleven, Oral Interview Life of Las Vegas. Okay, Susanne, I’m interviewing because I think you’re very—. First of all, Las Vegan. Second of all, I think I look up to you, you’ve had most of the jobs I’m sort of awing at this moment. You seem to be a very worldly person that can talk to people and they know how you feel at that time and that gives them a feeling of security. Because if you don’t like these people, they can see it right away. And I think that’s a good quality in a person because, first of all, you want to know exactly where you’re at when you’re dealing with someone. Okay. And I would like to, first of all, ask you a couple of questions. Like where you were born, how long you’ve lived in Las Vegas, and gradually we’ll go up into what you’ve done until now. Okay? All right. UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 6 Okay. So far I’ve said three words and you’ve been going for ten minutes. (Laughs). That’s right. Hopefully we’ll be able to edit this thing, take out what we don’t want. But all of this is historical memoralia (laughs) in the event. (Laughs). Memoralia. Memoralia, thank you. Well I was born January 9th in Santa Barbara, California. It was the last time it snowed on the beach in Santa Barbara. It was thirty one years ago. Remind me of (unintelligible). Yeah, I was present but I was not really aware of it, of what was going on. That’s true. It must be an omen of some sort. Go ahead, please. (Laughs) What’s the next question? Tell me about yourself. Santa Barbara, California. Mm-hmm. There’s a nice scrapbook full of pictures of me goofing around on the beach. And when I was about three years old we moved to Las Vegas. We lived at the, at that time, Twin Lakes. Which is now Lorenzi Park. It was a place where all the movie stars stayed. People that would come into town, entertainers that would come into town, would rent that hotel by the week. And it was more like, oh I don’t know what you would compare it with now. Maybe condominiums. Something like that. They had a big swimming pool and they had a pond. And a lot of people from Las Vegas lived up there but it was a combination of like a hotel, or a weekly, monthly UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 7 kind of rental place. So we lived up there, but there were a lot of people from the Strip that lived there too. And now it seems like it’s really far across town but at that time there was no traffic. My dad was in construction and so it was a perfect place to live. It was great for me. They had ducks in the pond and so I would go feed the ducks. I don’t remember much from back then, I was young young. Four or five years old. From there we rented a little tiny house out Russell Road. That time the airport wasn’t out there or anything, so it was miles and miles and miles away from anything else in the valley. The lady that we rented from had been here for about forty years. She was really an interesting character. She had collections of bottles that had been left out in the desert and they were all, they had all changed colors. And she also collected minerals. She had a great collection in her bedroom closet of all these different kinds of rocks. And we would all go, the best thing you could do when you were a kid was go in her closet and she would turn on the ultraviolet lights and show all the different kinds of colors coming out of the rock collections. Great lady. I mean just amazing. She had been here for years and years. At that time we didn’t have any horses. We had a neighbor that lived—our nearest neighbor was probably like—besides the three little houses that we, well, we rented one. The nearest neighbor was probably, oh two miles away. But they had horses and sheep and ducks and dogs. They had a regular old farm so we would always go down there and go horseback riding. It was, being raised in Las Vegas at that time, was like being raised in a little community. A little ranch community. A desert ranch community. (Laughs) I remember my little brother, who is six years younger than I, we used to just kind of hangout in the desert when we were kids andplay Indians and cowboys and that kind of stuff. And for a real treat, my brother would go out and collect scorpions. They would go on scorpion hunts and they would get those big old mason jars and go out. In the desert there, you know, scraps of paper and old cardboard boxes that have UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 8 been mashed down, weather had beaten them. You would lift one of those up in the summertime, there would be a big old scorpion under there. You know, a good old two incher. You know the big scorpions are not as poisonous as the little, tiny baby scorpions. The venom is not quite so bad. But all those kids would collect scorpions and come home with scorpions and horned toads. I used to have boxes full of horned toads. You know if you flip a horned toad over and you rub his stomach, he’ll just kind of stiffen up into a board. Have you ever had a horned toad? No. Oh, you should see one. They’re really kind of cute. (Laughs). Have you seen one? (Laughs) No. (Laughs) The top of them is like a dinosaur or very lizard-y. They’ve got their little heads, have got little flat heads with little horns. And their eyes are on top of their horns and they move them around like this? No, wrong. That’s something else. That’s a praying mantis or something. (Laughs) This is a different creature, it’s like a lizard. Only it’s a flat lizard. The bottom of them are all white and really soft. And the top of them looks like camouflage. They’re gray and brown and different colors and they blend in with the rocks in the desert. I’ve never seen one. And they spit blood. I don’t remember whether the blood comes out of their eyes or it comes through—yes, I think it comes out of their eyes. Did you, by any chance—I take it you were about fifteen years old at this time. Oh, no. Growing up I was, all the time I remember being four or five and then I remember UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 9 being—living in the valley. Well if your brother was six years younger and he was out collecting scorpions. I hope he was old enough to walk (laughs). (Laughs) Yes, he was old enough to walk. I’m really going back a lot of years then ’cause this is—yes, I guess I jumped ahead quite a bit. But it doesn’t really matter. Okay, it doesn’t matter. It was all the same kind of life that we had, because we lived in that house when my brother was born. That little, tiny like three room house. Well it must have been. Yes. The wind used to blow so strong out there that I used to think I was going to be like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I would lay there at night and the walls would shake. Honest to God, you would think the house was going to go completely because it was completely unprotected out there. There were no trees, there were no other houses or anything and these were very small. You mentioned that hotel when you were describing Las Vegas. Did you feel anything of hotels that you were going to end up working for a restaurant and hotels when you grow up? At that age. Definitely not. When you grew up in Las Vegas, you didn’t really pay attention to the Strip at all. I mean, it just wasn’t part of your existence. We used to, when I got older, we would go to church and we would go to the Sahara Hotel to the brunch. We would go out and watch airplanes coming into Alamo. And that was your only contact with the Strip. I don’t remember any of the kids that I grew up with ever thinking anything about that Strip being there. It was not a part of our existence. We had our horses and our parents and our school and all of those things that are UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 10 important to us. Mm-hmm. And that other thing was not important. Well are there other friends of yours in the hotel business now? No, not from back then. I didn’t have a lot of friends because we lived so far away. There was no real pocket of civilization. It was until I got to elementary school, I didn’t have very many friends. But most of the friends that I had, the girls that I know, are married and they have kids and their husbands are doing a variety of things. One of my very best friends now, I went to kindergarten with, and her husband went to first grade, he was like one year ahead of us. And she got married. We went through grade school and high school together, and they got married right out of high school. He’s a plumber and she just began working. Her kids are now like twelve, ten and twelve, something like that, or eight and twelve. And she just began working as a dental assistant. So, I mean, the people that grew up here largely were unaffected by the hotels. Interesting. Yes, I mean, in those days. Now there are younger people. See, now you have to also realize that when I grew up we didn’t have the university. I remember when they built Frazier Hall. And we thought that was fantastic. We were going to have a university. And when you go into that little tiny building to enroll and then where the business offices are, that was our university. That’s all we had. And we thought it was the greatest. We never thought about having a university library and having all those buildings and having our own basketball team, or those things. When you were a student here, you thought of going to Reno. Mm. So you didn’t have the hotel administration school. You didn’t have the benefit of all the UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 11 teachers, the people who would come in and teach classes for the hotels. So I mean that adds a lot. Now, younger people, people that are six or seven years younger than Ihad the benefit of the blossoming of the hotel administration school. And they could learn a little bit about the Strip and that made them think about jobs on the Strip. But we didn’t have that benefit. Yes, I imagine a lot of people were brought in from the outside to (unintelligible) hotels. You think? Oh, yes. See, the hotels have been going on for years and years and years and years. Everybody that is in Las Vegas now was brought in for some reason or another. In my lifetime, you have to remember that when I moved here there were two hotels here. Or three. And that’s in a thirty year time span. So Las Vegas is very new and anybody that is an old timer, unless they were a desert rat, was brought in or moved here to serve some function and to build some sort of—their spot in the community. All the doctors have come in. Everybody is imported and so, of course, all the hotel people are imported too, from one place or another. And there are some great stories about where these hotel people have come from. I mean really interesting. Bob Paluzzi was sales manager for Caesars Palace. He was a golf pro, and it will surprise you to learn where these people have come from. And you’ll find some people that are really young. Really smart, good hotel people. Bill Jackson, from the Sahara. A man that I really think is a clever hotel person. I think he’s smart, he’s good, he knows his business, and he’s as professional as anybody in this town, if not more. I would love to work for him or with him someday. He started out with Merritt’s, or he might have started out before them, but I know he came through Merritt’s and Saint Louis, an incentive house, so he was like in the travel industry. So all of these people have come from different places and just become hotel people. And, becoming hotel people, they look to Las Vegas because this is where a big pocket of hotel jobs are. Not necessarily the high-UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 12 paying hotel jobs in the nation. But it’s a good proofing ground, it’s a good training ground, because we run so many people in and out of here because the properties are so big. Yes, these hotels are not run like regular hotels and a lot of people tell me to run a hotel here in Las Vegas, you need to go out and get real hotel experience and then come in and try to run the hotel as best as possible because of the casino. Well the thing is that Las Vegas was built around the casinos. Las Vegas grew because of gambling. And now you have a very delicate balance because we have corporate entities coming in and taking over the hotel industry. These corporate industries believe that a hotel, each department should support itself. In the old days, this was not true. In the old days, you had a top dog. That man had all the power and he ran his hotel through the casino and all the big money players that he could bring in. The casino supported the whole thing. Well, of course, now the hotels are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. In the old days a huge hotel was four or five hundred rooms. So the whole façade, the whole game plan, is changing but you will also have people come in and they are hotel people. Corporate. Corporate! Hotel people. And they are very snobbish. You know, they look at the way that the town is run and they go “what is this? This place is not run right.” But you have to laugh. It’s the same thing as going to California and having the sail boat people look down their noses at the motor boat people. And it’s looking—it’s like going skiing and the cross country people are looking down their noses at the people that (laughs) are skiing down the mountains. It’s all the same ball game, everybody is doing the same thing. There’s nothing to be snobby about. The people that come in from out of town had better remember that their jobs are here because the casinos made them be here. And the people that are running the casinos are the old time Las UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 13 Vegas people. They’re the people who know the town, they’re the people that know the gamblers and they know. They’re in the know, they got the power. And all the hotel people in the world can come in, and they can be as knowledgeable as anybody in the world, but it’s still, they have to remember that it was the casinos that built this town. The town blossomed around the casinos. And now we have a pocket of civilization that is five hundred thousand, six hundred thousand people. I don’t know, it’s interesting to see what the new census is going to be. But it was all perpetrated because of gambling and because some very knowledgeable casino people came in here and made it work. That basic fact will never change. A lot of people, like those corporate people you mention, are having a problem identifying that the casino—that they’re afraid of losing their credibility. So it just freaks them out and they leave Las Vegas because of that basis. I’ve seen you work around that completely. For you, the casino is great and there’s no problem between you and the casino. I guess because you don’t have to worry about (unintelligible). Well, no. That’s not it at all. I believe in complete flexibility. I don’t care what town I work in or who I work for, there will be certain people that I work for or work with that I will have to adjust to. It might be a senior vice president, it might be a hotel owner, it might in Atlantic City or it might be in Palm Springs, or it might be anywhere, Chicago. You still have those people that you have to placate and you have to work around them. Now, my end of the industry is kind of fun because, in a lot of instances, the casino gives me the kind of parties I want to do. They say “Suzanne, we want to impress these people. Go for it lady, and we’ll give you whatever money you need or whatever credit you need.” So it’s nice because my department is credited with that sell and I haven’t had to do a thing except, you know, throw a little, a little Cecil B. DeMille into it and have a good time. UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 14 (Unintelligible). Sure. I’ve got some very interesting people that work for me. I’ve got a man that does a lot of the props for the stage for the different shows in town. He works out of Los Angeles also, he does the things for the movies. So I can incorporate a lot of his genius into some of my parties. And if I’m going to charge somebody five hundred dollars for renting a piece of equipment or a piece of scenery, I’ll charge them the five hundred dollars for rental and I’ll go ahead and just have the things built and that way I have it in my little nest egg of things so I can go ahead and sell that thing to somebody else, charge them another five hundred dollars for rental and get something else to add to repertoire. It’s a lot of fun. Catering is nice because you have a lot of freedom and you have a lot of creativeness, a lot of creative ability. But it hasn’t happened to you yet where you book the party—okay. The casino man comes up to you and says, “This party room, I need it at this time.” And all of a sudden you have that booked with somebody else. But then again, you have to be very smart about what you’re booking and I am smart enough to know when it’s most likely that the casino will want a room and then, believe me, I leave them a room. (Laughs) I’m not going to mess with that space. Is it always (unintelligible) you think? If the casino comes to me and they say “Suzanne, I want such and such a room,” believe me I will always have an alternate. Okay? I’ll say, “Sir, no problem at all. Go ahead and take that ballroom, that’s just fine. However I did have a beautiful party for about a hundred people in here. Would you mind giving me the Napoleon Suite for the night?” I mean it’s a give and take. Or I’ll say to him, “Gee, you know that’s a great idea. I love your concept but wouldn’t it be prettier in the Napoleon Suite?” I, you know, you can move anybody. As long as you can adapt UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 15 to a situation, as long as you don’t get excited or upset because somebody wants your room. Even if you’re backed up against a wall. I don’t know, to part with rooms, there would be—for instance, a honeymoon couple coming in for their honeymoon and you might even know the people and you’re the manager of the hotel. And all the suites are taken and also you’ve got this all prepared. You would probably even be—. Yes, but Rafael, you have to remember that—. The bride and groom, the best man—. You’re not the only duck in the sea. If you don’t have a suite available, there’s always one at Caesars. Or the next place. (Laughs) Or the next place. Las Vegas is big enough, if I have a local booking of a hundred people that I have all set up and for some unknown reason all of my rooms are unavailable to me, I cannot have a suite, it happens to be dead in the middle of winter so I cannot have a pool party and what other—. Against the wall. Whatever other circumstance can prop up, I can’t imagine one because I have always come up with a room so far. But I could always move it. There’s always a Jubilation down the street or there’s always a Joe Jullian’s, or there’s always a place to put a party. Mm-hmm. And you’ve always got friends, in this town especially. There’s a network of contacts that, I’m going to call it contacts, it is friends, it’s contacts. It’s people that you identify with and that you work with and that you respect. You’ve always got somebody there. You can always pick up the phone and get out of any trouble you’re in. No matter what the trouble is. It’s not a big deal, it’s UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 16 just don’t take anything too seriously. Especially not a booking for a hundred people. You’ve got a lot more going on the time. Well it destroys people sometimes. I’ve heard stories. Well it’s just people who tend to take themselves too seriously. It’s only a job and you do your job the very best you can. And if you do that and you’re honest about it, there’s nobody in the world who won’t back you up or understand. If a casino man comes to me and he says, “Suzanne, I want that room for the night,” I’m going to let him know it’s real important to me because I’ve given my word to somebody that they will have that room. So I will let him know that it’s important enough that I would like him to help me find another location for them. If it’s not in my hotel and I cannot possibly get it in another hotel because there’s big things going on in the city, there’s always a place to go. But I think honesty—. Hey, there’s a party at my house. Oh, God. Can you imagine? “Hello!” (Laughs). I haven’t tried it before but, you know, flexibility. Rent the roller rink. You know when I was in Acapulco and when they overbook there, they do it regularly. Really? (Laughs). Like home builders? And luckily my parent’s house in Acapulco has seven bedrooms overlooking the cliff of the ocean, just the place. I said, there’s no problem, come on over to my house. (Laughs). But, still you know. It’s still an aggravation of (unintelligible) of people off. It’s always—do you know something? I’ve found, throughout my working career, that there is never a reason to say no to anybody. I mean as long as you remain flexible, that’s the whole thing. That’s the key to it. Knowing what you can do, that’s number one, because if you know no UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 17 limits to your own expertise, then you might be in a little bit of trouble. But if you know what you can do and you know your limits and you remain flexible, there should never be ever a reason for running into a problem, a road block. Especially not here. So, where exactly, you began—you have so many jobs that you really didn’t begin in the hotel business like that. You were always sort of, if you didn’t start as—. What did you start with, as a show—? As a coffee girl. Coffee girl. In the Riviera hotel. You’re kidding. No. In the Riviera hotel. (Unintelligible). Yes, I’m trying to think of how I got that job. Every job that I have ever gotten in Las Vegas has been through somebody that I knew, or it’s always been. Las Vegas is funny in that respect. You do need juice to get a job here, that’s for sure. Yes, juice. Now, juice—you do understand that that’s a word that is peculiar to our area? Juice is a Las Vegas word. Right. Right. It is. Which is kind of, toke is another Las Vegas word. Toke. Sure. We were talking about that. We were talking about Las Vegas colloquialisms not too long ago. That’s kind of fun to people who are outside of the situation. But, there is. It’s always if you have a friend and that friend will call another friend to say, “Hey would you see this person? This is a UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 18 good person.” That’s the way that I have always gotten my positions in town. From babysitting (Laughs). But the Riviera Hotel was my first honest-to-goodness job. I started there when I was like sixteen years old and I worked on weekends and I worked in the summer and I worked on school holidays. I made enough money to buy my first automobile. Which was, I think it cost me all four hundred and fifty dollars. It was a real prize. Austin-Healey Sprite. Is that the one that’s parked out here? No (laughs). There’s a Bugeye right out front. Really? Yes. Oh, that’s right, that’s right. Isn’t that funny? That was my first car, was a little Austin-Healy. A red one too. But even when I was working in the coffee shop, I didn’t really acknowledge the hotel and the gambling and that type of thing. I wasn’t really affected by it. I was just working in a coffee shop and doing as good a job as I could do cleaning those tables and keeping on top of my situation, as it were. You never walked through the casino. I never went outside to the gambling that was going. It was always you walk through the back. I think growing up, I learned not to ever acknowledge gambling. It was just always there. Was it like an evil? No, definitely not. Are you kidding? (Laughs) Gambling and showgirls and show business and drinking and whatever else you want to throw into that category, was always a way of life. It was a fact. If you’re brought up in Las Vegas, there were entertainers on the Strip, there’s gambling going on and that’s what everybody, your uncle or your brother or your sister or somebody somehow, was involved in it. So of course it wasn’t an evil, it was a fact of life. It was a UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 19 necessity. It’s what kept food on the table. I never heard of anybody say it was evil. As a matter of fact, I can’t imagine. I’m sure there’s some church people that say gambling is evil, but I don’t understand that. I was raised with it. That’s interesting. I don’t gamble. In some places, like in Pennsylvania, gambling I’m sure is considered quite an evil. I haven’t—. You know it’s funny that Las Vegas, an oasis of just about a hundred feet in diameter can be a city because of it. It’s amazing. Well, Las Vegas was a natural stopping point between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. You know that it was like a little airstrip. We had a few miners, a few cattle people. From the north, yes. And then the gambling. And that’s what it grew from. I think there would have been people here no matter what. Not a lot of people. Because of the space? Just, yes. Just because of its early uses as a stopping point for the airline. You know the original Western Airline’s mail carrier came in here. Mm-hmm. I think that it’s a beautiful valley. It’s a beautiful place to live. It’s losing its beauty, to me anyway. To the (unintelligible) I guess. Yes. But I can go right over to Lake Mead and you find that same serenity and the same beauty from the desert. You drive out at six o’clock in the morning as the sun is coming up on one side UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 20 of the sky and the moon is going down the other side of the sky. The mountains are painted purple and the sky is purple. It is so beautiful and so peaceful. It’s got to be some of the greatest serenity in the world. So I think there would have been people settled here. Not, we wouldn’t have the population that we have today, and who is to say if we would be better or worse. But Palm Springs existed without gambling. I think it’s a nice desert, it’s a desert area. It’s a nice place to live. They’re making artificial deserts now everywhere. Dry saunas. True. Bet you can hear I have chronic sinus. (Laughs) I don’t think the desert helps me, you know. Yes, that’s true though. The saunas Have become very popular. Okay, so after that initial coffee shop job you got a little inspired, right? At this time you’re five ten, quite beautiful. Uh-oh. At that time you weren’t or what? I was awkward. I was a teenager. How can you be awkward? Excuse me for saying it that way. Yes, I was awkward. I felt like every sixteen year old girl feels. I felt taller than everybody else. And of course I didn’t have any dates because I was two feet taller than everybody else. I had a group of friends from high school that are very interesting. One of them was Don Spear’s son, DonSpear. And I ended up working with him, the father, in the Tropicana hotel. We were there at the same time. Getting that still interaction with the gambling. I just worked real hard. I took a lot of dancing growing up, trying to get out of that awkward stage. But I think any teenager feels that. (Unintelligible). UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 21 (Laughs). From the Riviera I evolved, through friends again. I worked at their travel agency. At the same time I was working at the Riviera. I was working two jobs off and on. And I was helping some friends out that owned Wide World Travel. Since then they have become millionaire people from that small little business that’s (unintelligible). I learned a little bit about travel and I enjoyed it very much. I enjoyed the travel industry. I still, to this day, love to travel. I love to travel to sell. I love to travel to shop. I love to travel for vacation. I love to get on an airplane. But from working in the travel agency, they suggested, “Gee Suzanne, why don’t you work for the airlines for a couple of years?” And at this time I didn’t really want to get into college. Number one, I would have had to work my way through college. My parents didn’t have any money. My mother and father were divorced. My father had moved to California. So I was kind of on my own. And I did, I always have audited classes at the university. I’ve taken, I have a few credits. But at that time I wanted to get right into the mainstream. I thought well (unintelligible) I’m going to go to work and I’ll take a class at a time. Which I still do. I’ll probably be a perennial student. By the way, Doctor Ram (unintelligible). Go ahead. (Laughs). Well I’ll tell you anyway. He’s going to—no I better not (laughs). (Laughs). I’m sorry, I can’t say. (Laughs) How dumb can I be? (Laughs). Go ahead. Dear, okay. (Laughs) (Unintelligible). Okay, (unintelligible) is our professor at the University of Las Vegas. UNLV University Libraries Mary Leo 22 So I worked for West Airlines. I went to work for West Jet Airlines. And again Brick Williams, who owned Wide World Travel, put a lot of business through Western Airlines here. He called his contact with Western and said, “I have a young person who would like to go to work for you. She’s got a lot of personality and she would be a real asset to the organization.” And they interviewed about forty people for my job, and I was picked out, selected out of the forty. I went to Los Angeles, and at that time everything was manual with the airlines. It’s a lot of fun and you got to, you used your OIG, the travel book. And everything was files. It was exciting. And we went to Los Angeles and lived i