Transcript of interview with Mindy Unger-Wadkins by Barbara Tabach, October 28, 2015

AN INTERVIEW WITH MINDY UNGER-WADKINS An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Mindy Unger-Wadkins was born in Los Angeles, California in 1965, and her family moved to Las Vegas two years later when her father, Joseph Unger, was relocated by his employer. At the age of twelve, after both her parents had passed away, she moved in with her brother Bob Unger and his wife Aydie. While studying at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Unger-Wadkins took a clerk job based at Yucca Mountain, and was eventually hired as a full-time public relations officer. She left Yucca Mountain after a decade to work for Nevada Power, capitalizing on both her public relations background as well as Masters in Public Administration. Unger-Wadkins is now a land developer, currently working with Bob Unger on project to clean-up and redevelop the Three Kids Mine. She is an active member of Congregation Ner Tamid, holding several leadership positions over the years, including president. Mike Unger, prominent local hotel manager, is her other sibling. In this interview, Unger-Wadkins discusses growing up in Las Vegas? close-knit Jewish community in the 1960s and 1970s, and involvement with various Jewish youth organizations and activities. She also describes her career in public relations, reflecting upon the unique challenges faced when interacting with the public, and with politics, in her positions. Unger-Wadkins ends by describing her current work in land development, particularly the history of the Three Kids Mine and the technical and political process of ensuring the land is suitable as a residential area. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Mindy Unger-Wadkins On October 28, 2015 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface?????????????????????????????????..?..iv Describes growing up in Las Vegas? tightknit Jewish community during the 1960s and 70s; family?s strong relationship with the Katz?s; father?s job in restaurant supply industry and mother?s accounts payable career at the Desert Inn Hotel and Casino. Mentions family history; childhood neighborhood; attending Camp Sholom day camp; her Las Vegas public education. Discusses her parents? passing away; moving in with brother Bob???????????.1-6 Talks about brother Mike?s career as hotel/casino executive; frequenting Foxy?s Caf?, deli behind Vegas Village with father; Bob?s decision to attend law school and subsequent legal career. Reflects on high school years; becoming active in BBYO; helping with Congregation Ner Tamid?s newsletter. Describes serving in Ner Tamid leadership positions over the years; the role of long-time residents as well as newcomers to congregation????????????...7-14 Recounts the proliferation of congregations around town; establishment of Ner Tamid?s. More about brothers; Bob getting into land development, including Showcase Mall. Talks about her public relations/communications education and career; working for Yucca Mountain project, Nevada Power. Elaborates on managing records as clerk for Yucca Mountain project, before digitalization; ?Screw Nevada Bill.? Mentions brief position at Manpower??????.15-23 Talks about professional challenges at Nevada Power, in dealing with community members, politicians, for line approvals. Recalls one planning commission meeting for substation approval near Desert Inn Country Club. Considers the Las Vegas? city planning growing pains. Talks about Three Kids Mine, its history, current project with brother Bob????????.?24-32 Index........................................................................................................................................33-34 vi 1 Today is October 28, 2015. This is Barbara Tabach and I am sitting with Mindy. Mindy, spell all of your name for the record. Mindy Unger-Wadkins. It's M-I-N-D-Y; U-N-G-E-R, dash, W-A-D-K-I-N-S. And you are a born and raised Las Vegan? Not born and raised. I was actually born in L.A.; moved here when I was two. The family moved here in 1967; I was born in 1965. So no memories of L.A. No memories in L.A., yes. As far as I'm concerned I'm from Vegas. What brought your family here? The Katz family, Mike and Bea Katz were best friends with my family in New York. In 1963, they all decided to move west. Mike and Bea stopped in Vegas and started Manpower of Southern Nevada. Then, it was just an answering service company. It wasn't the Manpower hire-a-person-type company. They started Manpower. My dad decided he wanted to be closer to his sister who was already in L.A. So the Ungers continued to L.A. and maintained the friendship with the Katzes and everything. My dad worked in L.A. They lived there for four years. But for health reasons he needed to be in an even drier community than L.A. and he hated L.A. It was too big. So they then followed the Katzes and moved to Las Vegas. As I grew up, the Katz family and the Unger family were like best friends the whole time. So that's what got us here. I've tried to get Andy to call me back because I would love to do an interview of him. Oh, Andy's impossible. I'll call Andy for you. I'll tell him to call you. All right. Andy I've been yelling at since I was born, literally. He was four when I was born and I have known Andy all my life and I've been yelling at Andy all my life, basically. 2 Would you say that that's probably the way you look at a lot of your Jewish friends, if not all your friends growing up here? It's funny. What's interesting is I've sort of got two worlds. I've got the world of the people I knew when I was a kid and there is some holdout, like Dayvid Figler was a little bit younger than me, but we were in AZA and BBG together. There's a whole group that I know from my past, like Jim Mason and Dayvid Figler?they're all my age?Mark Mushkin. Then there's like the current group that I'm involved in at Ner Tamid and the JCC and that's a whole new world of Jews to me. So it's kind of a mix. But there are some older families like the Katzes that I know and I can call up any time. But Andy and I were like brother and sister when they were growing up. Every Passover we would go over to the Katz family house, and he and I would run after the matzah together. Looking for the afikomen. Yes, we were looking for the afikomen together and I'd always find it. So I knew Andy as a little kid when I grew up. Then I worked for Manpower when I was about twenty-two. I worked for Mike before he passed away, worked for Mike and Bea for about two years. I saw Andy once in a while when he came into the office, which was rare. What kind of work did your father come to do here? He got transferred. He worked with Interstate Restaurant Supply, a company, and they had a Los Angeles office and they had opened a Las Vegas office and he transferred here as the vice president of sales for Interstate. They supplied all the restaurants, all the hotels, with glasses and silverware and linens, all the restaurant supply stuff, kitchen ware, all of that. In fact, he was best friends with Al. Al and Ann, who are not Jewish, they were best friends back then. They worked at Interstate Restaurant Supply. 3 Your dad's name is Joseph. Yes. And Shirley is your mom. You said she was accounts payable supervisor. Was she working in the business or something else? She was actually at the Desert Inn when Howard Hughes was at the top story of the Desert Inn. Those were those days. She was the accounts payable supervisor at the Desert Inn. I remember that when I was a kid they would do a Christmas show every year of all things and Debbie Reynolds would always do the Christmas show. I was always one of the kids in the Christmas show along with...She was Miss Nevada. At the time it wasn't Alicia Jacobs. What was it? Anyway, but Alicia and I were friends as kids and we'd always do the Debbie Reynolds Christmas Show together at the Desert Inn Hotel. She'd get her hair done every week and I'd sit there running around the Desert Inn Hotel while she was getting her hair done and stuff like that. When you say you were in the show, what did you do in the show? She'd do a song and she'd sing to the kids and have us do a little dance with her and stuff like that. It was always a big thing for the employees' kids to be in the show. That's cool. Not everybody can say they have that memory. That's right. Anyway, those were the days. But that was when Howard Hughes was at the top story of the Desert Inn before he moved out. Excellent. So in your family history, what do you know about your Jewish roots? Interesting question. Not a lot. Probably about as much as everyone else knows. My mother was an only child. Her mother and father, both were from England, came over. I have no records of them. I know the family name. I know my grandmother's maiden name. All of know of that family is what I've been able to look up. But just like every other Jewish family, the history stops 4 when you get over to Europe and then you have trouble finding anything else beyond that. I have the records of when they came to the United States, but that's about it. That was my grandparents on my mother's side. My mother's parents were not alive when I was born. I never met them. My father's parents were alive and I knew them up until I was about six and then my grandfather passed away and then my grandmother passed away right after my dad passed away when I was eight. So that ended that. But my aunt, my father's sister, is still alive. She lives in Henderson at Anthem. So that is our family history. My Aunt Dee is the only person who's left from that whole generation. I have lots of relatives in New York. I don't know any of them. So it's pretty much a Las Vegas history from what I know. So that Las Vegas history, it started when you were two, you said. Yes. What neighborhood did you grow up in? Right near Temple Beth Sholom. We were over on a street called Mariposa near St. Louis and Eastern, in that area. We could walk to the temple just like everyone else who was around that area. The Steinbergs lived over there. All the main temple families lived right there within a mile radius. So that's where I was till...My dad passed away when I was eight, and then my mom and I moved over to Pecos and Tropicana into a condominium complex. That must have been hard. Well, I was a little young, so I don't remember a lot. But I did Camp Sholom. My brother and Ira and Nan Spector were camp counselors at Camp Sholom. My brother and my sister-in-law were camp counselors at Camp Sholom. Nan [Spector] was my counselor. She was Nannette Deacon at the time. 5 What is Camp Sholom? Camp Sholom was the day camp for Temple Beth Sholom. Just about all of us were part of it. The Steinbergs, the Mushkins, the Masons, all the [families] who had kids my age. Because Temple Beth Sholom was the only temple in town that was it for us; there was no other camp; there was no other temple. It was still a small community. When we moved here I think there were only eighty thousand people in Las Vegas. So as far as I was concerned that was my whole world. I went to Camp Sholom every summer. In fact, Bella Schwartz, who is now Bella Feldman, who was our first cantorial soloist at Congregation Ner Tamid, and I went to camp together. I have pictures of her at Shakey's Pizza at my eighth birthday party. So I knew Bella as my friend versus the cantorial soloist at Ner Tamid. And Jim Mason and all of those guys, they were all my friends. That's cool. It's a tight group. Yes. So what schools did you attend? I kind of moved around a lot. I started with Robert E. Lake because I was going to a day care, like a woman who took care of us after school from when I was like two. She was my preschool and then all the way up to first grade. She was my after-school care. So I just stayed there and that was the closest school to her. That wasn't actually close to us, but it was the closest school to her. So Robert E. Lake is where I started. Then I switched over when my...Actually, my father got progressively worse. He got more ill. As time went on he couldn't walk. I never actually saw my father walk at all. Just before he died, I switched over to John F. Miller and I'd walk to school. That was down the street from us, on the other side of Eastern off St. Louis. I'd walk to John F. Miller. 6 When he passed away, we had to move everything. I first went to Lewis E. Rowe, but then that's when I started at a sixth grade center. So we moved over to Pecos and Tropicana. That's when they were bussing the kids to North Las Vegas and bussing the North Las Vegas kids out to the other parts of town. That was a completely failed system. So I was bussed to the middle of North Las Vegas to Kit Carson Sixth Grade Center. Then I came back and went to Woodbury Junior High School. Then my mom passed away when I was twelve, so I ended up moving in with my brother, Bob Unger, and that's why I'm close to Bob today because he was my guardian for a number of years. So you have two brothers? I have two brothers. I have Mike, who is eighteen years older than I am, and Bob is thirteen years older than I am. That's a big gap. Yes. I was kind of a surprise. My mom thought she was going into early menopause; instead she was pregnant. But my parents, they were fifty and fifty-four when they passed away. They were young. Very young. So I moved in with Bob. He was twenty-five; I was twelve. He had married Aydie. He had just finished law school and had bought his first house, and then I moved in with him. So I kind of moved around a lot just because of all the deaths and the changes. Well, you don't seem like you were scarred by any of it. No. You know what? When it happens that young...I remember my parents, but honestly I don't remember much. I just don't. Especially my dad because he died when I was eight. I remember how sick he was and I remember him screaming a lot, not at me, just into the air because he was in 7 pain. I was his little girl. So to me he wasn't ever screaming at me. But that's really all I remember. So your brothers probably were an extension of your parents' values. What kind of responsibility do you remember your brother taking on all of that? I would say that Mike...I'm not sure how much Mike is an extension of my parents, actually. Mike?he's another one you should interview?was the youngest hotel executive in Las Vegas at the time. He graduated from UNLV when it was still [Nevada Southern University]. He went to work at the Frontier Hotel, and at age twenty-two, he was the vice president of the Frontier Hotel. So he was in gaming during a very big time and went all the way up to...He was at one point the general manager of Caesars Palace; that was when I was a senior in high school. Then they had Black Friday one day; they got rid of five of the top executives at Caesars Palace and he was one of them. They had a whole big change. That was when we suddenly started going corporate. That was when there was less mob. There were all kinds of changes going on and he was walked out. He's worked at all kinds of hotels, but that was his height of everything when I was a senior in high school. Did you go to the casinos a lot because of his job there? No. But I'd get comped all the time for shows. I remember Paul Anka singing to me at a Paul Anka Show because I was set up as the one he was going to sing to because I was Mike's sister. So we'd do a lot of comp shows, but I don't remember going there other than that for anything. I do remember when my dad was still alive, we went to Foxy's Cafe a lot. That was the one at Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara. Tell me about Foxy's. My dad was friends with the owner. It was Abe Fox, right? 8 Yes, Abe. So he was friends with Abe Fox. We went to Foxy's all the time because that was right around the corner from where we lived. I just remember as a kid we were always there. He also was friends with Jackie Fields who was the guy who ran the deli at the back of Vegas Village that was in Commercial Center. So we were always eating at that deli so we could go see Jackie. So you were well fed. I was well fed. I was always at a deli or at Foxy's. Mary Fox was a member of Ner Tamid in later years after Abe passed away. I remember she had married...somebody else. I'm going to forget. But I remember talking to her a little bit about the history. There's another one, Shirley Gellin, who also was at Ner Tamid. She's one of our older members, and she was friends with my mom and they played cards together. My mom would drag me to all the Pan games. It wasn't Mahjong back then; it was Pan. Would you just sit there and watch them? They'd put me in another room and I'd play games or I'd play with whatever or watch TV. I was a little kid and I'd fall asleep. I always went to the Pan games. Do you play Pan yourself? I don't even know how to play Pan. I never knew how to play Pan. No desire. Don't know how to play Mahjong. Forget it. So tell me about Bob then at that same time period. That's when my mom was still alive and I was with her, but Bob went to law school. When Bob was eighteen, I would have been five, so he was working with Ivan Eisenberg at Ideal Office Supply. Ivan wanted to make him a partner because he loved him. He thought he was great. He was just delivering stuff for Ivan. I mean it was an after-school job kind of thing. Ivan loved him. 9 Long story short, Bob decided not to become Ivan's partner. He told him no and he decided to go to law school instead. So that was a big thing. He was probably twenty-two actually. I think he was going to college while he was working with Ivan. So I was a little bit older than that. I remember Ivan was not happy with him. I don't think Ivan was happy that he was leaving him. But Bob decided to go to law school, and he had married Aydie when he was twenty. They moved to California. He went to Southwestern Law University because there was no law school here, certainly. He got his law degree and then he came back. This whole time my mom was still alive. He came back. They got their first house, and it was just after they got [their] first house and he got his first job as a lawyer that my mom passed away and that's when I ended up moving in with them. He was working with David Goldwater, with Goldwater, Wiener and Waldman. It was David Goldwater, Lou Wiener and Herb Waldman. His very first case was...Al Bramlet, who was the Union Man of the Year, who was killed by Andy and "Gramby" Hanley (sic) [Tom and Andy "Gramby"]; he was the junior attorney on that case. That was his very first case. That was David Goldwater's case. So he's got the history. He hated criminal law. He'll tell you. He got out of it within a few years, but he couldn't stand criminal law. That was his first case, so that was his claim to fame. That's a real claim. I know. He was defending Andy and "Gramby" Hanley. When you reflect on that time growing up, how did that affect you? It didn't. I was sort of like coming into teenage years and could care less about my brother [Bob]. I was being a kid. My mom had just died. I was more concerned about can I take my animals with me to the new house kind of thing. Aydie and I did not get along. She'll be the first one to tell 10 you. She and I did not get along for the first couple of years and we finally fixed all that. So I don't even know that I was totally aware of what he was working on at the time. I was more self-consumed as a kid at the time. By the time I hit high school, and Mike was the general manager at Caesars and everything else, it was just nice to say, "Yeah, my brother is the general manager at Caesars." A little bit of a fame thing. I remember in my senior year I walk into school one day. I was taking a drafting class and my drafting teacher says, "What are you doing here? Are you okay?" I said, "What are you talking about?" He says, "Your brother." He says, "Your brother is in the paper. He died last night." I'm like, "What?" So I go running to the office. He sends me to the office. I go running to the office. I called Bob and he's like, "What?" It turns out that another Mike Unger had passed away. Whoever was writing the article had decided it was Mike Unger from Caesars Palace, didn't even check it out. It was the wrong Mike Unger. It was front page of the paper that Mike Unger from Caesars Palace had died, or front page of the Nevada section or something like that. So here are all these people, "What are you doing here?" I'm like, "What?" That was an interesting day. Oh, my God. What high school did you go to? Clark [High School]. I went with the Kirshbaums. There were a lot of Jews there. Randy Chaplin. Were you aware of being Jewish when you were growing up? Oh, yes. So skipping from Camp Sholom, didn't do much during all that time. My father passed away. My mom didn't really care. She never threw me into a bat mitzvah, religious school or anything. I never worried about it. She had friends who were Jewish, but we never went to temple. We were High Holiday Jews; that was it. Then she passed away and then I moved in with Bob and Aydie. It wasn't until Bob kind of got active as a BBYO adviser that he got me into 11 BBYO. Then I became a BBGer in BBYO and ran for president. Randie Gorbena and I are the same age and we were both running against each other for president. It was a whole story there. Randie is?Roberta Unger, who is Mike's wife, over at Ner Tamid, Roberta's niece is Randie Gorbena. So there's a whole connection there, too. And Helene Gorbena, which Gorbena BBG is named after, was Randie's older sister who was killed by a drunk driver, right in front of Valley High School; it was that street right there. We must have been about thirteen or fourteen years old. Maybe we were even less. We may have been ten. Randi and I were both in BBG at the same time. We kind of traded off as president. So that's where I knew everybody. I knew Andy Goldstein and Jim Mason. All those people were that generation. What was the purpose of BBG? B'nai B'rith Youth Organization is BBYO. And BBG, of course, is B'nai B'rith Girls and AZA is the guys? [group]; Aleph [Zadik Aleph]. I remember it having seven sections. iI was a Jewish youth club to put Jewish youth together, but you would concentrate on religion, you would concentrate on social action, you would concentrate on tikkun olam. You'd concentrate on these various areas. You'd have different people who led these different seven facets, if you will. It was to teach Jewish youth leadership and to teach us how to be social, but it was really just social. We all just wanted to be friends. The difference between BBYO and like a USY, United Synagogue Youth, or the other one NTTY, Ner Tamid Temple Youth, [is that] BBYO is student-run. The whole idea is you have to lead your organization; you have to lead your events. You have an adviser to just advise; the students run it. USY was very different. The adviser really just taught the kids things and the adviser really led everything and the kids just did the programs. So it was different. We were learning to be leaders. 12 So that was a good experience. That was a good experience, yes, for all of us. Anyway, so that's what I did. I tried USY. I tried Junior USY, which was when I was thirteen or something like that. Cheryl Chenin was my adviser and, quite frankly, I didn't hate Cheryl, but I hated junior USY. I just had no interest. That's when I became involved in BBG. So there was that gap between camp and BBG. And then from BBG, when I went to UNLV, I was an AEPi little sister, which, of course, is the Jewish fraternity at UNLV. Again social. But then after that I kind of lost touch again with the Jewish community other than a few people I knew. Just didn't really worry about it. Again, Bob got involved in Congregation Ner Tamid and asked me to do some of the newsletters. The newsletters that you'll end up archiving are some of the ones I did. So I started doing the newsletter and then I just kind of became involved. For years, I'd just do little things that rabbi asked me to do here and there. I ended up on the board, and yada, yada, yada. Now where are you at as far as being involved on the board? I am the executive vice president, second to Jacky Rosen. Next July I'll be the president. Describe what the responsibilities are of a president of a congregation, in particular Ner Tamid. Let's see. This is being taped, so let me be careful. No, I'm kidding. The whole idea is that you have a lay leader-run organization to manage the temple and the policies of the temple and the finances of the temple, and then you have clergy who are essentially managing the spiritual roles for all of the congregants. So I watch the budget. I watch what staff is doing. When we do programming there's inevitably always something that goes wrong with a program or something gets left out or something gets forgotten or whatever the case is. How do we fix that for the future? How do we not have that happen again? I take the complaints when those come in and I'll 13 just leave it at that. I take complaints. I hear good and bad. What usually happens is the lay leadership hears the bad and rabbi hears the good. That's a good deal for him. Yes. If they have something to say that's good, they tell him; if they have something bad to say, they tell us. I'll run the board, which is made up of the vice presidents?the ritual vice president, the social action vice president, the membership vice president. We've got the ways and means vice president, capital campaign. All of those things are under the board and I'll manage that group and take the temple forward in all of those things. So it's very much a leadership and business job. It's not a spiritual job at all. So which parts have you been in charge of leading up to this position? I was vice president of membership years ago. Then I've also done the leadership training program where we bring in new people and get them interested in getting active in the temple in committees and what have you, people who have already shown some interest. Then we bring them in and kind of do leadership programs where we tell them all about the temple. It's a little bit like the leadership program Michelle is going through where you learn all about the community and get to find out more. Then you can engage better and have more information. So I've run the leadership program. Did a long-rang plan in 2000; I led that committee. That was an eighteen-month long committee and out of that we created the Shabbatones because we figured out we needed musical influence in our services. We did a few things like that, but the Shabbatones came out of that. Moving to Henderson came out of that. We figured out we were not in the right place anymore. Major things came out of that. We have not done a long-range plan since. That was a long time ago. 14 I've always sort of been in a leadership position. This is the first time I'm actually going to become even more. When you reflect on the growth of Ner Tamid?as an outsider coming into Las Vegas Jewish community, [I?ve observed that] there is that core group of long-time residents and leaders and all of that, and then there's all the newbies, the transients and all of that. How do you blend all of that energy together? That's got to be a big job. The long-time members are really our foundation. They really are. Like Joyce Mack, the Molaskys, the Marshalls, the Greenspuns, these are all people who...We wouldn't be where we're at if it wasn't for them. But quite frankly, they show up to temple...Some of them are just High Holiday Jews...[but] they show up to temple and you just always kind of know they're there if you really ended up in trouble, but they don't really engage so much anymore. They've been there, done that. But we always save a seat for them. We always honor them. We always know they're there. It really is the next generation now that is running everything, and they just kind of watch from the sidelines. Some of those people are no longer involved. The Greenspuns, I call up Robin once in a while. We go to lunch and I fill her in and that's kind of what the extent of it is. You'll see Susan and Max sometimes at temple. They do come to some things. Every year we do a matching?instead of a gala, we do the no-show gala. Robin is one of my money people behind it. I'm one of the money people behind it. You've got Andrea Harris. And then I called Susan and Max and said, "Will you be the other people behind it?" So you always rely on those people, but they don't do the day-to-day. When you say the transients, yes, we get people in and out, but most of our active people have been here I'd say five years or more. Then you get somebody who's just moved into town who's retired here who wants to get active. Great, get them involved and what have you. Then 15 you've got the next genners, like Melissa [Lemoine]. You've got the younger crowd. You've got Jackie and Kevin Walton. You've got your younger group that will be our future generation of temple leadership, but right now they're just doing their social next gen group. But they're Jews connecting to Jews, so that's good. They're maintaining and perpetuating Judaism by being together and that's fine. But I can see them being the future leaders of the temple. You've been here through all?I hear the histories. Temple Beth Sholom was the only game in town for a long time. Then other congregations opened up. Now there's up to twenty some. Last count I think there were twenty-eight or something like that. It's crazy. There's way too many for this town. This town is not big enough for twenty-eight congregations. It's very splintered. But how do you fix it? Elliot Karp kind of had it in his mind that he wanted to put everybody together and conglomerate it. But you've got people who don't want to; they want their own turf, particularly the Chabads. They're small, they want their own turf and they do what they do. But Ner Tamid was the first one that splintered off. There were issues at Temple Beth; it was considered too conservative. There were people who were marrying non-Jews. Temple Beth would not even allow the spouses and the non-Jews up on the bema at all and people were getting upset. So they said, "Forget it; we're out of here." And that's when Congregation Ner Tamid actually splintered off and started, and that was forty years ago. We just had our fortieth birthday last year. That was really the first break. From there people started breaking off left and right. But now it's really based on the side of town. It used to be it didn't matter where in town you lived; you could get anywhere in twenty minutes. I'll tell you what, when I go to my JCC board meetings now at six o'clock at night on a week night, it takes me a full hour from Henderson to get there. I have to leave at five o'clock to get to my six o'clock board meeting. It's just crazy. 16 That's just over at Sahara and Fort Apache from Henderson. It's nuts. Anymore, people do not cross that