After Irene Porter's father's retirement from the Air Force, the family moved to Las Vegas where her aunt and uncle were involved in the gaming industry. After she married, she and her husband Dick moved to Boston. They moved back to Las Vegas due to the bad economy in Boston. Irene worked for the Clark County Planning Department as a secretary but moved up to doing the work of the director, but without the title nor the pay of that position, so she went to work in the planning department of the city of North Las Vegas and became its director of planning.
Felicia Florine Campbell is an English professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). As of 2018, she is the longest serving faculty member at UNLV.
At the time of this oral history, Meyer Lansky II had found a sentimental attachment to his namesake, Meyer Lansky, his grandfather. Though it was considered against Eastern European Jewish tradition, Meyer II’s parents had named him after the grandfather.
Richard Francis or Dick Franco, his stage name, by which he is more commonly known, has been juggling for over 50 years, having learned the art while he was still in high school. Taught by prominent juggling legends in Vaudeville and Las Vegas, Franco would go on to perform all over the world. He began as an opening act with the Harlem Globetrotters in the US, but would go on to perform throughout Europe and was featured in variety and production shows in Blackpool, London, Monte Carlo, Berlin, and many other cities.
Born and raised in Palm Desert, California, Cynthia Leung is the first Chinese-American woman elected as Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge; she was the only Asian child in her elementary school, and she grew up surrounded by the arts. She was the younger daughter of a Chinese brush artist mother and an architect father, and her older sister went to The Julliard School to study piano.
Frank Lawrence was a film editor who worked on silent and early sound films between 1917 and 1936. Born on June 15, 1883, Lawrence worked for film companies including Vitagraph Studios and Universal City Studios. On 1918, he married Viola Lawrence, a fellow editor considered to be the first female film editor in Hollywood. During his career, Lawrence performed editing on films including Hell's Angels (1930). He died on July 28, 1960.