Jackie Boiman (née Brooks) was born July 21, 1946 in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Levittown, New York. Her religious connection began in the Levittown Jewish Center Sunday School and under the close relationship she had with her grandmother, who kept kosher and inspired her to do so.
Erma Linda Rivera was born in Morenci, Arizona, in 1952. In the Las Vegas Valley, where Linda has lived for over twenty years, she has promoted educational opportunities for youth, particularly in the Hispanic community. Both she and her husband moved from Montana, where her husband worked as a power plant operator on Yellowtail Dam, to southern Nevada to work on Hoover Dam in 1986. Linda was put in charge of the affirmative employment plan for her branch of the Bureau of Reclamation.
Known for his remarkable service in the Clark County School District, Wayne Tanaka has made brilliant impacts in the lives of his students, colleagues, and the Las Vegas community as a whole. He was born in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, as a second generation Asian-American to a Japanese father and a Japanese-American mother. He grew up with a strong sense of community and attended Kamehameha III School and Lahainaluna High School. Tanaka eventually went to University of Utah majoring in geography and minoring in political science and history.
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.