Paul Christensen was born on August 26, 1932. He grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada during the World War II era. His parents were M.J. and Hazel Christensen, founders of a jewelry business. He attended the Fifth Street Grammar School, the John S. Park School, and Las Vegas High School. Too young to enlist, he was of an age that could focus on his education and opportunities for success. He attended college, earned a marketing degree, and joined the Air Force ROTC program. He flew B-47 bombers during the Cold War.
Adelaide Robbins was born in Manhattan (New York, New York) to a father who was a pianist and arranger and a mother who was a dancer on Broadway. She grew up as an only child in the theater district where she was exposed to the arts from a young age. She began piano lessons at age six and began working professionally by the age of 12. She attended the High School of Music and Art for four years.
Emory and Agnes Lockette met while they were both in college; she in Albany, Georgia, and he in Dawson, Georgia. He studied architectural and structural engineering. They secretly married in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1949 and moved to Boulder City in 1953 where they were the only African Americans during a time of tense race relations. She earned graduate degrees, including a doctorate in early childhood education, at UNLV. Initially, Mrs.
American photographer Glenn Augustus Davis was born March 22, 1894 in Portland, Oregon. He attended school in Oregon and Washington prior to working in the lumber camps and saw mills of Washington and British Columbia. He served in the US Army from 1915 to 1920. He was a member of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front in France during World War I. In the years following the war, Davis returned to the US and worked as a cook, a cotton grower, and a seaman before following his passion for photography.
Artemus W. Ham Jr. was born in 1920 in Las Vegas, Nevada to Artemus W. Ham Sr. and his wife Atla Mereness Ham. He was the oldest of three children born to the couple. Ham Jr. attended the University of Nevada, Reno and Stanford University for his bachelor's degree. He then went on to earn his law degree at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, California.
Pablo Macias was born in Carlin, Nevada, a small town 20 miles west of Elko, where the local population of Latinos was small. He has lived in Las Vegas since 1990.
He is the youngest of nine children born to Sofia and Tomas Macias, who met and married while living in Utah. Tomas was born in the United States and worked as a railroad laborer. Sofia was Mexican born and found work as a maid to help provide for their family.