Hazel Mae Bowden was born on February 22, 1922. She married Hershell Wade on November 30, 1939, and had one son, James Hedges. The couple divorced and in 1950 she married Charles William Hedges. She moved from Kansas City to Las Vegas with her husband and son in 1952. She worked briefly as a waitress in the dining room at the Thunderbird and then became a stay at home mother until her son was in junior high school. Then after she went to real estate school, she went to work in commercial real estate at Bond Realty.

The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History was founded as the Museum of Natural History by Richard H. Brooks in 1967 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Brooks was then the director of the Desert Research Institute (DRI). The museum was owned by DRI until the ownership was transferred to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1969. The museum's primary operations included exhibitions that displayed artifacts and artworks of the archaeology, history, and geology of Southern Nevada.

Barbara Givens was born September 13, 1937 in California. She grew up in Reno, Nevada and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1952 with her family when she was 14 years old. Givens graduated from Las Vegas High School and enrolled in the first matriculated teacher's program at the Southern Regional Division of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV).

Dallamy has beautiful memories of her childhood in Cuba where she played on the beach and in the fruit orchards. Her parents were separated, so she grew up with her mother and her siblings. Her father was a school teacher who was going to school for his doctorate. He urged Dallamy to pursue higher education, so she began a teaching program and was well on her way to receive a federal scholarship. In her last year of school Dallamy decided instead to move to the United States with her then partner.