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Hecht, Mel, Rabbi
Rabbi Mel Hecht was born July 8, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan. At the age of five, his family moved to Miami, Florida where they had a large, extended Jewish family, complete with relatives who were hazzans and mohels. Soon after moving to Florida, his parents bought a hotel in Hialeah, a city 10 miles outside of Miami, where Hecht spent the remainder of his childhood.
Person
Kolod, Ruby, 1910-1967
Ruby Kolod (1910-1967) was a co-owner of the Desert Inn hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Born in New York City on July 27, 1910, Kolod moved to Las Vegas around 1950 to purchase the Desert Inn with longtime associate Moe Dalitz and other investors. The Desert Inn group of investors had ties to organized crime and owned several hotel-casinos in Las Vegas in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1964, Kolod was sentenced to four years in prison for threatening Robert Sunshine in relation to an oil-lease investment.
Person
Canty, Hattie, 1933-2012
Hattie Canty was born and raised in St. Stephens, Alabama. She moved to California as a young woman to seek employment, and married and started a family. Canty's family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in the late 1960s and she found work as a maid for the Thunderbird Hotel and later the Maxim Hotel and Casino. Canty became a Culinary Union Local 226 member. Over the years, she became involved in securing better salaries for women and increasing the number of African Americans in high-paying positions in the casino industry.
Person
Huntsman, David
David Huntsman was the owner of Kane Springs Ranch located on the Upper Muddy River in the Moapa Valley of Clark County, Nevada. The Kane Springs Ranch, as it came to be called, was known for its large orchard and mining operations.
Person
Boiman, Jackie B.
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.
Person
Jaeger, Bernice, 1934-
Bernice Smith was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 27, 1934. She married Ivan Jaeger in 1955. He and his family were involved in the underground gaming industry in the Midwest. When it shut down in 1961, they moved to Las Vegas where Ivan worked first as a dealer and later in various executive gaming positions. Bernice was one of the fist students to attend Clark County Community College (later Community College of Southern Nevada) when it was founded in 1971. She earned a liberal arts degree in 1973 and a degree in hotel administration in 1974.
Person
Lewis, Leo, 1930-2001
Leo Lewis was born August 24, 1930 in Long Island, New York. He held many positions in various Las Vegas, Nevada hotels and casinos, including the general manager of the Barbary Coast Hotel and Casino and a casino executive in Binion's Horseshoe Club. He retired in 1989, and later taught casino management in University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He assisted in the development of the College of Hotel Administration (William F. Harrah College of Hospitality) at UNLV. He died July 17, 2001.
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Person
Morelli, Helen, 1905-1996
Helen (Collins) Morelli was born in 1905 the oldest of nine children born to Elizabeth McCann and James P. Collins. Her father was an New York Police Department officer and suffered a heart attack, which widowed her mother. Helen helped her mother raise her siblings as both her mother and her uncle (who moved in after her father's death) worked outside of the home to support the family.
Person