Composer Massimo "Max" Joseph DiJulio was born in 1919, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He took up the trumpet as a boy and turned professional while still in high school. During World War Two he served with a military band under the direction of Glenn Miller. After his tour of duty, he settled in Denver, Colorado where he served as the Director of the Fine Arts Department at Loretto Heights College for over thirty years. He also served as Music Director of the Denver Post Opera.
Betty Henderson was a private music teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada and dedicated member of the Nevada Music Teachers Association. She was born on January 23, 1923 in Portland, Indiana. She wanted to pursue a career in music and enrolled at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, but was forced to drop out after she started to become deaf. She married Charles B. Henderson, a civil engineer, in 1948 and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. She had many different jobs in the city including secretary and company auditor.
Boulder City, Nevada community leader Peggy Hyde Phillips (1916-1997) was born Helen Thelma Lewis in Iowa in 1916. Her father gave her the nickname of Peggy as a child and she used the name for the rest of her life. She married Charles Hyde (1907-1956) in 1937. He served in the United States Army Air Corps and worked as a flight instructor at Condor Field in Twentynine Palms, California during World War II. After the war, the family relocated to Boulder City, Nevada. They opened Desert Trails, a sporting goods and toy store in 1946.
University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) Professor William R. Eadington joined the faculty as an economist in 1969. He was the first holder of the Philip J. Satre Chair in Gaming Studies, a professor of economics, and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at UNR.
Steven Parker grew up and went to school in Connecticut. His only sibling was finishing a post doctorate at Yale and had accepted a job at one of the California State schools when his life was tragically ended through suicide. Parker graduated from Assumption College in Massachusetts with a bachelor's in political science and got a scholarship to the State University of New York at Albany. About halfway through his Master of Public Administration degree, the dean encouraged him to go on for his doctorate.
Dr. Robert Bruce Smith was born July 08, 1937 in Philadelphia, but considers California as home. His father’s career as a minister had taken them back to the east coast, and after his seminary training they returned to Los Angeles, California, followed by a five year stint in Oregon before returning to Vista, California. After graduating high school, Smith left home to attend Wheaton College in Illinois, a small Protestant school.
Judy Jetter was born November 18, 1939 and was raised in Chicago, Illinois. At the age of three, she began taking acting, tap, and ballet classes. While raised by her mother until age 15, she was forced to study opera, even though jazz music was her passion. Jetter’s first introduction to jazz came while listening to, legendary jazz great, Woody Herman on the radio. She developed an immediate appreciation and love for jazz music.
Maurice “Maury” Halfon Behar was born August 27, 1938 in Biarritz, France and spent his early childhood in Bayonne, France. On January 12, 1944, the Nazis took his parents from their home, but Behar was left behind due to a bout with measles. He was then cared for by his neighbor, Marie Cazous, passing as her son, until he was adopted by relatives from the United States and moved to New York City, New York in 1947.