Alexander “Al” Salton (1894-1948) was a founding member of the Las Vegas, Nevada Jewish community. Salton moved to Las Vegas in 1928 with his wife Rebecca and his children, Adele and Charles. He worked for a grocery store that sold bootlegging supplies, and he invested in real estate. After Prohibition ended in 1933, Salton opened Al’s Bar on South First Street. Al’s Bar was the first bar in the area to have guaranteed jackpots and was very popular among the Union Pacific Railroad workers.
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Charles Salton was born June 19, 1922 in Morristown, New Jersey to Rebecca and Al Salton. The family moved to Huntington Beach, California for two years before moving to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1929. Salton was very active in the Southern Nevada Jewish community. He held careers as an engineer draftsman, insurance agent, and a real estate broker. He was also an income tax enrollment agent and one of the original members of Temple Beth Shalom. Salton passed away April 11, 2004.
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Thornton Duard "TD" Barnes was born in Texas on January 25, 1937, grew up on a ranch at Dalhart, Texas, and graduated from Mountain View High School, Oklahoma. He then embarked on a ten-year military career. He served as an army intelligence officer in Korea. Following two years of radar and missile electronics schooling, he taught foreign students the Nike radar and missile system, and deployed with a Hawk missile battalion during the Soviet Iron Curtain threat. He attended Artillery OCS, where an injury ended his military career.
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Sheilagh Thompson was born on December 10, 1923 to Robert and Leah Thompson. She grew up in Southern California and graduated from San Pedro High School. She earned her BA in 1944, her MA in 1947, and her PhD in 1951 all in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She married Richard Brooks on November 10, 1951, and the couple had two children, Kathleen and Carolyn.
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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.
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Harold (Hal) Belfer was a writer, producer, and choreographer whose career spanned over 50 years. Belfer was born on February 16, 1922 in Los Angeles, California and his mother enrolled him in his first dance class at the age of three. Belfer began as a tap dancer and gradually expanded his entertainment career, eventually receiving more than 200 motion picture and television credits for choreography, producing, directing, and staging.
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