Genevieve "Gene" Segerblom contributed in a multitude of ways to her home of more than fifty years--Boulder City, Nevada. She was a third-generation Nevadan and was born in Ruby Valley, Nevada in 1918. Gene and her future husband Clifford moved from Reno where they both had attended the University of Nevada, Reno to Boulder City in 1940. After they came back from Panama in 1948 where Clifford had a photography assignment, she ran a child care center and wrote freelance articles about the Nevada landscape with her husband providing the photographs.
Sasha Semenoff (1924-2013) was born Abram Shapiro in Riga, Latvia. Sasha played the piano at age 6 and got his first violin at age 9. In a 2009 Las Vegas Sun interview, Sasha told the story that while being transported to a concentration camp a German Nazi soldier saw him holding a mandolin and instructed him to play “La Paloma.” To his great fortune, he was able to do so and always felt that that moment saved his life.