Program booklet for the testimonial dinner held for Leo Wilner's retirement includes dedications from colleagues and friends.

Folder from the Nevada Women's History Project Records (MS-00406).

Commencement program from University of Nevada, Las Vegas Commencement Programs and Graduation Lists (UA-00115).

This ability to greet each day with a challenge has laid the foundation for a long history of success for Elaine McNamara as she has navigated through local beauty pageants, an illustrious real estate career, serving on the Las Vegas-Clark County Library board during their decade of expansion to authorship. Her story of resilience starts when she became ill at approximately seven or eight with erythema nodosum that impeded her ability to walk for five months when she started collecting pictures of movie stars. Her favorite movies were any of Roy Rogers, Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Her family moved to Las Vegas, where she attended Las Vegas High School as well as UNLV majoring in elementary education and minoring in language arts. While she attended high school, she studied modeling in the evenings to help overcome her shyness and to become more outgoing. Becoming more involved with local and state beauty pageants, she met the likes of Phyllis Diller, Natalie Wood,

Roscoe Wilkes was born in Bonanza, Colorado, and moved with his family to Pioche, Nevada for what his sister called a 75-year pit stop. Soon after their move to this rural Nevada town, Roscoe’s mother became a widow, raising two children during the Depression. Like many families in Pioche, the Wilkes’ made due with what they had, and were creative in sustaining their livelihoods. Roscoe has never stood still. Before enlisting in the military, Roscoe worked various jobs, as a PBX systems operator, a lead zinc miner, and grade school teacher, before enlisting. During World War II, Roscoe became a prisoner of war in Romania, and was rescued a few months later when the Germans began retreating. Returning to the United States after his release, he relocated to a base in California, and married. As soon as Roscoe was relieved of his military service, he took advantage of the then new G.I. Bill and enrolled in the University of Southern California School of Law. He immediately took his degree to Pioche, soon becoming its district attorney, and later a judge. He spent 18 years based in Seattle as a federal administrative law judge, hearing cases prosecuted by the Coast Guard. Roscoe ended his 45-year career in law in 1990, and moved to Boulder City, where four generations of Wilkes live.

It was a scorching Fourth of July, when Norma (n?e Adler) and Leon Friedman rolled into their new home of Las Vegas in 1973. Nevertheless, they were content with leaving Gary, Indiana behind, and starting fresh with the family?s new ownership of Walker Furniture. Norma recalls her first stop in checking out Las Vegas was to visit the synagogue ? Temple Beth Sholom being the only option. Her oldest son would soon become a bar mitzvah. Feeling good about that, she and her sister-in-law who was also relocating to Las Vegas for the furniture business, searched for new homes. Norma settled into the community through volunteer work as well as through employment outside the family business. She worked in the real estate briefly and in a jewelry store at the Dunes. A natural organizer, she immersed herself in religious and civic organizations including the Jewish Federation, Jewish Family Service Agency, and volunteering at Selma Bartlett Elementary School in Henderson. Norma shares stories of her Jewish heritage and upbringing in Pittsburgh, the decision to move to Las Vegas, making fast friendships during her life in Las Vegas and the joy she has in traveling the world with Leon, who passed in 2004. In 2017, Norma was honored by the Jewish Family Service Agency.