Earl Rockwell was born on August 17, 1892 in Elmira, New York and in 1906 moved to Las Vegas, Nevada with his brother, Leon Rockwell. The two brothers helped to found the Las Vegas Volunteer Fire Department and became prominent citizens of early Las Vegas. The Rockwell brothers also constructed one of the first airfields in Las Vegas, and leased it to Western Air Express in 1920 which opened the city to aircraft. Later in life, both Earl and Leon Rockwell were involved in real estate ventures in the greater Las Vegas area. Earl Rockwell died in 1980.
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Interview with Adele Baratz by Claytee White on March 19, 2007. In this interview, Baratz talks about her parents who came to the United States as teenagers from Russia and eventually settled in Las Vegas after a short time in California. She discusses the Jewish community in Las Vegas when she was growing up, and her father's job selling bootlegging supplies, then as a real estate broker, then as a bar owner. Baratz attended the Fifth Street Grammar School, which was built after a fire destroyed the original school, and Las Vegas High School. As a teenager, she worked at Nellis as a messenger and in the rations department, then went to nursing school in Baltimore at Sinai Hospital. She talks about her father's bar, "Al's Bar," that was popular with Union Pacific Railroad workers, and how the bar was forced out for the building of the Golden Nugget. Baratz recounts where her family lived, the growth of the Jewish community, and building the first synagogue on Carson Street.
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Rabbi Sanford Akselrad discusses Project Ezra, an employment program he established during the recession in conjunction with the Jewish Family Service Agency.
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