Ramon "Ray" Martinez was born in Park City, Utah, but spent part of his childhood in Pioche Nevada. His mother and father both worked in aircraft factories and the Navy shipyards during WWII. Ray graduated from high school in 1953 and went on to the University of Utah on a Munich Scholarship. Before graduation he joined the Air Force, became an electronics technician, and got married. In 1959, Ramon left the Air Force and re-enrolled in college, graduating in 1964 During this time he supported his growing family by working for the FAA and teaching' at Weltech College. After college, he worked for a short while and then entered an electronics technology program near Rochester, New York. It was during this period that he saw an ad for department chair in electronics technology at Nevada Southern University. In 1968, Ray interviewed at Nevada Southern and was hired. He and his family moved to Las Vegas and he began teaching mechanical engineering courses like status and dynamics. He used NSF summer grants to further his education with two summers at Louisiana State and Utah State, and then two summers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he completed his master's degree. Ramon was here when Nevada Southern University changed its name to University of Nevada Las Vegas and the engineering department became part of the College of Math and Science. He made the move out of trailers into a high-tech building, has seen the change from slide rules and calculators to computers, and helped develop master's and PhD programs. He was involved in much of the work of accreditation, and taught his students much more than status and dynamics. He taught them how to negotiate job interviews, write concise technical reports, and be appreciative of the education they received in other disciplines.

Gladys Neville's story begins in Crowley, Louisiana, in 1915. She grew up as one of eleven children, graduated from high school in 1933, and entered nursing school at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. After earning her RN in 1937, she continued to work at Charity for four years, then joined the Army and served in the European Theater for three years. Gladys details her experience in nursing school, explaining that students were given on-the-job training. With that training and four years of nursing after that, she was well qualified to join the 24th General Hospital overseas deployment in WWII. It was during her stay in Florence, Italy, that she was married and not too long after that, the war ended and she and her husband were transferred back to the States. Her husband's work for Bank of America took them to Laguna Beach, Salt Lake City, and Idaho Falls. Their children were bom during this period and Gladys took a 20 year hiatus from nursing. In 1962 they moved to Las Vegas and in 1964 Gladys decided to take a refresher course at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital (now University Medical Center). After that refresher course, Gladys was hired for a full-time day shift at UMC. She and the interviewer share many details about the hospital's physical appearance, the staffing, location of surgeries and burn units, and how the RN's encouraged LPN's to continue their training and become nurses. Gladys concludes her interview with further recollections of her military nursing experience. She also gives more details about her war-time wedding. Among her final comments, she mentions the stress of working full time when her husband was ill.