Narrator affiliation: Administrator, Pace e Bene Franciscan Nonviolence Center

Includes meeting agenda and minutes with additional information about senate bills. CSUN Session 17 Meeting Minutes and Agendas.

Kenneth Fong reflects on growing up in Las Vegas and being the son of two successful and philanthropic community members, Wing and Lilly Fong. When Ken was born the family live in a modest home on 20th and Stewart. It was a close-knit neighborhood and era, kids played tag and roamed freely. When he entered third-grade, his parents moved their family to a newer subdivision near Rancho and West Charleston Avenue: the Scotch 80s. Their new custom home on Silver Avenue reflected Asian architecture and the family’s Chinese cultural heritage; it also included a pool and a small basketball court. Memories of the neighborhoods are distinct. He learned to be comfortable with his sister and he being the only Asian Americans in school at the time. He kept busy with community volunteering at Sunrise Hospital and tutoring younger children on the Westside among other high school activities. Ken speaks lovingly of his parents and their achievements, family outings to local venues such as Mount Charleston and Red Rock and to California, where they bought Chinese baked goods. His mother, Lilly was born into a large Chinese American family of ten children, each of whom achieved a college education. After her marriage to Wing, she moved to Las Vegas with plans to work as a teacher. Ken retells the story of her encounter with discrimination and overcoming that, and her trajectory to be the first Asian American elected the Nevada Board of Regents. His orphaned father, Wing, immigrated to the United Sates in 1939 to live with uncles. They worked as cooks in Las Vegas and established the first Las Vegas Chinese restaurant, Silver Café. Wing was merely thirteen years old and spoke no English. These were not to be obstacles. He would go on to graduate from Las Vegas High School, earn a college degree in business, have a successful career in commercial real estate and banking, building the notable Fong’s Garden. Ken calls his father his most influential mentor. Today Ken is also a successful in real estate management, active at Grace Presbyterian Church, involved in Rotary Club, and a proud father of two daughters.

Ann McGinley grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the third child in a family of four. Her mother was a homemaker and her father was a lawyer. It was because of her father that she became interested in civil rights. Ann attended college and majored in Spanish. She earned a master’s degree and taught in Spain for five years. Her brother and his wife were lawyers and she decided to go back to law school at the University of Pennsylvania. Ann did a two year clerkship for a federal judge, doing research and drafting opinions. She met her husband-to-be during this time and they mover to Minneapolis. Ann did commercial litigation and worked on a class action suit against the school system on behalf of the American Indian population. Her husband wanted to teach and was hired by Brooklyn Law School. Their first child was on the way and Ann studied for the bar in New Jersey. She then worked for a small firm in Labor and Employment Discrimination. A teaching job at Brooklyn Law School opened up and she worked part-time there for four or five years, meanwhile giving birth to two more children. It then seemed like the right time to make a career move, so Ann and her husband applied and were hired at Florida State in Tallahassee. After watching others being denied tenure and having experienced that denial themselves, they were ready to move on. A phone call from Carl Tobias inviting them to UNLV was followed up with interviews, and the McGinley’s made the move to Las Vegas. Ann and her family settled in Green Valley in 1999 during Carol Harter’s administration. Ann drafted the plan for a clinical program, which uses real clients to help train law students, and has helped build other programs for the law school. Ann now teaches employment law, employment discrimination, disabilities discrimination law, torts, and occasionally civil procedure. Her vision for the future of the law school is for it to continue with its social mission, and perhaps for a satellite campus to open at UNR. She is confident that the UNLV law school will continue to be a place where women can thrive.

Las Vegas Mayor Oran K. Gragson (left) with author Earl Wilson. Mayor Gragson is holding a copy of Earl's book, The Show Business Nobody Knows. A large cake decorated as a newspaper announcing the publishing of the book sits on the table in front of them. The location where the photograph was taken is unknown. Oran Kenneth Gragson (February 14, 1911 – October 7, 2002) was an American businessman and politician. He was the longest-serving mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada, from 1959 to 1975. Gragson, a member of the Republican Party, was a small business owner who was elected Mayor on a reform platform against police corruption and for equal opportunity for people of all socio-economic and racial categories. Gragson died in a Las Vegas hospice on October 7, 2002, at the age of 91. The Oran K. Gragson Elementary School located at 555 N. Honolulu Street, Las Vegas, NV 89110 was named in his honor. Earl Wilson (May 3, 1907–January 16, 1987), born Harvey Earl Wilson, was an American journalist, gossip columnist and author, perhaps best known for his nationally syndicated newspaper column, It Happened Last Night. Wilson's column originated from the New York Post and ran from 1942 until 1983. His chronicling of the Broadway theatre scene during the "Golden Age" of show business formed the basis for a book published in 1971, The Show Business Nobody Knows. He signed his columns with the tag line, "That's Earl, brother." His nickname was "Midnight Earl". In later years, the name of his column was changed to Last Night With Earl Wilson. In his final years with the Post, he alternated with the paper's entertainment writer and restaurant critic, Martin Burden, in turning out the column. (Burden, who died in 1993, took over the Last Night column full-time upon Wilson's retirement.) Wilson is also the author of two controversial books, Show Business Laid Bare, and an unauthorized biography of Frank Sinatra, Sinatra – An Unauthorized Biography. The former book is notable for revealing the extramarital affairs of President John F. Kennedy.