At the age of thirteen, the incredible life journey of Stephen “Pista” Nasser (b. 1931 - ) is preserved in his heart. His ordeal begins when his family are ripped from their home to be interred in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944. Fifty years later, he sits in his Las Vegas home and reflects on his calling to write and speak about his survival and losses. His ordeal is preserved in his book My Brother’s Voice (2013) and in his follow up stage production Not Now Pista. He is also the author of a companion memoir, Journey to Freedom. Stephen and his wife Francoise are tireless in their travels throughout the United States and the world. At the time of this 2018 oral history interview, Stephen had done over 1092 presentations about his harrowing life story to thousands of people of all ages and denominations. Each presentation fills a spot in his heart as he honors his brother and reminds listeners that such devastating episode in history should not be forgotten, and should never occur again. The timing of this interview also coincided with the premiere of a 20-minute documentary based on his writings and the play production. It was shown at the 2018 Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival. Note: the photo above of Stephen and Francoise Nasser was taken shortly after this interview on their next cruise. (2018)
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Frankie Perez (1986- ) is an individual that constantly found himself navigating two worlds, whether it was military versus civilian; female versus male; or being Latinx in the United States. As a result of this navigation, Perez has a unique perspective on our ever more complicated world that not many individuals possess. Perez served in the military during the Do Not Ask, Do Not Tell policy which made it difficult for someone dealing with gender identity, to seek out the proper support they need. Despite the policy, and other policies that were put in place afterwards to inhibit the transgender community in the military, Perez began his transition while still serving his country. In direct contradiction of popular opinion, Perez discovered that the military easily accommodated his transition. Outside of the military Perez is an active voice in the LGBTQ community. As a member of the LGBTQ, Latinx, and military community, Perez has a unique perspective that he uses to fight for both LGBTQ and Latinx rights. Currently, Perez is finishing his degree in gender and sexuality studies at UNLV. He hopes to use his education to help people have the difficult discussions and improve conditions for his communities.
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In 1943, Cleophis Hill Williams was a teenager visiting her mother who had moved to Las Vegas. For most of her young life she had lived with her parents in Muskogee, Oklahoma and Paul Spur/Douglas, Arizona. The same year that she visited Las Vegas, she met her future husband Tom Williams, with whom she had nine children, all born and raised on the Westside. Tom worked construction and built their first home on G Street. For Cleophis, she focused her life on raising her children and, whenever possible, finding some precious time to read.
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Jillian Hrushowy arrived in Las Vegas in 1959 as part of a company hired to appear at the El Rancho Vegas Hotel in a production called La Nouvelle Eve. She has remained here (other than three short-term contracts in Reno, Nevada) until present day. She is now the production manager for Legends in Concert at the Imperial Palace Hotel. She was an only child, born in Rhodesia to English parents and raised in a home with servants and tutors. Her mother exposed her to the arts at an early age. Jillian took dancing lessons from the age of three years until she began dancing professionally. When she was fifteen years old, both parents agreed it was time for her to leave Rhodesia and finish her education in England. Living alone was difficult and lonely, but it afforded her a wealth of opportunities otherwise unavailable. She worked as a dancer in small, local productions while still in high school. When only eighteen, she got a job dancing in La Nouvelle Eve in Paris which eventually came to Las Vegas. This interview focuses on the years from Jillian’s arrival in 1959 until she retired from dancing in 1979. It follows her transitions from dancer, to principal dancer to production manager. [The first twenty minutes of the tape is warped and the text is garbled. The transcriber has lightly edited the transcript.]
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Oral history interview with Sandra Gray conducted by Elsa Lopez and Barbara Tabach on December 13, 2019 for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. In this interview, Dr. Gray discusses her family history, and describes how her parents are immigrants from Durango, Mexico and moved from East Los Angeles, California to East Las Vegas, Nevada in 1991. After getting her bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) she started a behavioral health agency that provided rehabilitative mental health services to children primarily in the foster care system. She went on to earn a master's degree in mental health counseling, a master's in psychology, and a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. She is the founder of Empower LV, which strives for equitable access to sports and tutoring. Dr. Sandra Gray is also the owner and operator of Innovation Behavioral Health Solutions, LLC.
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Florence McClure came to Las Vegas later in her life, but the state felt her presence and the community her contributions as if she were a native daughter. Introduced to the League of Women Voters in 1967, McClure met her political mentor Jean Ford and learned how to practice the core elements of democracy. She put those tools to work in a number of ways, however her participation in the creation of the Rape Crises Center and her advocacy for locating the women’s prison near Las Vegas are two of her long-lasting efforts. Florence Alberta Schilling was born in southern Illinois where she enjoyed the security of a tight-knit family and the independence to test her abilities growing up. She graduated from high school and attended the MacMurray College for Women at Jacksonville. With the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, she began a series of jobs working for the war effort. She moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan with a girlfriend to work at the Willow Run Army Airbase and then moved to Miami, Florida where she worked for the Provost Marshall in the Security and Intelligence Division. She met her husband, James McClure, at the time and they married in 1945. During the next several years, they raised a family and moved around the country and to Japan with the military. McClure came to Las Vegas in 1966 as part of her work in the hotel industry which she engaged in after her husband’s retirement from the military. She had worked in California and Miami Beach, but it was Burton Cohen in Los Angeles who invited her to join him in a move to Las Vegas to build the new Frontier Hotel and Casino. Following the completion of the Frontier, she moved to the Desert Inn with Cohen in 1967 and worked as the executive office manager. After a few years, she decided to leave the industry and complete her college education. She graduated from UNLV in 1971with a BA in Sociology with an emphasis on criminology. She was 50 years old. McClure had been a member of the League of Women Voters for a few years at that point and had learned the political process from Jean Ford and workshops on lobbying. She had numerous skills that were waiting to be tapped when she attended an informational meeting on the incidence of rape in the Las Vegas valley. From that meeting, a small group of individuals, including McClure, began the organization Community Action Against Rape (later renamed the Rape Crisis Center) in 1973. It was the first agency in the area devoted to serving individuals who had been assaulted and changing the laws on rape. The organization’s first office was set up in McClure’s home. Over the next decade, she worked to change attitudes and reshape policy by constantly raising the issues of sexual assault with police officers, emergency room doctors, judges, and legislators. Her role as an advocate took her into hospital emergency rooms and courtrooms to assist victims. It also took her to the state legislator to lobby repeatedly for a change in laws. During this period, journalist Jan Seagrave gave McClure the nickname “Hurricane Florence” - a fitting moniker that captured the force with which McClure attacked the issue. As a result of her efforts and those of the people with whom she worked, we now 1) recognize rape as a crime of assault; 2) forbid the sexual history of a rape victim from being used against her in court; and 3) recognize marital rape. In addition to learning about Florence McClure’s activities, the reader of this interview will gain information on the role of civic organizations like the League of Women Voters in engaging the voluntary efforts of women in the post-war years.
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When looking back on his legacy in the Latinx community of Las Vegas, Otto Merida (1945 - ) takes great pride in being a Latin Chamber of Commerce [LCC] co-founder with Arturo Cambeiro. With the LCC, they forged a powerful economic entity that continues to provide the local Latino community with social and political influence. Growing up during the 1950s in Havana, Otto Merida fondly remembers his childhood despite living under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. There were the murmuring sounds of explosions from afar on the way to baseball games, but also the warm Sunday family meals of Cuban soup with fideos. In this interview, he talks about the rising communist powers inspired by revolutionary Fidel Castro and the events that led his family to place him in the Peter Pan Program in 1961. The Peter Pan Program sent unaccompanied Cuban children to the United States to avoid potential instruction by Castro’s government. Merida still holds on to his mother’s final request upon leaving Cuba-“I want you to remember the address where we live and the phone number: Josefina 68-entre primera y segunda-La Víbora, Havana con el teléfono X4304.” As a part of the Peter Pan Program, Merida experienced a nomadic childhood living in barracks in Miami and a three-story home in Wilmington, DE. The only connection he had to his family were a series of letters he exchanged with his mother, until they reunited years later in Miami. For Merida, life on 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard in Miami was defined by the values of his family and other Cubans and African Americans in his neighborhood. v Merida earned his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Florida. He credits his sister-in-law with a pivotal role in his decision to pursue a higher education. His engagement in politics continued through his involvement with the Cuban Circle, the first Hispanic community to be involved with politics in Las Vegas. He describes the migration of Cubans to the casino scene of Las Vegas and the presence of Cubans in the community. His work with the Cuban Circle inspired him to develop a political presence for Hispanics in the community. While travelling across the United States before settling in Las Vegas, Merida made many significant relationships while working with associations such as the Fitchburg Chamber of Commerce and Volunteers in Service to America [VISTA]. Living in Las Vegas, Otto Merida worked as an educator and community organizer. In the late 1970s, Merida and Arturo Cambeiro collaborated to create the Latin Chamber of Commerce of Las Vegas. For Merida, the Chamber consistently goes above and beyond the vision he and Cambeiro had created when they first opened their doors. From the creation of the Latino Youth Leadership Program at UNLV to their work alongside political figures such as Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, Merida is extremely proud of the various accomplishments of the Chamber. Now as President Emeritus, Otto Merida continues to dedicate himself to the Chamber as a volunteer and serves as one of the many Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada that have shaped the greater Las Vegas community.
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This interview is compiled in the bound book version for OH-02270. Born Ffolliott Chorlton in Butte, Montana in 1923, Fluff Le Coque embarked on a career during World War II that would span fifty-five years. Le Coque’s experience as an entertainer started at the age of seven when she began dance lessons during the Great Depression. She expanded her interest in show business at the University of Washington. Attending on a drama scholarship, she performed in theatrical productions and supplemented the scholarship by teaching coordination to university athletes through dance. Le Coque toured as a dancer in a road company during World War II. After the war she came to Las Vegas for the first time. Although she did not consider herself a singer, she performed as a vocalist with the Chuck Gould Orchestra at the Last Frontier. After a brief excursion to Hollywood, she returned to Las Vegas to work at the Thunderbird Hotel as a dancer. It was at the Thunderbird that she became part of the glamour publicity that would help shape the image of Las Vegas. Crowned “Miss Thunderbird,” Le Coque took part in publicity photo shoots designed to attract vacationing customers to the Las Vegas resort casino. While performing at the Thunderbird, Le Coque learned of an opportunity to showcase her talents in a wider arena. She joined a touring company that was preparing to take the production of Hollywood Extravangza to Europe. In Paris, Le Coque took on additional responsibilities in the production end of the business. She served the Hollywood Extravaganza as principal dancer, choreographer, and ballet mistress. On her return to New York, she firmed up her career-long relationship with producers Donn Arden and Ron Fletcher. Le Coque’s association with Arden-Fletcher Productions proved beneficial for an already successful career. She performed as principal dancer for Arden and Fletcher beginning with a six-month engagement at the Lookout House in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the late 1950s Arden wanted her to return to Las Vegas and she accepted immediately. The Las Vegas Desert Inn opened a newly remodeled showroom with Fluff Le Coque as a featured principal dancer. Arden-Fletcher Productions kept a number of performers busy throughout the United States from California to New York. Le Coque, now a valued talent, appeared in the Arden-Fletcher production at the Moulin Rouge in Hollywood. She worked there as company captain and principal dancer for ten years. Following her extended engagement at the Moulin Rouge, she toured the United States and Europe before returning to Las Vegas for good in the late 1960s. Arden again asked her to open a renovated showroom at the Desert Inn and again she agreed. This time Le Coque made Las Vegas her permanent home. She danced until she was forty-five years old and during the later years worked both sides of the stage, as company manager and dancer. Fluff Le Coque retired from dancing in 1970 to enjoy leisure activities and volunteer work. She learned to paint and served as publicity director of the Las Vegas Art Museum. She was wooed out of retirement by Donn Arden, to become company manager of the production show at the new MGM Grand Hotel [later reopened as Bally’s]. At the time of the interview, Le Coque continued to serve as company manager for Jubilee at Bally’s Hotel & Casino. Le Coque’s narrative provides a vivid account of the history of the Las Vegas entertainment industry. In addition to the organization of club circuits during the post-war years, the narrative provides clues about white-black relations during the era. It also informs a wider historical context. Post-war American society underwent significant changes economically, politically, and socially. Expanded work opportunities for women were among those changes. Le Coque’s choice to complete a college education during the 1940s was atypical. Her successful dancing career and later move into production management provides an example of career achievement decades ealier than the majority of American women. By extending her career as a dancer into her forty-fifth year, she resisted the evolving publicity hype that only an ingenue could be a dancer. Her narrative provides a compelling description of both the glamour and physical demands associated with the Las Vegas entertainment industry.
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Interviewed by Claytee White. Rodrigo Vazquez also participated in the questioning. Guadalupe Redmond lived a wonderful life in Mexico while growing up. When Guadalupe was 17, her mother decided to immigrate the family to Las Vegas, Nevada, Guadalupe did not want to move but reluctantly did so. She taught herself English by watching TV. Then she decided she wanted to work and became a guest room attendant working downtown and on the Strip - Sundance (Fitzgerald's, now the D), Stratosphere, Aladdin, Planet Hollywood, Riviera, Hacienda - to name a few. As she moved about, she began to understand the importance of the Culinary Union Local 226. She is now an organizer who in 1989 participated in a 10-month Work and Walk strategy that was successful.
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