Oral history interview with Lynnette Sawyer conducted by Nathalie Martinez on January 03, 2019 for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. Barbara Tabach and Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez also participate in the questioning. Lynnette Sawyer identifies as a Puerto Rican woman born and raised in Spanish Harlem in New York. Her ancestry extends from Spain to Africa and has helped her identity, as she became an educator and museum curator. She describes her life in New York and her journey to Las Vegas. As the founder of the Hispanic Museum of Nevada, she wanted to create a space that would teach young Latinos about their history and heritage.

Interviewed by Catherine Bellver. Velma Haselton was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1914. She worked as an assistant bookkeeper for Hart, Schaffner and Marx and rose to Assistant Credit Manager. Velma worked at various jobs after she married for the second time and her son was born. She also represented the San Francisco CPA firm Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery (now Coopers Lybrand) in various capacities, both in California and St. Louis, eventually attaining the position of controller. Velma moved to Las Vegas for the first time in the 1950s, where she and her husband Don ran a coffee shop at the Park Lane Motel on South Fifth Street. Family requirements necessitated a move back to California. In 1971, Velma and her third husband, Charles Haselton, "retired" to Las Vegas. Velma immediately went to work as a cost accountant for United Pipeline, and later as an accountant for Kafoury Armstrong, a CPA firm. She eventually ran her own accounting business. Velma also held memberships and offices in various women's service groups.

Guy begins by talking about his birth in Brazil, Indiana, his early work selling Civilian Conservation Corps magazine subscriptions, and his travels across the United States before arriving in Boulder City, Nevada in 1938. Next, Guy recalls his early memories of Boulder City, the Las Vegas Wash, and his work at the Boulder Beach campgrounds at Lake Mead Recreation Area and in Overton, Nevada. Guy also discusses the campgrounds' working conditions, entertainment, access to amenities, and work associates. Afterwards, Guy talks about his time as a railroad worker in Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, Block 16 in Las Vegas, Las Vegas entertainers, working as a volunteer fire fighter, and anecdotes about people in his personal life.

Born and raised in Las Vegas, Ann Clark Kanie, elementary teacher, exemplifies the love of teaching in Clark County. Her mother, Marie Larson Clark Dane, taught elementary school at Lincoln Elementary School for 35 years. Ann attended Lincoln Elementary with her mother, Jim Bridger Junior High, Rancho, and then graduated from UNLV in elementary education. She also began teaching, like her mother, at Lincoln Elementary in North Las Vegas but later changed to Wasden Elementary which she obviously admires. Ann recalls growing up in Las Vegas and the fun that she and her friends enjoyed: participating in Helldorado Week, renting horses at Tule Springs or Old Nevada, riding bikes to the Meadows Mall and the Black Hole at the Springs Preserve, sliding down Becker’s Super Slide on Decatur Avenue, watching Disney movies at the Huntridge Theater, playing miniature golf and ice skating at Commercial Center, and going to Lake Mead and investigating the Potosi Mines. Ann married, continued teaching at Wasden. Her only son has chosen to follow his mother’s footsteps, graduated from UNLV in English education and teaches and coaches at Cimarron-Memorial High School. Even though she admits that teaching has become a very difficult, time-consuming job, it is obvious that Ann Kanie loves educating students and has passed this love on to her son.

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.

In this interview, Joyce Mack discusses meeting her husband, Jerry Mack, in Los Angeles,their early life as a couple, and moving to Las Vegas at the suggestion of Jerry's father, Nate Mack. She discusses how Jerry met Parry Thomas and their banking and real estate investments. Mrs. Mack talks about the opening of the Thomas and Mack Center at UNLV, and the development of the strip hotels, and discusses her children.

Joyce Mack: wife to Jerry Mack and matriarch of one of the most influential families of Las Vegas history. During this oral history conversation, she begins by tracing her family ancestry from Kiev to New York to Omaha and then Los Angeles, where she was born and raised. At a UCLA fraternity party in the early 1940s, a teenage Joyce Rosenberg was swept off her feet by her older brother's friend Jerry Mack. Jerry was from Boulder City, Nevada and had attended school in Las Vegas. In 1946, the couple married and took an extended honeymoon throughout the United States and Cuba. Soon afterwards, Jerry's father Nate Mack, a businessman and real estate developer encouraged the newlyweds to come to Las Vegas. She tells of Jerry sharing his vision of the valley's future. Thus began a successful journey that traverses decades of Las Vegas history and breathtaking growth in which the Macks were active participants and leaders. Joyce recalls the people the first met, who they raised their children side-by-side with and became lasting friends. These people were other Las Vegas pioneers including the Greenspuns and mostly importantly her husband's partnership with Parry Thomas which created the Bank of Las Vegas. It was their partnership she explains that reduced the presence of the mob element. As members of the small Jewish community of the late 1940s, the Macks would participate in the founding of Temple Beth Sholom.