On March 13, 1976, Mary Germain interviewed Thalia Dondero (born 1921 in Greeley, Colorado) about her life in Nevada and her experiences as the first female commissioner for the Clark County Commission. Dondero first talks about her upbringing and her eventual move to Southern Nevada. She also discusses her involvement in extracurricular activities, such as being a leader for the Girl Scouts, and how some of those experiences led her to get involved in politics. Dondero also mentions her work with National Geographic and her passion for working with oil paintings and watercolors. The final part of the interview involves some of Dondero’s accounts as a commissioner for Clark County and some of the challenges she has faced in that position.
Joyce Moore's family moved to Las Vegas from Chicago in 1953, when she was eight years old. She attended Rancho High School, married and had three daughters, and currently lives in Las Vegas. Joyce's father was in the gaming industry and her mother was a nurse. Growing up in Las Vegas meant going to shows with her mother, spending summer days in the pool at the Showboat Hotel, and riding horses to the Last Frontier. While a teenager at Rancho High school, Joyce worked at several movie theaters including the Huntridge, went to school dances and marched in the Hellodorado Parade. After her divorce, Joyce returned to work to support herself and her children, first at the Daily Fax then later on the Strip at the Aladdin and Circus, Circus doing a variety of office and accounting jobs. As a lark she and a friend applied to work as cocktail waitresses at the MGM; she was hired and spent the next five years in a job that was by turns interesting, exhausting, frustrating and fun. This interview covers several periods of Joyce's life - her childhood, teen years, and early adult life - and what it was like to grow up, live and work in Las Vegas in from the mid-1950s until the mid-1970s.