Interview with Adele Baratz by Steve McClenachan on March 3 and 4, 1979. In this interview, Baratz talks about growing up in Las Vegas and her her schooling. She graduated from Las Vegas High School in 1944, and discusses the rationing that took place during World War II. She went to Maryland for nursing school and returned to Las Vegas in 1947. She describes some of the hotels and casinos, and tells the story of her father trading property for an automobile in 1935. She also recalls the building of Hoover Dam, swimming in local pools, and going to Mount Charleston in the winter. The interviewer asks her about travel between Las Vegas and California and the impact of Atlantic City on Las Vegas tourism. Baratz then talks about her nursing career and starting a re-certification program in 1974 and the different hospitals in the area.
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Interview with Adele Baratz by Claytee White on March 19, 2007. In this interview, Baratz talks about her parents who came to the United States as teenagers from Russia and eventually settled in Las Vegas after a short time in California. She discusses the Jewish community in Las Vegas when she was growing up, and her father's job selling bootlegging supplies, then as a real estate broker, then as a bar owner. Baratz attended the Fifth Street Grammar School, which was built after a fire destroyed the original school, and Las Vegas High School. As a teenager, she worked at Nellis as a messenger and in the rations department, then went to nursing school in Baltimore at Sinai Hospital. She talks about her father's bar, "Al's Bar," that was popular with Union Pacific Railroad workers, and how the bar was forced out for the building of the Golden Nugget. Baratz recounts where her family lived, the growth of the Jewish community, and building the first synagogue on Carson Street.
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Interview with Ron Lurie by Barbara Tabach on June 5, 2015. In this interview, Lurie discusses his family and his time in politics, campaigning for office, and some of his accomplishments while in office as mayor and in the city council. He also talks about growing up in Las Vegas and attending Las Vegas High School, and working for his father, Art Lurie, in the grocery store business.
Ron Lurie was a rambunctious teenager when the Lurie family moved to Las Vegas from California. He adapted quickly to Las Vegas and made fast friends. He is a 1958 graduate of Las Vegas High School. His father, Art Lurie, a supermarket businessman, was also a well-known professional boxing judge and a former Nevada Athletic Commission chair. In 1987 Ron became the first person of Jewish ancestry to be elected Mayor of Las Vegas. Previously, he was fourteen year member of the Las Vegas City Council and served on many community boards and commissions. Since political office was not a fulltime position, Ron's career path developed in a couple of different ways. He tells the story of becoming a butcher and the opportunities he experienced becoming a successful salesman of gaming machines for Si Redd, IGT and others. His over three decade gaming career continues as of this oral history. He is executive vice president and general manager of Arizona Charlie's Decatur location. In this oral history he reflects on some of his political accomplishments as mayor and city councilman. He also served six years on the State of Nevada Wildlife Commission and is a member of the Fraternity of the Desert Bighorn.
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Interview with Mark Fine in two sessions, November 18 and December 2, 2014. In the first session, Fine begins by talking about his sons and their business interests, then discusses his own childhood growing up in Cleveland. Fine moved to Arizona as a teenager and attended the University of Arizona for college. After college, he moved to New York city, and describes his employment at Chemical Bank, and then at the investment firm Loeb, Rhoades. He was married and started a family in New York City, then moved to Las Vegas to assist in his in-laws' (the Greenspuns) business ventures, which included real estate development and Sun Outdoor Advertising. Fine talks about Las Vegas in the 1970s and building Green Valley and Summerlin, the "social engineering" aspects of developing a community and the importance of building incrementally. In Part II of the interview, Fine discusses his family history and raising his children in Las Vegas. He talks about the growth of the Jewish community and ph
Mark Fine was born in 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio, and was raised with a strong Jewish identity. When Mark was in fourth grade, his parents moved the family to Shaker Heights, and again moved to Arizona during his senior of high school. Upon graduation, Mark enrolled at the University of Arizona and became a member of the ZBT fraternity; determined to graduate in four years, he finished in 1964 with a degree in business administration with an emphasis in real estate. Though never having been, Mark took his degree to New York City and established a career on Wall Street, first working for Chemical Bank. In 1969, Mark married Susan Greenspun, and soon after, the couple had their first child. By this time, Mark had taken a new position with Loeb, Rhoades and Company, and worked there for nearly five years in their corporate finance department. In 1973, Mark moved to Las Vegas to assist his father-in-law, Hank Greenpun, with his nonnewspaper business operations, largely under the auspices of American Nevada Corporation. Mark soon capitalized on this passion for real estate and community development, leading several integrated real estate projects to create the Green Valley area, the city's first large-scale master-planned community. Mark went on to launch a similar project in Summerlin, and at one point, he was leading the development of the country's two fastest selling planned communities (Green Valley and Summerlin). Ultimately, Mark became one of state's prominent real estate developers, and continues to lead significant projects positively impacting the city's growth and appeal. His fundamental goal has always been to create a sense of place, to develop thriving communities with generational stamina. His success in this endeavor is recognized, in part, with the naming of Mark L. Fine Elementary School. Over the years, Mark has also been an important member of the Jewish community, among the "second generation of pioneers," coming after those heavily involved with the hotels during the 1950s and 1960s. He served on the Temple Beth Sholom board of directors, and initiated events to bring older and younger generations of the Jewish community together in meaningful ways. Mark has five children?Alyson Marmur, Katie Erhman, Jeffrey Fine and Jonathan Fine and Nicole Ruvo Falcone?and is married to Gloria Fine.
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Interview with Barbara Raben by Barbara Tabach on February 24, 2015. In the first part of the interview Raben discusses her involvement with Hadassah in Southern Nevada, and the various groups within that organization. During the second part of the interview, she talks about her family and her relationship to Judaism, and moving to Las Vegas in 1991. Raben discusses the business she built in Los Angeles and Las Vegas called the Candy Factory. She then talks about the formation of Midbar Kodesh with other families from Temple Beth Sholom. Raben continues to be involved in the Jewish community and the Jewish Family Service Agency.
In 1945, Barbara Raben was born to Kermit and Adele Shulman, children of Eastern European emigrants. She enjoyed a happy childhood in Stamford, Connecticut, and was raised with a strong Jewish identity. After attending college in New Jersey, Barbara married Richard Grisar, and the couple lived in London for a year, before returning to Stamford. In 1975, Barbara and Richard moved to Los Angeles where Barbara owned and operated a very successful candy business, Candy Factory. Sixteen years later, Barbara sold her business, and the family relocated permanently to Las Vegas, where her husband owned radio stations. Barbara has always been an active member of the Jewish community, wherever she lived, giving her time to synagogue, children's day school and service organizations. Upon arriving in Las Vegas, Barbara and her family were members of Temple Beth Sholom, before leaving the congregation to start Midbar Kodesh Temple with a small group of other families. She has been an active member of Hadassah Southern Nevada Chapter for over a decade, helping rebuild the organization locally after participating in the Hadassah Leadership Academy, a program designed to engage a younger generation of members. Currently, Barbara serves as board president and interim executive director for Jewish Family Service. In 2004, then a widow, she married Terry Raben. Barbara has four sons with her first husband: Michael, Andrew, David and Marc Grisar.
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Sharon Walker is a real estate investor, retired stockbroker and former loan officer. She was born on December 8, 1949 in Toledo, Ohio, and moved to Las Vegas with her family in 1963, where they started Walker Furniture, a store which they later sold to the Alterwitz family. Sharon's father, Julius Walker, was also in the casino business, becoming an owner of the El Cortez Hotel and Casino with Jackie Gaughan. Her mother, Anne Walker was a founding member of the first local Hadassah, The Women?s Zionist Organization. Sharon continues the family tradition of being active in Hadassah as well as being a Board Member of Jewish Family Service Agency. In November 2014 she was an honoree of Hadassah Leadership. In this interview, Sharon describes her adolescence in Las Vegas and the differences in culture as compared to her childhood in Toledo, Ohio. She also recalls the Walker Furniture business, her father?s careers, and her uncles Ed ?E? Walker and Lou ?Paddock? Walker.
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always thought I'd be more urban. I would live in a downtown city. I wouldn't have a car. I would walk around. I would work on these big skyscrapers.” At one point in his life, architect Craig Galati dreamt of designing large buildings in some of the nation’s biggest cities. Instead, he was drawn back to his childhood home of Las Vegas, where he created projects meant to preserve the city’s integrity, such as the Grant Sawyer State Office Building and the first building at the College of Southern Nevada Charleston Campus. He speaks to his work in preservation at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve and in welcoming visitors to Mount Charleston with his Spring Mountains Visitor Gateway design. In this interview, Galati talks about his parents’ decision to move from Ohio to Nevada and what it was like growing up in Las Vegas. He recalls his first teenage jobs in the Las Vegas of his youth and his studies in architecture at the University of Idaho. He recounts the dilemma of struggling to find architecture work he enjoyed and how that vision drew him back to Vegas. He describes various projects in his portfolio from his early years to the present. He speaks highly of his partnership with Ray Lucchesi and the basis for their vision: “We wanted to be a place that everybody liked to work for. Buildings were just tools to do something grander. They weren't an object. We had a philosophy that was not object based, it was people based.”
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Brothers Steve and Bart Jones live and breathe Las Vegas history. Their grandparents, Burley and Arlie Jones, arrived in Las Vegas in the nineteen-teens; their father, Herb Jones; his sister, Florence Lee Jones Cahlan, and their uncle, Cliff Jones, helped form the legal, journalistic, and water policy framework that sustains Southern Nevada today. The Jones brothers build on that foundation through their custom home-building company, Merlin Construction. In this interview, they talk about living and growing up in Las Vegas, of attending John S. Park Elementary School, of hunting in the desert, of their family's commitment to cultural and racial diversity, and of accompanying their grandfather to his business at the Ranch Market in the Westside. They share their early work experiences lifeguarding and later, dealing, at local casinos as well as second-hand memories of the Kefauver trials through the tales told by their father and uncle. Steve describes mentor Audie Coker; he explains
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Fourth-generation Nevadan, Las Vegas native, and great grandson of Mormon pioneer Edward Bunker, Richard W. Bunker knows Southern Nevada as few others do. For example, when Richard Bunker speaks of water, he talks about his father's family leaving their home after the completion of Hoover Dam because their little town of St. Thomas was submerged in the rising waters of Lake Mead; he recalls swimming at the Old Ranch pool, the Springs, and the Mermaid pool; he shares stories of hiring Pat Mulroy, mentoring her, and encouraging her to apply to lead the Las Vegas Valley Water District; he mentions the Dunes and its two fresh-water wells, the Sanitation District and wastewater treatment. Few others have actively shaped Southern Nevada as Richard Bunker has through his lengthy career as a lobbyist (1973–2000); assistant manager for City of Las Vegas (1973–77); Clark County Manager (1977–79); member and Chair of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (1980–1982); executive director (1988-1990) and
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Interviewed by Barbara Tabach.
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