On January 14, 1975, collector James Greene interviewed foreman, Neil H. Holmes (born on November 16th, 1897, in Chicopee, Kansas) in his home in Boulder City, Nevada. This interview covers the early days in Boulder City. Mr. Holmes also discusses the local education system, family life, employment opportunities, housing, and the building of Hoover Dam.
In this interview, Letizia discusses her career, and breaking gender barriers in both broadcasting as well as in advertising. She also talks about how her family ended up settling in Las Vegas, and the evolution of her relationship with Judaism from childhood to adulthood, eventually leading to her leadership roles with Congregation Ner Tamid as well as Jewish Federation, where she is on the Board of Directors.
Marla R. Letizia is the founder of Big Traffic Mobile Billboards in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company operates mobile billboard advertising trucks and employs brand ambassadors to carry WOBI? walking billboards for retail, gaming, and entertainment clients such as Caesars entertainment, Tropicana, and Cirque Du Soleil. Letizia founded Big Traffic in 2001 after leaving a successful broadcast journalism career to raise her two children. She met her husband, Tom Letizia, while working at KLAS-TV Channel 8 as an assistant production manager. She later became the first female director of live television news broadcasts in Las Vegas at Channel 8. She also developed a TV show called "Las Vegas Turnaround" and a syndicated production called "The Parenting Network." Letizia grew up in Las Vegas, and is a former president of Congregation Ner Tamid and a founding member of the board of trustees of the Meadows School in Las Vegas. In this interview, Letizia discusses her career, and breaking gender barriers in both broadcasting as well as in advertising. She also talks about how her family ended up settling in Las Vegas, and the evolution of her relationship with Judaism from childhood to adulthood, eventually leading to her leadership roles with Congregation Ner Tamid as well as Jewish Federation, where she is on the Board of Directors.
In this interview, Rosencrantz discusses at length her involvement as a founder of the city?s Jewish Federation?s Young Leadership Program, including other local leaders she worked with to promote Jewish community engagement in Las Vegas. She also talks about her spiritual journey as an adult, leading to her participation at Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development.
In this interview, focused on the John S. Park neighborhood of Las Vegas, Arne Rosencrantz discusses his childhood growing up in Las Vegas. He talks about local businesses, including his father's furniture store, as well as schools and churches in the neighborhood.
Arne Rosencrantz remembers living on Beverly Way from 1954 to 1970. Like so many others from that era, he attended Fifth Street School, John S. Park Elementary School, John C. Fremont Middle School and graduated from Las Vegas High School. As a Jew, he was in a small minority, but fondly recalls growing up in the dense Mormon population of John S. Park Neighborhood. As a youngster, life in Las Vegas was filled with fun. The desert provided opportunity to hunt lizards and rabbits. Kids walked to school without concern. They played ball and found the Strip casinos welcoming to locals. He tells how the social issue of segregation of the 1960s did not affect him personally, but how local movie theatre owner Lloyd Katz fought to make his Huntridge and Fremont theatres integrated. He also reminisces about his father opening Hollywood Furniture and later Garrett's Furniture, which Arne operated until retiring in 2001. During the interview, he lists other furniture companies and the strong assortment of other retailers and restaurants that served the neighborhood.
Interview with Myra Berkovits, Susan Dubin and Doug Unger of the Holocaust Resource Center. In this interview, the group discusses the beginnings of what is now the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center. Edythe Katz-Yarchever is discussed as the catalyst for establishing the center and getting others involved with the Governor's Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust. Berkovits talks about her role as a liason for Holocaust education in the Clark County School District and the student-teacher conferences held each year with funding from Sheldon Adelson. Unger discusses expanding the outreach to the Washoe County School District with assistance from Atlantis Hotel (Reno, Nev.) owner, John Farahi and Judy Mack. They talk about the previous locations of the Holocaust Resource Center on Maryland Parkway, then Renaissance Drive, and the affiliation with the Jewish Federation and the Jewish Family Service Agency. After funding and personnel issues around 2011, the advisory council and the library went through a re-structuring and hired Susan Dubin who organized and catalogued the library collection. The library is now accredited by the Association of Jewish Libraries.
Interview with Henry Kronberg by Barbara Tabach in two sessions, February 26 and April 13, 2015. In the first session Kronberg talks about his childhood in Germany and Poland and his experience being imprisoned by the Gestapo, and transported to a concentration camp. He survived the Holocaust and met his wife, and they moved to the United States in 1946. He discusses being reunited with his sister in Las Vegas after decades of searching, and moved his family to Las Vegas in 1962. Kronberg talks about becoming involved with Jewish life here, and his wife, Lillian's involvement at Temple Beth Sholom. In the second session, Kronberg discusses purchasing Stoney's, a loan and pawn shop, including some of the clientele and merchandise. He also discusses other social and environmental concerns like anti-Semitism and water resources in Southern Nevada.
Henry Kronberg was born in 1920 and spent his early childhood in a town on the border of Poland and Germany, about 40 miles from Krakow. For years he felt uncomfortable telling his story of surviving the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Today his name is linked to the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center in Las Vegas. And in his soft-spoken manner, Henry recalls his ordeal of loss of family and survival during this most heinous of situations through backbreaking labor and ingenuity. At the end of the war, Henry met the love of his life, Lillian, also a survivor. The two married in 1946 in Frankfurt and immigrated to New Jersey where she had relatives. He describes their difficulties and the various jobs he held until becoming an excellent baker. Then in 1962 an interesting choice took him to a bar mitzvah in Canada. While there the dinner conversation lead him to a great discovery?his sister Lala had survived and was living in Las Vegas. Soon he moved his wife and daughter to Las Vegas. His first foray into business was with his brother-in-law. However, soon it was important to be independent and to control his own destiny. He purchased a going concern, Stoney's Pawn Shop, from Dr. Alexander Coblentz, one of the city's first doctors. He became the fourth owner of Stoney's and operated it until selling it to Steven Mack in 1998. Henry and his wife were active in the Jewish community. They joined Temple Beth Sholom and became fast friends with many of the early leaders of Las Vegas and became a respected member of the secular and Jewish communities.
Jacque Dvorak was born in London, England, in 1944. Two years later, her family immigrated to Canada and then in 1953 they fulfilled their dreams to reside in the United States. The Dvorak family settled in Long Beach, California where Jacque?s brother was born. In 1957, the Dvorak family relocated to Las Vegas when Jacque?s father, Sam, opened a 24-hour barbeque restaurant in Market Town with his brother Harry. While growing up in California, Jacque enjoyed dancing and being on stage. She found herself drawn to performance much like her mother, Irene, who was an entertainer in Great Britain. This enthusiasm served her well in her future retail career which included the opening of the MGM. Jacque attended Las Vegas High School and graduated in 1962. Taking full advantage of being a teenager in Las Vegas, Jacque remembers the days when the need to lock your doors didn't? exist. Though, Jacque describes being keenly aware of being Jewish and forming strong bonds within the Jewish community through BBYO and other Jewish organizations. She also recalls protesting during school prayer recitations in the 1960s. In this interview Jacque gives an insider?s perspective of growing up in Las Vegas and Jewish life in the city. Her stories range from tales of teenage fun to dealing with modern anti-Semitism in Las Vegas to the joy she has found in friendships in the community. Jacque has two children, Harry Fagel and Lisa Sokoloski.
Sanford Akselrad is the rabbi at Congregation Ner Tamid. In this interview he describes his rabbinical training, coming to Las Vegas, and the growth of the congregation.
More inclined in his youth to pursue a career as a scientist than rabbi, Sanford Akselrad (1957- ) became the rabbi at Congregation Ner Tamid in 1988. Turning his tenure, Rabbi Akselrad has lead the congregation through its move from Emerson to Street to its permanent home on Green Valley Parkway and I-215 and shares a fun story about buying desks and chairs from the Clark County School District. He talks about many of the milestones including: Project Ezra which he started during the 2008 recession to help Jewish community members find jobs; the NextGen program which was initiated to bring young adults in their twenties and thirties back to the temple. For over twenty years Rabbi Akselrad was a member of the board of the Nevada Governor?s Council on Holocaust education, a topic that was the focus of his rabbinical thesis. He was the founding president of the Clark County Board of Rabbis and has served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, Jewish Family Services, and the Humana Hospital Pastoral Advisory Board. He was also the chair of the Federation?s Community Relations Council (CRC). Rabbi Akselrad is a board member of the Anti-Defamation League Nevada region office and the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada. Sanford Akselrad was born on October 6, 1957 in Oakland, California and raised in Palo Alto. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles and then went to graduate school at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. He spent the first year of his graduate program in Israel, the next two in Los Angeles, and the final two years in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Akselrad met his wife Joni in Reno, Nevada and married her during his third year of rabbinical school. The couple has two children, CJ and Sam. After his ordination in 1984, Rabbi Akselrad was associate rabbi of Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio, one of the largest Reform congregations in the Midwest. His choice of career was inspired by his father, Sidney Akselrad, who was a prominent rabbi involved in social justice issues and the Civil Rights Movement. Sanford Akselrad has followed his father?s example of community involvement, both in Las Vegas and on a national level: he served on the board of the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCJJ), he was chair of the NCJJ's Inter-faith Council, and he is active in the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ).
On February 25, 1977, Walter John Ritzau interviewed Elizabeth Schneehagen Garrison (born 1943 in Las Vegas, Nevada) about her life in Southern Nevada. Garrison first talks about her schooling in Las Vegas and her first homes in Las Vegas. She also discusses the atomic testing, the Devils Hole in Ash Meadows, early church involvement, recreational activities, and some of the environmental aspects of Las Vegas. Garrison later describes her work for the Central Telephone Company before describing the Helldorado parade and some of the early activities designed for children. In the latter part of the interview, she describes her father’s garden, the changes in the city environment and building, shopping locations, and more about her home life.
On February 24, 1979, collector Elyse Rozinsky interviewed file clerk, Janet Garry, (born on November 24th, 1927, in Louisiana) at her home in Bonanza Village Trailer Park in Las Vegas, Nevada. This interview covers the growth of Las Vegas from 1952 to 1979. Janet recalls the early years of the television and the telephone. She also discusses her own personal experience of raising a family in Las Vegas.