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Transcript of interview with Rabbi Sanford Akselrad by Barbara Tabach, October 29, 2014
Date
2014-10-29
Archival Collection
Description
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).
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Interview with John Shannon Coogan, September 15, 2006
Date
2006-09-15
Archival Collection
Description
Narrator affiliation: Health Physicist, Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company (REECo), Public Health Service (USPHS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
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Meeting minutes for Consolidated Student Senate, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, November 15, 2004
Date
2004-11-15
Archival Collection
Description
Includes meeting minutes and agenda, along with additional information about bylaws and proposals.
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Meeting minutes for Consolidated Student Senate, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, November 08, 2004
Date
2004-11-08
Archival Collection
Description
Includes meeting minutes and agenda, along with additional information about Code of Conduct.
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Meeting minutes for Consolidated Student Senate, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, March 15, 2004
Date
2004-03-15
Archival Collection
Description
Includes meeting minutes and agenda, along with additional information about the Articles of Incorporation, student wellness, and the Leadership Advisory Board.
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Kochy Tang oral history interview: transcript
Date
2021-05-26
Archival Collection
Description
Oral history interview with Kochy Tang conducted by Kristel Peralta, Vanessa Concepcion, and Stefani Evans on May 26, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Kochy gives a family history of her parents and how they both came to practice medicine; her father served in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War and later practiced alternative medicine alongside Kochy's mother in San Francisco and Reno. Kochy shares her educational and employment path pursuing osteopathic medicine and how, with the help of Tony Marnell, she was able to open her pratice within the M Resort and Casino. She discusses her work as a Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.) and the relationships she has built within the Las Vegas medical community.
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Transcript of interview with Eva Garcia Mendoza by Elsa Lopez and Barbara Tabach, September 25, 2018
Date
2018-09-25
Archival Collection
Description
On the corner of 7th street and Clark, and beside the tennis courts of Las Vegas Academy, stands the law office of attorney Eva Garcia Mendoza. Eva has worked in her office since 1982, and in this time she has helped the Las Vegas community work through civil and immigration cases besides aiding in a myriad of other ways. Eva Garcia Mendoza was born in 1950, in the town of McAllen, TX-an environment that perpetuated hatred of Mexican Americans. Eva recalls the racism she endured; for instance, being spanked if she spoke Spanish in school, and her family facing job discrimination because of her skin color or her last name. Being an ethnic and financial minority was difficult, and Eva remembers nights as a child when she would cry herself to sleep. Eva showed resilience in the face of adversity as she states, “you rise to the level of your teachers’ expectations.” With the encouragement of her band professor, Dr. L.M Snavely, she began higher education at Pan American College. She moved to Las Vegas in 1971 and began to work before being accepted at UNLV to study Spanish literature. She graduated in the class of 1973. In 1975, Eva applied to become a court interpreter, a decision that would drastically change the trajectory of her career. She earned the coveted position and began to work beside Judge John Mendoza who was the first Latino elected to public office in the state of Nevada. Several years later John and Eva would wed. Judge Mendoza passed away in 2011. Eva talks about how extraordinary his legacy is-from his professional achievements to a story about his v football days and the 1944 Dream Team, this true story even piqued the interest of Hollywood writers. Through her work, Eva began to notice how she was more than qualified to become a lawyer herself, so she applied and gained a full ride scholarship to the Law School of San Diego University. Eva describes the struggles of attending school in San Diego while her spouse and children were home in Las Vegas. Despite the financial difficulties, being one of few minority students, and becoming pregnant her second year, Eva was able to finish her remaining university credits by returning to Las Vegas and working with Judge Mendoza. Together, they started the Latin Bar Association. Eva began her own practice in 1981 and would later partner with Luther Snavely, who was the son of her band teacher that helped her to attend college so many years back. Today, Eva has a new partner at her office and hired her son to work as a secretary. Eva also tells of the office’s mysterious history, of which includes a ghostly figure many clients claimed to have seen in the reception room. Eva recounts many of her professional achievements, such as petitioning to start the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Nevada Chapter, representing celebrities, winning the unwinnable cases such as against the Nevada Test Site. Eva talks about current events, such as today’s immigration laws, the discriminatory practices of revoking birth certificates from those born in Brownsville, TX., and about the importance of the #MeToo movement. Eva and her family have a great fondness for Las Vegas. The support for the Latinx community in Las Vegas greatly contrasts that which she experienced as a child in southern Texas. She describes wanting to take her children and grandchildren to visit her old home in McAllen, TX where her family grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks.”
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