Interviewed by Barbara Tabach. Born and raised in Zacatecas, Mexico, Irma moved to Las Vegas in 1989. She is the Cultural Program Supervisor at Winchester Community Center and has devoted much of her career to preserving Hispanic cultural traditions in Las Vegas. She has been an active leader in local events such as Community Roots, International Food & Folk Life Festival, World Vibrations, and Dio de Los Muertos.
In this interview, Mimi Katz discusses growing up in the Boston area and her schooling, and moving to Washington, D.C. working as a physiotherapist. She returned to Boston and met her husband, and she talks about moving to Las Vegas and adjusting to life here. They became involved at Temple Beth Sholom, and Mimi worked as a conventions coordinator at the Sands and the Sahara. She discusses moving around in Las Vegas from an apartment to a house in the John S. Park neighborhood, working for the Jewish Federation, and helping to develop the Holocaust education program with Edythe Katz, conducting oral history interviews with survivors. She continued working at the Convention Center in the 1980s, and is involved in the Lou Ruvo Center.
Everyone knows her as Mimi. She was born Miriam Green to immigrant parents in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1926. As a youngster she danced, excelled at school and enjoyed an abundance of sports. To pay for her higher education at Massachusetts School of Physiotherapy she worked at Raytheon Manufacturing. In 1957 she married George Katz who swept her away to their honeymoon in Las Vegas. It's a story that she loves to recall-they never left. She sent for her things and energetically settled in to her new hometown and marriage. Mimi found employment with the Clark County School District, began having children (three daughters), and making fast new friends. Many of these friends were from the founding days of Temple Beth Sholom, which roots her to the history of the local Jewish community. In addition, for a decade she worked in community relations for the Jewish Federation. She valued community activism and volunteered over the years for many organizations; such as Easter Seals, Jewish War Veterans, Parent Teachers Association and the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, and many more organizations over the subsequent decades.
In this chapter, Stern describes her upbringing in Russia and fleeing to Poland. It is accompanied by a letter to the publishing company William Morrow.
Terry Miller-Newcomb was born at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her grandparents on both sides were Nevada residents, and her mother and father were born in Reno and McGill, respectively. Her younger sister Linda was born at Sunrise Hospital shortly after it opened. Terry vividly remembers the way Vegas was in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Las Vegas was very small in the '50s, and one of the town's boundaries was Tropicana Avenue. Beyond that was dirt road and desert. Terry and her sister and friends rode horses out in that area. Terry's father, Chub Drakulich, taught drafting and Phys Ed and coached the basketball team at Rancho High School from 1955 to 1958. Her mother, Theresa Drakulich, was hired at the new Ruby S. Thomas Elementary School to teach kindergarten. Terry attended kindergarten through second grades at Tom Williams, and from third grade on went to Ruby Thomas E.S. Her junior high school years were spent at Orr Middle School, and she attended Valley High School through graduation. "Chub" Drakulich was hired at Southern Nevada University (now UNLV) in 1958 to start the Phys Ed program there. Terry remembers Frazier Hall and the old gym where she played on the gymnastics equipment while her father conducted basketball practice. Her parents would host a party every Christmas as part of the basketball Holiday Classic program. Terry chose to attend UNR after she graduated high school in 1974. She was hired at R&R Advertising in the summer of '78 and worked at the Reno office for two years. She then transferred to the Las Vegas office to work as account executive. She oversaw all advertising for Democrat and Republican campaigns, including road signs, radio and TV spots, and billboards. Between 1984 and 1987 Terry made several major changes in her life. She started a master's program in a totally new area, worked as a church administrator for an income, and was remarried. She finished her master's in 1987 and opened a private practice in marriage and family therapy in 1988, which she continues with today. Her oldest daughter is currently enrolled at UNLV on the Millennium Scholarship.
Oral history with Nympha Comacchio conducted by Cecilia Winchell and Stefani Evans on May 09, 2022 for the Reflections: the Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. In this interview, Comacchio recalls her childhood in the Philippines and growing up in a large family. After attending elementary school, Comacchio immediately went to work on her father's lumber farm, performing manual labor until she was seventeen. Later, she recalls finding employment as a seamstress in Manila, where she met her first husband when she left to work in Saudi Arabia for better pay. Comacchio describes how she was able to receive a student visa to finally immigrate to the United States, where she first arrived in California. Eventually, after meeting her second husband and hearing about housing prices in Las Vegas, Nevada, they purchased a house in the city in 2000. After briefly working for the New Frontier, Comacchio began working for the Wynn and Encore, where she found out about the Culinary Workers Union and became more active in that organization. Throughout the rest of the interview, Comacchio touches on the responsibilities of being a housekeeper, the current challenges they face, and how she feels about the growing AAPI population in southern Nevada.
Dr. Robert Skaggs was born April 2, 1932 and grew up around the St. Louis, Missouri area. His father was a teamster with a milk delivery route, tried his hand at the restaurant business, and during World War II worked for the United States Cartridge. Several members of Skaggs’s family were teachers, including his grandmother and a couple of aunts. Skaggs graduated from Normandy High School and afterwards attended the Missouri School of Mines and majored in metallurgical engineering. He graduated in 1954 and went to work for DuPont University for two years.
Betty Henderson was a private music teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada and dedicated member of the Nevada Music Teachers Association. She was born on January 23, 1923 in Portland, Indiana. She wanted to pursue a career in music and enrolled at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, but was forced to drop out after she started to become deaf. She married Charles B. Henderson, a civil engineer, in 1948 and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. She had many different jobs in the city including secretary and company auditor.
Jerry Duane Morlan (1938-2000) was born and raised in Victorville, California. He worked as a letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office from 1960 to 1965 before his eight-year tenure as an industrial photographer at Teledyne Semiconductor in Hawthorne, California. After Teledyne, Morlan was a successful general supervisor of the graphic arts department of leading toy manufacturing company Mattel, continuing to work as a photographer and sometimes acting as a consultant for the Yankee Photo Products company.