Dr. Tom Wright was born and grew up in Illinois. His father finished his PhD in Chicago and then taught at Illinois College in Jacksonville. His mother suffered from arthritis and was told to seek a warmer climate, so John Wright packed up his family and moved to Las Vegas. Tom was 14, ready for high school, and his two brothers were elementary school age. Tom attended Las Vegas High School, which was close to the Crestwood community where the family had purchased their first home. He remembers that UNLV had no buildings when his dad first started teaching there. Instead, he conducted class in high school classrooms and church Sunday school rooms. Dr. Wright started off at a community college as a Geology Major, but a class with Bud Poland convinced him that history was his passion. He transferred to Pomona to continue his bachelor's degree. He spent his junior year in Peru on a study-abroad program, and that experience made him a Latin Americanist. The information he gath

Interviewed by Maribel Estrada Calderón. Farmersville is described as a small town between, Exeter and Visalia, California populated by Mexican American farm workers. It is in this small town, where UNLV History Professor Maria Raquél Casas spent her childhood raised along with her sisters and brothers. In her interview, Dr. Casas describes how growing up in this small town with her traditional Mexican family influenced the person she is today. While working alongside her family in the fields, Dr. Casas decided that she would strive to obtain an education. Through hard work and constant support from her sister, Dr. Casas attended Fresno State, where she discovered her love for history. Upon completing her undergraduate program, Dr. Casas made the decision to further her education by pursuing a master's at Cornell University. At Cornell, she faced discouraging professors who believed she would not be able to complete the master's program let alone pursue a PhD program. Despite these demoralizing professors, Dr. Casas completed her program and was admitted into University of California Santa Barbara's history program. Dr. Casas never forgot her roots or the significance of her presence in the majority white academic spaces she attended during her academic journey. When she arrived at UNLV, she continued to strive for more Latino representation in both the student population and in the school faculty. During her tenure at UNLV, Dr. Casas has served as an advisor for multiple Latino student organizations including MEChA and SoL. Dr. Casas has witnessed much progress in Latino representation at UNLV, but she believes there is still much work left to be accomplished.

Interview with Myra Berkovits by Barbara Tabach on August 21, 2014. In this interview, Berkovits talks about growing up and starting her teaching career in Chicago. When she moves to Las Vegas, Berkovits eventually purchases a dining concierge business, but returned to teaching, and is now involved with the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center.

Myra Berkovits was born Myra Mosse in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. She became an elementary school teacher in Chicago before moving to Las Vegas in 1980. Myra has made contributions to Las Vegas in the public and private sectors. She owned several businesses then returned to teaching, heading to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) to renew her teaching license and later received her master's degree. After a year of teaching in multicultural education, Myra was then in charge of the school district's homeless program, seeing its growth from serving 1,200 to 6,000 students. Myra's other passion was for Holocaust education and she became one of six interviewers in the city for the Shoah Foundation, documenting survivors' stories. One interviewee, David Berkovits, would later become her husband of fifteen years. Myra's own Holocaust education was aided by powerful trips to Israel and Poland. She used these experiences to develop and lead student-teacher conferences and classroom curriculum for the whole state. Myra still serves at the Education Specialist at the Holocaust Resource Center.

In this oral history, the long married couple Henry and Anita Schuster recall the history of the 1930s and how they eventually met and created a life together. Their childhoods were distinctively different, but charter a future where they would inevitably meet. Born in Germany in 1926, Henry recalls the dawn of Hitler and the Nazism. His mother would arrange for his evacuation to France, where he would not know her fate or that of his two sisters for a number of years. Along with hundreds of other displaced children, he escaped to America and lived with relatives in Louisiana where he finished his schooling and joined the US Army. Anita on the other hand grew up with her family in New York. They share the story of meeting when she was 16, falling in love and marrying in 1948. They had four children and moved several times before settling in California. They retired to Las Vegas in 1993. Henry's recollections include childhood memories of the Holocaust and its affect on his family, including the loss of his mother and one of his sisters. Finding his surviving sister Bertel (Betty Kale) after the war is a heartwarming tale of survival. The Schusters are part of the approximately 300 members of the Holocaust Survivor Group that has settled in southern Nevada and Henry was President Emeritus of the group. He published his memoir, Abraham's Son-the Making of an American, in 2010.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Copa Room at the Sands Hotel and Casino featured glamorous showgirls. For a few years, the Houston Chronicle sponsored a contest that added the Texas Copa Girls to the line. In 1958, one of the winners was 17-year-old Judith Lee Johnson. For the "wild" but "naive" Judy, the experience was a period of funfilled freedom, followed by relentless encouragement of others to attend college, which she reluctantly did. To her surprise, she embraced the college life, took her studies seriously, and received an education degree. She also became Miss Houston. Four years later she returned to Las Vegas and the Sands. As she stepped into her role as a showgirl this second time, she was no longer the newbie. She experiences the lifestyle with more maturity. She talks about the celebrities she met, the lasting friendships she formed, performing in the Elvis movie Viva Las Vegas, and her trip around the world, a trip that included her personal dream of going to Paris. Judy shares details of her family heritage and she wonders to what extent she might have been living her mother's dream. Though her love of performance and theatre is keen, Judy channeled her passions into a 29-year career as an educator. She married a Marine in 1965, raised their children, moved with his career. She and her husband, Walter F. Jones, live in Virginia.

Oral history interview with Lupe Avelar conducted by Marcela Rodriguez-Campo and Maribel Estrada Calderón for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. Lupe Avelar describes her life growing up in Durango, Mexico on a family farm and her immigration to New Mexico as a teen with her brother before returning back to Mexico. Lupe talks about her marriage to Eladio Avelar and how the couple eventually moved to California as well as her circumstances of moving to Las Vegas. Subjects discussed include: cotton fields; cotton farming.

Oral history interview with Marisa Rodriguez conducted by Maribel Estrada Calderón, Monserrath Hernández and Claytee D. White for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. Marisa Rodriguez discusses her childhood and living in North Las Vegas as a teenager; she was born in Chicago, Illinois, moved to Mexico with her family at a young age, and returned to the United States at age 12. She recounts what it was like acclimating to American life, learning English, and studying abroad in Spain before becoming a law student. Marisa attended the William S. Boyd School of Law and is currently a civil litigator in Las Vegas. Subjects discussed include: La Voz Hispanic/Latino Law Students Association at the William S. Boyd School of Law; Huellas mentorship program.