Dr. Robert Skaggs grew up around the St. Louis area. His father was a teamster with a milk delivery route, tried his hand at the restaurant business, and during WWII worked tor U.S. Cartridge. Several members of Dr. Skaggs's family were teachers, including his grandmother and a couple of aunts. Robert graduated trom Normandy High School and afterwards attended the Missouri School of Mines and majored in metallurgical engineering. He graduated in 1954 and went to work tor DuPont tor two years. He went to graduate school at Iowa State on an Atomic Energy Commission scholarship, and afterwards was hired by Standard Oil of California. During this time he met and married Anna Pedersen (1961) and moved to Minneapolis to work for Honeywell. Around 1966, Bob started teaching at the University of Kentucky. After a couple of years, he got wind of teaching opportunities at the Southern Division of the University of Nevada (now UNLV), and interviewed with Herb Wells. He and his family moved to Boulder City (1969) and he began teaching at what is now UNLV. He was involved in the work bringing accreditation to the engineering department, establishing a chapter for Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Honor Society, and building a master's and a PhD program. After a heart attack in 1975, Dr. Skaggs took a sabbatical from UNLV and did some team teaching at University of Arizona in Tucson with Ray Sierka. He returned to UNLV on a half time teaching basis, and also worked for the Bureau of Mines. He was again involved in accreditation preparations and stayed to graduate a PhD student in engineering. He looks upon his experiences at UNLV as very positive and delightful.

Lawrence Seidman grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Culver Military Academy the first three years of high school, but graduated from Bay Village High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration, and went on to law school at Case Western Reserve University. Lawrence and his wife moved to Chicago after he finished law school, where he worked in the First National Bank of Chicago doing estate planning and analysis. He wanted to try teaching, so he sent letters to many different schools. Ferris State College in Michigan gave him an interview, and he and his wife moved there for one academic year. The freezing cold winter convinced them that they did not want to stay in the Midwest, so Lawrence began writing letters to schools out west. UNR replied to the letter they received, saying they had no openings, but he might try Nevada Southern University in Las Vegas. The school was in the middle of changing its name to University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). Lawrence flew out, interviewed with future colleagues, and accepted the job. He and his wife have lived in Vegas ever since 1969. Lawrence was the first full-time person hired to teach business law. He restructured the way the courses were developed and presented. A discipline officer was needed after the regents passed a new code of conduct and he was asked to take the position, which he did. Because the administrative or discipline officer reports to the president of the university, he got to know several of them rather well. Eventually, Lawrence became assistant general counsel, and also served as deputy attorney general for a while. His wife Janet pursued her degrees at UNLV, taught for about five years, and then worked at Children's Behavioral Services. Today they are both retired, and are enjoying traveling and working on their home. Lawrence occasionally teaches summer sessions at UNLV.

A view of some of the abandonded buildings in Delamar, Nevada, taken from a nearby hill. Delamar, Nevada, nicknamed The Widowmaker, is a ghost town in central eastern Nevada, USA along the east side of the Delamar Valley. During its heyday, primarily between 1895 and 1900, it produced $13.5 million in gold. In 1889, prospectors John Ferguson and Joseph Sharp discovered gold around Monkeywrench Wash. A mining camp was then born west of the Monkeywrench Mine. It was called Ferguson. In April 1894, Captain Joseph Raphael De Lamar bought most of the important mines in the area and renamed the Ferguson camp as Delamar. In the same year, a newspaper called the Delamar Lode began publication and a post office was opened. Soon, the new settlement boasted more than 1,500 residents, a hospital, an opera house, churches, a school, several businesses and saloons. Most buildings were made of native rock. By 1896, the Delamar mill was handling up to 260 tons of ore daily. Water for the camp was pumped from a well in Meadow Valley Wash, some twelve miles away. Supplies and materials traveled even further, by mule team over mountainous terrain from the railroad head at Milford, Utah, which was 150 miles from Delamar. Silicosis The gold in the Delamar mines was embedded in quartzite which when crushed created a fine dust. Miners breathing the dust often developed silicosis and the town became known as a "widow-maker." Many ruins now stand semi-intact in the Delamar ghost town region. Foundations can easily be seen from adjacent hills. There are two graveyards, which have been vandalized. The area is honeycombed with mines and mineshafts, but in recent years the main shaft has been blasted closed. Wild horses roam the area. The nearby dry lake is known to pilots as Texas Lake because its outline resembles the state of Texas.