Annual report from Congregation Ner Tamid, 2010-2011

When Mr. Elmer Hilsinger arrived from the Los Angeles area in 1942, to work as a Refractory Inspector in the Engineering Department at Basic Magnesium Incorporated (BMI), little did he know the town site would grow to be known as Henderson, Nevadain a few short decades. Mr. Hilsinger’s oral history provides a glimpse of the work being done by women at BMI, including women working as chemists, truck drivers, and secretaries. His words attest to the strong work ethic demonstrated by women at the plant during the “war work” period. Through Mr. Hilsinger’s story, we are also provided with an account of what daily life was like for a married couple, including Mr. Hilsinger’s life with his wife who worked as a waitress at Anderson Camp. In addition, Mr. Hilsinger’s oral history touches on the evolution of safety rules within the plant, the transition from the American Federation of Labor Union to the Congress of Industrial Organizations Union, and the role prostitution played during the tim

In the early summer of 1972, Patsy and Chuck Rosenberry packed the car to begin their journey from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to Las Vegas. Patsy’s two teenage children (plus a friend) crowded into the back seat as Chuck eased behind the wheel. He and Patsy had just recently married and he was taking his new family to their new home in southern Nevada. Chuck was a nuclear technologist at the Nevada Test Site and a kind, patient man that Patsy would have followed anywhere. As it turned out, Las Vegas was a wonderful fit and the family would thrive in their new hometown of Las Vegas. The children attended Valley High School; the family eventually bought into a house in the Paradise Valley area; and from 1978 to 1999 Patsy enjoyed working with a growing cardiovascular group. Chuck censored his work-talk like most Test Site employees, but Patsy recalls with pride his concern for safety and how he always felt the public did not have correct information. She also remembers the fun of partic

As we go about our days, running errands and getting things for our households, we often don’t think too much of the story behind the commercial real estate and retail stores we frequent. Only when those stores aren’t there and the neighborhood demographic changes do we embrace the nostalgia that goes into the story of the neighborhoods where we live and shop. Hank Gordon is the man behind those memories of those shopping centers we frequent not only in the Las Vegas Valley, but in Washington, Oregon, Montana, California and Alaska as well. Gordon was raised in Los Angeles and graduated from USC in 1956, when he went to work for a home builder in the San Fernando Valley selling his houses to make some extra weekend money. It was during this time he fell in love with real estate and had to break the news to his parents that he no longer was going to be a doctor. Feeling the urge of leadership he told his mentor that he didn’t want to sell houses-he wanted to develop homes instead. Shortly after that he bought a subdivision of lots in Van Nuys and started building 7-11 and Goodyear stores in the early 1960s. In this interview, Gordon talks about building his first shopping center in 1967 and moving to the Pacific Northwest. He moved to Las Vegas in 1988, when he bought 23 new national retailers to the Valley. He was responsible for bring Home Depot in 1999 and Costco and Best Buy to some of Las Vegas’s longest-standing shopping centers; Best of the Boulevard on Maryland Parkway and Best of the West on Rainbow Boulevard. He speaks of the changes to the market after the Great Recession, how retailers are having a hard time keeping afloat because of online shopping, and his days on the planning commission for the City of Las Vegas during the 1990s, when Jan Jones was mayor. It is without a doubt that Hank Gordon is one of the best in the business and there isn’t a lot of competition at the top.