Oral history interview with Cynthia Mun conducted by Vanessa Concepcion and Stefani Evans on March 31, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Cynthia Mun discusses her upbringing near Seoul, South Korea and her family's immigration to Los Angeles in 1974. She talks about her parents' employment as a seamstress and a janitor, as well as the educational mentors she encountered who helped her to succeed at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena and later at Yale University. Mun shares her corporate employment history, including helping to launch the Pandora streaming service and creating an accessible platform for E-book use before the creation of Amazon Kindle. Mun talks about her career working at MGM International and how this opened the door for her mother to become an MGM employee and access better working conditions with union employment.
With the explosive growth of the Las Vegas Valley over the past 30 years, it is rare to find someone who has deep battle born roots that go back to the early mining days of Nevada. Nancy Cummings-Schmidt is an example of that rare kind of gem. As a fourth generation Nevadan, her family came to the state in the 1800s form Ireland and England. Looking to capitalize off of the mining boom in Virginia City, they transitioned to ranching. She spent her first years in Reno and when her father went off to fight in the Second World War, her mother moved to Herlong, California and sent her to live with her grandparents. Upon moving to Vegas for fourth grade, her mother remarried and worked for the Las Vegas Sun while Nancy attended the Fifth Street Grammar School and later became a member Las Vegas High School’s first graduating class in 1956. After graduating from high school, Nancy invested in the spirit of wanderlust as it carried her to study theatre at Texas Christian University (which sh
In 2011, Ian and Shanna Anderson moved into their McNeil Estates home with their two young children. Though both of the children born-and-raised Nevadan, neither Ian nor Shanna is. However, as the couple explains in this interview, letting their roots grow in Las Vegas has been quite easy. Ian has lived in Las Vegas since 1997 and Shanna since 2008. Ian was raised in Central corridor of Phoenix, where he explains he was in the minority as a white person. Shanna, by contrast, is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan. They met, married at Taliesin West (Scottsdale, AZ) and settled in Las Vegas, where both work in the office furniture industry. Shanna and Ian share a passion for design, especially midcentury modern design. So when they felt the need to move from their Summerlin home, they looked for a house in the center of the city. Something clicked when they saw 2601 Mason Avenue. It was a burnt out shell of a dwelling, but their vision of what could be became a tale of imagination and patience. They talk about the upside and downside of living in this Ward 1 neighborhood; there is the proximity to work, concerns about education for the children, and where they shops and play. They talk in detail about owning a perfect family home in a remarkable part of Las Vegas.