Peter Perazzo, a land surveyor born and raised in Las Vegas, talks about his family, his Native American ancestry, and how construction and land surveying have changed over the years. Peter’s father, Frederick Perazzo, moved temporarily to Las Vegas from Reno in the 1940s to find employment. He worked as a draftsman, and later an architect. He designed public building and residential buildings around the valley as well as at Area 51 (Atomic Test Site). His temporary move became permanent in 1953 with the purchase of a family home in Northwest Las Vegas, across from Twin Lakes. Peter’s early life was spent playing in clover in the family’s yard and enjoying his four grandmothers. Peter began his land surveying career working for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1985. He describes how he became hooked on the profession and describes surveying terms like monuments, townships, and “the dumb end of the tape”. Later Peter worked for the Nevada Department of Transportation, where he wa

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.

On April 12, 1977, collector Mark French interviewed Nanyu Tomiyasu (born May 28th, 1918 in Las Vegas, Nevada) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In this interview, Nanyu Tomiyasu discusses growing up and working on his father’s (Bill Yonema Tomiyasu) farm in Las Vegas, Nevada. He also discusses how his father came to Las Vegas and being one of the few Japanese families in Las Vegas as a child.

Interviewed by Maribel Estrada Calderón. Claytee White also participates in the questioning. Eddie Escobedo was born in 1961 and two years later, he and his family immigrated to the United States. He fondly remembers his father, Edmundo Escobedo. Escobedo is currently in charge of the newspaper that his father started, El Mundo Newspaper.

Most Las Vegas residents like living in Southern Nevada, but few make the leap of faith that Ron M. Portaro did in 1994. The business and development consultant gave up a "tenure-track, full time, full-benefits, kids-could-go-to-college-for free job" to keep his family in Las Vegas. He had no local job, so he commuted twice a month to the Cleveland and Toledo areas for two years to complete the consulting assignments that fed his young family. As the Ohio native discusses the dysfunctional family into which he was born and was raised, he also talks about forging his own path as an overachiever, about going to college at Penn State at Altoona on a mining engineering co-op program with Morton Salt, working six months out of the year in the salt mines and attending classes the other six months. After transferring to the University of Toledo, he formed his own painting business to pay his tuition and graduated in management in 1978 and earned his JD and MBA in 1981. His mentor at University of Toledo asked him to teach labor management. While teaching labor relations he also began representing athletes as a player agent in the National Football League and the United States Football League back in the day and the Canadian Football League. From there, he became associate director for the Northwest Ohio Center for Labor Management Cooperation at the University of Toledo and later with the Cleveland State Labor Management Center. It was with the latter that he learned the benefits of the BUILT-RITE model of business relations to promote cooperation between and among the building trades, contractors, and owners. In this interview, Portaro speaks to the BUILT-RITE model for cooperation, his 1993 move to Las Vegas and fortuitous meetings of Pastor Paul Goulet of the International Church of Las Vegas, City of Las Vegas councilman Arnie Adamsen, and Charlie Kajkowski of the Las Vegas Public Works Department. He reveals how these connections eventually not only shaped Portaro's life in Southern Nevada; they also enabled him to turn his life experiences, education, and skill set to benefit his church, his family, and his adopted community. The commitment Portaro made in 1994 to remain in Las Vegas has benefitted Southern Nevada tourists, residents, and business owners in countless ways we can appreciate only when we stop to think about how many people had to cooperate and communicate to make our large infrastructure projects come to fruition.

Dayvid Figler (1967 - ) is the quiet boy who became an insightful and creative contributor to the local culture of Las Vegas. The oldest of Barbara and Meyer Figler?s three children, he was four years old when the family station wagon reached Las Vegas in 1971. They moved in with Uncle Izzy (aka Big Irish) Figler for a few months. Having the ?juice,? Dayvid?s father soon became a Pan dealer on the Strip. As the family grew, Barbara eventually immersed her energies in her children?s activities, Hadassah and Temple Beth Sholom. In this oral history, Dayvid also recalls his awkward, but incredibly interesting youth, his bar mitzvah at Temple Beth Sholom, and path to a successful career as a criminal defense attorney. He also talks about embracing Las Vegas as his home, owning a home in John S. Park neighborhood and mentions a number of literary depictions of Las Vegas that he admires. Dayvid describes growing up a ?casino kid? who lived in an apartment near the Riviera Hotel. This, in addition to his slight stature and academic brilliance, may have set him apart from many of his childhood peers. He graduated from Valley High School at the age of 16 and by the age of 23 he was a rising star in the legal world. He looks back with appreciation to his list of mentors who encouraged him along the way. Dayvid is also a local favorite as an essayist and poet. For a number of years he could be heard on KNPR/NPR. He has been a performer in hundreds of productions that featured his comic wit and writings, from Lollapalooza to Tom and Jerry?s on Maryland Parkway.

Raymond Rawson's life started in the rural Utah community of Sandy in 1940. His family moved around in what he describes as a scene from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. By the age of 10, the family settled in Las Vegas, which had a population of around 35,000. He attended Fifth Street Grammar School, Las Vegas High School, was a member of UNLV's first graduating class, and eventually became a dentist. In this interview, he reflects on his experiences of growing up in Las Vegas, the hardships of difficult economic eras, and his professional accomplishments in the field of dentistry, including actively advocating the creation of UNLV School of Dental Medicine. Ray also became a community leader. He served in the Nevada State Legislature from 1985 to 2001. He talks about his relationship with long-time legislator Joe Neal. Education and access to healthcare were among the issues that Ray championed and he shares his observations of these issues. In 2009, he was appointe