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After serving as a nurse in World War II in Hawaii, Okinawa and Japan, Dorothy returned home to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. She experienced a particularly bad winter and she set out for California but stopped in Las Vegas to visit the family of her traveling companion, a girlfriend from her home town. The girlfriend returned to Wisconsin and George applied for a nursing license and got it within three days. She never left. Dorothy met her husband while working the night shift at Clark County Hospital. He would come in regularly to assist his patients in the births of their babies. Their occupations and their service in World War II drew them together in a marriage that has lasted over fifty years. From 1949 to this interview in 2003, Dorothy George has seen Las Vegas grow from a town that she loved to a metropolitan area that is no longer as friendly. She reminisces about the Heldorado parades, family picnics at Mount Charleston, watching the cloud formed by the atomic bomb tests, raising six successful children, leading a Girl Scout Troop, and working in organizations to improve the social and civic life of Las Vegas.
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First arriving in Las Vegas as an infant, Cheryl Leonard's young life included a brief sojourn in Southern California before returning to Las Vegas in 1954. After attending local elementary and middle schools, she started at Rancho High during the day, and working at the Huntridge theater in the evenings and during the summers. More than just work, though - in this interview, Cheryl recalls school activities from parades to pep club, participating in Helldorado, hanging out with her friends at the Blue Onion and shopping on Fremont Street. After graduation, Cheryl returned to California to attend school before coming back to Las Vegas and taking a job with the Central Telephone Company. This was followed by a brief stint working at the Nevada Test Site before she married in 1964 and concentrated on raising her own daughters in a rapidly growing and changing Las Vegas.
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On March 16, 1975, David P. Wiser interviewed former hair dresser and dealer, Darlene Kelly (born December 1st, 1942 in San Francisco, California) in the collector’s home in Las Vegas, Nevada. The two discuss how Kelly first arrived in Las Vegas, as well as her occupational history. Kelly goes on to describe the Stewart Ranch, as well as the social environment of the forties and fifties in Southern Nevada.
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Full interview audio with Mike and Sallie Gordon in March 1977 in which they discuss arriving in Las Vegas and their business enterprises.
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The Mabel Hoggard Papers (1903-2011) contain materials related to Hoggard's career as a Las Vegas, Nevada elementary school teacher, her research and civic interests in Las Vegas's predominantly African American Westside communities, and her engagement with civil rights issues. The collection also contains materials about Hoggard's life, including biographical newspaper articles about her childhood, education, work, and family. The collection includes lesson plans, scrapbooks, awards, correspondence, photographs, and physical objects such as a vinyl record and political pins. The bulk of the collection focuses on her life in Las Vegas from approximately 1946-1989.
Archival Collection