First played in Las Vegas with Jack E. Leonard in 1960. Only worked at two hotels during his 24-year Las Vegas career - Flamingo and riviera
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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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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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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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From the Roosevelt Fitzgerald Professional Papers (MS-01082) -- Unpublished manuscripts file.
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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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Oral history interview with Hernando Amaya conducted by Laurents Banuelos-Benitez, Marcela Rodriguez-Campo, and Barbara Tabach on October 18, 2018 and December 3, 2018 for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. In this interview, Hernando Amaya talks about his childhood and education in Bogota, Colombia. He discusses his start in journalism as a young man and working for El Espectador, the Colombian national newspaper. He discusses his experiences reporting on the narco-terrorism occurring in Medellin, Colombia and how this eventually led to his immigration to the United States. Amaya moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 2001 and continued his career in journalism by working for local Spanish speaking papers and websites. He relates his civic involvement in the Las Vegas area, his work as the president of the Colombian Association of Las Vegas, and various other civic engagements. As a journalist, he asserts the importance of knowing one's culture, storytelling, learning history, and being active in the community.
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Oral history interview with Eric Mendoza conducted by Holly O'Donnell on November 29, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. In this interview, Eric Mendoza shares his family's chain migration history from Manila, Philippines to the United States and his difficult immigration and naturalization process once arriving in America in 1996. He talks about what brought him to live in Las Vegas, Nevada, his education and professional pursuits, what his life is like in the United States compared to that of the Philippines, and the lives of his eight siblings. Eric Mendoza discusses the historical past of the Philippines, the infrastructure in place there, and government corruption. He also speaks to Filipino traditions and festivals, food and customs, his cultural identity, and assimilating to American culture.
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