Waldemar Jackson was born on May 29, 1957 to Charcohe Ann Jackson and Lisele Wall Jackson. The Jacksons were one of the first black families in the West Las Vegas, Nevada neighborhood, Vegas Heights. He grew up facing racial tensions and prejudices.
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Yorko Kagafas was born in Columbus, Ohio, got his degree at Ohio State University, served in the United States Navy, and earned a master’s degree in Environmental Planning from Arizona State University.
Kagafas came to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1999. His background complemented his new job which was to implement the Neighborhood Planning Process, a proactive system for Las Vegas communities to express their neighborhood desires prior to a developer coming in with their own agenda.
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Nancy Master grew up in Greenville in Western Michigan. Her father was in middle management at a refrigerator company and her mother was a librarian and a teacher.
She and her husband Larry and their daughter came to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1980 at the suggestion of Master's uncle, a doctor who had established a practice here. Larry was hired at Roy Martin Junior High, and in February of 1981, Nancy was hired to teach library skills classes at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).
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John G. Tryon was born December 18, 1920 and grew up in Washington, D.C., the oldest of three sons. His father worked with the National Bituminous Coal Commission during the Depression and his mother was editor of the American Association of University Women's Publications.
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Ruth D'Hondt was born and reared in Las Vegas, Nevada, living on Jackson Street where her family owned Mattie's Cafe. The restaurant provided not just great food but employment for D’hondt and her five brothers and sisters. In 1959, the family moved to Berkley Square.
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Dancer Charles Nur Fernald first came to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1963 to perform for five weeks in the Kay Starr Show at the Sahara Hotel and again in 1964 working with Donn Arden for three months at the Desert Inn Hotel. Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1939, Fernald moved several times to various places in Arizona and southern California with his parents, Charles Knox Fernald and Marguerite Marie Higgins Fernald, and half-siblings before settling in Hollywood, California, where he remained (except for his short stints in Las Vegas) from 1961 to 1967.
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Gaming executive and responsible gaming expert Alan Feldman grew up in Los Angeles, California and began working in the field of public relations while attending the University of California, Los Angeles. He first became involved in the gaming industry in 1989 when he came to Las Vegas, Nevada to work on a public relations program for Steve Wynn’s Mirage Hotel and Casino. Feldman spent over 30 years working as a gaming executive for Mirage Resorts and MGM Resorts International.
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Eugene Williams was born June 15, 1944 into a musical family and grew up in Fresno, California. His mother and father were both singers, and he and his siblings grew up singing. Williams sang in the church choir before forming his own groups, the Vells and the Precision Six. Buck Ram signed Williams to the Platters in 1970, with whom he performed for eighteen years.
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Glenn Victory Tredwell was born on VE Day, May 8, 1945 in Philadelphia, PA. He grew up in a close family in the Philadelphia area and attended Temple University. He later graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in landscape architecture and had a two decade long career in landscaping in Florida.
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Alex De Castroverde group up proud of his Cuban ancestry and embraced his parents’ stories of coming to be Americans.
Both parents, Vivian and Waldo De Castroverde, were teenagers as Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. Waldo actively fought against the Castro regime as a CIA trained paratrooper; during which he was arrested and was imprisoned for two years. Vivian was one of thousands of young Cubans who quietly entered the United States through Operation Peter Pan in the early 1960s.
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