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Gay, Hazel
Hazel Gay was born in Fordyce, Arkansas in 1923. Hazel met her husband, Jimmy Gay, when she was about twenty years old while she was attending school in Thornton, Arkansas. Eventually, Gay and Jimmy were married secretly with no one knowing until several weeks later. Gay and her husband went on to have four children, all currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Before the family moved to Las Vegas, they lived in Fordyce, Arkansas.
Person
Spencer, Prince
Spencer was born on in Jenkinsville, South Carolina, a small town where he lived for only a short time, moving to Boston and then to Toledo, Ohio, at the age of six. At the age of eight, he won a dance contest doing the Charleston that launched his career. As a member of the famed Step Brothers, he danced all over the country and in Europe, where he lived for five years. From the stage, his career took him into movies and television. In Las Vegas, Nevada he played the Sands Hotel with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and the Flamingo Hotel with Pearl Bailey.
Person
Conway, Debbie
Debbie Conway was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi on December 8, 1953. She moved to Las Vegas in 1989 after having lived in Chicago and worked in management for Avon. Conway was elected as Clark County Recorder in 2007. She is the first African American to hold that position in Nevada. She has also worked as a trainer at Levi Strauss, as Clark County's Business Development Manager, and as a producer/host of an economics talk show on KCEP radio.
Person
Bristol, Shelley, 1953-
Shelley Bristol is an AIDS activist in the Las Vegas, Nevada community. During the early 1990s Bristol was a legal prostitute in Winnemucca, Nevada. By 1993 Bristol left the brothel and decided to become an AIDS activist. During this time there was a great demand for legal prostitutes' testimony in AIDS prevention campaigns in Nevada. Besides providing her testimony about her experience with HIV/AIDS testing as a prostitute, Bristol also volunteered as a hotline operator with AIDS for AIDS of Nevada.
Person
Claxton, Eunice, 1942-
Eunice Claxton was born in 1942 in Tallulah, Louisiana. When she was ten years old, she and her mother moved to Las Vegas, Nevada for a few years. She attended the Westside Elementary School in Las Vegas, but she finished her education in Reno, Nevada. She lived in Reno until 1974 when she returned to Las Vegas. Claxton worked in a number of different establishments. She worked as a change girl at the Desert Inn and as a cocktail waitress at the Dunes Hotel. She also worked at clubs such as the Cover and the El Morocco.
Person
Washington, Isadore
Isadore Washington was born in Tallulah, Louisiana, the son of Isadore Washington, Sr., and Destelle Washington. His father came out to Las Vegas, Nevada in the 1930s to work on Hoover Dam, and the family followed in 1942 when Isadore was eight years old. His mother worked at the El Rancho and Last Frontier Hotels, the Shaw Apartments and Harrison boarding house on the Westside where black entertainers were expected to stay. Washington recalls playing with Wayne Newton when they were children and life on the Westside where he attended the Westside School.
Person
Genovese, Ann
Ann Genovese was born March 01, 1943 and was raised in Toronto Ontario, Canada. She met her husband, Robert, in Reno, Nevada and they married after knowing each other for only 31 days on September 09, 1967. The couple spent their first few years of marriage on the road with Robert’s band, with Las Vegas, Nevada as their home base. Later, they bought a home in McNeil Estates, and ceased their nomadic life when their eldest son, Joseph, started school. After their children grew up, the Genoveses started and ran a travel agency.
Person
Kanie, Ann Clark
Ann Clark Kanie was born February 28, 1959 and was raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. She attended Lincoln Elementary when her mother taught there, Jim Bridger Junior High, Rancho High School, and then graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) in elementary education. She began teaching, like her mother, at Lincoln Elementary in North Las Vegas but later changed to Wasden Elementary. Kanie married her husband, Kyle, on August 31, 1985.
Person
Gausling, Mike
Mike Gausling started in the casino industry as a slot floor person at the Aladdin in 1976. After about a year, he moved to the Stardust in a similar capacity and in 1980 went to the the Sundance, later named Fitzgeralds and The D Las Vegas. Gausling later worked at the Holiday Casino where he held supervisory roles and then after about 12 years in those roles, eventually assisted in opening the Stratosphere. He would then move to The Mirage where he would start on the floor again before moving into higher positions at that property.
Person
Parson, Claude H., 1928-1998
Reverend Claude Parson Jr. was born September 07, 1928 in Alabama and moved to New York when he was two years old. After graduating from the State University of New York at Oswego, Parson enlisted in the United States Air Force and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1951. He met his wife, Stella Parson, and married her in 1953. He worked in the Clark County School District for nearly twenty years and has an elementary school named after him. After retiring in 1974, Parson became a pastor in the Vegas View Church of God in Christ.
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