Shirley Edmond and Althia Taylor grew up on Jackson Avenue where their parents owned Johnson's Malt Shop. Both women worked in the postal service until their retirements; Shirley worked for 36 years and Althia for 32 years. Shirley went into management but Althia loved mail delivery even after 14 dog bites. Mackie Edmond worked for the Stardust and interacted with MOB figures like Frank Rosenthal. He explains why people thought that era was better than corporate ownership.
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Retired City of Las Vegas Assistant Fire Chief Cherina Kleven was born in Taiwan, the fifth of her parents' seven children and the first daughter. The family spoke Taiwanese at home, but once the children started school all instruction was in Mandarin Chinese. Her father was in charge of the motor pool for the U.S. Embassy, and her mother stayed home. In 1970, the family immigrated the U.S. and to Las Vegas, where her father could use his training as an electrician to work with air conditioners. Cherina attended Roy W.
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Flo Mlynarczyk was born in Fort Morgan, Colorado. Her parents divorced and she moved with her mother first to Loveland, Colorado and eventually to Los Angeles, California. Upon graduation from high school in 1943, Mlynarczyk moved to Kodiak, Alaska, to live with friends.
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Paul Christensen was born on August 26, 1932. He grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada during the World War II era. His parents were M.J. and Hazel Christensen, founders of a jewelry business. He attended the Fifth Street Grammar School, the John S. Park School, and Las Vegas High School. Too young to enlist, he was of an age that could focus on his education and opportunities for success. He attended college, earned a marketing degree, and joined the Air Force ROTC program. He flew B-47 bombers during the Cold War.
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Adelaide Robbins was born in Manhattan (New York, New York) to a father who was a pianist and arranger and a mother who was a dancer on Broadway. She grew up as an only child in the theater district where she was exposed to the arts from a young age. She began piano lessons at age six and began working professionally by the age of 12. She attended the High School of Music and Art for four years.
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Dennis McBride grew up in Boulder City, Nevada, and received both his BA and MA from UNLV. He is well-known as an expert in the history of Hoover Dam and has done several histories of Boulder City. He has chronicled and collected the history of the LGBTQ community in Las Vegas since the late 1970s, and his work culminated in the manuscript "Life in the Neon Closet: A History of Gay Las Vegas" published in 2017.
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James Fox "Jim" Dunbar was Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino's longest-tenured employee. He was born on June 22, 1938 in Los Angeles, California. His parents were Harold Leslie Dunbar and Elaine Mary Greenberg. Dunbar's father moved the family to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1943 to work as a taxi driver. On August 4, 1966, Dunbar worked at Caesars Palace at its grand opening as a valet, and continued working as a Caesars Palace valet until 2018. He died March 29, 2019.
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Helen (Collins) Morelli was born in 1905 the oldest of nine children born to Elizabeth McCann and James P. Collins. Her father was an New York Police Department officer and suffered a heart attack, which widowed her mother. Helen helped her mother raise her siblings as both her mother and her uncle (who moved in after her father's death) worked outside of the home to support the family.
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