In 1954, Dan Connell enrolled as a sophomore at Las Vegas High School, newly arrived from Ocean Gate, New Jersey, where his father was a New Jersey state trooper. The family’s first living space was a converted two-car garage close to McCarran airport. Living there seemed far out of town at the time; so far out that the school district could not justify providing him bus service. Instead, the family was reimbursed for his transportation costs. Dan also worked fulltime in a restaurant near McCarran Airport while going to high school. This was followed by two years in the military. Afterwards, he returned to Las Vegas, went to school, married his wife Linda, and eventually settled in the Westleigh neighborhood of Ward 1 in 1973. Westleigh remains their home, the place where they raised four sons, lived near their parents, enjoyed Sunday dinners surrounded by family and friends, and the neighborhood where their sons delivered newspapers. All four sons, David, Donald, Mark and Brian, still
With a liveliness of a man decades younger, Harry Kogan looks at his 100th birthday with cheer and satisfaction. Born March 11, 1916 to poor Russian immigrant parents in the Jewish ghetto of Philadelphia, Harry vividly recalls walking to school shoeless, with no hat or no raincoat. A treat would be his mother handing him ten-cents to go to the theater and enjoy a silent movie. After graduating from high school in 1933, Harry quickly took one of the rare jobs available in a garment manufacturing company where he worked his way into being a skilled and valued fabric cutter-a job that paid $35 a week. Harry was raised with two brothers and lived in Philadelphia for the first 91 years of his life before moving to Las Vegas. One of his brothers learned the refrigeration business while enlisted in the Navy and after the war formed a commercial refrigeration business named Kogan Brothers. Harry is a philosophical and philanthropic man. He was slow to retire and traveled the world, took classes and donated to his favorite causes; among which are the Boys Town Jerusalem and the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas. He sat for this interview to honor his Jewish roots, to share his life experiences and spending the past years in Las Vegas.
Color photograph of Lonnie Wright (second from right) with prison staff. Wright gave a presentation to young offenders in the prison system along with the others in this photograph.
David Green was born in New York in July 1949. He was the founder of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Source:
David Green oral history interviews, 1999 August 20 and 1999 October 22. OH-00727. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada.
Interview with Susan Greenspun Fine by Cecillia Boland on February 18, 1976. In this interview, Fine talks about growing up in Las Vegas and her schooling. The interview is geared towards the growth of Las Vegas from her childhood to her adulthood, including roads, air travel and medical facilities. She is the daughter of Hank and Barbara Greenspun, owners of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, and discusses being involved in all the happenings around town because of that.