Search Results
Transcript of interview with Alfred "Al" Guzman by Barbara Guzman, March 1, 1981
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Archival Collection
Description
On March 1, 1981, Barbara Guzman interviewed her father, Alfred “Al” Guzman (born 1932 in El Paso, Texas) about his life in Southern Nevada. Guzman first talks about his occupational history, including his then-current career in public relations for the Sands Hotel and Casino. He then talks about Las Vegas, including social changes, changes in the gaming industry, and mob influence in the casinos. He also talks about Reno, how his job affects the public, and the MX Missile system.
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Transcript of interview with Margaret Price by Joanne Goodwin, March 5, 1997
Date
Archival Collection
Description
When farm-girl-turned-waitress, Margaret "Maggie" Price, came to Las Vegas from Ohio in 1950 with her husband, Francis "Frank" Price, she had no idea what was in store for her in the hot desert oasis. Maggie's career spanned a period of historical transformation in Las Vegas when Downtown was becoming overshadowed by the development on the Las Vegas Strip. Vaudeville and striptease acts were still alive, but the arrival of big-named acts, such as the Rat Pack, Barbara Streisand, and the King himself, Elvis Presley, were just beginning to take the lead. Organized crime was still a prominent part of the culture and brothels still operated somewhat openly. The three decades Maggie and Frank worked in Las Vegas provided them with front-row seats for the birth, transformation, and occasional death of numerous casinos, including the Sahara, the Flamingo, the Sands, the Dunes, the Tropicana, and the International. Initially going to work as a waitress at the El Rancho Vegas, Maggie
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Transcript of interview with Darrin Bush by Claytee White, June 30, 2016
Date
Archival Collection
Description
In 1948 in Las Vegas, Nevada, a camera-girl-turned-cocktail-waitress and a casino credit manager welcomed the birth of their son, Darrin Bush. After attaining his education at St. Joseph’s Catholic School and Bishop Gorman High School, Bush earned his Bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. Bush credits his love for photography to his mother’s influence and his study of journalism. Bush’s first job after college as a room service waiter at the Sahara Hotel eventually grew into the coveted position of room service swing captain. His swing shift duties included the entertainers' dressing rooms, which meant taking care of the entertainers, getting them what they needed, and stocking their favorite foods and drinks nightly. Through his work, Bush eventually formed close friendships with several celebrities of the day. He enjoyed his work, but he never stopped honing his skills as an amateur photographer. In the mid-1980s, Bush left the Strip to become a professional photographer for the Las Vegas News Bureau. Throughout his News Bureau career, Bush photographed the casino buildings made famous by Las Vegas-the construction and the architecture of Southern Nevada’s gaming palaces-as well as iconic events in Las Vegas history. Darrin retired from the News Bureau in about 2014, but his work recording the building of and events of Las Vegas lives on in the News Bureau archives. He continues to be an avid photographer.
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Transcript of interview with Maxwell Kent "Tim" Hafen by Stefani Evans and Claytee White, September 14, 2016
Date
Archival Collection
Description
With so much emphasis put on the growth of Las Vegas and Henderson over the past thirty years, we often forget about the development of the others cities in the Valley. Expansive growth in Southern Nevada in the mid-twentieth century shows the region being one of the last bastions of agricultural existence, and Tim Hafen has been a major player in the development of the city of Pahrump. Born in St. George, Utah, and raised in Mesquite, Nevada, he graduated from Virgin Valley High School and attended Dixie College. Before the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was called as such, his father introduced him to the working of the land through dairy and hay farming, where a young Tim decided he would never milk a cow again. His rejection of cow milking didn’t deter him from following the influence of his father after he married his wife, Eleanor, in 1951 and moved to Pahrump to become a cotton farmer. At that time, there were only 150 people in the area with a third of the population being from the Paiute tribe. Once the city was incorporated in 1964, he founded the Pahrump Valley Utility Company to get electricity to the area along with Amargosa Valley. Top crops at the time included cotton, alfalfa as well as wheat that were picked by Mexican farm laborers used under a yearlong contract with the Bracero program. vi In this interview, Hafen shares how he began his career in politics from getting called for grand jury in 1963. From 1966–1974, he was a member of the legislature, where he served two terms in the Old Capital building and held various positions such as Chairman of the State Board of Agriculture for twelve years and President of the Nevada Farm Bureau. He was speaker pro tem and Chairman of the taxation committee and decided to call it quits because of the Nixon scandal. Between 1974 and 1975 Hafen ended his political career, which he did before brothels began to come to the area later in the decade. In 1982, in the wake of the gasoline crisis, Hafen, like other Pahrump cotton farmers, could not afford to continue farming; he decided to shift from farming to development. His first development done was Cottonwoods at Hafen Ranch, which was on 160 acres of alluvial fan, non-farmable land; in 2000 he opened his second subdivision, Artesia at Hafen Ranch.
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Transcript of interview with Bruce L. Woodbury by Stefani Evans, September 27, 2016
Date
Archival Collection
Description
As Bruce Woodbury reflects on his twenty-eight years as Clark County's longest-serving County commissioner (1981–2009) he recalls serving with about thirty different commissioners. Surprisingly, "only seven of us got major jail sentences." He ruminates how Federal Bureau of Investigation probes Operation Yobo in the early 1980s and G Sting in the early 2000s exposed several Clark County politicians who succumbed to greed. While Woodbury considers honesty in office a given, his values were not held by all of his colleagues. One Operation Yobo recording caught a fellow commissioner responding to the query, "How about Woodbury?" with, "No, you can't touch him with a ten foot pole." Woodbury remembers his "campaign guys really liked that." Apparently the voters did as well, as he consistently won re-election. The Las Vegas native, who was raised in the John S. Park neighborhood and attended Las Vegas schools, earned his Bachelor's degree at the University of Utah and his Juris Doctorat
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Transcript of interview with Nancy Cummings-Schmidt by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White, October 18, 2016
Date
Archival Collection
Description
With the explosive growth of the Las Vegas Valley over the past 30 years, it is rare to find someone who has deep battle born roots that go back to the early mining days of Nevada. Nancy Cummings-Schmidt is an example of that rare kind of gem. As a fourth generation Nevadan, her family came to the state in the 1800s form Ireland and England. Looking to capitalize off of the mining boom in Virginia City, they transitioned to ranching. She spent her first years in Reno and when her father went off to fight in the Second World War, her mother moved to Herlong, California and sent her to live with her grandparents. Upon moving to Vegas for fourth grade, her mother remarried and worked for the Las Vegas Sun while Nancy attended the Fifth Street Grammar School and later became a member Las Vegas High School’s first graduating class in 1956. After graduating from high school, Nancy invested in the spirit of wanderlust as it carried her to study theatre at Texas Christian University (which sh
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Transcript of interview with Cindy Coletti and David Fordham by Stefani Evans and Claytee White, October 27, 2016
Date
Archival Collection
Description
The interior of the green house at the end of the cul-de-sac envelops the visitor. Every room exudes comfort and encourages conversation even as the lake, lapping quietly on three sides of the house, beckons. Cindy Coletti revels in this house and its interiors, all of her own design, especially because they are so different from the daring, opulent, and award-winning custom homes for which she is known. Arriving in Las Vegas in 1988 as a single mother, Cindy immediately submitted a successful design for the first Southern Nevada Street of Dreams event and began networking. She established Sun West Custom Homes in Nevada by applying the design and contracting skills she had successfully honed by building nearly seventy houses in California, Florida, and Colorado—all the while grooming her son Danny—from the time he was in his teens—to eventually take over the company. In this interview, Cindy's husband, David Fordham, shares his background, his reasons for relocating to Las Vegas, work in commercial real estate, meeting Cindy, and living at The Lakes. Cindy then recalls the experiences that brought her to Las Vegas; shaped her ideas of self-help, friendship, design, and business, and instilled in her the confidence to succeed in a man's world. Cindy has retired from building and now enjoys traveling with her husband, but Sun West Custom Homes continues to thrive under the capable ownership and leadership of Daniel S. Coletti.
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Steve Jones and Bart Jones interview, Novermber 7, 2016: transcript
Date
Archival Collection
Description
Brothers Steve and Bart Jones live and breathe Las Vegas history. Their grandparents, Burley and Arlie Jones, arrived in Las Vegas in the nineteen-teens; their father, Herb Jones; his sister, Florence Lee Jones Cahlan, and their uncle, Cliff Jones, helped form the legal, journalistic, and water policy framework that sustains Southern Nevada today. The Jones brothers build on that foundation through their custom home-building company, Merlin Construction. In this interview, they talk about living and growing up in Las Vegas, of attending John S. Park Elementary School, of hunting in the desert, of their family's commitment to cultural and racial diversity, and of accompanying their grandfather to his business at the Ranch Market in the Westside. They share their early work experiences lifeguarding and later, dealing, at local casinos as well as second-hand memories of the Kefauver trials through the tales told by their father and uncle. Steve describes mentor Audie Coker; he explains
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