Lewis Gibson Miller was born on March 8, 1931, in Los Angeles, California. Lewis married Ann Johnson in April of 1987, and they had five children: Alisa, Michon, Tiffany, Marc, and Marta. Miller graduated from high school and attended two years of college. Then he attended Navy Electronic School and Navy specialty training. Miller served two and a half years in the United States Navy aboard the USS Wiseman DE 667.

Susan Cowan grew up in Kansas City, Missouri with her parents, older sister and grandparents. By the time Cowan graduated from high school, she had moved five different times. This continued once she was married, she eventually settled in Boulder, Colorado. It was there that Cowan began working in higher education as a secretary at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where she met her second husband.

Katherine M. Joseph was born December 31, 1931 in Oakland, California. She came to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1950 at the age of 19 and was immediately employed at the Elks Club as a dancer and cocktail waitress. Soon after that she joined a dance show as well, which took her to Havana, Cuba for a year.

Henry L. Regan Jr. was born March 09, 1948 and was raised in New York. He grew up a tough kid who often tried to fill the shoes of his absent father. Regan, with his mother and younger siblings, arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1958 when he was ten years old. Regan joined a gang and survived the surrounding violence during the 1960s and 1970s—during what he describes his time as a “wild” teen on the Westside of Las Vegas. With the help of caring people and spiritual guides, Regan escaped his addictions and intense path.

Ronald D. Textor was born in Kirksville, Missouri, but moved shortly after his birth to Flint, Michigan. He started his own band, earned a degree in music education, and was in the North American Air Defense Command Band for three years. He then toured with the Glenn Miller Band under the direction of Buddy DeFranco. Textor earned a master's in music and briefly taught in several colleges in the late 1970s. He moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1981 and played with the Norm Geller orchestra at the Sands.

Vincent Kethen was born October 31, 1964 in Las Vegas, Nevada, the year that desegregation of schools began. Like many African-American children living in the Las Vegas Westside neighborhood, Kethen was bused out of his neighborhood in third grade to attend a white school. In his case, this meant attending John S. Park Elementary School and later other predominantly white schools.

Bobbie Gang was born on April 6, 1940 in New York, New York.

Gang married a young future attorney, Leonard Gang, in 1961. Two years later the couple was living in Nevada. She only agreed to move upon finding a welcoming synagogue, in this case Temple Beth Sholom. The couple and their three children spent time in both Carson City and Las Vegas.