Dr. Joseph "Andy" Fry is currently a professor of history at UNLV. He was born and grew up in West Virginia, the only child of an insurance salesman and a public school teacher. His parents met in Ronceverte, West Virginia, and lived for a while in his grandmother's boarding house. He had an idyllic childhood in this small town of 2500 people. Andy received an excellent high school education, including learning eighth grade English and 2 years of Latin from his mother. After graduation, he was interested in playing college basketball and ended up at Davis and Elkins College in east central West Virginia. Undecided on a major at first, he tried math and then chemistry, but he found his niche when he began studying the history of western civilization. During his undergraduate years, Andy met his wife-to-be, Sandra Schwitzer, and they were married in 1969 in the summer after their senior year. He was accepted at graduate school in history at the University of Virginia, so he and his bride moved to Charlottesville. After that, he worked for 2 years at Virginia Tech. In 1975, Dr. Fry was offered a job at UNLV, so he and his family packed up and moved to Las Vegas. He was welcomed to the history department by such notables as Roman "Jay" Zom, Ralph Rosky, and Tom Wright. In addition to teaching, he has had the opportunity to do research, write 4 books, and edit a series of diplomatic biographies. Andy was department chair in the mid 80s and again from 1999 to 2002. He also served for three years as executive assistant to Dr. Carol Harter (president of UNLV for 11 years), but prefers teaching over administrative work. His plans for the future are to finish a fifth book and continue teaching to at least age 66.
Interview with Myra Berkovits by Barbara Tabach on August 21, 2014. In this interview, Berkovits talks about growing up and starting her teaching career in Chicago. When she moves to Las Vegas, Berkovits eventually purchases a dining concierge business, but returned to teaching, and is now involved with the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center.
Myra Berkovits was born Myra Mosse in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. She became an elementary school teacher in Chicago before moving to Las Vegas in 1980. Myra has made contributions to Las Vegas in the public and private sectors. She owned several businesses then returned to teaching, heading to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) to renew her teaching license and later received her master's degree. After a year of teaching in multicultural education, Myra was then in charge of the school district's homeless program, seeing its growth from serving 1,200 to 6,000 students. Myra's other passion was for Holocaust education and she became one of six interviewers in the city for the Shoah Foundation, documenting survivors' stories. One interviewee, David Berkovits, would later become her husband of fifteen years. Myra's own Holocaust education was aided by powerful trips to Israel and Poland. She used these experiences to develop and lead student-teacher conferences and classroom curriculum for the whole state. Myra still serves at the Education Specialist at the Holocaust Resource Center.
Interview with Jerry Fox by Barbara Tabach on November 12, 2014. In this interview, Fox discusses his father's restaurant, Foxy's Delicatessen, which opened on the Las Vegas Strip in the 1950s, and his own business endeavors including the Tinder Box and an embroidery business.
Jerry Fox grew up in Los Angeles until his family moved to Las Vegas in February 1955, where his father opened Foxy's Delicatessen, the city's first Jewish deli. Jerry would go on to follow in his father's entrepreneurial footsteps, operating several ventures across different industries, including his own restaurant, Foxy Dog. Jerry sold Foxy Dog in 1975 after going through a divorce, the same year that Foxy's Deli closed.