The Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Collection (1951-1977) contains publicity books, scrapbooks, community service records, newspaper clippings, correspondence, photographs, and newsletters pertaining primarily to the Fred S. Pennington post no. 1753 Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars of Las Vegas, Nevada and the associated local chapter of the American War Mothers organization. The Ladies Auxiliary and the American War Mothers are non-profit organizations that assist in providing support and services to veterans and active service members. This material was formerly known as the Luanna Mitchell Collection.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Gregory T. H. Lee conducted by Stefani Evans, Ayrton Yamaguchi, Cecilia Winchell, and Kristel Marie Peralta on December 1, 2020 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.
Gregory discusses his birth in Honolulu, Hawai'i, his upbringing in San Francisco, California, his education from Harvard University, and his moving to Las Vegas in 1988 with his family. He shares how his parents, Doris Shoong Lee and Ted Lee, purchased a casino on East Sahara Avenue and renamed it the Eureka before Gregory left Las Vegas to earn his Juris Doctorate degree from USC Gould School of Law. He talks about his employment history related to law and the joint venture with his parents to open Eureka's sister property in Mesquite, Nevada. Gregory also discusses his Chinese and Japanese heritage, the Hawaiian culture, and his current affairs as well as his take on current events and discrimination in the United States, with particular regard to Black Lives Matter and COVID-19.
Subjects discussed include: Kyushu, Japan and "China virus."
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Stella Kalaoram conducted by Kristel Peralta and Cecilia Winchell on August 2, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.
Stella Kalaoram discusses her childhood in Singapore, the occupations and ethnic diversity of her family, and the four languages she speaks: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. She shares her immigration journey to the United States with her husband, from Singapore to San Bernardino, California in 1990, and their move to Las Vegas in 2000. Stella also shares her employment experiences as a dental assistant, a housekeeper for the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino, and as a shop steward for the Culinary Workers Union. She also talks about contracting COVID-19 and her hospital experience, her family's differing religious faiths, and her translation work to empower the Asian-American community.
Subjects discussed include: insurance benefits; Volunteer Organizer (VO); mask mandates; vaccine hesitancy; food traditions; language barriers; Baba and Nyonya cultures.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Cynthia Leung conducted by Vanessa Concepcion, Kristel Peralta, and Stefani Evans on June 24, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.
Cynthia Leung shares her personal history growing up in Palm Desert, California and the story of how her artistic parents met. Cynthia's mother, a brush artist, immigrated alone from Shanghai and Taiwan to the United States where she met her husband and Cynthia's father, a Chinese-American architect. Cynthia talks about her educational pursuits and her move to Las Vegas to become a defense attorney. She discusses her career as a prosecutor before becoming the first Chinese-American women elected as a Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge, and her experiences within the court system witnessing discrimination, mental illness, and the opportunity for diversity in law.
Subjects discussed include: Joy Luck Club (book); Women in Need of Change (WIN) Court; alternative courts; Las Vegas legal community.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Barbara Atkinson conducted by Claytee D. White on August 5, 2019 for the UNLV School of Medicine Oral History Project. Atkinson begins by talking about her family and early life. She recounts her experience in medical school, women in medicine, and sexism and discrimination in medical schools. She brings up her mentors and what she had learned from each of them. She explains her pathology specialization, her research, and publications she has written. After, Atkinson talks about her occupation history and her retirement. She mentions how some attitudes about women and sexism have changed and some have stayed the same within the medical profession. She was hired by Don Snyder, John White, and Carl Reiber in 2014 to make a medical school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She goes in depth about the process, plans, obstacles, and the general medical training the students go through. Atkinson then talks about the history of Nevada's medical schools in Reno, Nevada and Las Vegas, Nevada. Lastly, she talks about her opinions on health care, her outlook on future generations, future plans for UNLV School of Medicine, and community of color interactions.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Tina and So Lin Kwan conducted by Cecilia Winchell and Stefani Evans on November 6, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.
Tina Kwan and her mother, So Lin, discuss their family's history within Guangzhou, China and the United States. So Lin shares how her siblings immigrated to the United States and sponsored the rest of their family to join them in Las Vegas. Tina, So Lin's daughter, discusses her educational career pursuing medicine with degrees from the University of Nevada, Reno; the University of Arizona; and with a fellowship at Arkansas Children's Hospital before joining Children's Heart Center Nevada where she is a pediatric cardiologist. Tina and So Lin talk about the Kwan's restaurant, the Fortune Inn Restaurant, which was open for 15 years and closed in 2005. They also discuss Chinese superstitions and customs, diversity within Southern Nevada, anti-Asian discrimination, and learning English as a second language.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Burton Cohen conducted by Claytee D. White on July 9, 2013 as part of the UNLV Boyd Law School project, UNLV Gaming Law Journal. In this interview, casino executive Burton Cohen begins with his early life in Miami, Florida where he “fell in love with the hotel business” while working in his father’s hotel as a boy. He recounts how he abandoned his law career to return to the hotel business and how he came to Las Vegas, Nevada in the 1960s to build up and manage operations at The Frontier. Cohen discusses his long career as a chief operating officer, touching briefly on some of the hotel/casinos that he helped launch and oversee in Las Vegas, including The Frontier, Circus Circus, Flamingo, Caesars Palace, the Desert Inn, and the Dunes. Cohen discusses some of the major changes that have occurred over the years in hotel/casino management and expresses respect for some of his contemporaries in the hotel industry such as Kirk Kerkorian, Billy Weinberger, and Gary Loveman.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Stephen Round conducted by Claytee D. White on October 25, 2017 for the Remembering 1 October Oral History Project. In this interview, Stephen A. Round, a career military contractor, describes his experiences during the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. Round mentions moving to Las Vegas in 2013 and in later years staying at the Aria on the evening of October 1. He describes the chaos of the shooting and the 12-hour-plus lockdown at the Aria hotel and casino. The day after the shooting, Round built a memorial around the shooting site and protected it. Once the memorabilia of that first site was taken to the Clark County Museum, he moved to protect the second memorial at the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign where crosses devoted to the victims had been placed. Along with his preservation of the memorials, Round describes his preparation of a book that was signed by many who visited the sites. Round explains that he was able to see some of the best and worst of humanity during those days of watching and caring for the memorial sites as well as helping any victims, families of the victims, and sympathizers of the Las Vegas 2017 shooting.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Marihka "Minddie" Lloyd conducted by Kristel Peralta and Stefani Evans on June 15, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Minddie talks about her upbringing in Manila, Philippines by her paternal grandmother and sisters (her Lolas) and her immigration to the United States at a young age. her personal history and childhood, including abuse that she suffered and her time in foster homes and a girls' home, Olive Crest. Minddie discusses the mentors she met through Olive Crest and her move to Las Vegas as an adult where she met her husband, an undercover Las Vegas Metro officer. Minddie talks about her employment with Hawaiian Air Lines, her support of the Injured Police Officers' Fund, and the creation of "Bamboo Bridges," a nonprofit organization based in Henderson, Nevada that aids abused, trafficked Asian women. Minddie also shares how she and her husband both contracted COVID-19 in 2020, and the untimely death of her spouse the day Minddie was released from the hospital. She shares how this event caused her to convert from Catholicism to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the religion of her late husband.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Estelle and Julia Elliott conducted by Vanessa Concepcion and Stefani Evans on December 2, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.
Twins Estrellita "Estelle" and Julieta "Julia" Elliott share their personal histories growing up in Cebu City, Philippines with their grandparents. They discuss moving to the United States to live with their parents after the death of their grandfather, and how they preserved their "tricultural" Castilian Spanish, Filipino, and American identities. After graduating from Stevens College, an art and academic school in Missouri, Estelle recounts marrying her husband and moving to Las Vegas where she gave birth to her daughter. Julia shares how she followed Estelle a few years later to Las Vegas, and the two women share their experiences as entertainers on the Las Vegas Strip. Both Estelle and Julia joined Minsky's Burlesque before becoming a permanent act in Siegfried and Roy's show at the Frontier Hotel. They also discuss their performances with Kirby VanBurch at the Aladdin's Abracadabra Show, dancing at the Playboy Mansion, and how Siegfried and Roy helped to diversify Las Vegas entertainment by incorporating dancers and performers of color, like the King Charles Troupe, into their shows.
Archival Collection