Oral history interview with Tony Cordasco conducted by Stefani Evans and Claytee D. White on July 3, 2024 for Game On! The Oral History of Las Vegas Sports project. In this interview, Tony Cordasco recalls his childhood in Newark, New Jersey, and eventually moving to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1979, where he became the first sports director of the new "KJON" radio station. In 1981, the station earned its FCC license as KUNV, and he was the first program director. After graduating with a degree in communications in 1982, he worked at news radio stations in Las Vegas and New Jersey until returning to Las Vegas permanently in 1987 to host a daily sports radio show and UNLV basketball play-by-play on a new station, KROL, co-owned by Sig Rogich and Mark Ratner. He also headed public relations for sports at The Showboat, which offered professional bowling, boxing, and wrestling. In 2000, he joined Red Bull as its marketing director and produced the company's first marketing plan. After fifteen years with the company, he opened his own consulting firm. He discusses his personal history with sports reporting and commentating and his work with Red Bull; the Professional Women's Volleyball team, Vegas Thrill; Jerry Tarkanian; and attending boxing matches at the Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion. Digital audio and photograph available.
Archival Collection
Game On! The Oral History of Las Vegas Sports Interviews
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Collection Number: OH-03922 Collection Name: Game On! The Oral History of Las Vegas Sports Interviews Box/Folder: Digital File 00
When Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs talks about the landscape architecture firm her parents, Barbara and Don Brinkerhoff, began in their home in 1958, she brightens and leans in. Since joining her parents’ firm in 1982, Julie gradually assumed responsibility for Lifescapes International’s sales, marketing, financial management, and strategic planning and serves as President and Chief Financial Officer. Here, Brinkerhoff-Jacobs talks of her life before joining and outside of Lifescapes: her family; her youth; her charity, HomeAid; her leadership activities; and her personal interests. Her focus, though, is Lifescapes and the Las Vegas people and the iconic projects that not only altered the ways that visitors perceive Southern Nevada but also changed the business of Lifescapes. “Not just in Las Vegas, but around the world people hire us because of what we've done in Las Vegas.” For Julie, one of the greatest joys of working alongside her parents was discovering them as peers—learning to know them as two people who “chose to live an incredibly artistic life together.” Her mother passed in 2014, but Julie and her father continue to work with and learn from each other.
Bell Family Scrapbook scanning, Set 4, proofed 11.04.2010 Clara Bow at rock garden in courtyard at ranch house at Walking Box Ranch. The garden was made by "Big John" Silvera from Searchlight Nevada. He was deputy sheriff and did rock work
Bell Family Scrapbook scanning, Set 4, proofed 11.04.2010 Clara Bow at rock garden in courtyard at ranch house at Walking Box Ranch. The garden was made by "Big John" Silvera from Searchlight Nevada. He was deputy sheriff and did rock work
Following the October 1, 2017 killing of 58 people at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on the Las Vegas Strip, the Las Vegas community responded in a variety of ways. Envisioned by activists and built by volunteers, the City of Las Vegas established the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden at 1015 S. Casino Center Boulevard to honor the victims and give family members and the community a place to gather to remember.