Judy Jetter was born November 18, 1939 and was raised in Chicago, Illinois. At the age of three, she began taking acting, tap, and ballet classes. While raised by her mother until age 15, she was forced to study opera, even though jazz music was her passion. Jetter’s first introduction to jazz came while listening to, legendary jazz great, Woody Herman on the radio. She developed an immediate appreciation and love for jazz music.
Maurice “Maury” Halfon Behar was born August 27, 1938 in Biarritz, France and spent his early childhood in Bayonne, France. On January 12, 1944, the Nazis took his parents from their home, but Behar was left behind due to a bout with measles. He was then cared for by his neighbor, Marie Cazous, passing as her son, until he was adopted by relatives from the United States and moved to New York City, New York in 1947.
Count Guido Roberto Deiro was born February 18, 1938 in Reno, Nevada. He was the son of vaudeville performer and recording star Count Guido Pietro Deiro, who was the first major piano-accordionist to become popular in the United States, and his teenage wife Yvonne Teresa LeBaron De Forrest. Deiro grew up in and around Las Vegas, Nevada and Southern California after his parents’ divorce in 1941.
Elizabeth Francis (nee Knath), born in Laramie, Wyoming on November 12, 1931, was the fourth of nine children. The family then moved to Salem, Oregon and Francis attended high school there through her junior year. She finished high school in 1949 in Saratoga, Wyoming, becoming the first of her siblings to graduate.
Matthew O'Brien is a journalist, author, and college instructor who is known for his nonfiction book Beneath the Neon about homeless people living underground in the Las Vegas Valley. He lived in Las Vegas from 1997-2017. O'Brien was born in Washington D.C. but grew up in Atlanta, GA, where he graduated from the University of West Georgia in 1995. He also earned an MFA from UNLV. O'Brien was a staff writer, news editor and managing editor of the alternative weekly Las Vegas CityLife from 2000 to 2008.
Jerry Duane Morlan (1938-2000) was born and raised in Victorville, California. He worked as a letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office from 1960 to 1965 before his eight-year tenure as an industrial photographer at Teledyne Semiconductor in Hawthorne, California. After Teledyne, Morlan was a successful general supervisor of the graphic arts department of leading toy manufacturing company Mattel, continuing to work as a photographer and sometimes acting as a consultant for the Yankee Photo Products company.
Willard H. George (1889-1956) was a Los Angeles, California based furrier who designed, created, and supplied furs to movie studios during the Golden Age of Hollywood (1920s-1960s). George was the son of Sadie Kiel George, and great-grandson of early Las Vegas, Nevada settler Conrad Kiel, owner of the Kiel Ranch in North Las Vegas, Nevada.
Dr. Hale Burgher Slavin practiced medicine in Las Vegas, Nevada for more than thirty years between 1933, when he first arrived, until his death in 1965. During this time, he held a number of positions in the state's medical society while working in a large private practice.