When looking back on his legacy in the Latinx community of Las Vegas, Otto Merida (1945 - ) takes great pride in being a Latin Chamber of Commerce [LCC] co-founder with Arturo Cambeiro. With the LCC, they forged a powerful economic entity that continues to provide the local Latino community with social and political influence. Growing up during the 1950s in Havana, Otto Merida fondly remembers his childhood despite living under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. There were the murmuring sounds of explosions from afar on the way to baseball games, but also the warm Sunday family meals of Cuban soup with fideos. In this interview, he talks about the rising communist powers inspired by revolutionary Fidel Castro and the events that led his family to place him in the Peter Pan Program in 1961. The Peter Pan Program sent unaccompanied Cuban children to the United States to avoid potential instruction by Castro’s government. Merida still holds on to his mother’s final request upon leaving Cuba-“I want you to remember the address where we live and the phone number: Josefina 68-entre primera y segunda-La Víbora, Havana con el teléfono X4304.” As a part of the Peter Pan Program, Merida experienced a nomadic childhood living in barracks in Miami and a three-story home in Wilmington, DE. The only connection he had to his family were a series of letters he exchanged with his mother, until they reunited years later in Miami. For Merida, life on 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard in Miami was defined by the values of his family and other Cubans and African Americans in his neighborhood. v Merida earned his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Florida. He credits his sister-in-law with a pivotal role in his decision to pursue a higher education. His engagement in politics continued through his involvement with the Cuban Circle, the first Hispanic community to be involved with politics in Las Vegas. He describes the migration of Cubans to the casino scene of Las Vegas and the presence of Cubans in the community. His work with the Cuban Circle inspired him to develop a political presence for Hispanics in the community. While travelling across the United States before settling in Las Vegas, Merida made many significant relationships while working with associations such as the Fitchburg Chamber of Commerce and Volunteers in Service to America [VISTA]. Living in Las Vegas, Otto Merida worked as an educator and community organizer. In the late 1970s, Merida and Arturo Cambeiro collaborated to create the Latin Chamber of Commerce of Las Vegas. For Merida, the Chamber consistently goes above and beyond the vision he and Cambeiro had created when they first opened their doors. From the creation of the Latino Youth Leadership Program at UNLV to their work alongside political figures such as Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, Merida is extremely proud of the various accomplishments of the Chamber. Now as President Emeritus, Otto Merida continues to dedicate himself to the Chamber as a volunteer and serves as one of the many Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada that have shaped the greater Las Vegas community.

Visionary John Acres likes to use his engineering background and computer expertise to solve problems. He has sold more companies that most people ever form—Electronic Data Technologies, Mikohn Gaming, and Acres Gaming—and he still owns the Acres 4.0 and Gen Seven companies. The 2016 Inductee to the American Gaming Association and the University of Nevada Las Vegas Gaming Hall of Fame reshaped the gaming industry by inventing electronic player tracking, progressive jackpot systems, and loyalty programs. Each innovation focused on customer service—"what would the customer think; what would they like; what would really get them excited; what would get them to come back"—and harkened back to lessons taught him by Norman Little, manager of Mr. Sy's Casino of Fun and one of the first people to hire a teenaged John Acres. In this interview, Acres bookends his remarkable career in gaming with the customer service philosophy of Norman Little as the basis, culminating with solutions to enable g

Most Las Vegas residents like living in Southern Nevada, but few make the leap of faith that Ron M. Portaro did in 1994. The business and development consultant gave up a "tenure-track, full time, full-benefits, kids-could-go-to-college-for free job" to keep his family in Las Vegas. He had no local job, so he commuted twice a month to the Cleveland and Toledo areas for two years to complete the consulting assignments that fed his young family. As the Ohio native discusses the dysfunctional family into which he was born and was raised, he also talks about forging his own path as an overachiever, about going to college at Penn State at Altoona on a mining engineering co-op program with Morton Salt, working six months out of the year in the salt mines and attending classes the other six months. After transferring to the University of Toledo, he formed his own painting business to pay his tuition and graduated in management in 1978 and earned his JD and MBA in 1981. His mentor at University of Toledo asked him to teach labor management. While teaching labor relations he also began representing athletes as a player agent in the National Football League and the United States Football League back in the day and the Canadian Football League. From there, he became associate director for the Northwest Ohio Center for Labor Management Cooperation at the University of Toledo and later with the Cleveland State Labor Management Center. It was with the latter that he learned the benefits of the BUILT-RITE model of business relations to promote cooperation between and among the building trades, contractors, and owners. In this interview, Portaro speaks to the BUILT-RITE model for cooperation, his 1993 move to Las Vegas and fortuitous meetings of Pastor Paul Goulet of the International Church of Las Vegas, City of Las Vegas councilman Arnie Adamsen, and Charlie Kajkowski of the Las Vegas Public Works Department. He reveals how these connections eventually not only shaped Portaro's life in Southern Nevada; they also enabled him to turn his life experiences, education, and skill set to benefit his church, his family, and his adopted community. The commitment Portaro made in 1994 to remain in Las Vegas has benefitted Southern Nevada tourists, residents, and business owners in countless ways we can appreciate only when we stop to think about how many people had to cooperate and communicate to make our large infrastructure projects come to fruition.

Roberta “Bobbie” Kane (1932 - ) is the first known Jewish child born in Las Vegas. Her parents, Sallie and Mike Gordon, were liquor stores owners and among the founders of the first Jewish congregation in Las Vegas. Bobbie’s childhood remembrances are as a young girl who was fully aware that “Friday nights were reserved for religious services. Saturdays were always reserved for gin rummy.” In the late 1940s, as a teenager at Las Vegas High School (and 1950 graduate), Bobbie recalls Las Vegas as a small town and a joyful place to grow up. She briefly attended University of Southern California before marrying and beginning her family. In time, life brought her back to live with her parents. She pursued a career working for the Desert Inn group of hotels and helped open the Stardust in 1957. She was mentored by Mark Swain, “a six foot-four hunk of a cowboy” who worked for Moe Dalitz. This experience included driving Mark’s pink Cadillac to pick up hotel guests. This provided her with a

In 1984, with the advice of his father ringing in his ears, Brad Nelson uprooted his wife and two children from their Denver home and moved them to Henderson, Nevada, where he would begin a new adventure in shaping the new master-planned community of Green Valley with Mark Fine and American Nevada Corporation (ANC). Nelson, lifelong Nebraskan and only child of his parents, arrived armed with a Bachelor's degree in landscape architecture with urban planning option, a Master's degree in urban planning, and fifteen years of planning and executive experience with the national firm of Harmon, O'Donnell and Henniger Planning Consultants. He arrived in time to plan Green Valley's first village, the Village of Silver Spring. By the time he left ANC for Lake Las Vegas in 1999, his work was done and most large parcels had been sold. As Nelson puts it, by 1999 ANC was "out of land, and I'm a land guy." Lake Las Vegas had plenty of undeveloped land, so "land guy" Nelson a chief operating officer

The documentation of the Holocaust of World War II reveals the desperation of Jewish families to protect their loved ones from doom. In this oral history, Sonja (neé Niekerk) Walter recalls the story of being an infant handed off to a family friend for safety and nurturing. Next to Sonja is Wilma, her “sister” and the biological daughter of that friend. Sonja and Wilma are tethered together by history and love for Cor Vandenberg, mother and protector. Sonja was born in 1943 Holland to Simon and Rose Niekerk. At thirteen days of age she was given sanctuary by Cor, who raise her as her own for the next two and half years. She and Wilma reminisce about the circumstances that brought them together, their love of Cor, and the impact of being a child survivor of the Holocaust. Sonja also shares her family’s journey to the United States and to Las Vegas.

In 1976, when Bob Campbell accepted the city manager position in Henderson, Nevada, he and his family had just endured nearly a month of sub-zero temperatures in their native Missouri. Southern Nevada's mild winter coupled with the promise of developing the 8,600 acres that would become Green Valley convinced Bob and his wife, Pat, to make the move. Bob came to Henderson with a degree in public administration and city manager experience in two Missouri towns, but Green Valley offered something akin to "an artist having a blank canvas on which to plan and create." In this interview, Bob talks about the ways his career in public administration blossomed in Southern Nevada. After about five years with the City of Henderson, Campbell joined Mark Fine and American Nevada Corporation to develop Green Valley; five years after that, he moved to Southwest Gas Corporation to work with Bill Laub and later, Kenny Guinn. From about 1989 to 1997, he helped develop Lake Las Vegas. In 1994, Bob and Pat together formed The Campbell Company, a private consulting firm whose clients included Transcontinental Properties' Lake Las Vegas project as well as Henry Chen's Ascaya. v Much of the interview focuses on the Lake Las Vegas project: its original visionary, false starts, and its tumultuous development as an arm of the Bass brothers of Fort Worth, Texas; their developer, Ronald Boeddeker of Transcontinental Properties in Santa Barbara, California, and Boeddeker's appointee, Alton Jones. Along the way Campbell shares the strategies employed by the Wednesday morning group of Henderson boosters who met at Saint Peter's Catholic Church and who succeeded in gaining the necessary local, state, and federal approvals to move the project forward. He reveals the intimidation, physical threats, and sexual harassment suffered by those who questioned the way Jones did business. Overall, though, he explains why he continues to respect the Bass brothers and is still proud of Lake Las Vegas, "proud that we got it on, and proud that it's turned out to be what it is."