Throughout his career, former Clark County School District Superintendent (1989–2000) Brian Cram took his father's words to heart. He heard them repeatedly over the years as he watched and later, helped, his father clean classrooms at Robert E. Lake Elementary School: this place—the classroom—this is the most important place. Cram was born in Caliente, where his father worked on the railroad. In 1939, when Cram was a toddler, the family moved to Las Vegas and his father found work first as a sanitation engineer at a hospital, and then at CCSD as a custodian. The elder Cram, who spent his formative years in the Great Depression, prided himself on doing "good, honorable work" as a custodian, because the work—the classroom—mattered. Even so, he wanted more for his son. Cram largely ignored his father's advice during his four years at Las Vegas High School, where he ran with The Trimmers car club, wore a duck tail and a leather jacket, and copped an attitude. Cram's swagger, though, d

I've known Christie Young for many years and was grateful she agreed to be interviewed for the Las Vegas Gay Archives Oral History Project. Not only is she frank in what she says, but her background as a researcher in sexual issues and as a straight woman involved in the gay community give her a unique perspective. Ancillary to her donation of this interview transcript to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Christie has generously donated her personal journals which detail more than a decade of her life including the years she worked with Las Vegas's gay community . Christie shares the project's concern that documentation of the gay community is ephemeral and vanishes rapidly; her determination that her contribution to that community be preserved greatly enriches our knowledge and will benefit future scholars.