Sharon Walker is a real estate investor, retired stockbroker and former loan officer. She was born on December 8, 1949 in Toledo, Ohio, and moved to Las Vegas with her family in 1963, where they started Walker Furniture, a store which they later sold to the Alterwitz family. Sharon's father, Julius Walker, was also in the casino business, becoming an owner of the El Cortez Hotel and Casino with Jackie Gaughan. Her mother, Anne Walker was a founding member of the first local Hadassah, The Women?s Zionist Organization. Sharon continues the family tradition of being active in Hadassah as well as being a Board Member of Jewish Family Service Agency. In November 2014 she was an honoree of Hadassah Leadership. In this interview, Sharon describes her adolescence in Las Vegas and the differences in culture as compared to her childhood in Toledo, Ohio. She also recalls the Walker Furniture business, her father?s careers, and her uncles Ed ?E? Walker and Lou ?Paddock? Walker.
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Sanford Akselrad is the rabbi at Congregation Ner Tamid. In this interview he describes his rabbinical training, coming to Las Vegas, and the growth of the congregation.
More inclined in his youth to pursue a career as a scientist than rabbi, Sanford Akselrad (1957- ) became the rabbi at Congregation Ner Tamid in 1988. Turning his tenure, Rabbi Akselrad has lead the congregation through its move from Emerson to Street to its permanent home on Green Valley Parkway and I-215 and shares a fun story about buying desks and chairs from the Clark County School District. He talks about many of the milestones including: Project Ezra which he started during the 2008 recession to help Jewish community members find jobs; the NextGen program which was initiated to bring young adults in their twenties and thirties back to the temple. For over twenty years Rabbi Akselrad was a member of the board of the Nevada Governor?s Council on Holocaust education, a topic that was the focus of his rabbinical thesis. He was the founding president of the Clark County Board of Rabbis and has served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, Jewish Family Services, and the Humana Hospital Pastoral Advisory Board. He was also the chair of the Federation?s Community Relations Council (CRC). Rabbi Akselrad is a board member of the Anti-Defamation League Nevada region office and the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada. Sanford Akselrad was born on October 6, 1957 in Oakland, California and raised in Palo Alto. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles and then went to graduate school at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. He spent the first year of his graduate program in Israel, the next two in Los Angeles, and the final two years in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Akselrad met his wife Joni in Reno, Nevada and married her during his third year of rabbinical school. The couple has two children, CJ and Sam. After his ordination in 1984, Rabbi Akselrad was associate rabbi of Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio, one of the largest Reform congregations in the Midwest. His choice of career was inspired by his father, Sidney Akselrad, who was a prominent rabbi involved in social justice issues and the Civil Rights Movement. Sanford Akselrad has followed his father?s example of community involvement, both in Las Vegas and on a national level: he served on the board of the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCJJ), he was chair of the NCJJ's Inter-faith Council, and he is active in the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ).
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Jim Marsh in Denver, Colorado. Father was the chief for the Colorado Patrol. Mother lived in Nebraska. Jim split time in both places while growing up. He was a service member of the Army and once getting out of the service he started his work with his father at a Ford dealership. Jim went on to work and own dealership in several different areas, Colorado, California, New Mexico, and Washington states before arriving in Las Vegas, NV in 1971. Once arriving in Las Vegas Marsh purchased a dealership called American Auto Mart. Around 1976 Jim Marsh bought the Santa Fe Saloon along with the twenty lots surrounding it for 12,500. This was his first experience in the gaming industry Marsh was the only dealership in the world for 25 years to have a gaming license in a new-car dealership. Marsh discovered interest in Belmont when there was a lone resident Rose Walter. The two bartered and Jim gained land in Belmont and went on to build a bar and church for the town. Marsh eventually went on to own the Skyline Casino. Jim Marsh founded the Nevada Auto Auction in 1987 on Las Vegas Boulevard South Eventually sold it and used the investment to build the Longstreet Casino. Marsh was' also a member of business organizations, Better Business Bureau and The Red Cross Marsh has been a member of the Salvation Army Advisory Board for at least 25 years. Tonopah is another location that Marsh has invested in. After leasing the gaming at the Mizpah Hotel to later buying the Valley Bank building and moving the gaming from Mizpah. It is still successful today. He also purchased the Tonopah Station House which is a hotel bar, and restaurant; along with owning the grocery store Scolari's next-door. Tonopah has proved to be a very good investment for Jim Marsh.
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Oral history interview with Kochy Tang conducted by Kristel Peralta, Vanessa Concepcion, and Stefani Evans on May 26, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Kochy gives a family history of her parents and how they both came to practice medicine; her father served in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War and later practiced alternative medicine alongside Kochy's mother in San Francisco and Reno. Kochy shares her educational and employment path pursuing osteopathic medicine and how, with the help of Tony Marnell, she was able to open her pratice within the M Resort and Casino. She discusses her work as a Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.) and the relationships she has built within the Las Vegas medical community.
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Oral history interview with Linh Fee conducted by Cecilia Winchell, Stefani Evans, and Jerwin Tiu on February 4, 2022 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Linh Fee talks about her family life growing up in Oahu, Hawaii, how her parents met in Vietnam, and memories of her childhood with her six siblings. She shares how she moved to Las Vegas, Nevada to find work after graduating from college at the University of Hawaii and her brief time working in the hospitality industry as a cocktail server. Fee discusses her career change to become a dental hygienist and life with her husband and three children.
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