It seems counterintuitive that a man who was raised a Mennonite, spoke Pennsylvania Dutch before he spoke English, and was destined to quit school after eighth grade to work on the family farm would grow up to become one of the most progressive and visionary library directors in the United States. His participation in the Building Las Vegas project results from his being responsible for building twenty libraries in Clark County during his 1971–1994 tenure as director of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District. One of his first controversies was to insist on going to high school after his father demanded he quit. After graduating high school he went to Nigeria on behalf of his church, serving there for five years. Upon returning to the U.S., he found work at the Fort Wayne Library, albeit he was limited by how far he could advance because of his limited education. After attaining his library degree Indiana University at Bloomington he served as director at the Columbia City Library

Patty Ann Drew’s life experiences capture large movements in Las Vegas history: mob-dominated gambling, the Helldorado Rodeo, explosive growth, medical advances, and Clark County School District’s Sixth Grade Centers—all in a desert city centered in the Mormon Culture Region. Patty arrived in Las Vegas as an infant with her parents and older brothers in 1944 and was raised in the Huntridge area, where she and her brothers attended John S. Park Elementary School and matriculated from there to Las Vegas High School. In this interview, Patty talks about her parents working on the Strip, her school days, joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, marrying her high school sweetheart, and becoming a young mother in Las Vegas. After Patty married her second husband, Thomas Ross, the couple built a house west of Jones Boulevard and Patty gave birth to her third son. In addition, she returned to school to earn her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and taught at C. H. Decker Elementary School for twenty years.

One cannot talk about the arts in Southern Nevada without speaking of Patrick Gaffey. The Cincinnati, Ohio, native moved to Las Vegas as a child and has served the local arts community in several roles nearly his entire adult life, retiring soon after this interview as cultural program supervisor for the Clark County Parks & Recreation Department. After earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English at the University of Nevada, Reno, Gaffey married Cynthia Pearson in 1968. In 1981 he began working as a publicist for the Allied Arts Council of Southern Nevada, founding its acclaimed magazine, Arts Alive, and remaining with the organization through its several moves until 1991. In this interview, he speaks to the collaborative nature and long vision of the Southern Nevada arts and architecture community through the founding of Discovery Children's Museum and the Neon Museum and of working with farsighted public entities—the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, Clark County,

As he reveals in this oral history, Roger Thomas is, among many other things, a son, a father, a brother, a husband, a student, an artist, a visionary, and a philanthropist. As the second son of Peggy and E. Parry Thomas’s five children, Roger was raised a Mormon child of privilege and civic responsibility. The banking family summered in Newport Beach, wintered in Sun Valley, and taught their children by words and deeds that it is not up for debate if you will be involved in your community; the only question is how you will apply your talents and resources to benefit your community. Roger absorbed the lessons well. As a child who struggled in school but excelled in art, he attended his last two years of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, graduating in 1969, finally finding himself “in an environment where what I did had currency.” From there he earned his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Studio Degree from Tufts University before returning to Las Vegas and eventually joining Steve Wynn’s team in 1981. As Executive Vice President of Design for Wynn Design & Development, he is the man in whom Steve Wynn places his trust to make real at each Wynn property the Wynn design philosophy: aim for a constituency of highly sophisticated, well-traveled, very educated people and give them a reality, a now, that is so fetching, so alluring they wish to be no place else. As he was mentored by his father and Steve Wynn, he too is mentoring those who will follow him. At Wynn, the next generation will carry forward the Wynn idea of evoca-texture, of creating “moments of experiential emotion that result in a memory so captivating and so unique that if you want to repeat that you have to come back.” At home, he collaborates with his daughter on a children’s book that has the potential to become a series; she is the illustrator, while he provides the words. Roger Thomas sat for this interview five days after his father, E. Parry Thomas, passed away in Idaho. Instead of postponing the interview to a more convenient time, Roger kept the appointment and explained, “This is for UNLV. If I’d cancelled my father would have killed me.”

Ron Lurie is a product of Las Vegas. Ron Lurie knows Las Vegas. The Los Angeles native arrived in Las Vegas with his parents when he was twelve years old; his father opened Market Town next to White Cross Drug Store. Lurie graduated from Las Vegas High School in 1958 and attended Nevada Southern, where he played baseball and basketball before joining the United States Army Reserves. Returning from training, he began working at a new store, Fantastic Fair. Soon the owner, builder Lloyd Whaley, asked him to manage a new Fantastic Fair. At 24 years of age, he managed the entire Fantastic Fair store, which later became Wonder World. Over time, Lurie would manage three of the four Wonder World stores. In this interview, the former mayor of the City of Las Vegas and former Las Vegas City Council member talks about running for City council because he wanted more parks and ball fields downtown and about his political career, which coincided with the years of explosive growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The current vice president and general manager of Arizona Charlie's also v discusses his careers in the grocery business and in gaming; he speaks to giving back to the community and the changing demography of the area surrounding Arizona Charlie's; he talks of the ways Steve Wynn pioneered an aura of glamour that helped to upgrade Downtown Las Vegas; he recalls the challenges of public safety, regional transportation, flood control, and the Monorail and of civic dreams of a magnetic levitation train that would connect Downtown Las Vegas to Cashman Field. He remembers his parents and his wife; he talks about his children, and he shares vignettes of, among many others, Ernie Becker IV, Bill Briare, Al Levy, Steve Miller, and Bob Stupak. Throughout, Mayor Lurie especially beams when he talks about his family, his friends, his work, Las Vegas, the Boys and Girls Clubs, and baseball. This man loves baseball.

always thought I'd be more urban. I would live in a downtown city. I wouldn't have a car. I would walk around. I would work on these big skyscrapers.” At one point in his life, architect Craig Galati dreamt of designing large buildings in some of the nation’s biggest cities. Instead, he was drawn back to his childhood home of Las Vegas, where he created projects meant to preserve the city’s integrity, such as the Grant Sawyer State Office Building and the first building at the College of Southern Nevada Charleston Campus. He speaks to his work in preservation at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve and in welcoming visitors to Mount Charleston with his Spring Mountains Visitor Gateway design. In this interview, Galati talks about his parents’ decision to move from Ohio to Nevada and what it was like growing up in Las Vegas. He recalls his first teenage jobs in the Las Vegas of his youth and his studies in architecture at the University of Idaho. He recounts the dilemma of struggling to find architecture work he enjoyed and how that vision drew him back to Vegas. He describes various projects in his portfolio from his early years to the present. He speaks highly of his partnership with Ray Lucchesi and the basis for their vision: “We wanted to be a place that everybody liked to work for. Buildings were just tools to do something grander. They weren't an object. We had a philosophy that was not object based, it was people based.”

Chef and longtime gaming executive Joseph “Joe” Wilcock was born in Detroit and raised by his mother, Ruby, and stepfather, Ross Johnson, in Sarasota, Florida; Gary, Indiana; and Harlan, Kentucky. After he graduated from high school in Gary he moved to Chicago to attend Washburne Culinary Institute. While attending Washburne Joe worked at Chicago’s Drake Hotel and lived at the Sears YMCA. After earning his certificate from Washburne, Joe worked at the newly opened Holiday Inn in Chicago, the Sea View hotel in Bal Harbour, Florida, and a resort at Blowing Rock, North Carolina. At Blowing Rock he heard about the new School of Hotel Management at UNLV and in August 1969 23-year-old Joe headed for Las Vegas with $400 in his pocket. Las Vegas was a disappointment. Joe could not get a job as a chef without first joining Culinary Workers Union Local 226-which he could not afford to do. Also, because he ran a poker game and cooked at the Chuck Wagon Diner during high school his high school grade point average was roughly a C-, which hindered his admittance into the School of Hotel Management. Undaunted, Joe found a job bussing tables at the Frontier Hotel and joined the Culinary Union so he could work as a chef. He also took three classes at UNLV that semester, earned an A in each, and was admitted to the School of Hotel Management. While at UNLV he affiliated with Sigma Chi fraternity. In his career Joe has worked in all facets of the gaming industry in such Las Vegas properties as the Flamingo Capri, the Frontier, Caesars Palace, the Tropicana, the Dunes, the Golden Nugget, the Mirage, Treasure Island, the Sands, MGM, and the Downtown Grand. He learned the business from the ground up. He also worked at Caesars Tahoe and at different times owned and operated a sandwich shop and a bar. Joe married his wife, Linda, 38 years ago in Las Vegas, in 1976. He is currently employed as a casino shift manager at the Downtown Grand hotel and is affiliated with the House Corporation of Sigma Chi Alumni, UNLV Rebel Golf, the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, and Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation of Nevada.