Interviewed by Nathalie Martinez. Larry Mason is an Arizona native that moved to Las Vegas as a Higher Education Administrator. He was born in Tuscon, Arizona, but grew up mostly in East Los Angeles and his "Gramitas" ranch in Sonora, Mexico. He has a history in athletics as a basketball player in his upbringing which brought him to play at the New Mexico Highlands University and the European League. Earning a Masters in Education, Larry Mason came to Las Vegas to become the first Latino Director of Admissions at UNLV, first Latino President of the Board of Education, and first Latino Vice President of the Board of Education in the Clark County School District. He launched an incredible amount of movements within the educational field in Las Vegas including (but not limited to): the Mariachi program, the magnet school program, and the growth of the Diversity Division within the NSHE. Some of his greatest supporters and allies included Senator Harry Reid, John Lujan and Tom Rodriguez. Mason continues to work as a community leader for minority representation in STEM fields, as a board member for the Nevada STEM Coalition.
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Until her passing in 2017, Millicent (Siegel) Rosen was the living link to Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, one of Las Vegas’ most notorious links to the Jewish mob. A steadfastly independent woman herself, Millicent recalls Benjamin as a loving father to her and her younger sister. She is proud of his status as a Las Vegas visionary, though she affixes a footnote that the city of today might not be to his liking. She includes a few anecdotes about common names of the early days, including Meyer Lansky who walked her down the aisle when she married Jack Rosen. They had three children: Benjamin, Cindy, and Wendy. Millicent moved to Las Vegas to be with her daughter and her family in about 2000 and cherished her role as a grandmother. Always an artist at heart, Millicent once painted canvases for needlepoint and in 2015 promoted her clothing line.
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Joyce Moore's family moved to Las Vegas from Chicago in 1953, when she was eight years old. She attended Rancho High School, married and had three daughters, and currently lives in Las Vegas. Joyce's father was in the gaming industry and her mother was a nurse. Growing up in Las Vegas meant going to shows with her mother, spending summer days in the pool at the Showboat Hotel, and riding horses to the Last Frontier. While a teenager at Rancho High school, Joyce worked at several movie theaters including the Huntridge, went to school dances and marched in the Hellodorado Parade. After her divorce, Joyce returned to work to support herself and her children, first at the Daily Fax then later on the Strip at the Aladdin and Circus, Circus doing a variety of office and accounting jobs. As a lark she and a friend applied to work as cocktail waitresses at the MGM; she was hired and spent the next five years in a job that was by turns interesting, exhausting, frustrating and fun. This interview covers several periods of Joyce's life - her childhood, teen years, and early adult life - and what it was like to grow up, live and work in Las Vegas in from the mid-1950s until the mid-1970s.
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Ashley Hall was born April 3, 1943 in Caliente, Nevada. After high school, he worked for the Union Pacific Railroad at the Nevada Test Site as a cashier and as a signalman. He later attended Brigham Young University and the University of Nevada, Reno. After college, Hall served the City of Las Vegas in significant ways. Notably, as City Manager he was instrumental in the initial development of Summerlin, Nevada. Though he has retired from local politics, he remains active as the President of the Old Spanish Trail Association and as the U.S. Army Reserve Ambassador.
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Rachel Gibson was the granddaughter of Nevada pioneers. Her maternal grandparents, George Rammelkamp and Anna Dougherty, were among the earliest white residents of northern Nevada, settling first in Dayton and later Yerington. Her mother, Clara Angelina, and her two aunts, Elizabeth and Georgie, graduated from the University of Nevada at the turn of the century. Clara taught in Yerington for a number of years before marrying Chase Masterson, a dentist. Rachel was born in 1913 in Yerington. The eldest of three children, she continued the tradition of women’s learning and education that began with her mother’s generation. Her 1930 class was the first to graduate from Las Vegas High School, and soon after Rachel moved to California to attend college. Although her father had counseled her to study law, Rachel chose the field of economics. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and worked in San Francisco for one year before returning to complete
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As a young woman, Phyllis Silvestri made the adventurous decision to move to the United States. She was bom in Canada and lived there until her early 20s. Over the next few years, Phyllis and her friend Mona logged many miles, worked and visited several states. By 1953, Phyllis had met and married Vincent Silvestri, who worked at Bingo Palace, now the Sahara Hotel and Casino. Soon they had their first child and had bought a home on Santa Rosa. A few years later they were building a new home in the John S. Park area. She proudly recalls her husband's attention to details such as including lots of built-in features and a bomb shelter that represents the era. Phyllis talks fondly of the neighborhood, but also recalls her children not being allowed to play with some of the neighborhood children because they were of Italian ancestry.
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Janice and Robert Spurlock were married in 1990 and each has a lifetime of Las Vegas memories. They have made Sandy Valley home for nearly 32 years. Together the couple recalls the people and places of Las Vegas' past from their points of view during this oral history interview. For Janice the stories begin in the 1930s after her family moved to Las Vegas from California. She was a youngster of about five. Among the topics she talks about is walking to Fifth Street Grammar School, graduating from Vegas High School, and fun had during Helldorado Days. In 1953, Robert arrived. He was a young man headed from Arizona to Colorado seeking work as a welder. He stopped in Henderson, Nevada and never quite made it out of the area. For the next two decades he worked construction and helped build many local landmarks. He shares stories about the range wars and about being accidentally exposed to radiation from the Nevada Test site.
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Lytle discusses his birth in Salt Lake City, Utah, his early life in Overton, Nevada, moving around the Southwest United States, and returning to Overton in the early 1930s to work with the Civilian Conservation Corps. Subjects Lytle also talks about in the interview include road and campsite construction at the Valley of Fire State Park, stories about associates and relatives, and being enlisted as a male nurse with the United States Army during World War II. Lastly, Lytle talks about the construction of an exhibit building at Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam) originally used as a headquarters for soldiers during World War II to protect the dam.
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Claytee White interviews Robert Paluzzi on September 5, 2006.
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From the Roosevelt Fitzgerald Professional Papers (MS-01082) -- Unpublished manuscripts file. Presented to the National Social Science Association, Reno, Nevada.
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