University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) Professor William R. Eadington joined the faculty as an economist in 1969. He was the first holder of the Philip J. Satre Chair in Gaming Studies, a professor of economics, and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at UNR.
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Steven Parker grew up and went to school in Connecticut. His only sibling was finishing a post doctorate at Yale and had accepted a job at one of the California State schools when his life was tragically ended through suicide. Parker graduated from Assumption College in Massachusetts with a bachelor's in political science and got a scholarship to the State University of New York at Albany. About halfway through his Master of Public Administration degree, the dean encouraged him to go on for his doctorate.
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Dr. Robert Bruce Smith was born July 08, 1937 in Philadelphia, but considers California as home. His father’s career as a minister had taken them back to the east coast, and after his seminary training they returned to Los Angeles, California, followed by a five year stint in Oregon before returning to Vista, California. After graduating high school, Smith left home to attend Wheaton College in Illinois, a small Protestant school.
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Judy Jetter was born November 18, 1939 and was raised in Chicago, Illinois. At the age of three, she began taking acting, tap, and ballet classes. While raised by her mother until age 15, she was forced to study opera, even though jazz music was her passion. Jetter’s first introduction to jazz came while listening to, legendary jazz great, Woody Herman on the radio. She developed an immediate appreciation and love for jazz music.
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Maurice “Maury” Halfon Behar was born August 27, 1938 in Biarritz, France and spent his early childhood in Bayonne, France. On January 12, 1944, the Nazis took his parents from their home, but Behar was left behind due to a bout with measles. He was then cared for by his neighbor, Marie Cazous, passing as her son, until he was adopted by relatives from the United States and moved to New York City, New York in 1947.
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Count Guido Roberto Deiro was born February 18, 1938 in Reno, Nevada. He was the son of vaudeville performer and recording star Count Guido Pietro Deiro, who was the first major piano-accordionist to become popular in the United States, and his teenage wife Yvonne Teresa LeBaron De Forrest. Deiro grew up in and around Las Vegas, Nevada and Southern California after his parents’ divorce in 1941.
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Elizabeth Francis (nee Knath), born in Laramie, Wyoming on November 12, 1931, was the fourth of nine children. The family then moved to Salem, Oregon and Francis attended high school there through her junior year. She finished high school in 1949 in Saratoga, Wyoming, becoming the first of her siblings to graduate.
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Matthew O'Brien is a journalist, author, and college instructor who is known for his nonfiction book Beneath the Neon about homeless people living underground in the Las Vegas Valley. He lived in Las Vegas from 1997-2017. O'Brien was born in Washington D.C. but grew up in Atlanta, GA, where he graduated from the University of West Georgia in 1995. He also earned an MFA from UNLV. O'Brien was a staff writer, news editor and managing editor of the alternative weekly Las Vegas CityLife from 2000 to 2008.
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