Dr. Edith Fernandez is a native Las Vegan, a Chicana American. In the 1950s, her parents emigrated from Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico and joined family already residing in Las Vegas area since the 1920s. The Fernandez family of three children grew up in Charleston Heights as one of a very few Latinx families in the predominantly white community.
Musician John (Johnnie) Alvin Ray was born on January 10, 1927 in Hopewell, Oregon and spent his childhood on a farm before moving to Portland, Oregon as a teenager. He became deaf in his right ear at the age of thirteen due to an accident while on a trip with his Boy Scout Troop.
Walter Varah Long (1899-1986) was an educator in Southern Nevada for 48 years and was active in local, state, and national efforts to improve education. Long was born in Pioche, Lincoln County, Nevada on August 21, 1899. He was raised in the farming community of Panaca, Nevada and graduated from Lincoln County High School. After teaching in Panaca for two years, he furthered his education, ultimately earning his Bachelor of Science degree in School Administration from the University of Utah.
Isaac Eloy Barrón identifies as a Mexican American. However, as he explains, it took a move five hundred miles away, from North Las Vegas to Winnemucca, to learn what it meant to be Mexican—and that he spoke with a Chihuahuan accent. It was also in Winnemucca that Barrón lauched his stellar career as an educator.
Jacob David "Jay" Bingham carries the Lincoln County town of Alamo, Nevada, in his heart. The former North Las Vegas City Councilman (1981-84) and Clark County Commissioner (1984-96) presided over fifteen years of Southern Nevada’s explosive urban growth, but he learned about small-town values when he got out of line at Rancho High School with some friends and was sent to live with an uncle in Alamo for his sophomore year. What began as a short-term placement blossomed into a life-long attachment to a rural Nevada place where no gap separated generations; where people looked out for one another; where small classes allowed teachers to accommodate his Attention Deficit Disorder and let him learn at his own pace; where he acquired rodeo skills and became a cowboy, and where he met his wife. But it was in urban Clark County where Bingham spiritually reconnected with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and crafted successful careers in politics and construction that significantly and mutually contributed to the way Southern Nevada looks and the way it works. In this interview, he discusses Alamo, his faith, his learning disability, Southern Nevada’s political landscape, his learning curves at the North Las Vegas City Council and the Clark County Commission, comprehensive planning, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, and his construction and development business. He recalls heated competition between political kingmakers Kent Oram and Big Jim Joyce; telling Pat Mulroy she was not "tough enough," and the corruption that seemed to define Southern Nevada politics before, during, and after his terms in office.