In this oral history, Gary explains how the family came to live in the United States?Cleveland and Los Angeles. In 1957, he married Noreen and they eventually came to live in Las Vegas where Gary worked for Sears selling washing machines, had a repair business and an importing business with Noreen. Gary was an entrepreneurial soul and inventive much like his father. He owns three patents.

On August 25, 1931, Augusta and Herman Sternberg welcomed their second child, Gerd (aka Gary), into the world of Cuxhaven, Germany. Augusta was a devout Christian of Polish ancestry who had fled Russian persecution. Herman was a German-born Jew salesman and inventor. The couple fell in love and had two children, Gary and Ruth who was a year and half older. By 1938, German politics were targeting Jews and Herman was ripped away from his Christian wife and children and sent to a concentration camp. Fate and friendship rescued Herman with the option to go to China. And so begins the history of the Sternberg family and how they all would eventually live together during World War II in the confines of a Jewish ghetto in Hongkew, China from May 1939 to July 1948. Gary had an extraordinary career as a dealer. He was not the stereotypical young dealer-to-be: he was in his 40s when he signed up for the Michael Gaughn Dealing School in the mid-1970s. Gary?s charming wit and ease of making friends soon gained him a position at El Cortez and then Caesars Palace. It was the same personality that would sustain his stellar thirty-one year career at Caesars. He was employed there from April 1974 until his retirement May 8, 2005. Though Jewish tradition would identify Gary as Christian, he self-identified as Jewish, officially converted and has been an active member of the Jewish community. Among his anecdotes-and he has many-is one about securing a $30,000 donation from Frank Sinatra and Jilly Rizzo for Congregation Ner Tamid.

Newsbeat newsletter for October 1989

From the Syphus-Bunker Papers (MS-00169). The folder contains an original handwritten letter, a typed transcription of the same letter, the original envelope with the stamp removed, and a copy of the original letter.

Oral history interview with Sara Kalaoram conducted by Alexandra Arabshian on November 15, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Sara Kalaoram shares her immigration story to the United States from Singapore in 2002 at the age of four. She talks about her upbringing in Las Vegas, Nevada, her education from Arizona State University, and her work with the Culinary Workers Union and with Assemblyman Steve Yeager as his campaign manager and executive assistant. Sara Kalaoram discusses cultural differences between Singapore and the United States, the immigration stories of her parents, and her experience as an Asian-American immigrant in the twenty-first century.