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.

Claytee White interviews Robert Paluzzi on September 5, 2006.

Dr. Tom Wright was born and grew up in Illinois. His father finished his PhD in Chicago and then taught at Illinois College in Jacksonville. His mother suffered from arthritis and was told to seek a warmer climate, so John Wright packed up his family and moved to Las Vegas. Tom was 14, ready for high school, and his two brothers were elementary school age. Tom attended Las Vegas High School, which was close to the Crestwood community where the family had purchased their first home. He remembers that UNLV had no buildings when his dad first started teaching there. Instead, he conducted class in high school classrooms and church Sunday school rooms. Dr. Wright started off at a community college as a Geology Major, but a class with Bud Poland convinced him that history was his passion. He transferred to Pomona to continue his bachelor's degree. He spent his junior year in Peru on a study-abroad program, and that experience made him a Latin Americanist. The information he gath

Interviewed by Maribel Estrada Calderón. Claytee White also participates in the questioning. Eddie Escobedo was born in 1961 and two years later, he and his family immigrated to the United States. He fondly remembers his father, Edmundo Escobedo. Escobedo is currently in charge of the newspaper that his father started, El Mundo Newspaper.

Born in the coal fields of Strunk, Kentucky, Audrey Aline Messer Wickman first visited the West at twelve years of age. She moved to western Colorado to help in her grandparents’ home for a couple of years. The stay made a lasting impression because she only returned to her birthplace for a short time after that. In Colorado, she graduated from high school, met her future husband, and married in 1925. They came to southern Nevada in 1932 so that Robert Wickman could find work on Hoover Dam. Audrey Wickman joined the Mesquite Club in 1936 and has remained a member to date. She started the Literary Committee as a forum to share book reviews and hear speakers. She served as President of the club for 1947-48 and chose the year’s theme “Know your Neighbor.” In the post-war society, women’s involvement in civic affairs was particularly needed, she told the membership at the opening fall meeting. “The troubles which unsettle the world today are primarily ones which lie within the sphere of women’s business. They are matters of housekeeping, teaching and health. . . . The time has come when we as a nation cannot stay in our own backyards. . . . If we are to be good world citizens, local, state and national, we must first be good home citizens. These responsibilities call for knowledge, an appreciation of other points of view, and attitudes of good will and cooperation.” (Las Vegas Review Journal, 6 October 1947, Mesquite Club microfilm collection.) The duties of the president varied during those years. She recalled that “I was janitor, gardener and President.” During the wintertime, she remembered, “you had to have heat [for Friday’s meeting] and I’d go up on Thursday afternoon and light that old oil burning stove and then pray that it didn’t catch the place on fire all night.” She continued her commitment to club work by serving as state secretary for the Nevada Federation of Women’s Clubs. The friendships and cultural events which came from Mesquite Club and Federation membership proved to be of lasting value for this community builder. This interview has been produced with the assistance of the Mesquite Club and the History Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It is part of a series on women community builders in Las Vegas. The transcript has been edited only slightly for clarity while the syntax and style of the narrator were retained.

Interviewed by Monserrath Hernández and Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez. Eric Calvillo was born into a Mexican American household in San Jose, California in 1980. As he recalls, it was there that his fixation with the colors and recurring themes of his family's Mexican roots told hold of his imagination. Today, this is core to his growing art career. Art has not been his sole ambition. Before moving to Las Vegas in 2005, Calvillo attended a San Francisco culinary school. He relocated to Las Vegas to complete his culinary internship at the prestigious Picasso restaurant at the Bellagio. Eventually, he began to pursue a professional art career as a painter of Día de los Muertos motifs and beautifully portray the Mexican tradition of celebrating the lives of the deceased. Through his use of acrylics and oil on canvas, Calvillo conveys the emotion of his culture and then, being a skilled carpenter, crafts his own frames.