In this interview, Stuart Mason discusses his family's construction business, Taylor Construction Co., and his involvement with building various Las Vegas Strip hotels including Caesars Palace and the Riviera, and remodeling the Flamingo. He talks about working within a "social contract" with the various unions, and other aspects of construction.
Stuart Mason was born in Columbus, Ohio, and moved with his family to Miami, Florida, when he was two years old. He received his bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Miami in 1958. Shortly after graduation, he married his wife, Flora, and started working for Taylor International, the family business. He came to Las Vegas in 1964 to start work on Caesars Palace as the assistant project manager and eventually took over the management of the business. Mason has contributed greatly to the city of Las Vegas over the years through his contributions in the development and construction of the Las Vegas Strip and his commitment to the community. He and Flora started the Nevada Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in 1970. In addition, they made donations to the UNLV University Libraries to benefit the Undergraduate Peer Research Coaches program, which helps undergraduate students obtain their college degrees. In addition to his work on Caesars Palace, Mason worked on the original and new MGMs, The Rivera, The International, the Stratosphere, and the Desert Inn, along with remodeling work at the Flamingo. Other company projects can be found in Miami, Jamaica, Aruba, the Grand Bahamas, Melbourne and Puerto Rico. His two sons took over the family business in 1997, the same year that Mason started as the Vice President of Development for the Venetian Hotel Casino.
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In this interview, Phyllis Friedman reflects upon her extensive work with the ADL in Las Vegas. She discusses the city?s relatively low anti-Semitic activity, and how this allowed the Las Vegas ADL office to focus its efforts more broadly than in other cities. She also touches upon her family history, and how the community of Las Vegas has evolved since first visiting in 1963.
A Chicago native, Phyllis Friedman first came to Las Vegas in 1996 to become the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas? first foundation director. After two years, Friedman moved to year Los Angeles to work for ORT. Itching to get back to Las Vegas, in 2007, Friedman returned to the city to became director of the Nevada regional office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In this position, she worked with schools as well as law enforcement, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), teaching about tolerance and justice. She is a recipient of the FBI?s Las Vegas Division Director?s Community Leadership Award as well as the first awardee of Jewish Federation?s Jewish Professional of the Year. Three weeks into retirement, Friedman gave this interview, reflecting upon her extensive work with the ADL in Las Vegas. She discusses the city?s relatively low anti-Semitic activity, and how this allowed the Las Vegas ADL office to focus its efforts more broadly than in other cities. She also touches upon her family history, and how the community of Las Vegas has evolved since first visiting in 1963.
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In this interview, Fine discusses her childhood as well as the path that led to her career in law, which included working on a presidential campaign in New York City as well as several legal secretary positions in Washington, D.C., Texas and California, before eventually receiving her law degree from Golden Gate University. In addition, she reflects upon working on the infamous Jeff MacDonald murder trial in the 1970s as well as her experience becoming?and ending her service as?a Family Court Judge. Fine also discusses her community service work, particularly with the Women?s Philanthropy Board of the Jewish Federation and with Temple Beth Am.
Frances-Ann "Fran" Fine-Ventura is an attorney at the Fine and Price Law Group in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was born September 28, 1951, in Cleveland, Ohio, and moved to Arizona at the age of eleven when her father sought new economic opportunities out West. Fine eventually moved to Las Vegas shortly after she graduated law school in 1983. Fine worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nevada in the early 1980s, then at several private law firms. From 1992 to 1998, she served as a District Court Judge in the Family Division of the Eighth Judicial District Court. Fine is involved in the Las Vegas community via the Nevada School of the Arts and the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Foundation in Clark County, Nevada. She has also been involved with the Women's Philanthropy Board of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas since 1984, and served as chair from 2014 to 2016. Fran Fine's brother is Las Vegas real estate developer Mark Fine. In this interview, Fine discusses her childhood as well as the path that led to her career in law, which included working on a presidential campaign in New York City as well as several legal secretary positions in Washington, D.C., Texas and California, before eventually receiving her law degree from Golden Gate University. In addition, she reflects upon working on the infamous Jeff MacDonald murder trial in the 1970s as well as her experience becoming?and ending her service as?a Family Court Judge. Fine also discusses her community service work, particularly with the Women?s Philanthropy Board of the Jewish Federation and with Temple Beth Am.
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In this interview, Milton Schwartz discusses his life in Las Vegas and his business investments. He worked at the Flamingo Hotel right after World War II, and he started Valley Hospital as an investor in 1970. Schwartz has a Hebrew academy named after him in Israel, and owned the Yellow-Checker-Star Cab Company. He was active in the Republican Party.
Milton I. Schwartz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He enlisted in the Army the day after Pearl Harbor (age 20) and did a five year stint in the Pacific as a repeater specialist. After the war he returned to his job as a refrigeration mechanic in Brooklyn and was soon offered a job out in Las Vegas at the Flamingo Hotel, which was owned by Bugsy Siegel. After three months in Las Vegas, during which time he had several conversations over dinner with Beldon Cattleman, Milton returned to New York to work with his father in the fixture business. After ten years he sold that business and bought into Design Equipment Construction, which brought him back to Las Vegas. Milton started or bought many businesses over the years, but the one he's proudest of is Valley Hospital. He and his partners brought the first medical helicopters into Nevada and he feels that many lives were saved because of that. He also invested in Yellow-Checker-Star Cab Company, which he still owns. Two on-going concerns that are important to Milton are his involvement with the Republican Party and the Milton I. Schwartz Hebrew Academy in Israel. Of the many awards and plaques he has earned over the decades, he is proudest of the birthday acknowledgements from the Academy. He believes strongly that the most important achievements of his life revolve around his religion and the children being educated in it. Milton shares many stories, facts, descriptions, and anecdotes about Las Vegas in the decades since 1946. He built a house in the Scotch 80's, contributes to UNLV, and approves of city growth and the proposed changes in the downtown area. He has contributed much to the growth and stability of the Las Vegas valley.
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Transcript of interviews with Edythe Katz-Yarchever by Claytee White over the course of several sessions in 2000, 2003 and 2005. In the interviews, Katz-Yarchever discusses her life in Las Vegas, owning theaters with her husband, Lloyd Katz, and the strides they made in civil rights. She talks about her service in Civil Defense and the National Guard, and moving to various places, then working in California and meeting her husband, Lloyd. The Katzes became involved in the community in various ways with Operation Independence and Holocaust education. About a decade after Lloyd's death, Edythe married Judge Gilbert Yarchever.
Edythe Katz-Yarvhever was born in Boston, a second generation American whose grandparents left Russia the century before. Edythe completed finishing school at the start of World War II and worked various jobs at home before joining the Civil Defense, and later, the National Guard. She moved to Maryland and got a job as a secretary at Edgewood Arsenal, then transferred to Cushing General Hospital to assist a Marine Corps neurologist, who was also a Jewish refugee. Towards the end of the war, she is transferred to an Army hospital in Hawaii, and thus began the rest of her life on the West Coast. When the war ended, Edythe sailed to California and worked various jobs in Los Angeles: in the secretarial pool at MGM Studios, for a casting agency and for a hotel magazine. Edythe met Lloyd Katz in San Francisco, and the two were married after a short courtship. The couple lived in San Francisco before moving to Las Vegas in 1951, where they took over the management of the Huntridge, Palace and Fremont theaters, then leased by Edythe's parents. The Katzes took a stand to desegregate their theaters, allowing black customers to sit with white patrons. Edythe and Lloyd became active in the city's Civil Rights Movement, including work with Operation Independence and the NAACP. Edythe started organizations like Volunteers for Education and Junior Art League, and directed an interfaith, interracial preschool. Lloyd would frequently open up their theaters to organizations to hold fundraisers, free-of-charge. Edythe was extremely active in the local Jewish community, including opening the city's first Jewish gift shop, serving as sisterhood president at her synagogue and starting the Jewish Reporter. She later founded a library for Holocaust education as well as assisted the school district's development of curriculum and teacher training relating to the Holocaust. Lloyd Katz passed away in 1986, and in 1995, Edythe married Gilbert Yarchever. Edythe and Lloyd's community service work was honored with the naming of their school, the Edythe and Lloyd Katz Elementary School, where Edythe still remains active.
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Included in this oral history are reminiscences of Sonja Saltman's personal non-Jewish heritage in Austria, the importance of her grandmother in her life, and how she recalls becoming part of the Jewish community.
Sonja Saltman is a psychologist and philanthropist in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is executive director and co-founder of the Existential Humanistic Institute, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California that offers training in existential-humanistic therapy and theory. In 2003 Sonja and her husband Michael Saltman founded the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) William S. Boyd School of Law. The Saltman Center is focused on research, teaching, and public service related to "the advanced study of the nature of conflict and how to resolve it." A native of Austria, Sonja Saltman also serves as the Honorary Consul for Austria in Las Vegas. The Saltmans are involved with multiple charitable organizations and initiatives, both locally and abroad. Sonja Saltman has served on the boards of the Anti-Defamation League, Nevada Women's Philanthropy, and the Black Mountain Institute. Projects that the couple has supported include the rebuilding of homes and bridges is Bosnia, and Streetball Hafla, a basketball program to improve relations between Jewish and Arab teenagers in Israel. In 2014 Sonja and Michael Saltman were recognized as Distinguished Nevadans by the Nevada System of Higher Education. Included in this oral history are reminiscences of her personal non-Jewish heritage in Austrian, the importance of her grandmother in her life, and how she recalls becoming part of the Jewish community.
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Steven Eisen (1966 - ) is the oldest son of Barry and Beverly Eisen, who were part of the migration of Jews from St. Louis to Las Vegas in the 1960s. He is married to Stacy Fisher and the older brother to Andrew and Robert Eisen. They are members of an early group of born-and-raised Las Vegans. Growing up Jewish, he became a bar mitzvah, belonged to B?nai B?rith Youth Organization. In this oral history interview, Steve recalls enjoyable stories of growing up in Las Vegas and humorous anecdotes of mistaken identity since the three brothers bear such strong physical resemblances. Today he finds himself enjoying his career as CEO of the Children?s Heart Center since 2001 and talks about the success and reputation of the pediatric medical group. It was his first job as a fourteen year old helping Theodore Manos and Michael Cherry during the MGM fire litigations where he learned about the legal world and being organized as a path to success in whatever he might pursue. Steve graduated from University of Missouri, attended law school at Washington University in St. Louis, and received his business degree from UNLV. Throughout the interview, he recalls the steady and strong involvement of his parents in their sons? educations. He also describes their active connection with the Jewish community and organizations. Steve?s wife Stacy is a professor in physical therapy at Touro University.
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Music brought Jay Poster to Las Vegas for a brief time in 1974. Jay wanted to pursue a musical career and his cousin was a professional musician with the Nat Brandwynne Orchestra at Caesars Palace. To Jay?s disappointment, within a few months his cousin Jack Poster left Las Vegas for a road tour. So Jay decided his best strategy was to return home to San Diego and his studies at San Diego State University. It would be over a decade later before Jay returned to Las Vegas to live and this time it became permanent. This time it was not for music. For beyond his musical talent, Jay had a gift for connecting with people of all of ages and walks of life. He was good at sales and his day job selling office furniture offered him the opportunity to transfer to Las Vegas in 1986. Within a few years, however, it was a recruiter for Palm Mortuaries who introduced Jay to his defining career moment and to Allen Brewster, a prominent Jewish leader and founder of King David Cemetery and Mortuary. It was 2001. Jay has been King David?s ever since and is the General Manager. In this interview, Jay describes his personal and spiritual growth through his career in funeral services and his respect for the Jewish traditions of burial and grieving. In addition, his passion for music has also soared and he talks about his participation in the Shabbatones at Congregation Ner Tamid and Desert Winds, a community based performance organization. He shares his love of traditional Jewish klezmer music and the Meshugginah Klezmorim.
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Annual report from Congregation Ner Tamid, 2011-2012
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Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center of Las Vegas education specialist Myra Berkovits.
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