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Transcript of interview with Jonathan Sparer by Stefani Evans and Claytee White, August 29, 2016

Date

2016-08-29

Archival Collection

Jonathan Sparer oral history interview

Description

Jonathan “Jon” Sparer of Las Vegas, Nevada, is a retired architect who is active in the local Jewish and LGBTQ communities. He grew up on Long Island, New York, in the hamlet of Woodmere, where his father was an importer. After graduating in Architecture from Ohio State University in 1977 Jon moved to Los Angeles, California, where he worked first with architect Jack Chernoff, then with architect Bob Barnett until 1981, when he accompanied his future wife and college classmate who worked for Martin Stern to Las Vegas. Stern sent her to open a field office to supervise the reconstruction of the MGM Grand after it burned in November 1980. Once in Las Vegas, Jon began working for architect Homer Rissman on Steve Wynn’s future project, The Mirage. Although Jon switched firms, he continued working on The Mirage and other Wynn projects with Marnell Corrao, where he would stay until 2001. Ironically, Jon’s original supervisor at Marnell Corrao was his future husband, architect John R. Klai II; Klai’s subordinate in turn was Jon’s Spring Valley neighbor. After Jon left Marnell in 2001, he became a founding principal architect at YWS Design & Architecture. Although he has retired from full-time architecture, Jon has since designed the Temple for Congregation Ner Tamid (pictured above) and The Center (Las Vegas's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer community center). Jon remains active in the AIA Las Vegas Chapter as the incoming president as well as serving as a board member for Jewish Family Services Agency and The Center.

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Transcript of interview with Alan Feldman by Claytee White, September 24, 2014

Date

2014-09-24

Archival Collection

Alan Feldman oral history interview

Description

Alan Feldman fell in love with Las Vegas because of the Siegfried & Roy show at the Frontier. After the opening illusion, Crystal Chamber, “I don’t remember breathing.” Feldman grew up in a home with a creative father who was a self-trained musicologist and expert on Paul Robeson. His mother worked as a bookkeeper so Alan was encouraged to be grounded and to soar. As a theater major at UCLA, he was encouraged to hone his Public Relations skills. That expertise brought him to Las Vegas and to Steve Wynn and to work toward a changing relationship with the Culinary Workers Union Local 226. His work here has been life changing; management and labor did not have to fight at the end of each contract. He speaks of the changed understanding in this way: “…we also wanted to make a better product, and in making a better product we needed the employees to step up. Because if you are going to put five million dollars into a restaurant in 1990 where prior to that the most anyone had ever spent was a million, if you were going to tell the world come to Las Vegas because the experience is better, then the experience needed to be better. Maybe this is the part of Steve that he does deserve credit for, although, again, I think it's more—no, he's not alone now and folks like Jim Murren have absolutely taken up this same kind of notion. The building doesn't deliver your bags. The building doesn't hand you the meal. The building doesn't take your order. So great, you've got a volcano and you've got fountains and you've got stunning architecture. Fantastic. But if you don't have a smile on your face when you're welcoming someone to the hotel, it sucks and the rest of it doesn't matter.”

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Hayes, Grace, 1895-1989

Grace Hayes was born on August 23, 1896 in Springfield, Missouri. She moved to San Francisco, California at the age of ten, and began to sing at nightclubs at the age of fourteen. In 1912 Hayes married Joseph Lind, and their son Joseph Conrad Lind (better known as Peter Lind Hayes) was born in 1915. She married twice after Lind; first to Charlie Foy, then to Robert Evan Hopkins. Hayes is best known for her career in motion pictures from 1929 to 1950, primarily for King of Jazz (1930) and Zis Boom Bah (1941).

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sod2024-018-001

Archival Collection

Hank deLespinasse Photographs

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sod2024-018-002

Archival Collection

Hank deLespinasse Photographs

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sod2024-018-003

Archival Collection

Hank deLespinasse Photographs

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Transcript of interview with Emilio Muscelli by Claytee D. White, November 25, 2008

Date

2008-11-25

Archival Collection

Emilio Muscelli oral history interview

Description

Emilio Muscelli was in his mid-80s when he sat for this oral history interview. With a thick Italian accent he recalled his career as a Las Vegas maitre d' that spanned decades of Strip history. Emilio arrived in America in 1948, landed a job at the Copacabana in New York City. His boss was Jack Entratter, who brought Emilio to Las Vegas when he opened the Sands in 1952. Over the decades he has witnessed the ups and downs of Las Vegas economy and has befriended many celebrities along the way. He reminisces during this interview about his friendship with singer Bobby Darin, actor Cary Grant and meeting a laundry list of others. He fondly speaks of those he worked for and their contribution to the growth of Las Vegas.

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Transcript of interview with John Wilhelm by Claytee White, August 12, 2014

Date

2014-08-12

Archival Collection

John Wilhelm oral history interview

Description

John Wilhelm, past president of UNITE HERE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union), settles in at Union headquarters in Las Vegas and recalls highlights from his forty years as a union leader and organizer. After sharing his discontent with his freshman year at Earlham College and Midwestern Quakers, he reveals the curious manner in which Yale University accepted him, how he became a community organizer, and, following graduation, the way he began his union career and his efforts to organize the workers at Yale. He expresses gratitude to his mother for her insistence that he get a good education and to Betsy, his wife of forty-five years, for her unfailing support of his work and the union cause. He also discloses the reasons he commutes between Las Vegas and Santa Barbara, California. After explaining the history of the union in hospitality he speaks to the fluidity of problems with race, gender, and labor with the corporatization of the hospitality industry. He highlights union issues, strikes, and campaigns: arrests, card check, guaranteed work week, Union Again, and Walk and Work. He talks of negotiations with Las Vegas owners or managers like the Binion family, Bill Boyd, the Elardi family, Jackie and Michael Gaughan, Terry Lanni, Bob Maxey, and Steve Wynn. Mostly, he fondly remembers stories of and contributions by union leaders Geoconda Arguello, Jim Arnold, Joe Duarte, Edward T. Hanley, Ardella Roberts, Phil Schloop, Vincent Sirabella, Myra Wolfgang, and Steve Yokich of United Auto Workers. Throughout, his stories involve D. Taylor, who followed Wilhelm as president in 2012. Although he stepped down from the presidency, he continues to work on pension and healthcare issues.

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Transcript of interview with Lee Cagley by Claytee D. White and Stefani Evans, August 08, 2016

Date

2016-08-08

Archival Collection

Lee Cagley oral history interview

Description

Lee Cagely, an interior designer and professor who designed some of the most iconic hotels in Las Vegas, Nevada, was born in the Panama Canal Zone on January 31, 1951. His father Leo was a civil engineer for the Panama Canal Company and his mother Charlotte worked as a receptionist. After his father left his job in Panama, Lee spent his childhood in Dallas, Texas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Des Moines, Iowa. He started to attend Rice University for architecture, but he chose to leave before completing his degree. He returned to college a few years later and graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in interior design in 1975. While his first California jobs were in restaurant design, he quickly moved on to airports and hotels and moved to Las Vegas in 1990 after associating with Marnell Architecture. Cagley is known for his designs in the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, Ceasars Palace Atlantic City, the Mirage, and the Bellagio Resort & Casino. He is currently Chair of the Iowa State University College of Design and is principal designer for Lee Cagely Design. Here, Cagley explains the importance of keeping the various pieces of the infrastructure of a resort—including landscape architecture, architecture, interior design, all kinds of HVAC [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] concerns, housekeeping, food service, maintenance, etc.-invisible in order to maximize the visitor experience. At the same time he illustrates through several examples how resort design does not happen in a vacuum-it is instead part of a complex team that works together to create the whole. He also describes the challenges the Las Vegas resort industry finds in creating the very best visitor experience for a broad range of groups-from Millennials to their Boomer grandparents and all the generations in between.

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Brian Greenspun interview, 2018: transcript

Date

2018-01-10
2018-01-24
2018-02-21
2018-03-20

Archival Collection

Brian Greenspun oral history interviews

Description

Interviewed by Barbara Tabach. Publisher of Las Vegas Sun, child of Hank and Barbara Green. Part 1 Subjects: Las Vegas Sun, Greenspun family, Israel gun running; Part 2 subjects: Journalism importance, Las Vegas Sun, Watergate tie-in with Hank's safe, October 1 shootings reflections; Part 3 subjects: Hank and Barabara Greenspun. Talks about Jewish visionaries of Las Vegas that includes Art Marshall, Jack Entratter, Sheldon Adelson, Nate Mack; Part 4: Interviewed by Barbara Tabach. Las Vegas Sun newspaper publisher and native Las Vegan talk about events and people from Las Vegas' years of him growing up. From watching pink smoke from test site to hanging out with friends in the John S. Park neighborhood to racial riot of 1969 to playing golf as a kid.

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