Oral history interviews with Diana Saunders conducted by Joyce (Marshall) Moore on May 23, 1996, conducted by Brigid Kelly on July 22, 2002, and conducted by Joanna Goodwin on August 12, 2002 for the Women's Research Institute of Nevada (WRIN) Las Vegas Women Oral History Project. In her interviews Saunders discusses her dance career in New York City, New York. Saunders discusses working on Broadway and touring internationally in Europe and Australia as a dancer. Saunders discusses working at the Dunes in Las Vegas, Nevada and her experiences as a dancer in Las Vegas. Saunders also talks about the lengths dancers had to go through to be successful.
Archival Collection
Oral history interviews with Harry Mortenson conducted by Claytee D. White on April 08, 2014, April 22, 2014, and May 06, 2014 for the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. In the first interview, Mortenson discusses his personal background, working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and arriving to Nevada to work as a nuclear physicist at the Nevada Test Site. Mortenson describes his work and recalls anecdotes from his employment. He then talks about his company, Sigma Scientific, and explains the different projects where he worked as a consultant. In the second interview, Mortenson discusses the methods of transportation used to arrive to the Nevada Test Site, his involvement with different organizations, and his tenure in the Nevada State Legislature. In the final interview, Mortenson discusses the device he built to take photographs of the nuclear reactor cores at Las Alamos National Laboratory, and explains how that device worked.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Aaron Williams conducted by Claytee D. White on August 16, 2005 for the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. Williams recalls individuals he worked with, such as Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Gay, and the mayor of Los Angeles, California. He remembers the Westside Federal Credit Union, joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and encountering discrimination at one of the first jobs he had at the Sahara Hotel. He shares anecdotes of Robert Maheu, Steve Wynn, Lubertha Johnson, Ruby Duncan, Mabel Hoggard, and other Las Vegas, Nevada notables.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Lavern Cummings and Tony Midnite conducted by Dennis McBride on August 29, 2000 for the Las Vegas Gay Archives Oral History Project. In the interview, Cummings and Midnite discuss their work as female impersonators in Las Vegas, Nevada during the late 1960s and 1970s. They also talk about other impersonators and performance venues in Las Vegas and around the United States. They explain the distinctions between transgender and straight performers, and the perceptions of transgender and straight audience members. Other subjects Cummings and Midnite cover include their early lives and arrivals to Las Vegas, and the history of sex reassignment surgeries beginning in the 1930s.
Archival Collection
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Oral history interview with Paul Velez conducted by Barbara Tabach on February 22, 2018 for the Remembering 1 October Oral History Project. In this interview, Paul Velez, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) campus officer, discusses his experience at the Thomas & Mack Center during the night of the October 1, 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. He shares his goal of creating a safe atmosphere for the survivors and providing them with all of their needs, including helping separated survivors find their loved ones and friends. Velez also describes his move to Las Vegas in 2008 and his time with the New York City police force, talking about his experience as a first responder at Ground Zero during the 9/11 attacks. He discusses the effect these attacks have had on general and campus security measures and on him as an individual.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Dayvid Figler conducted by Barbara Tabach on June 22, 2016 for the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Figler discusses his youth, his bar mitzvah at Temple Beth Sholom, and path to a career as a criminal defense attorney. He also talks about embracing Las Vegas, Nevada as his home, owning a home in the John S. Park neighborhood, and mentions a number of literary depictions of Las Vegas that he admires.
Archival Collection
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