The website for Freed’s Bakery happily displays the headline: Baking Sweet Memories Since 1959. Today the third generation of Frieds (correct spelling of the family surname) is hard at work creating incredible wedding cakes, cookies, and delightful desserts for the Las Vegas valley. For this oral history interview, Joni Fried, her daughter Sarah Fried, and nephew Max Jacobson-Fried sit to share stories of working in the family business started by Joni’s parents Milton and Esther Fried. Joni has handed the reins over to the third generation who invest their delicious souls into maintaining this Las Vegas tradition. Their tales range from childhood memories of holidays baking and cleaning to their personal favorite desserts. They also explain the impact on their business as early adapters of computer technologies and social media marketing. In October 2017, Freed’s Bakery landed a TV show, Vegas Cakes, on the Food Network.

Interviewed by Catherine Bellver. Velma Haselton was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1914. She worked as an assistant bookkeeper for Hart, Schaffner and Marx and rose to Assistant Credit Manager. Velma worked at various jobs after she married for the second time and her son was born. She also represented the San Francisco CPA firm Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery (now Coopers Lybrand) in various capacities, both in California and St. Louis, eventually attaining the position of controller. Velma moved to Las Vegas for the first time in the 1950s, where she and her husband Don ran a coffee shop at the Park Lane Motel on South Fifth Street. Family requirements necessitated a move back to California. In 1971, Velma and her third husband, Charles Haselton, "retired" to Las Vegas. Velma immediately went to work as a cost accountant for United Pipeline, and later as an accountant for Kafoury Armstrong, a CPA firm. She eventually ran her own accounting business. Velma also held memberships and offices in various women's service groups.

On February 26, 1979, Christina Oda interviewed Toshiyuki “George” Goto (born 1922 in Huntington Beach, California) about his life in Nevada. Goto first talks about his move to Nevada in 1951 before talking about his family, church activities, politics, and recreational activities. He then discusses the building, economic, and environmental changes in Las Vegas. Goto later talks in depth about his profession in landscaping, including the work he completed for some of the hotels and resorts built on the Las Vegas Strip. The latter part of the interview includes discussion about Goto’s Japanese ancestry and his perceptions as a minority when first moving to and living in Las Vegas. The interview’s conclusion covers the topics of social activities and Goto’s organization of a local chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League.

On February 13th, 1980, collector Valerie Fujii interviewed dancer, Elinor Horden, (born May 21st, 1930 in Ohio) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This interview covers local entertainment in the 1950s and the social and environmental changes that have occurred in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Oral history interview with Timothy Dickhudt conducted by Barbara Tabach on March 13, 2018 for the Remembering 1 October Oral History Project. In this interview, Timothy Dickhudt discusses his move to Las Vegas, Nevada in 2017 for a fellowship at the University Medical Center in Southern Nevada (UMC). He describes the night of the October 1, 2017 mass shooting, how he was called into work almost immediately after he arrived home from his shift, and his gradual understanding that a mass shooting had occurred on the Las Vegas Strip. Dickhudt also talks about operating on a family acquaintance from his home state of Minnesota who had attended the concert.

Patty Ann Drew’s life experiences capture large movements in Las Vegas history: mob-dominated gambling, the Helldorado Rodeo, explosive growth, medical advances, and Clark County School District’s Sixth Grade Centers—all in a desert city centered in the Mormon Culture Region. Patty arrived in Las Vegas as an infant with her parents and older brothers in 1944 and was raised in the Huntridge area, where she and her brothers attended John S. Park Elementary School and matriculated from there to Las Vegas High School. In this interview, Patty talks about her parents working on the Strip, her school days, joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, marrying her high school sweetheart, and becoming a young mother in Las Vegas. After Patty married her second husband, Thomas Ross, the couple built a house west of Jones Boulevard and Patty gave birth to her third son. In addition, she returned to school to earn her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and taught at C. H. Decker Elementary School for twenty years.

Minnesotan Don Laughlin landed far from the land of (more than) 10,000 lakes. His office 90 miles south of Las Vegas in the eponymous town of Laughlin commands an unimpeded view of a very different landscape from that of his youth. Here, where the Colorado River flows south through one of its narrowest channels, Laughlin arrived in about 1966 and purchased what would become the Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino. The endeavor was so successful that the then-settlement of 10 to 15 people at that tiny spot on the river grew to be an unincorporated town housing more than 7,000 people in 2010. Today, Laughlin the man continues to promote and support Laughlin the town via flood control projects and infrastructure development. In this interview, Laughlin sits amid the antique slot machines in his office and enjoys the view as he recalls his childhood on the family farm in southern Minnesota, and talks about leaving the farm in the late 1940s for nearby Owatonna to do watchmaking and watch repairing while simultaneously running a slot machine and pinball parlor. After visiting Las Vegas on vacation, he arrived permanently in 1952 and bartended at the Thunderbird Hotel until he bought his own bar and restaurant in Downtown Las Vegas, which he named Laughlin’s Made Right Café. After selling the café, he bought the 101 Club in North Las Vegas. He began searching for a casino for a casino to buy, seeking only those located on the border of a state that did not allow gambling. When he found the small hotel/casino on the Colorado River he purchased it. He talks of building an airstrip across the street and making daily trips to Las Vegas to buy groceries, beer, and toilet paper-essentially, everything one would need to run a hotel, restaurant, and casino-sometimes making three trips in one day. He continues to own and manage his hotel/casino at the age of 85, and he is in his office every day, all day, seven days a week. He gave up flying last year because he claims he’s too old to pilot his own aircraft. So is especially advantageous that the town that bears his name can now supply almost everything that he and the Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino need.