Dr. Joseph George, Jr., was born, raised, and educated through high school in Sudlersville, Maryland. He describes his college career at the University of Pennsylvania and earning his MD degree at University of Maryland in Baltimore. There were only 15 students in his high school class and 114 in his medical class. After graduation and two years of country medical practice, Dr. George joined the Army in 1942 and became a flight surgeon. His duty assignments took him to Africa, England, and St. Petersburg, Florida, doing physical exams for pilots and flight crews and treating soldiers with mental problems. He was discharged in 1945 and headed for California, but describes his change of mind when the train arrived in Las Vegas for a brief stopover. Dr. George liked what he saw, a typical small western city, and decided to stay. He mentions the original hotels and hospitals and names many of the doctors he knew in the forties and fifties. He opened his family practice in an office on Fourth and Carson and later moved to a location on East Sahara. Over the next forty or so years he delivered more than 6,000 babies at various hospitals in Henderson and Las Vegas. Dr. George shares several anecdotes and stories, names a few notable Las Vegas patients, and comments on historical incidents that occurred here. He gives his opinions on changes he has seen in medical practice and the need for improved psychiatric care in the valley. He also talks about keeping in touch with former patients, high school classmates, and the members of his medical class at University of Baltimore.
Joyce Moore's family moved to Las Vegas from Chicago in 1953, when she was eight years old. She attended Rancho High School, married and had three daughters, and currently lives in Las Vegas. Joyce's father was in the gaming industry and her mother was a nurse. Growing up in Las Vegas meant going to shows with her mother, spending summer days in the pool at the Showboat Hotel, and riding horses to the Last Frontier. While a teenager at Rancho High school, Joyce worked at several movie theaters including the Huntridge, went to school dances and marched in the Hellodorado Parade. After her divorce, Joyce returned to work to support herself and her children, first at the Daily Fax then later on the Strip at the Aladdin and Circus, Circus doing a variety of office and accounting jobs. As a lark she and a friend applied to work as cocktail waitresses at the MGM; she was hired and spent the next five years in a job that was by turns interesting, exhausting, frustrating and fun. This interview covers several periods of Joyce's life - her childhood, teen years, and early adult life - and what it was like to grow up, live and work in Las Vegas in from the mid-1950s until the mid-1970s.