Part of an interview with Senator Joe Neal by Claytee White on March 6, 2006. Neal discusses the cost of tourism posed by the gaming industry in Nevada and compares the low taxes on gaming profits to higher gaming taxes elsewhere.
Stephen Craig Ronshaugen was born on March 22, 1948, in Minot, North Dakota. Stephen married Bonita on February 10, 1979, and they had two children: Matthew and Kristina.
Ronshaugen obtained a bachelor of arts degree from Minot State University. He also did some graduate work at the North Dakota State University.
William Dean Whitaker was born March 04, 1925 and raised in a suburb of Los Angeles, California. Dean, as he is known, had his youth end quickly when he joined the United States Air Force and became an aviation cadet once he turned 18 years old. The year was 1943 and World War II was raging. He became a member of the 398th Bomb Group and flew twenty missions before being captured by the Germans. He married his wife, Lucille, on May 15, 1946. They moved to Las Vegas, Nevada together in 1990.
The Kim Sisters, composed of three sisters, Sook-ja, Ai-ja, and Mia, came from Korea to Las Vegas in February 1959. Their first contract in America was to perform at the Thunderbird Hotel for four weeks as part of the China Doll Revue, the main showroom program. This engagement led to a successful career. Their popularity reached was at its height at the end of the 1960s when they performed throughout the United States and Europe. Sook-ja Kim is the oldest of the sisters. After his sister Ai-ja died in 1987, Sook-ja teamed up with her two brothers and continued to perform until 1989. Now semi-retired from show business, with occasional performances in Korea, she is working as a real estate agent. In this interview, she talked about her childhood, her career, and the family she has built since coming to America. Sook-ja was born in 1941 in Seoul, Korea as the third child of seven in a musical family. Her father was a conductor and her mother, a popular singer. After the Korean War, her mother arranged to send the Kim Sisters to America. When they came to Las Vegas, there were virtually no Koreans in the area. They depended on each other to take care of themselves. Some of the difficulties they had to adjust to in American were language, food, and cultural differences. Over the span of almost forty years in America, Sook-ja became acculturated without discarding her ethnic identity of family priorities. Her life-long guiding principle has been to adopt certain American values while continuing to keep her cherished Korean ethnic values. Through their performances, the Kim Sister informed the audience about Koreans and their culture. As the oldest of the group, Sook-ja was entrusted the care of her sisters, and later her brothers, the Kim brothers. Once she settled in Las Vegas, she brought more than forty members of her extended family to the city, contributing to the growth of the Las Vegas Korean community.
Joyce Marshall-Moore came to Las Vegas from Chicago in December of 1953. Only eight years old at the time, she clearly remembers the road trip with her father Royce (known as "Mousie"), her mother Agnes, and her two brothers. They left Chicago, where it was snowing, and arrived in Las Vegas on a cold snowy day! Joyce attended school at Sunrise Acres ES until eighth grade and then went to Rancho High School, graduating in 1962. She recalls that her father worked for a time at the El Rancho Vegas and that her mother found work at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital. Agnes Marshall (nee Rasmussen) took her nurse's training in Buffalo, New York, and then worked at Buffalo General Hospital and Millard Fillmore Hospital. Later she joined the army and was stationed in Memphis, Tennessee, working at Kennedy General Hospital where she met Royce and married him. They moved to Chicago where she found work at Ravenswood Hospital. After their move to Las Vegas, Agnes was hired at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital. She became disenchanted with nurse-patient interactions at the county hospital and found employment at Las Vegas Hospital. She worked there until 1976 and then was hired at Las Vegas Convalescent Center. Agnes followed her dreams and traveled during this period as well. Agnes worked with Doctors Lund, Allen, Woodbury, Sulvane, and Hardy, among others. Joyce recalls that Dr. Hardy, a cousin and look-alike to Oliver Hardy, was one of her mother's favorites. She shares anecdotes and memories of these and other doctors. Joyce remembers many aspects of her mother's life, including the fact that she took care of neighbors as well as her family and patients. She often worked double shifts and the pay was nominal, but she loved her job because of the relationships with her patients. Agnes passed away in 2006 at the ripe old age of 91.