As he reveals in this oral history, Roger Thomas is, among many other things, a son, a father, a brother, a husband, a student, an artist, a visionary, and a philanthropist. As the second son of Peggy and E. Parry Thomas’s five children, Roger was raised a Mormon child of privilege and civic responsibility. The banking family summered in Newport Beach, wintered in Sun Valley, and taught their children by words and deeds that it is not up for debate if you will be involved in your community; the only question is how you will apply your talents and resources to benefit your community. Roger absorbed the lessons well. As a child who struggled in school but excelled in art, he attended his last two years of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, graduating in 1969, finally finding himself “in an environment where what I did had currency.” From there he earned his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Studio Degree from Tufts University before returning to Las Vegas and eventually joining Steve Wynn’s team in 1981. As Executive Vice President of Design for Wynn Design & Development, he is the man in whom Steve Wynn places his trust to make real at each Wynn property the Wynn design philosophy: aim for a constituency of highly sophisticated, well-traveled, very educated people and give them a reality, a now, that is so fetching, so alluring they wish to be no place else. As he was mentored by his father and Steve Wynn, he too is mentoring those who will follow him. At Wynn, the next generation will carry forward the Wynn idea of evoca-texture, of creating “moments of experiential emotion that result in a memory so captivating and so unique that if you want to repeat that you have to come back.” At home, he collaborates with his daughter on a children’s book that has the potential to become a series; she is the illustrator, while he provides the words. Roger Thomas sat for this interview five days after his father, E. Parry Thomas, passed away in Idaho. Instead of postponing the interview to a more convenient time, Roger kept the appointment and explained, “This is for UNLV. If I’d cancelled my father would have killed me.”
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Las Vegas tourists who stop to admire the Mirage volcano, the Bellagio conservatory, the Wynn Las Vegas mountain, the Encore gardens, and the iconic Welcome to Las Vegas sign’s surroundings on the Las Vegas Strip likely do not realize that in each case they have sampled a unique landscape environment conceived by Don Brinkerhoff of Lifescapes International, Newport Beach, California. It is for producing work of this caliber that in 2016 the American Gaming Association selected Brinkerhoff to be the first designer inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame. In this interview, the Los Angeles native and son of a working-class father and an artist/schoolteacher mother, explains how he spent his youth in an owner-built house in the modest suburb of El Monte, where he tended the family truck garden. Despite earning his degree in ornamental horticulture at California Polytechnic (Cal Poly), Don felt unschooled in the arts because the small school did not teach them. To fill that educational gap, Don took his wife and four children to Europe for two years, where he affiliated with the American Academy in Rome and worked for TAC (The Architects' Collaborative) in Greece among other adventures. The family spent another six months in Hawaii, where the children attended school and Don worked with a local landscape architect. The family’s unusual work, school, and travel experience more than completed Don’s arts education and shaped his world view and that of his daughter Julie in countless ways that came to silently benefit the Las Vegas built environment. Upon returning to California in 1968, Brinkerhoff opened his Orange County office, and Lifescapes International became the “go-to” firm to create water features for condominium projects. This work led to his first hotel-casino project at a Sun City golf course condominium project in South Africa, which in turn led to a telephone call from architect Joel Bergman inviting him to become one of three candidate landscape architects to work with Steve Wynn on what would become The Mirage hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Here, Brinkerhoff speaks to his design philosophy as ninety percent problem-solving and ten percent inspiration even as he describes organizing the signature tree for The Mirage, building the Mirage volcano, taking the idea for Bellagio’s conservatory from the DuPont family’s Longwood Gardens, of creating faux banyans in the Mirage atrium, of creating the model for the Las Vegas Strip median, and of building the mountain on Las Vegas Boulevard in front of Wynn Las Vegas to conceal the Cloud at the Fashion Show Mall. While the fortunes of Lifescapes International continue to grow and succeed worldwide, both Don and Julie credit Steve Wynn and their Las Vegas work: “Las Vegas has totally changed our lives.”
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As we go about our days, running errands and getting things for our households, we often don’t think too much of the story behind the commercial real estate and retail stores we frequent. Only when those stores aren’t there and the neighborhood demographic changes do we embrace the nostalgia that goes into the story of the neighborhoods where we live and shop. Hank Gordon is the man behind those memories of those shopping centers we frequent not only in the Las Vegas Valley, but in Washington, Oregon, Montana, California and Alaska as well. Gordon was raised in Los Angeles and graduated from USC in 1956, when he went to work for a home builder in the San Fernando Valley selling his houses to make some extra weekend money. It was during this time he fell in love with real estate and had to break the news to his parents that he no longer was going to be a doctor. Feeling the urge of leadership he told his mentor that he didn’t want to sell houses-he wanted to develop homes instead. Shortly after that he bought a subdivision of lots in Van Nuys and started building 7-11 and Goodyear stores in the early 1960s. In this interview, Gordon talks about building his first shopping center in 1967 and moving to the Pacific Northwest. He moved to Las Vegas in 1988, when he bought 23 new national retailers to the Valley. He was responsible for bring Home Depot in 1999 and Costco and Best Buy to some of Las Vegas’s longest-standing shopping centers; Best of the Boulevard on Maryland Parkway and Best of the West on Rainbow Boulevard. He speaks of the changes to the market after the Great Recession, how retailers are having a hard time keeping afloat because of online shopping, and his days on the planning commission for the City of Las Vegas during the 1990s, when Jan Jones was mayor. It is without a doubt that Hank Gordon is one of the best in the business and there isn’t a lot of competition at the top.
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On March 1st, 1981, Glorialyn Gutierrez interviewed Emily McKinley (b. April 28, 1930 in Las Vegas, Nevada) about her life in the Las Vegas Valley. McKinley begins by speaking about her childhood, her siblings and her extended family. McKinley gives a variety of anecdotes about being raised in Las Vegas, her family’s economic hardships and the house she grew up in. Lastly, McKinley talks about the businesses she owned with her husband, their hardships and her time working multiple jobs.
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Lillian Morrison was the first uniformed female who worked for Park Service and has worked for Reclamation for 20 years during the war at Camp Williston. Morrison recalls life in Boulder City during the late 1930s and 1940s. Morrison is the wife of Lloyd Shorty Morrison.
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Interviewer: Dennis McBride
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F. Andrew Taylor has been a Las Vegas resident for over 20 years, moving to the city by way of New England and Georgia at the age of 28. Armed with a degree in painting from the Swain School of Design, got a job at a Laughlin casino as a caricature artist. After a brief stay in Laughlin and Bullhead City, Andrew moved to Ward I, where his girlfriend, now wife, lived. They soon moved to the Spring Valley area, where Andrew later learned through conversations with neighbors and his own research that the home sat on what was the old Stardust Racetrack. With Andrew’s move to the city came new professional opportunities. He got a job at CityLife as the in-house artist and graphic designer, what was then apart of Wick Communications. After a year, Andrew began reporting, initially working for the Sunrise/Whitney paper, and eventually working the downtown beat. Always feeling the pulse of the local arts and culture scene, he has attended First Fridays since it started, continues his own art,
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I've known Christie Young for many years and was grateful she agreed to be interviewed for the Las Vegas Gay Archives Oral History Project. Not only is she frank in what she says, but her background as a researcher in sexual issues and as a straight woman involved in the gay community give her a unique perspective. Ancillary to her donation of this interview transcript to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Christie has generously donated her personal journals which detail more than a decade of her life including the years she worked with Las Vegas's gay community . Christie shares the project's concern that documentation of the gay community is ephemeral and vanishes rapidly; her determination that her contribution to that community be preserved greatly enriches our knowledge and will benefit future scholars.
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Liliam Lujan Hickey was born in 1932 Havana, Cuba, where her father owned an insurance company and her mother was a music teacher. At age 17, Liliam married Enrique Lujan who owned five casinos and who was twelve years her senior. It was the early 1950s, and the people of Cuba lived with stark distinctions between upper class and low-income families. Liliam and Enrique lived a life of luxury. She became accustomed to flying to New York for dinner and wearing the finest Italian silks for custom dresses. Then in 1959, Liliam’s life took a vast turn as Fidel Castro rose to power and seized assets from the wealthy class. This upended Liliam’s family and in 1962, Liliam, Enrique and their three children fled to the United States. They first arrived in San Diego, California, where Liliam took a job at the Scripps Clinic. While Liliam spoke five different languages, she attended night school to learn English. Eventually, Liliam and her family moved to Las Vegas where Enrique could find work in the casinos. Unexpectedly in 1972, Enrique passed away, leaving Liliam and her children to fend for themselves. Liliam was thrust into the role of matriarch; she learned how to write a check and drive a car. She describes this as a period when her community activism awoke, how she secured a position working for the Nevada Welfare Administration Office, and how her persistent spirit led her to citizenship within a week. Through friends, Liliam met Nevada legislator Thomas Hickey, an Irish American who she endearingly nicknamed her Pink Husband. Liliam credits Senator Hickey with teaching her about life and the world, and ultimately inspiring much of her political activism. She was an active member of the Latin Chamber of Commerce, first known as el Circulo Cubano. At the peak of her career, Liliam became the first Latina to be elected to the Nevada State Board of Education. She envisioned building a village through schools in order to support and help all students be successful. A local Las Vegas school, Liliam Lujan Hickey Elementary School, was named in honor of her public service. Today, Liliam is retired, but continues to work to increase civic engagement in the Latinx community and improve our educational system.
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Interviewed by Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez. Gustavo Ramos Junior was born in Presidio, Texas. Growing up Ramos described his childhood as simple childhood, typical of someone that was born on farmland. At the age 10, Ramos and his family moved to California in hopes of better opportunities. When they arrived in California the family had to live in public housing, despite his father not wanting to, he realized it was the only way his family could start anew. Living in public housing influenced Ramos for the rest of his life, including his career as director of public housing in three states.
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