Oral history interview with Brendan Ly conducted by Cecilia Winchell and Stefani Evans on March 27, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Brendan discusses his background growing up in communist Vietnam in the early 1970s and fleeing with his family as refugees; they immigrated to Hong Kong, China before moving to the United States to live briefly in North Carolina before settling in California. Brendan talks about working at a young age picking fruit, working in catering, and having positions in retail before pursuing higher education and studying pharmaceuticals. He shares stories of his work experience with Walgreens and how this led to him opening a pharmacy with his brother, which they've managed together for the past 18 years.
From the Roosevelt Fitzgerald Professional Papers (MS-01082) -- Drafts for the Las Vegas Sentinel Voice file. On childhood memories of respect filled stories of ancestors.
With so much emphasis put on the growth of Las Vegas and Henderson over the past thirty years, we often forget about the development of the others cities in the Valley. Expansive growth in Southern Nevada in the mid-twentieth century shows the region being one of the last bastions of agricultural existence, and Tim Hafen has been a major player in the development of the city of Pahrump. Born in St. George, Utah, and raised in Mesquite, Nevada, he graduated from Virgin Valley High School and attended Dixie College. Before the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was called as such, his father introduced him to the working of the land through dairy and hay farming, where a young Tim decided he would never milk a cow again. His rejection of cow milking didn’t deter him from following the influence of his father after he married his wife, Eleanor, in 1951 and moved to Pahrump to become a cotton farmer. At that time, there were only 150 people in the area with a third of the population being from the Paiute tribe. Once the city was incorporated in 1964, he founded the Pahrump Valley Utility Company to get electricity to the area along with Amargosa Valley. Top crops at the time included cotton, alfalfa as well as wheat that were picked by Mexican farm laborers used under a yearlong contract with the Bracero program. vi In this interview, Hafen shares how he began his career in politics from getting called for grand jury in 1963. From 1966–1974, he was a member of the legislature, where he served two terms in the Old Capital building and held various positions such as Chairman of the State Board of Agriculture for twelve years and President of the Nevada Farm Bureau. He was speaker pro tem and Chairman of the taxation committee and decided to call it quits because of the Nixon scandal. Between 1974 and 1975 Hafen ended his political career, which he did before brothels began to come to the area later in the decade. In 1982, in the wake of the gasoline crisis, Hafen, like other Pahrump cotton farmers, could not afford to continue farming; he decided to shift from farming to development. His first development done was Cottonwoods at Hafen Ranch, which was on 160 acres of alluvial fan, non-farmable land; in 2000 he opened his second subdivision, Artesia at Hafen Ranch.
The interior of the green house at the end of the cul-de-sac envelops the visitor. Every room exudes comfort and encourages conversation even as the lake, lapping quietly on three sides of the house, beckons. Cindy Coletti revels in this house and its interiors, all of her own design, especially because they are so different from the daring, opulent, and award-winning custom homes for which she is known. Arriving in Las Vegas in 1988 as a single mother, Cindy immediately submitted a successful design for the first Southern Nevada Street of Dreams event and began networking. She established Sun West Custom Homes in Nevada by applying the design and contracting skills she had successfully honed by building nearly seventy houses in California, Florida, and Colorado—all the while grooming her son Danny—from the time he was in his teens—to eventually take over the company. In this interview, Cindy's husband, David Fordham, shares his background, his reasons for relocating to Las Vegas, work in commercial real estate, meeting Cindy, and living at The Lakes. Cindy then recalls the experiences that brought her to Las Vegas; shaped her ideas of self-help, friendship, design, and business, and instilled in her the confidence to succeed in a man's world. Cindy has retired from building and now enjoys traveling with her husband, but Sun West Custom Homes continues to thrive under the capable ownership and leadership of Daniel S. Coletti.