Gary Sternberg grew up in Germany, witnessing anti-Semitic propaganda as early as age 7. He describes some of the experiences his father endured at a concentration camp, and his escape to China. He and his mother reunited with his father in Shanghai in 1940. They left Shanghai in 1948, eventually settling in Cleveland. He and his family came to Las Vegas in 1969.
Lori Chenin-Frankl was born December 7, 1960. Chenin-Frankl is the child of a Holocaust survivor, Fernande Magalnik Chenin, and Simon Chenin, a barber. In 1963, the Chenin family moved from Cleveland, Ohio, to Las Vegas for her father’s health. The city was already home to her uncle Dr. Joe Chenin, the first licensed Jewish dentist in Southern Nevada and a good place for the family to settle in. Her father worked his barber business and her mother was a clerk for the school bus yard.