Jackie, n?e Brooks, Boiman was born in Brooklyn and raised in Levittown, New York. Although Jackie recalls her family?s Jewish observance as far less than strict, her religious connection began in the Levittown Jewish Center Sunday School and under the close relationship she had with her grandmother, who kept kosher and inspired her to do so. In her early twenties, Jackie worked in data reduction at Grumman Aerospace Corporation and the space program; was married and had her only child, Andee. After twelve years of marriage, Jackie divorced and relocated to Las Vegas, where her parents had moved earlier. In Las Vegas, job opportunities for a single mother were scant. Then after months of searching, she found her first job as a part time secretary for Temple Beth Sholom. Over the course of the next nearly fifteen years, Jackie would go on to work with almost every congregation and temple in Las Vegas, developing their youth programs and contributing to the growth of each one for 15 years. After a brief retirement, she had gone back to work as the first administration person for Touro University. In this interview, Jackie discusses at length her involvement with each of the temples, her experiences with being a single mother and living below the poverty line. She shares how her life has been changed through trials and tribulations but how her faithfulness and commitment to her mission had led her to the success she has today.

This interview conducted by Cork Proctor and is part of the Arnold Shaw Collection at UNLV University Libraries Special Collections. It has been added to the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project with Mr. Morris?s permission. In this conversation, Morris reflects upon his career, how he got started as a musician, and the wide range of influential artists he has worked with over the years, as a drummer, musical director and talent manager. Stories include playing with Louis Prima, live and on his albums; serving as Elvis? musical director; filling in for Frank Sinatra?s drummer; entertaining Howard Hughes; and playing at President John F. Kennedy?s inauguration.

This ability to greet each day with a challenge has laid the foundation for a long history of success for Elaine McNamara as she has navigated through local beauty pageants, an illustrious real estate career, serving on the Las Vegas-Clark County Library board during their decade of expansion to authorship. Her story of resilience starts when she became ill at approximately seven or eight with erythema nodosum that impeded her ability to walk for five months when she started collecting pictures of movie stars. Her favorite movies were any of Roy Rogers, Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Her family moved to Las Vegas, where she attended Las Vegas High School as well as UNLV majoring in elementary education and minoring in language arts. While she attended high school, she studied modeling in the evenings to help overcome her shyness and to become more outgoing. Becoming more involved with local and state beauty pageants, she met the likes of Phyllis Diller, Natalie Wood,

Tucson, Arizona, native David Ober moved to Las Vegas twice. He arrived reluctantly the first time in 1978 with his parents as a high-school student, when his father, Hal Ober, came to Las Vegas to begin building and marketing the U.S. Home (now Lennar) brand. While the elder Ober soon left U.S. Home to open his own home-building business, R.A. Homes, his youngest child left Las Vegas shortly after his high school graduation to return to his native Tucson, follow in the footsteps of his siblings, and attend the University of Arizona. After graduating from the University of Arizona David Ober opened his own mortgage company and began building a life in Phoenix. In the late 1980s he agreed to take a large pay cut, return to Las Vegas, and learn his father's business from the ground up. At the time, Hal Ober was developing his award-winning, master-planned community, Desert Shores. David Ober, the youngest of the five children of Hal and D'Vorre (Dee) Ober, agreed to participate in the

Born on August 22, 1935, Harriet spent her childhood years in the segregated southern cities of St. Petersburg, Florida and Mobile, Alabama. Daughter to a blue collar plumber, who was also a union organizer and ‘rabid Democrat,’ Harriet recalls her father saying, “Remember children, you know what meat tastes like because there’s a man named Franklin Roosevelt.” Unsurprisingly, she grew up thinking Roosevelt was God. With her mother’s sudden death at age thirty-one from a cerebral hemorrhage, ten year old Harriet spent two years at a boarding school before rejoining her younger brother at her maternal grandparents in St. Petersburg. Florida. During this time, her father also based out of the grandparents’ home while following big construction work opportunities at various cities. In 1948, sixteen-year-old Harriet accompanied her father, an Alabama Delegate, to the Democratic National Convention. Hearing Hubert Humphrey’s Civil Rights speech change her life. “I came home from that conve

Sydney Wickliffe, nee Botkin, was born in Long Beach, California in 1944. Her parents, Donald and Betty Botkin, moved their young family first to Denver and then to the small town of Ulysses, Kansas before heading for Las Vegas in 1952, when Sydney was eight years old. Since then, she has called Las Vegas her home, graduating from Rancho High School's inaugural senior class in 1962. Growing up in a growing city, Sydney combined an active youth with long hours working in her father's North Las Vegas pharmacy and, later, would earn her degree in accounting from UNLV. As a CPA, she worked as an auditor for the Gaming Control Board and, in 1987, was promoted to deputy chief. From there, she took on the challenging role of director in Nevada's Department of Business and Industry as a member of Governor Kenny Guinn cabinet. As she says, even "one of the north-town girls" can go a long way - and in this interview, she shares memories that help us all see what the Las Vegas she remembers was like in the 1950s and 60s and how it helped to shape the person she is today.

Janice and Robert Spurlock were married in 1990 and each has a lifetime of Las Vegas memories. They have made Sandy Valley home for nearly 32 years. Together the couple recalls the people and places of Las Vegas' past from their points of view during this oral history interview. For Janice the stories begin in the 1930s after her family moved to Las Vegas from California. She was a youngster of about five. Among the topics she talks about is walking to Fifth Street Grammar School, graduating from Vegas High School, and fun had during Helldorado Days. In 1953, Robert arrived. He was a young man headed from Arizona to Colorado seeking work as a welder. He stopped in Henderson, Nevada and never quite made it out of the area. For the next two decades he worked construction and helped build many local landmarks. He shares stories about the range wars and about being accidentally exposed to radiation from the Nevada Test site.