Oral history interview with Lynnette Sawyer conducted by Nathalie Martinez on January 03, 2019 for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. Barbara Tabach and Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez also participate in the questioning. Lynnette Sawyer identifies as a Puerto Rican woman born and raised in Spanish Harlem in New York. Her ancestry extends from Spain to Africa and has helped her identity, as she became an educator and museum curator. She describes her life in New York and her journey to Las Vegas. As the founder of the Hispanic Museum of Nevada, she wanted to create a space that would teach young Latinos about their history and heritage.
"...former Chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party and a former State Senator in Nevada. Lowden is a former businesswoman, television news anchor and kindergarten teacher."
When Melanie Greenberg was a young girl in her hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, she thinks it is likely that she crossed paths with her future husband at Hebrew School. However, it would be years later in college when they officially met – and fell in love and married in 1970. By 1976, Missouri was in the rearview mirror and career opportunities for her husband Gene Greenberg would lead them to Las Vegas. With their 18-month-old daughter Sari, they drove into Las Vegas for the first time, down Boulder Highway to Flamingo Road. Gene’s employer had arranged for a room at the Flamingo Hotel. As she explains, there many have been a better route, but it brought them to town and they stayed, raised their family, and became fixtures in the community since that moment. Among their first goals was finding a synagogue. Melanie’s magical touch has been felt in many places within the Las Vegas Jewish community: an active member of Temple Beth Sholom, the Jewish Federation’s Young Leadership and Women’s programs, organizer of Hebrew High, coordinator of L’Dor V’Dor activities for seniors, and Executive Director of Hillel from 1996 – 2003.
In this interview, Fiol discusses her experience as a a hidden child in the Holocaust and her family's history. She also talks about her involvement with the Las Vegas Holocaust survivors group.
Raymonde "Ray" Fiol is president of the Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada. A Jewish Holocaust survivor whose parents were killed in Auschwitz, Fiol was hidden by a Christian family of Resistance fighters during her childhood in Nazi-occupied Paris, France. She married American serviceman Phil Fiol and left Paris in 1957. The couple lived in New York City where she worked in inventory control. She retired to Las Vegas, Nevada around 2003 and became active in the local Holocaust Survivors Group. In 2007, she became president of the organization, which provides essential services to Holocaust survivors and helps them share their stories. Fiol is also a member of the Nevada Governor?s Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust and the coordinating council of Shoah International. Her dedication to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and caring for survivors earned her the Nevada Senior Citizen of the Year award from the Nevada Delegation of the National Silver Haired Congress and the Aging Services Directors Organization in 2014, and in 2013 she was named Mensch Volunteer of the Year by the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas. In this interview, Ray reflects upon her traumatic childhood experiences, and shares how she learned details of her family?s history from a woman in France who had researched the destiny of the local Jewish community. She also discusses her involvement with the survivors group, and the positive impacts of its outreach activities, as well as goals to ensure future generations learn about, and from, the Holocaust.
Lois Goodall was born July 18, 1938 in Odessa, Missouri to a father who was a farmer and a teacher mother. Goodall went to college to become a teacher, and her freshman year met a young sophomore gentleman by the name of Pat Goodall. They married and while Goodall attended graduate school at the University of Missouri, she taught fifth grade.
Fern S. Olive was a Las Vegas, Nevada elementary school teacher. She was born September 24, 1895 in Minnesota. Olive later married Wilford Clay Olive on June 5, 1928 and lived in Las Vegas for sixty-five years. She was a member of the Retired Teachers Association and the Daughters of the American Revolution. Olive died July 16, 1992.
Sources:
"Deaths." Las Vegas Review-Journal. July 19, 1992.
Karen Sarret Bartolo’s life in Las Vegas from 1948 to the present exemplifies the vast changes that took place in the social, cultural, and physical landscape of the city over the course of the twentieth century. Schools and businesses mentioned in interview are/were located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Karen Sarret Bartolo moved to Las Vegas from Reno at five years of age in 1948 with her parents, Jules James Sarret and Ila Burgess Sarret, and younger brother, Gordon. Upon arriving in the city her father opened Sarret's Office Supply, the family rented a small, two-bedroom house on Tenth Street, and Karen attended John S. Park Elementary School. Younger sister Lynn was born in Las Vegas...The Sarrets reveal how quickly Las Vegas and the Clark County School District grew in the second half of the twentieth century. Although Karen completed eighth grade at West Charleston Elementary before going to Las Vegas High School (one of the city’s two public high schools), her siblings attended Hyde Park Junior High school. Gordon then matriculated to Western High School, while Lynn graduated from Ed. W. Clark High School.