Thomas J. Schoeman was born May 18, 1949 in Brooklyn, New York, and was the first of his four siblings to graduate high school and attend college. Schoeman attended Nassau Community College and then transferred to the University of New Mexico in the early 1970s, from which he graduated in 1974. After spending his first five years out of college working as an architect in New Mexico, Schoeman received a job offer from Jack Miller and Associates (later, JMA Studio) and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1979.

Connie Hill Sheldon was born November 16, 1944 in Oklahoma and spent her early years in southern California before moving to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1956 with her family. In Las Vegas, Sheldon and her siblings attended Sunrise Acres Elementary School before going to Rancho High School, and the family was active with Homesite Baptist Church. While she was at Rancho High, Sheldon worked at the Huntridge Theater, and she continued working there after she graduated. In 1968, Sheldon married fellow Rancho Class of 1962 classmate, Clyde, in Goldfield, Nevada.

Jerry Engel was born in 1930 in New Jersey and spent most of his early life in Long Beach, New York until the family moved westward to Los Angeles in 1945. Jerry is a retired Certified Public Accountant and loves to talk about the history of Las Vegas that he observed since arriving in 1953. That was the year that he moved to Las Vegas to join his older brothers, Morris and Phil, in their accounting firm. Their major client at the time was Desert Inn.

Mary Martell Shaw called Central America home for the first 19 years of her life. Because of misrouted luggage, she met her husband, Rollin H. Shaw, a civil engineer, at a time in when his atomic energy career was taking off. In October of 1943, they married in Costa Rica and for the next two decades traveled the country: Hawaii to California to Panama—wherever a project required Ronnie’s engineering skills. Shaw supported her husband every step of the way, with every new location.

Sydney Wickliffe was born July 27, 1944 in Long Beach, California. She came to Nevada in October of 1952. Wickliffe was a retired certified public accountant.

Gwendolyn K. Walker was born August 11, 1956 in Houston, Texas. She arrived in North Las Vegas, Nevada in 1962 as a five-year-old with her parents, two brothers, and her cousins. The Walker family at first moved to a rented house on D Street, and she attended Kit Carson Elementary School for first grade. Her mother enrolled in nursing school, so she sent Walker back to Delhi, Louisiana, to be raised by her grandmother. In Delhi, she picked cotton with her aunt while she was in the second grade.

Linda Falba McSweeney was born January 3, 1945 in Miami, Florida. Her family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1950 and lived in the Huntridge area of town. She and her two siblings attended St. Joseph’s Catholic School, St. Anne’s School, and Bishop Gorman High School. They marched in the city’s Helldorado Parades, and she was a Bishop Gorman High School cheerleader. McSweeney was a retired speech pathologist.