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Stella Parson was born November 18, 1929 in Mississippi. She moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1942 when she was in the fifth grade and was always involved in the Church of God in Christ. After graduating from Las Vegas High School, she went to college at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Parson became the first African-American to graduate from UNR.
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Margaret McGhie was born on May 18, 1922 and grew up in western Nevada, where her grandparents were ranchers. She attended a business college in Reno, Nevada and eventually moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. She worked for Basic Magnesium (BMI) in Gabbs, Nevada and for a remanufacturing company where she verified rocket measurements.
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Chris Phipps was born November 1, 1959 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was homeschooled until the age of 12, when he went to boarding school in New England. After graduating high school in 1977, he moved to California and came out as gay. Phipps stopped attending college for a few years to regain his social life, but he returned and received his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Utah in 1986.
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Dr. Blair Hale was born in Idaho in 1949, the third of four children born to Zendal McKay and Lenny Raymond Hale. His education includes semesters at Brigham Young University, El Camino City College, and a dental degree from Washington University.
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Vincent Kethen was born October 31, 1964 in Las Vegas, Nevada, the year that desegregation of schools began. Like many African-American children living in the Las Vegas Westside neighborhood, Kethen was bused out of his neighborhood in third grade to attend a white school. In his case, this meant attending John S. Park Elementary School and later other predominantly white schools.
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Ronald D. Textor was born in Kirksville, Missouri, but moved shortly after his birth to Flint, Michigan. He started his own band, earned a degree in music education, and was in the North American Air Defense Command Band for three years. He then toured with the Glenn Miller Band under the direction of Buddy DeFranco. Textor earned a master's in music and briefly taught in several colleges in the late 1970s. He moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1981 and played with the Norm Geller orchestra at the Sands.
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Margaret “Peggy” Casey was born in Louisville, Kentucky where her father was the city editor of the local newspaper. Peggy attended college at the University of Wisconsin during World War II. After graduating, she worked for an aeronautical company, Curtiss-Wright, where she helped build planes for the war.
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JoNell Thomas was born February 11, 1966 and grew up in Murray, Utah in a large family. She attended college at Utah State and the law school at University of Utah. She moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1992 and held multiple careers from being a staff attorney with a Las Vegas firm to an attorney with the Clark County Special Public Defender’s office. Thomas, her husband, Billy Logan, and their twin daughters have lived in the John S. Park Neighborhood since 2001.
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