Search Results

Matthew O'Brien is a journalist, author, and college instructor who is known for his nonfiction book Beneath the Neon about homeless people living underground in the Las Vegas Valley. He lived in Las Vegas from 1997-2017. O'Brien was born in Washington D.C. but grew up in Atlanta, GA, where he graduated from the University of West Georgia in 1995. He also earned an MFA from UNLV. O'Brien was a staff writer, news editor and managing editor of the alternative weekly Las Vegas CityLife from 2000 to 2008.

Composer Massimo "Max" Joseph DiJulio was born in 1919, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He took up the trumpet as a boy and turned professional while still in high school. During World War Two he served with a military band under the direction of Glenn Miller. After his tour of duty, he settled in Denver, Colorado where he served as the Director of the Fine Arts Department at Loretto Heights College for over thirty years. He also served as Music Director of the Denver Post Opera.

Born in Piedmont, California in 1935, Nancy Houssels is a retired dancer and prominent supporter of the arts in Las Vegas, Nevada. She started dancing as a child, and in 1957 received a bachelor's degree in Theater Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. During her dance career, she toured the world as a part of the dance team of Szony and Claire, eventually settling in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1966. She performed at the Tropicana Hotel until 1970, when she married the Tropicana's president, J. Kell Houssels, Jr.

Hotel sales promotion manager Elmo Hughes Ellsworth was born in Safford, Arizona in 1911. He attended George Washington University Law School for a year until his job required him to move to San Francisco, California where he worked in sales promotion, publicity and theaters. He married Charlotte Rowberry in 1936 and a few years later they moved to the Las Vegas, Nevada. There he began working in the Security and Public Relations Department of the Basic Magnesium Company.

This is the history of Blue Diamond Village. Blue Diamond is located 26 miles southwest of Las Vegas. The village, originally known as Cottonwood Springs, changed its name when the Blue Diamond Company took ownership of the Gypsum mine and built corporate housing for the workers in the early '20s. Near the base of the Red Rock canyon, Blue Diamond Village was originally a stop on the Old Spanish Trail for traders from Santa Fe, N.M., to California between 1830 and 1848, according to the history committee's findings.

Alpha Kappa Alpha, Incorporated (AKA), is one of the oldest Black sororities in the United States, and was founded on January 15, 1908 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. AKA is an international service organization that comprises nearly 300,000 members in over 1,000 graduate and undergraduate chapters worldwide.