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Transcript of interview with Marie Horseley by Suzanne Becker, June 13, 2007
Twenty years after her birth in Utah in 1924, Marie Horseley met and married her husband who was an engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad. They settled in Las Vegas, his home town and soon purchased a home for $9800 in the new John S. Park neighborhood. Sixty years later Marie, twice a widow, remains in the home. Up the street four doors, one of her granddaughters lives with her three children. Marie recalls the new housing development that appealed to railroad workers. The roads were dirt and there were no streetlights, but soon a community blossomed. Marie is a self-described quiet resident; her life was about raising her three daughters and being a member of the LDS church. However, she knew everyone on her street no matter their religious affiliation. Today the businesses are gone. Homes have changed appearances over the years as owners have changed. Ethnic diversity is apparent and the sense of community closeness has slipped away for her. Yet she loves her place there, feels safe and secure. When asked about the ides of John S. Park being designated a historic district, she is not all that wowed by the idea of restrictions that might be included in that. Nevertheless, she has no intention of relocating from the comfort of the place she has called home all these years.
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Patti Chess oral history interview, 2025 March 12
Oral history interview with Patti Chess conducted by Stefani Evans on March 12, 2025 for the Game On! An Oral History of Sports project. In this interview Patti discusses being one of five children growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, and moving to Las Vegas to live with a local cousin, and attend UNLV on a scholarship. She graduated and spend twenty five years as an investigator with DCFS. During her time at UNLV, she first started playing soccer, then softball. After ten years of playing these sports, she transitioned to tennis, which she played consistently for thirty years. After an injury, she decided to move away from tennis and got involved in pickleball. She eventually became a US Pickleball Ambassador, and taught lessons to those wanting to learn. Pickleball continued to grow, and Patti discusses the tensions that came with this rapid growth between tennis and pickleball. Eventually the tensions lessened and pickleball has become a permanent fixture in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is one of the most rapidly expanding cities for pickleball, and that led Patti to helping grow the pickleball community within CCSD. She trained physical education teachers on how to instruct their students, and it was warmly received. CCSD grew to love pickleball, and eventually expanded to having a teacher league, and yearly tournaments amongst teachers and administrators. Patti has seen pickleball help a variety of people over the years. Those that have struggled with loss and need community, those with mental health issues who need an outlet, and those who want to be more physically active and improve their health. She is confident that pickleball will continue to grow, and Las Vegas will be one of the premiere destinations for pickleball players. Digital audio and transcript available.
Collection Name: Game On! The Oral History of Las Vegas Sports Interviews
Box/Folder: Digital File 00
Archival Component
Postcard showing Searchlight, Nevada, circa 1930s
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Transcript of interview with Rabbi Sanford Akselrad by Barbara Tabach, October 29, 2014
Sanford Akselrad is the rabbi at Congregation Ner Tamid. In this interview he describes his rabbinical training, coming to Las Vegas, and the growth of the congregation.
More inclined in his youth to pursue a career as a scientist than rabbi, Sanford Akselrad (1957- ) became the rabbi at Congregation Ner Tamid in 1988. Turning his tenure, Rabbi Akselrad has lead the congregation through its move from Emerson to Street to its permanent home on Green Valley Parkway and I-215 and shares a fun story about buying desks and chairs from the Clark County School District. He talks about many of the milestones including: Project Ezra which he started during the 2008 recession to help Jewish community members find jobs; the NextGen program which was initiated to bring young adults in their twenties and thirties back to the temple. For over twenty years Rabbi Akselrad was a member of the board of the Nevada Governor?s Council on Holocaust education, a topic that was the focus of his rabbinical thesis. He was the founding president of the Clark County Board of Rabbis and has served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, Jewish Family Services, and the Humana Hospital Pastoral Advisory Board. He was also the chair of the Federation?s Community Relations Council (CRC). Rabbi Akselrad is a board member of the Anti-Defamation League Nevada region office and the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada. Sanford Akselrad was born on October 6, 1957 in Oakland, California and raised in Palo Alto. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles and then went to graduate school at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. He spent the first year of his graduate program in Israel, the next two in Los Angeles, and the final two years in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Akselrad met his wife Joni in Reno, Nevada and married her during his third year of rabbinical school. The couple has two children, CJ and Sam. After his ordination in 1984, Rabbi Akselrad was associate rabbi of Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio, one of the largest Reform congregations in the Midwest. His choice of career was inspired by his father, Sidney Akselrad, who was a prominent rabbi involved in social justice issues and the Civil Rights Movement. Sanford Akselrad has followed his father?s example of community involvement, both in Las Vegas and on a national level: he served on the board of the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCJJ), he was chair of the NCJJ's Inter-faith Council, and he is active in the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ).
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