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Joyce Moore's family moved to Las Vegas from Chicago in 1953, when she was eight years old. She attended Rancho High School, married and had three daughters, and currently lives in Las Vegas. Joyce's father was in the gaming industry and her mother was a nurse. Growing up in Las Vegas meant going to shows with her mother, spending summer days in the pool at the Showboat Hotel, and riding horses to the Last Frontier. While a teenager at Rancho High school, Joyce worked at several movie theaters including the Huntridge, went to school dances and marched in the Hellodorado Parade. After her divorce, Joyce returned to work to support herself and her children, first at the Daily Fax then later on the Strip at the Aladdin and Circus, Circus doing a variety of office and accounting jobs. As a lark she and a friend applied to work as cocktail waitresses at the MGM; she was hired and spent the next five years in a job that was by turns interesting, exhausting, frustrating and fun. This interview covers several periods of Joyce's life - her childhood, teen years, and early adult life - and what it was like to grow up, live and work in Las Vegas in from the mid-1950s until the mid-1970s.

Ashley Hall was born April 3, 1943 in Caliente, Nevada. After high school, he worked for the Union Pacific Railroad at the Nevada Test Site as a cashier and as a signalman. He later attended Brigham Young University and the University of Nevada, Reno. After college, Hall served the City of Las Vegas in significant ways. Notably, as City Manager he was instrumental in the initial development of Summerlin, Nevada. Though he has retired from local politics, he remains active as the President of the Old Spanish Trail Association and as the U.S. Army Reserve Ambassador.

Florence McClure came to Las Vegas later in her life, but the state felt her presence and the community her contributions as if she were a native daughter. Introduced to the League of Women Voters in 1967, McClure met her political mentor Jean Ford and learned how to practice the core elements of democracy. She put those tools to work in a number of ways, however her participation in the creation of the Rape Crises Center and her advocacy for locating the women’s prison near Las Vegas are two of her long-lasting efforts. Florence Alberta Schilling was born in southern Illinois where she enjoyed the security of a tight-knit family and the independence to test her abilities growing up. She graduated from high school and attended the MacMurray College for Women at Jacksonville. With the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, she began a series of jobs working for the war effort. She moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan with a girlfriend to work at the Willow Run Army Airbase and then moved to Miami, Florida where she worked for the Provost Marshall in the Security and Intelligence Division. She met her husband, James McClure, at the time and they married in 1945. During the next several years, they raised a family and moved around the country and to Japan with the military. McClure came to Las Vegas in 1966 as part of her work in the hotel industry which she engaged in after her husband’s retirement from the military. She had worked in California and Miami Beach, but it was Burton Cohen in Los Angeles who invited her to join him in a move to Las Vegas to build the new Frontier Hotel and Casino. Following the completion of the Frontier, she moved to the Desert Inn with Cohen in 1967 and worked as the executive office manager. After a few years, she decided to leave the industry and complete her college education. She graduated from UNLV in 1971with a BA in Sociology with an emphasis on criminology. She was 50 years old. McClure had been a member of the League of Women Voters for a few years at that point and had learned the political process from Jean Ford and workshops on lobbying. She had numerous skills that were waiting to be tapped when she attended an informational meeting on the incidence of rape in the Las Vegas valley. From that meeting, a small group of individuals, including McClure, began the organization Community Action Against Rape (later renamed the Rape Crisis Center) in 1973. It was the first agency in the area devoted to serving individuals who had been assaulted and changing the laws on rape. The organization’s first office was set up in McClure’s home. Over the next decade, she worked to change attitudes and reshape policy by constantly raising the issues of sexual assault with police officers, emergency room doctors, judges, and legislators. Her role as an advocate took her into hospital emergency rooms and courtrooms to assist victims. It also took her to the state legislator to lobby repeatedly for a change in laws. During this period, journalist Jan Seagrave gave McClure the nickname “Hurricane Florence” - a fitting moniker that captured the force with which McClure attacked the issue. As a result of her efforts and those of the people with whom she worked, we now 1) recognize rape as a crime of assault; 2) forbid the sexual history of a rape victim from being used against her in court; and 3) recognize marital rape. In addition to learning about Florence McClure’s activities, the reader of this interview will gain information on the role of civic organizations like the League of Women Voters in engaging the voluntary efforts of women in the post-war years.

Interviewed by Joanne L. Goodwin. Gail Spaulding (Jaros) was born on October 16, 1937, in Cicero, Illinois. a suburb of Chicago. Both of her parents were in show business. Gail began tap and ballet lessons when she was five years old. She signed as a dancer with Moro-Landis Productions in 1956, and she worked for that company at the Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, the Riverside Hotel and Casino in Reno, and the Beverly Hills Country Club in Covington, Kentucky. Gail was promoted to line captain and did choreography at the Beverly Hills Country Club. She stopped dancing shortly before her daughter was born and worked as a cocktail waitress at the Riverside Hotel and Casino and at the Mapes Hotel in Reno. In 1964 she moved back to Las Vegas, trained in real estate, became general sales manager and corporate broker for Realty Executives in Las Vegas and later worked as an associate with Dyson and Dyson Real Estate in Indian Wells, California.

In the early summer of 1972, Patsy and Chuck Rosenberry packed the car to begin their journey from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to Las Vegas. Patsy’s two teenage children (plus a friend) crowded into the back seat as Chuck eased behind the wheel. He and Patsy had just recently married and he was taking his new family to their new home in southern Nevada. Chuck was a nuclear technologist at the Nevada Test Site and a kind, patient man that Patsy would have followed anywhere. As it turned out, Las Vegas was a wonderful fit and the family would thrive in their new hometown of Las Vegas. The children attended Valley High School; the family eventually bought into a house in the Paradise Valley area; and from 1978 to 1999 Patsy enjoyed working with a growing cardiovascular group. Chuck censored his work-talk like most Test Site employees, but Patsy recalls with pride his concern for safety and how he always felt the public did not have correct information. She also remembers the fun of partic

Hughie and Greta Mills spent their childhoods in Charlestown, West Virginia. Fate would bring them together years later in New York City. They married in 1954. Both Hughie and Greta talk about achieving a better life through education and perseverance. He became an educator and she a librarian. In 1989, the couple relocated to Las Vegas, seeing the weather and retirement lifestyle here to their liking. During this interview they describe their lives, individually and as a couple, and how they embraced life and living in Las Vegas as a retired, African- American couple.

Houghton Hoot Peterson played trombone in his high school band in northern Minnesota where he grew up. That same instrument would lead him to be a member of the highly regarded Air Force jazz band called Airmen of Note after enlistment. Then during a short tour at Nellis Air Force base, Hoot decided that the Las Vegas entertainment scene might have career opportunities for him. He moved to Las Vegas in 1962, an era of celebrity performers and tourists who enjoyed the crowds and nightlife. Hoot's point of view was as a musician in the band, most often a Strip relief band. But he also has tales of famous musicians and late night jam sessions. Hoot's career spanned 20 years. Eventually the Las Vegas scene for live musicians began to change. When times got tough for Hoot, he worked as a carpenter and at a music store. In this interview he discusses his fascinating past and offers advice for today's musicians.