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Narrator affiliation: Public Health Service (USPHS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Test Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory

World War II Naval officer, outdoors man, viola player John Watkins arrived in Las Vegas in 1955 fresh from his fellowship at UCLA, as the town’s first urologist. In this interview made two years before his 2011 death, Watkins talks about his schooling, his medical career, and medicine and medical practitioners in Las Vegas from the mid-1950s. He recalls how he met his wife, Frances (née) O’Rourke, and the Las Vegas places he, Frances, and their sons John and Brian lived. In particular, he describes their Desert Inn Country Club neighbors and neighborhood, where he and his family lived for fourteen years near the third tee. Watkins talks about his musical education and playing the viola in Antonio Morelli’s Christmas concerts. He also shares his experiences as a mountain climber who climbed Mount Charleston several times before deciding in his seventies to climb the highest peak in each of the fifty states. By the time of this interview, he and his son Brian had conquered forty-three state peaks. According to his obituary, he completed one more climb before he died at ninety years of age, for a total of forty-four highest state peaks. In an Appendix, Watkins shares his detailed wartime journal covering nine “terrible days” on a U.S. Naval ship in an undisclosed battle zone in the Pacific Theatre, 28 December 1944 – 6 January 1945.

Attending the Inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981. Reagan's Inauguration was the first one held on the West Front of the U. S. Capitol. Standing in front of a large banner are pictured L-R: Las Vegas Mayor Oran Gragson and his wife Bonnie; Ambassador Thomas Aranda and his wife Shirley Gragson Aranda. Shirley Gragson Aranda is Oran and Bonnie Gragson's daughter. In the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph is an insert that reads " Inauguration January 20, 1980 Ronald Reagan 40th President of the United States and George Bush, 43rd Vice-President of the United States." Oran Kenneth Gragson (February 14, 1911 – October 7, 2002) was an American businessman and politician. He was the longest-serving mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada, from 1959 to 1975. Gragson, a member of the Republican Party, was a small business owner who was elected Mayor on a reform platform against police corruption and for equal opportunity for people of all socio-economic and racial categories. Gragson died in a Las Vegas hospice on October 7, 2002, at the age of 91. The Oran K. Gragson Elementary School located at 555 N Honolulu Street, Las Vegas, NV 89110 was named in his honor.