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Transcript of interview with Norma Friedman by Barbara Tabach, November 19, 2015 and April 06, 2016
It was a scorching Fourth of July, when Norma (n?e Adler) and Leon Friedman rolled into their new home of Las Vegas in 1973. Nevertheless, they were content with leaving Gary, Indiana behind, and starting fresh with the family?s new ownership of Walker Furniture. Norma recalls her first stop in checking out Las Vegas was to visit the synagogue ? Temple Beth Sholom being the only option. Her oldest son would soon become a bar mitzvah. Feeling good about that, she and her sister-in-law who was also relocating to Las Vegas for the furniture business, searched for new homes. Norma settled into the community through volunteer work as well as through employment outside the family business. She worked in the real estate briefly and in a jewelry store at the Dunes. A natural organizer, she immersed herself in religious and civic organizations including the Jewish Federation, Jewish Family Service Agency, and volunteering at Selma Bartlett Elementary School in Henderson. Norma shares stories of her Jewish heritage and upbringing in Pittsburgh, the decision to move to Las Vegas, making fast friendships during her life in Las Vegas and the joy she has in traveling the world with Leon, who passed in 2004. In 2017, Norma was honored by the Jewish Family Service Agency.
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Transcript of interview with Mahamed Youssouf by Barbara Tabach, August 6, 2013 & August 13, 2013
Ethiopian business owner Mahamed Youssouf became an American citizen in 1986. Born in Harar, Ethiopia, he recalls the hardships he had to endure during the Ethiopia-Somalia conflict. Coming from a family of tailors, he began making clothes with his father at a very early age. Mahamed’s recollections concerning his journey from political refugee to successful businessman demonstrates his resilience and determination to overcome obstacles and achieve his goals. Mahamed moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1985, where he rented a storefront in North Las Vegas. The name of his store was Uniform Plus and he focused mainly on making children’s clothes. His efforts proved lucrative as he began buying wholesale in Los Angeles, California, and selling clothes in Las Vegas on the weekends at the outdoor Swap Meet. After a fateful encounter, Mahamed became business partners with Eugene Hoffman, owner of Village East Cleaners. Mahamed firmly believes that communication is the key to socio-economic success. He views education as an investment and states that, “to have dialogue means better relationships.” When the Ethiopian government was overthrown, Mahamed returned home to Africa for a visit. He met his wife while there, got married, and started a family. Mahamed returned to America and bought a family home in Las Vegas. He dedicated his time to teaching his American born children more about Ethiopian culture and taught himself more about American culture— including the African-American experience in Las Vegas, racism, the Moulin Rouge, and the Westside.
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Transcript of interview with Elaine Cali McNamara by Claytee White and Stefani Evans, October 5, 2016
This ability to greet each day with a challenge has laid the foundation for a long history of success for Elaine McNamara as she has navigated through local beauty pageants, an illustrious real estate career, serving on the Las Vegas-Clark County Library board during their decade of expansion to authorship. Her story of resilience starts when she became ill at approximately seven or eight with erythema nodosum that impeded her ability to walk for five months when she started collecting pictures of movie stars. Her favorite movies were any of Roy Rogers, Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Her family moved to Las Vegas, where she attended Las Vegas High School as well as UNLV majoring in elementary education and minoring in language arts. While she attended high school, she studied modeling in the evenings to help overcome her shyness and to become more outgoing. Becoming more involved with local and state beauty pageants, she met the likes of Phyllis Diller, Natalie Wood,
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Transcript of interview with Velma Haselton by Catherine Bellver, September 13, 2001
Interviewed by Catherine Bellver. Velma Haselton was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1914. She worked as an assistant bookkeeper for Hart, Schaffner and Marx and rose to Assistant Credit Manager. Velma worked at various jobs after she married for the second time and her son was born. She also represented the San Francisco CPA firm Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery (now Coopers Lybrand) in various capacities, both in California and St. Louis, eventually attaining the position of controller. Velma moved to Las Vegas for the first time in the 1950s, where she and her husband Don ran a coffee shop at the Park Lane Motel on South Fifth Street. Family requirements necessitated a move back to California. In 1971, Velma and her third husband, Charles Haselton, "retired" to Las Vegas. Velma immediately went to work as a cost accountant for United Pipeline, and later as an accountant for Kafoury Armstrong, a CPA firm. She eventually ran her own accounting business. Velma also held memberships and offices in various women's service groups.
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Transcript of interview with Sally Halko by Roberta Farmer, March 11, 1978
On March 11, 1978, Roberta Farmer interviewed Sally Halko (born 1921 in Gowen, Oklahoma) about her life in Las Vegas, Nevada. Halko first talks about her family background, education, traveling, and church membership. She later talks about the development Las Vegas casinos, racial minorities, housing growth, Lake Mead, and the first theaters.
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Transcript of interview with Roscoe Wilkes by Claytee White, March 19, 2009
Roscoe Wilkes was born in Bonanza, Colorado, and moved with his family to Pioche, Nevada for what his sister called a 75-year pit stop. Soon after their move to this rural Nevada town, Roscoe’s mother became a widow, raising two children during the Depression. Like many families in Pioche, the Wilkes’ made due with what they had, and were creative in sustaining their livelihoods. Roscoe has never stood still. Before enlisting in the military, Roscoe worked various jobs, as a PBX systems operator, a lead zinc miner, and grade school teacher, before enlisting. During World War II, Roscoe became a prisoner of war in Romania, and was rescued a few months later when the Germans began retreating. Returning to the United States after his release, he relocated to a base in California, and married. As soon as Roscoe was relieved of his military service, he took advantage of the then new G.I. Bill and enrolled in the University of Southern California School of Law. He immediately took his degree to Pioche, soon becoming its district attorney, and later a judge. He spent 18 years based in Seattle as a federal administrative law judge, hearing cases prosecuted by the Coast Guard. Roscoe ended his 45-year career in law in 1990, and moved to Boulder City, where four generations of Wilkes live.
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Photographs of Casino Royale and Denny's signs, Las Vegas (Nev.), 2002
Site address: 3419 S Las Vegas Blvd
Sign owner: Tom Elardi
Sign details: The Casino Royale is located on the east side of the strip facing west, just south of the Venetian. The smaller establishment shares its space with a Denny's restaurant, which was present before the Royale was opened. The exterior is adorned with a stylized, European-esque, architecture, including apparent windows, domes, towers, and a cohesive landscape of connected buildings. The exterior of the Royale is a brightly lit facade of white raceways, lined with incandescent bulbs, boxing in vibrantly toned walls, and subdued neon. The colors correspond with those seen in the sign itself, as well the neon placed inside the edges of the windows. One section displays purple, the next a teal color, next a blue, then a red. Total signage of the property includes a two LED screens, one on the west side of the building, and the other housed in the logo cabinet on the south west corner of the property. Two logo cabinets, one in the aforementioned spot, and the second facing west over the main entrance on the west side of the building. Two double-faced cabinets lie on the northern end of the west side of the building, advertising for Denny's restaurant. Two small logos signs are also placed on the west face of the structure, for Caffe Trilussa.
Sign condition: Structure 5 Surface 5 Lighting 5
Sign form: Fascia
Sign-specific description: Upon the southwest corner of the building, a blue cabinet houses an LED screen in the rectangular body of the cabinet. The cabinet continues upward where the blue steel face supports white channel letters bordered in red neon and filled with incandescent bulbs. The text is written in two lines. The cabinet continues upward and is transformed into the sculpted design of a pink, purple, red, and blue crown on channel faced scrolls and sweeping shapes. The interiors of each section are lined with neon of a corresponding color to the paint treatments. Around to the west side of the building, the same style of text and scrolling adornments are used in a different marquee sign denoting the main entrance to the establishment. The same style of text seen on the southwestern sign is present with the same pattern of scroll work, crafted in a cabinet style, with channel faces. The major difference between the two signs is the size. The main entrance sign is much larger than the corner sign, as well as not having a LED screen incorporated below the text. The western sign possesses more scroll work below the text instead. The neon treatments are the same, as well as the incandescent bulbs, inside of the text. The lower roofline of the property plays host to the small but noticeable signage for Caffe Trilussa. Upon a extended surface of the roof line, two separate signs for the establishment are present. The roof shape is three sided with the signage on the northwest and southwest sides of the extension. Inside a section of the entablature created with white raceways, brown channel letters, spell the text "Trilussa," stretching across the length of the surface. The brown letters sit upon a yellow surface and are filled with incandescent bulbs, which are as wide as the channel letters themselves. Spelled in bent neon tubing, the word "Caffe" is spelled in all capital letters, sitting just above the left hand side of the title text. The right of the collection is occupied by a graphically treated, two-dimensional cut-out of a palm tree. The palm tree is treated on the surface with neon tubing as well. The tubing glows green and a gold corresponding to the graphical treatments. At the northern end of the property, two signs sit outside facing north, south. The double backed, internally lit cabinets represent the advertisements for the Denny's restaurant attached to the Royale. The first is at ground level outside the main entrance of the restaurant, the six sided, green cabinet, sports a yellow plastic face with red graphic text, reading "Denny's" in script text. Around the border of the face, incandescent bulbs run in a raceway pattern, and are covered in a plastic sheath. An angular cabinet rests on top of the other cabinet, creating a shallow peak. The internally lit, white face reads "Casino Royale" in black text. The same cabinet can be seen cantilevering off of the west side of the building above its partner sign. The cabinets are of identical design except for there is no plastic sheath covering the raceway of incandescent bulbs, and the plastic face of the main section of the cabinet is treated in different graphics. The script reads "Denny's" similar red script, but with a different background.
Sign - type of display: Neon; Incandescent; Backlit
Sign - media: Steel; Plastic
Sign - non-neon treatments: Graphics; Paint
Sign animation: Chasing, oscillating
Notes: The incandescent bulbs inside the channel letters of the main text oscillate, while all incandescent bulbs on the raceways along the building chase each other also. The incandescent bulbs, which surround the Denny's cabinet, also chase each other.
Sign environment: The Casino Royale stands independently on it's own even though it is surrounded on all sides by casino giants. To the north stands the Venetian, to the South stands Harrah's, and the Mirage lies west across the street. Yes, the property itself seems to be dwarfed by the immense neighbors, but the ultra bright, clear external signage and facade create a charming and bright environment that announces its presence.
Sign manufacturer: YESCO
Sign - date of installation: 1992
Sign - date of redesign/move: The Royale was once the Nob hill, which was closed in 1980. It was reopened in 1992 as the Casino Royale.
Sign - thematic influences: The theme seems to be tied to a European theme with the French term "Royale" in the title. The scrollwork is reminiscent of confetti or Mardi Gras theme. Such a combination of elements to suggest a theme is seen in the Harrah's property also. The party themed reminiscent sculpted cabinets are also reminiscent of the Fleur de Li. Believe it or not, the property is tied to many other larger, corporate, properties in one respect regarding its facades. The facade of a town or city, shrunken down and stylized into the facade of the property is present all over the Strip. Such properties which utilize this technique, to one degree or the next, include: New York New York, Oshea's, Treasure Island, Bellagio, The Venetian, The Luxor, The Tropicana, and the Excalibur.
Surveyor: Joshua Cannaday
Survey - date completed: 2002
Sign keywords: Chasing; Oscillating; Fascia; Neon; Incandescent; Backlit; Steel; Plastic
Mixed Content
University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) 20th commencement program
Commencement program from University of Nevada, Las Vegas Commencement Programs and Graduation Lists (UA-00115).
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