Waldemar Jackson was born on May 29, 1957 to Charcohe Ann Jackson and Lisele Wall Jackson. The Jacksons were one of the first black families in the West Las Vegas, Nevada neighborhood, Vegas Heights. He grew up facing racial tensions and prejudices.
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John G. Tryon was born December 18, 1920 and grew up in Washington, D.C., the oldest of three sons. His father worked with the National Bituminous Coal Commission during the Depression and his mother was editor of the American Association of University Women's Publications.
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Joan Massagli was born January 26, 1938 and spent her childhood in Tacoma, Washington singing three-part harmony—a member of a musically talented family that included five children as well as an aunt and uncle who raised all the kids to enjoy music. By high school in the early 1950s, she and her two older sisters were regulars on a local TV show.
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Hilda Bush was born in 1907 in Chernigov, Ukraine, Russia. Her family immigrated to the United States and settled in Bakersfield, California. She completed her elementary school training coursework through the Mennonite Church of America Board of Education in September 1925. Hilda and Charles Aplin married in 1927.
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Thalia Dondero was born January 23, 1921 in Greeley, Colorado. She lived in Colorado and Wyoming before her family settled in Bakersfield, California. Dondero moved to Las Vegas in 1943 when her employer took a job with Basic Magnesium, Inc., and asked that she follow him. She married Harvey Dondero, who taught English and journalism for local high schools, in 1946.
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Ruby Amie-Pilot was born April 03, 1932 and raised in Karnack, Texas. In 1952, Amie-Pilot boarded a train with her two young sons, Curtis Rufus Jr. and Herbert, to join her high school sweetheart and husband, Curtis Amie, in Las Vegas, Nevada. His family had moved to Las Vegas in the 1940s, seeking better job opportunities. Upon arriving, however, Amie-Pilot found the living conditions quite appalling.
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Architect Harry Hayden Whitely, born in 1890 in Bakersfield, California, studied drafting and worked as the chief draftsman for Twentieth Century Fox in 1920 after serving in World War I. Whiteley graduated in 1924 from the University of Southern California with a degree in engineering. He designed elegant residences in Beverly Hills before World War II, working among the architects Paul Revere Williams, Frank Taylor, and Adrian Wilson.
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