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Santo was born in the Bronx, New York in 1937. Santo’s family includes his father who was a butcher, and his mother who mostly stayed at home to raise the children, as well as a brother who currently lives with Santo. Santo recalls that it was great growing up in the Bronx, and he spent most of his life there until he joined the Air Force when he was 17. Santo’s immediate family was not musically oriented, but he learned to play the drums from a cousin. Music came easy for Santo, and he started getting paid for playing when he was 12. At 17, Santo joined the Air Force with a group of friends. He auditioned for and was accepted into the Air Force band where he played drums for four years. Santo was married with a child and another child on the way when he ended his military career and moved to California. After jobs working as a security guard and on an assembly line, Santo knew he just wanted to play and came to Las Vegas in 1960 to play with a band. It took several years before Santo was able to get on with a permanent band. Once Santo broke into the scene in Las Vegas, he played for six years at the Flamingo. Following that he was on the road for a couple of years with Paul Anka. Upon returning to Las Vegas, Santo worked for 14 years at the Sahara. Santo talks about when “the boys” had the hotels before the corporations came in and how everything changed. Currently, Santo does a lot of work with trumpet player Carl Saunders, frequently traveling to Los Angeles to do recordings together.

Folder from the Flora Dungan Papers (MS-00193) -- Series 4. University of Nevada Regents Material.

On a sunny day in 1946, the train from Shreveport, Louisiana, stopped at The Plaza hotel in downtown Las Vegas like it always did. But on this particular day, Atha Toliver and her only child, twelve-year-old Barbara, stepped off the train and onto the dusty Western street of Fremont. Narrator Barbara Bates Kirkland recalls that event and living in Las Vegas for most of the next seven decades during this 2004 interview. Like many others who migrated from the South, Barbara Kirkland’s mother would find employment as a maid. A friend who already lived in Las Vegas had told her of the good paying jobs as private maid. So Atha who was determined that her daughter would get an education and a finer future saw this as her opportunity to achieve this for her daughter. Later, the entrepreneurial and creative mother opened Eva’s Flower Basket, a floral shop that Barbara operates in her retirement from teaching. Barbara returned to Louisiana for her senior year in high school, attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, and then returned to Las Vegas to teach first grade at Westside School. Barbara was active in the community, was a founding member of Les Femmes Douze, involved with Zion United Methodist Church and was friends with many of the early African American community leaders at the time. She talks about these, describes various neighborhoods where she lived and about raising her own two children in Las Vegas. Barbara was a founding member of Les Femmes Douze. AKA/Akateens.

From the Nye County, Nevada Photograph Collection (PH-00221) -- Series V. Smoky Valley, Nevada and Round Mountain, Nevada -- Subseries V.C. Lofthouse-Berg Families (Round Mountain). Back row: unidentified person, Mr. Peck (teacher), Irene ‘Rene” Rogers Berg Zaval, Ruby Zuzallo, unidentified person, Lucille Berg (7th from left), Pansy Weeks, unidentified person. Front row: unidentified person, Bill Berg, unidentified person, unidentified person, Dan Berg, Getta Berg, Kay Salisbury (identified from left to right).