Hugh Rossolo was born in Elko and moved to Reno in 1958. In the mid-1920s, his grandparents, Ralph and Marie Galletti, ran a small tamale factory in the Coney Island neighborhood located between Reno and Sparks. Eventually, it became the Coney Island Bar, still operated by the Galletti family. Rossolo, who became a teacher, shares family memories of the popular establishment and how the restaurant and its surroundings have changed through the years.
Full Oral History TranscriptInterviewed in 2013, Hugh Rossolo describes the path taken by his grandfather, Ralph Galletti, from his native Italy to San Francisco and then to Sparks, Nevada, where he founded the business that later became the Coney Island Bar. Recorded by Alicia Barber.
Hugh Rossolo describes how his uncle John Galletti and aunt Nettie Galletti split the duties at the family business, the Coney Island Bar, when he was growing up. Recorded by Alicia Barber.
Spencer Hobson was born in Reno, where his grandfather, Antonio Bevilacqua, emigrated from Italy. His family members owned several casino properties, including Virginia City’s Frontier Club and Reno’s Overland and Riverside Hotels. Spencer owns the Reno Brewing Company bottling plant building on East 4th Street, which his father purchased in 1956 after the brewery closed. He also discusses Reno’s Italian community and the urban renewal project that targeted homes north of East 4th Street in the 1960s.
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Norman Avansino was born in Reno in 1917 and raised in Virginia City. He worked at the power company and the Farm Bureau in Reno in the 1930s, and for Senator Pat McCarran in his Washington, D.C. office. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he worked briefly for the Veterans Administration and in 1948 began working in the front office at Eveleth Lumber, on East 4th Street. He left the company in 1980.
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John Mayer’s great-grandparents on his mother’s side arrived in Sparks in the 1890s, while his father’s parents moved there with the relocation of the Southern Pacific railroad shops from Wadsworth. Mayer vividly describes growing up in Sparks in the 1940s and 1950s. He taught for the Washoe County School District, and served for seventeen years on the Sparks City Council and the Board of the Regional Transportation Commission, which named the new RTC Centennial Plaza after him in 2009.
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