Preserve Nevada Board of Directors

One of Preserve Nevada's most significant accomplishments has been to bring together people from different parts of the state who share a common interest in preservation. Because of its unique geography, the Northern and Southern parts of Nevada can seem like different worlds, with entirely different histories and historical concerns. Preserve Nevada's Board of Directors represents the full range of these concerns within the state, and has played an important role in shaping a common understanding of the Nevada's preservation needs.

Former U.S. Senator Richard H. Bryan is a native Nevadan with a demonstrated commitment to the state of Nevada and its people. A graduate of Hastings Law School, Senator Bryan is a partner in the Lionel, Sawyer & Collins law firm and emphasizes Federal, state and local government relations; gaming, mining, and public land uses in his practice. Prior to serving two terms in the United States Senate, Bryan served with distinction as Clark County's first Public Defender, State Assemblyman and Senator, Attorney General and two terms as Governor. The Senator is an active community and business leader, and in addition to his duties as Chairman of the Board for Preserve Nevada, he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Nevada Development Authority and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce; a Board Member of the Las Vegas Performing Arts Center; and a member of the City of Las Vegas' Centennial Committee.

Alicia Barber teaches in the Department of History at UNR, where she serves as the department's Director of Public History. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. Her research and teaching interests include public history, American history and literature, tourism, urban studies, the American West, and Nevada. She has served on the City of Reno's Historical Resources Commission since 2004, and her book, Reno's Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City, was published in 2008.

Peter Barton serves as the Acting Administrator for the Nevada Division of Museums and History, overseeing the operations and programs of Nevada's seven State-sponsored museums. A graduate of the State University of New York with a degree in American history, Peter has spent nearly 35 years managing museums and historical organizations from coast to coast. With a special interest on transportation history he has developed numerous railroad museums, including the acclaimed Altoona (PA) Railroaders Memorial Museum, a museum that rather than celebrating advances in technology breaks from tradition and explores railroad life and labor in what was America's largest railroad community. During the 1990's while living and working in western Pennsylvania Peter played a role in developing the Southwestern Pennsylvania Heritage Preservation Commission, one of America's early National Heritage Areas. He also served as an organizer and Board member of the Allegheny Ridge State Heritage Park and served a term as President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Museums and Historical Organizations (PFMHO). Barton has also spent many years managing museum exhibit design projects for a variety of clients including the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, Mt. Vernon, the home of George Washington, the US Marine Corps (National Museum of the Marine Corps, Quantico, VA), the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service. For his efforts in developing engaging museum experiences he is the recipient of three internationally recognized Awards of Merit from the Themed Entertainment Association (THEA). In addition to his professional work, Barton serves as appointed chair of the Carson City Cultural Commission.

Mark Bassett is the Executive Director of the Nevada Northern Railway Museum in Ely Nevada. The museum is soon to become the nation’s newest National Historic Landmark. This fifty-six acre complex consists of sixty-six buildings and structures, operating steam locomotives, over sixty pieces of antique railroad equipment, thirty miles of track along with the corporate paper record of the railroad. Mark’s biggest challenge is how to preserve and protect this nationally significant landmark that is located in, what has been called, the most remote incorporated city in the continental United States. Part of the challenge is not just preserving the equipment and buildings, but teaching the skills necessary to maintain equipment that is almost a century old to the current generation. Mark’s experience as a National Trust for Historic Preservation Main Street Project Manager, Publisher, Retailer, Historic Building Restorer, Marketing Professional and Traveler give him unique insights in how to make the past relevant to present day visitors.

Michael A "Bert" Bedeau presently serves as District Administrator for the Comstock Historic District Commission in Virginia City. Prior to moving to Nevada he was Associate Deputy SHPO and Architectural Historian with the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office from 1996 to 1999 and Architectural Historian for the South Dakota State Historical Preservation Center from 1990 to 1996. Bert is a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles where he earned a B.A. in History and of Boston University from which he holds an M.A. in Historic Preservation Studies. He also has a J.D. from the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington D.C. and has been admitted to the practice of law in Massachusetts and South Dakota (now both inactive). He was privileged to be a member of the Board of Directors for the Society for Commercial Archaeology from 1995 to 2003, serving as President in his final year. Bert was also coeditor of the SCA Journal from 1997 to 2000.

Sue Fawn Chung is an Associate Professor of History at UNLV. She received her BA from UCLA, her A.M. from Harvard, and her Ph.D. from UCB. She has lived in Las Vegas since 1975. Currently she is on the Board of Advisors and Diversity Council of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Nevada State Board of Museums and History, and history consultant to the US Forest Service on recent archaeological projects involving Chinese Americans in conjunction with the UNR Anthropology Department. Sue Fawn Chung also is working on an online history of Chinese American sites for the National Park Service. She holds awards from the UNLV College of Liberal Arts in teaching and community service, the Nevada Humanities Committee (service), Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce (teaching), and American Association for Affirmative Action (service).

Joni Eastley is vice-chairman of the Nye County Board of Commissioners. She is a committed preservationist who, along with her husband Dennis, restored their home, the 1906 Raycraft House, in Tonopah. The restoration was featured on an episode of HGTV’s Restore Nevada and was selected for special recognition by the State Historic Preservation Office in 2005. Joni leads a multi-organizational partnership for the BLM’s Tonopah Field Station for the preservation of the historic Rhyolite townsite. She is also a founding member and secretary of the Tonopah Historic Mining Park Foundation Board and a longtime member of its Advisory Board. She is currently actively involved in the restoration of the 1906 Nye County Courthouse in Tonopah. Joni is an 11-year member of Rotary Club of Tonopah, where she has served as president as is a Paul Harris Fellow. She is past president of the Nevada Association of Counties, founding member of the domestic violence organization No to Abuse, current president of both the Nevada Airport Managers Association and the Central Nevada Regional Water Authority, and secretary and founding member of the Tonopah Development Corporation. She was appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to the BLM’s Mohave-Southern Resource Advisory Council in 1004 and is a 2006 County Leadership Institute Fellow of NYU Wagner.

Honor Jones was raised on a ranch near Gardnerville, Nevada. After receiving a BS degree in Biology from the University of Nevada, Reno, she taught science at Reno High School and in the city's adult education program. Subsequently, Honor founded a nationwide mail order company which she owned and operated for 20 years. She has volunteered for community and national agencies and in support of her alma mater, has served on the UNR alumni council and chaired the alumni travel committee. Serving as a board member of the non profit organization STEP 2, Honor implemented and for ten years chaired one of Reno's premier fundraisers, STEP 2's Homes for the Holidays. She has also served as the Master National Retriever Hunt Test Secretary. She is a Truckee Meadows Heritage Trust board member and one of Reno's Recreation and Park commissioners.

Melinda Gustin, SPHR, is the Vice President/ CFO of Gustin & Associates, Inc., a sports broadcasting/production and real estate administration firm, comprised of residential and commercial preservation redevelopment and new development projects. Historic landmark projects include the California Market, Hawkins House and Newlands Mansion renovations; with the Newlands project being featured on HGTV's Preserve America program and the PBS/KNPB House with a History series. Additionally, Melinda serves as the northern Nevada Advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Memberships include; Historic Reno Preservation Society, Scenic Nevada, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Society of Human Resource Management. Recipient; City of Reno Historic Resources Commission Inaugural Historic Preservation Advocacy Award and RHRC 2007 Restoration Nomination for the Francis G. Newlands Mansion, National Historic Landmark. She has a B.S. in Business Administration and has most recently received graduate certifications in Organizational/Human Resource Management and Advanced Business Management programs, University of Nevada - Reno.

Don Hardesty is an archaeologist who studies the modern world of the last 500 years. He completed MA and Ph.D. degrees in Anthropology at the University of Oregon. His graduate studies focused on human evolution and the ancient civilizations of the New World, including a master's thesis on Moche ceramics of the Peruvian north coast and a doctoral dissertation on human ecology. He has done archaeological fieldwork in Mexico, Guatemala, the American Southeast, and extensively throughout the American West. Presently, he is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he teaches classes ranging from historical archaeology to ecological anthropology and museology. He has been president of the Society for Historical Archaeology, the Mining History Association, and the Register of Professional Archaeologists. His publications include Ecological Anthropology (John Wiley, 1977), The Archaeology of the Donner Party (University of Nevada Press, 1997), and (with Barbara Little) Assessing Site Significance: A Guide for Archaeologists and Historians (AltaMira Press, 2000). At present, he is the archaeology theme editor for the UNESCO-sponsored Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems.

Mella Rothwell Harmon is the curator of history at the Nevada Historical Society, where she also serves as the managing editor of the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly. Ms. Harmon holds a masters of science degree in land use planning with an emphasis in historic preservation from the University of Nevada, Reno. She teaches Nevada history through UNR's Independent Learning program, and courses in historic preservation planning and survey and documentation in the Historic Preservation Program. From 1998-2005, Ms. Harmon served as the National Register of Historic Places coordinator for Nevada and was active in heritage tourism initiatives for rural communities. She currently serves on the board of St. Augustine's Cultural Center in Austin, Nevada.

Andrew G. Kirk is a history professor and the Director of UNLV’s Public History Program. His research and teaching focus on the intersections of cultural and environmental history in the modern U.S. with a special interest in the American West. These multidisciplinary interests shaped UNLV’s public history program. In addition to his work in helping to found Preserve Nevada, Kirk is the principal investigator on a series of innovative cooperative federal and regional research partnerships. Current projects include: an eight-year partnership with the National Park Service to research the historic and cultural resources of Western National Parks, The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ntsohp/ and the Autry National Center Fellowship that tracks graduate students through a special material culture program culminating with a research residency at the Autry National Center in L.A. His most recent book is,Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, Culture/America Series, 2007).

Courtney Mooney holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Architecture from University Nevada-Las Vegas, and a Master of Science Degree in Historic Preservation from Columbia University, New York. Currently she works for the city of Las Vegas as an Urban Design Coordinator and Historic Preservation Officer, developing and implementing historic preservation programs for the Planning & Development Department. She is also an active board member of the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, and Preservation Action!, a non-profit preservation advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. Courtney is a Nevada native, born in Elko and raised in Carson City. She spent her childhood exploring Nevada's museums, antique shops, and hidden ghost towns on the back of her father's motorcycle. She has a deep appreciation for Nevada history and has dedicated her professional life to preserving Nevada's historic resources.

Michelle Turk is a Ph.D. candidate in History of the American West. After studying history at University of California, Irvine and Meiji Gakuin University in Totsuka, Japan, she moved back to Las Vegas for graduate school. Her grandfather, Dr. Kirk V. Cammack, came to Las Vegas in the early 1960s and was instrumental in the growth and accreditation of the valley's hospitals, helping form the Nevada Chapter of the American Cancer Society and the first and only burn center in Nevada at University Medical Center in Las Vegas. Michelle served as Preserve Nevada's Deputy Director from 2005-2008, and is currently teaching History 101 and 102 at UNLV. Michelle has a vested interest in the rich cultural heritages of Nevada because of her family history in the state. Additionally, she is writing her dissertation on the medical history of southern Nevada. Michelle plans to teach and work in public history in Nevada after the completion of her degree.

Greg Seymour is Senior Archaeologist/Principal Investigator at SWCA Environmental Consultants in Las Vegas. He has been working as an archaeologist for more than 25 years and has conducted research in eight western states. Seymour's experience is broad based and includes expertise in both historic and prehistoric archaeology, as well as historic architectural assessment and restoration. He is particularly interested in the rapidly vanishing historic landscapes of the western United States. Recently, he completed a term as the Executive Director for the Great Basin National Heritage Route in Baker, Nevada. Mr. Seymour has been the Research Manager/Archaeologist at the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas where he supervised the initial planning and implementation of all preconstruction aspects of the project. He received his MA in Archaeology from UNLV with an emphasis in the prehistoric ceramics of Southern Nevada and the Lower Colorado River area. Early in his career he worked on Mexican Period adobes in California. He has completed large inventories and data recoveries and continues to be involved in numerous historic preservation projects in Nevada and Arizona. Additionally, Mr. Seymour serves on the City of Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commission, the Nevada Archaeological Association, and is a member of the Bureau of Land Management Resource Advisory Council, Mojave-Southern Great Basin RAC.

Robert Stoldal is an award-winning journalist and broadcast manager who is the former Vice President of News at KLAS Television and oversees the news operation of KLAS, KTUD, and Las Vegas ONE. During Stoldal's tenure as news director, United Press International honored KLAS as "Best Newscast in America." He was instrumental in the drive to allow the public to have access to judicial and governmental proceedings through television broadcasting and was elected to the Nevada Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1998. Nationally, he has helped to launch 24-hour news channels in Tennessee and Virginia and has served on the National Committee on Ethics in Television and was a board member of the National Committee on Civic Journalism. As a community leader, Stoldal works with several historical and preservation groups throughout Nevada as Chairman of the Board of the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society, Chairman of the City of Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commission and a board member of the State Commission of Cultural Affairs and the Las Vegas Springs Preserve Foundation. Stoldal also serves on the steering committee of a construction project to build a history museum in Las Vegas, scheduled to open in the fall of 2007. In addition, Stoldal serves on the Executive Committee of the City of Las Vegas Centennial Celebration Commission. Stoldal also serves on the Centennial Commissions History Working Group. The working group's projects include the creation and installation of historic markers for Las Vegas, along with creating and implementing plans to save historic structures. In March of 2003, Governor Kenny Guinn requested Stoldal's participation in the process of select to new United States quarter commemorating the state of Nevada. Stoldal now serves on this committee, chaired by Nevada State Treasurer, Brian Krolicki. The Nevada quarter will premier in January of 2006.

Jordan is working on his Ph.D. in US Intellectual/Cultural History and the History of the American West. Jordan received his BA in history from Brigham Young University in 2006. In the spring of 2009 Jordan received his MA in history from Claremon Graduate University, where he specialized in US religious history. Jordan wrote his thesis on nineteenth-century transcontinental travel narratives about the American West and its inhabitants.

Noel S. Wheeler, a graduate of the University of New South Wales, Australia has a 40 year career in International Business in Finance and the Human Resource sector. Presently serving as Chief Executive Officer for CLP Resources, Inc. a Reno NV based national skilled trades staffing company serving the construction industry, Noel brings the perspective of having lived and worked on four continents before settling in Reno in 1999, with wife Candace and youngest son Tynan (9). Noel's wife Candace, is the President and Founder of the Comstock Cemetery Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of the historic Comstock cemeteries.