Nebraska Quarterly Fall 2019

An itty bitty Herbie Husker wireless bluetooth speaker. An autographed football from Scott Frost. A bundle of letters written to future university leaders. A Valentino’s pie-shaped box (sans pizza). These items and others will be entombed in a time capsule for 50 years to attempt to capture what is important, right now, at the University of

Q U A R T E R LY

IT’S TIME TO COME HOME. Whether you live as close as South Lincoln or as far away as South Carolina, come back to campus and help us celebrate 2019 Homecoming “150 Years of Grit and Glory.” Now bigger and better than ever!

HOMECOMING PARADE

CORNSTOCK FESTIVAL

October 4 | 6:00 p.m.

• Homecoming floats and decorated golf carts • Marching Band and Spirit Squad • Homecoming royalty • Appearances by the 1969 Husker Football team and the 50 Year Homecoming Queen • Performances from community groups

October 4 | 4:30-9:00 p.m.

• Music and performances featuring Hannah Huston • Interviews with Fred Hoiberg, Bill Moos and former Husker players • Food trucks • Kids’ zone with games • and inflatables • Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom • Cocktails in the Coliseum alumni and friends social

LEARN MORE ›› n150.unl.edu/homecoming

LIV E S T R EAM ING Celebrate Good Times Nebraska’s weeklong celebration of the 150th anniversary of its charter rolled onto center court last semester as the Husker men’s basketball team defeated Minnesota, 62-61. During halftime at Pinnacle Bank Arena, fans were treated to a performance

by Nebraska Steel, UNL’s first student ensemble dedicated to playing steel drum music and a jubilant Herbie Husker leaping from a cake.

WHO WAS THERE? Athletic Director Bill Moos, Chancellor Ronnie Green and Football Coach Scott Frost who tossed T-shirts to surprised fans.

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FALL

Contents 2019

How good is your memory? What triggers a trip down Memory Lane? A song? A scent? A photograph? We polled alumni from all generations to find out what they remembered of campus on pivotal days in our country’s history. We heard from those in their 90s who were in school when Pearl Harbor was bombed and those in their 20s who recall the election of the first black U.S. president. P44 Helen Dinsmore was the 1913 May Queen and in 1971 wrote in vivid detail about campus at the turn of the 20th century. P32 Former Governor Bob Kerrey loved many things about his time on the Lincoln campus, including the chemistry lab in Avery Hall, the Nebraska museum and Sheldon; but none more than his college professors. P64

craig chandler

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4 Contributors 6 Homecoming 8 Community 10 Campus News 25 Voices 53 Bulletin 54 Alum Profiles

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Cherish Nebraska

Willa Cather

Class Quotes

It’s been 50 years since the fourth floor of Morrill Hall has been open to patrons.

Its transformation is a must-visit locale.

Discover why our famed alumna remains worthy of study and insight a century after she penned her prose.

Alumni tell us what item they would put into a time capsule that would be representative of their college days.

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NEBRASKA

CONTRIBUTORS

QUARTERLY

Fall 2019 VOLUME 115 NO. 3

BOB KERREY

Alumnus Bob Kerrey, who represented Nebraska as a United States senator from 1989-2001 and as its 35th governor, serves as the managing director at Allen & Company in New York City. Kerrey served three years as a Navy SEAL and is a Medal of Honor recipient. He earned his bachelor of science in pharmacy from the University of Nebraska in 1965.

Shelley Zaborowski, ’96, ’00 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Kirstin Swanson Wilder, ’89 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS

Kevin Wright, ’78 DIRECTOR, DESIGN

EmDash MAGAZINE DESIGN

JESSICA SIMPSON MARSHALL

Jessica Marshall (’11) graduated with a degree in advertising and public relations from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. She’s currently a marketing manager and copywriter for Nebraska Book Company and is a certified pilates instructor. She lives in Lincoln with her husband Travis, son Cal and dog Gus.

Lorenzo Petrantoni COVER ILLUSTRATION

NEBRASKA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION STAFF Stephen Boggs, ’12 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

ANDREW JEWELL

Andrew Jewell is a professor in the University Libraries and director of the Willa Cather Archive. He is the co-editor of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather and the digital Complete Letters of Willa Cather. He received his Ph.D. in English in 2004 and is currently at work on a new Cather biography.

Conrad Casillas ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Charles Dorse CUSTODIAN

Viann Schroeder

Julie Gehring, ’91

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Nebraska Quarterly Wick Alumni Center / 1520 R Street Lincoln, NE 68508-1651 Phone: 402-472-2841 Toll-free: 888-353-1874 E-mail: nebmag@huskeralum.org Website: huskeralum.org Views expressed in Nebraska Quarterly do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Nebraska Alumni Association. The alumni association

does not discriminate on the basis of gender, age, disability, race, color, religion, marital status, veteran’s status, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.

EDITORIAL QUERIES:

Kirstin Wilder (kwilder@huskeralum.org)

Deb Schwab ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VENUES

Jeff Sheldon, ’04, ’07

DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

SENIOR DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

Wendy Kempcke

Laura Springer, ’18

ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Tyler Kruger ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Michael Mahnken, ’13

Tracy Moore SE ND MAI L T O :

DIRECTOR, MEMBERSHIP

ALUMNI CAMPUS TOURS

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VENUES

Nebraska Quarterly is published quarterly by the Nebraska Alumni Association, the known office of publication is 1520 R St., Lincoln NE 68508-1651. Alumni association dues are $65 annually. Requests for permission to reprint materials and reader comments are welcome.

Ethan Rowley, ’03, ’13

Derek Engelbart

Jordan Gonzales ’17

Jeff Zeleny (’96) is senior Washington correspondent for CNN, where he covers President Trump and the 2020 presidential race. After graduating from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, he slowly moved east, working at the Des Moines Register, Chicago Tribune and The New York Times. A native of Exeter, Nebraska, he lives in Washington.

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALUMNI RELATIONS

MEMBERSHIP AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT

JEFF ZELENY

Heather Rempe, ’03

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Maria Muhlbach, ’09 DIRECTOR, ALUMNI OUTREACH

Lauren Taylor, ’19 VENUES AND EVENTS COORDINATOR

Andy Washburn, ’00, ’07 ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS

Hilary Winter, ’11, ’18 DIRECTOR, DIGITAL STRATEGY/PR

Hanna Peterson, ’16 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

ADVERTISING QUERIES:

Jeff Sheldon (jsheldon@huskeralum.org)

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

NEBRASKA

CONTRIBUTORS

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QUARTERLY

Fall 2019 VOLUME 115 NO. 3

BOB KERREY

Alumnus Bob Kerrey, who represented Nebraska as a United States senator from 1989-2001 and as its 35th governor, serves as the managing director at Allen & Company in New York City. Kerrey served three years as a Navy SEAL and is a Medal of Honor recipient. He earned his bachelor of science in pharmacy from the University of Nebraska in 1965.

Shelley Zaborowski, ’96, ’00 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Kirstin Swanson Wilder, ’89 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS

Kevin Wright, ’78 DIRECTOR, DESIGN

EmDash MAGAZINE DESIGN

JESSICA SIMPSON MARSHALL

Jessica Marshall (’11) graduated with a degree in advertising and public relations from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. She’s currently a marketing manager and copywriter for Nebraska Book Company and is a certified pilates instructor. She lives in Lincoln with her husband Travis, son Cal and dog Gus.

Lorenzo Petrantoni COVER ILLUSTRATION

NEBRASKA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION STAFF Stephen Boggs, ’12 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

ANDREW JEWELL

Andrew Jewell is a professor in the University Libraries and director of the Willa Cather Archive. He is the co-editor of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather and the digital Complete Letters of Willa Cather. He received his Ph.D. in English in 2004 and is currently at work on a new Cather biography.

Conrad Casillas ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Charles Dorse CUSTODIAN

Viann Schroeder

Julie Gehring, ’91

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SE ND MAI L T O :

Nebraska Quarterly Wick Alumni Center / 1520 R Street Lincoln, NE 68508-1651 Phone: 402-472-2841 Toll-free: 888-353-1874 E-mail: nebmag@huskeralum.org Website: huskeralum.org Views expressed in Nebraska Quarterly

do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Nebraska Alumni Association. The alumni association does not discriminate on the basis of gender, age, disability, race, color, religion, marital status, veteran’s status, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.

EDITORIAL QUERIES:

Deb Schwab ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VENUES

Jeff Sheldon, ’04, ’07

DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

SENIOR DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING

Wendy Kempcke

Laura Springer, ’18

ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Tyler Kruger ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Michael Mahnken, ’13

Tracy Moore materials and reader comments are welcome.

DIRECTOR, MEMBERSHIP

ALUMNI CAMPUS TOURS

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VENUES

Nebraska Quarterly (USPS 10970) is published quarterly by the Nebraska Alumni Association, the known office of publication is 1520 R St., Lincoln NE 68508-1651. Alumni association dues are $65 annually of which $10 is for a subscription to Nebraska Quarterly. Periodicals postage is paid at Lincoln Nebraska 68501 and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. Requests for permission to reprint

Ethan Rowley, ’03, ’13

Derek Engelbart

Jordan Gonzales ’17

Jeff Zeleny (’96) is senior Washington correspondent for CNN, where he covers President Trump and the 2020 presidential race. After graduating from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, he slowly moved east, working at the Des Moines Register, Chicago Tribune and The New York Times. A native of Exeter, Nebraska, he lives in Washington.

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALUMNI RELATIONS

MEMBERSHIP AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT

JEFF ZELENY

Heather Rempe, ’03

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Maria Muhlbach, ’09 DIRECTOR, ALUMNI OUTREACH

Lauren Taylor, ’19 VENUES AND EVENTS COORDINATOR

Andy Washburn, ’00, ’07 ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS

Hilary Winter, ’11, ’18 DIRECTOR, DIGITAL STRATEGY/PR

Y i

J f a A a

(

Hanna Peterson, ’16 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

M W

Kirstin Wilder (kwilder@huskeralum.org)

ADVERTISING QUERIES:

Jeff Sheldon (jsheldon@huskeralum.org)

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

W &

The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts

@carsoncenterunl

Bernie Su Peabody + Emmy Award Winning Web Series Creator, Artificial, Lizzie Bennett Diaries, Emma Approved

Maureen Fan Emmy Award Winning CEO + Co-Founder of Baobab Studios

Alex McDowell, RDI Production Designer—Minority Report, Man of Steel, Fight Club

Ashley Baccus-Clarke Molecular + Cellular Biologist + Multidisciplinary Artist

Preeta Bansal

Futurist, Paramount Pictures

Join us for a Grand Opening Celebration featuring members of the Carson Center’s award-winning, internationally recognized Advisory Council and faculty! Learn more at carsoncenter.unl.edu.

Carson Center Summit

Wednesday, November 13 & Thursday, November 14

Friday, November 15

VP + XR Creative Director, Live Nation LIVE

Lynette Wallworth Sundance Institute Board of Trustees, Award-winning Artist + Activist

(Schedule subject to change)

Master Classes & Workshops

Jeff Nicholas

Home Game: Cornhuskers vs.

Badgers Saturday, November 16

Grand Opening Celebration Sunday, November 17

The University of Nebraska does not discriminate based upon any protected status. Please see go.unl.edu/nondiscrimination.

You’re invited!

Ted Schilowitz

General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor, Obama White House

BREAKFAST PARADING WITH WITH THE DIANE EDITOR

Q:

Why should alumni return to campus for Homecoming?

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students, alumni and staff has been working diligently to reignite past traditions and establish future ones that will engage the entire Husker community.

This year ’s Homecoming Week will culminate on Friday, Oct. 4, with a full day of campus activities. Stop by in the morning for a campus tour before attending the Chancellor ’s Distinguished Lecture with Debra Kleve White’s presentation on school spirit. In the afternoon, you can stroll down 16th and R streets to view the traditional lawn displays depicting this year’s theme 150 Years of

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craig chandler

A: Because Homecoming 2019 will be bigger and better than ever before as the University of Nebraska celebrates its 150th birthday. It is a tremendous milestone for our university — and we encourage our alumni and friends from all decades to come home and celebrate.

The N150 committee desi g n a te d Ho m e co m i n g a s a signature event in our sesquicentennial celebratory year.

C h a r te r We e k i n Febr u a r y launched the celebration, and Homecoming will be the crescendo. An expanded Homecoming team involving

Grit and Glory. Evening festivities will bring everyone together for the Cornstock festival on the newly-renovated Memorial Mall just east of Memorial Stadium and adjacent to the historic Coliseum, the columns, Mueller Tower, Morrill Hall, Archie and the Athletics Hall of Fame.

The reinvigorated parade (which embarks on a new route) will travel west on Vine Street and include floats, bands, performers, golf carts decorated by student organizations, the spirit squad and mascots. Excitement will build as it enters Memorial Mall where the Cornstock festival will be in progress, offering a memorable evening.

Festivities include performances by parade participants and musical guests, the jester competition, introductions of Homecoming royalty and VIP guests, food trucks, a photo booth, inflatable games, face painting and more. The evening will cap off with a social for alumni to reconnect and reminisce during Cocktails in the Coliseum.

And, of course, there will be a football game on Oct. 5, when the Huskers play the Wildcats of Northwestern in an afternoon game at Memorial Stadium. The halftime show will feature the coronation of the Homecoming royalty and the Cornhusker Marching Band. There will be special N150 celebratory moments preceding kickoff and during the game.

So book an airline ticket, reserve a hotel, or just invite your friends to carpool from south Lincoln, because it’s time to come home.

—Diane Mendenhall, Associate to the Chancellor, and N150 celebration co-chair

Th C pl su

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COMMUNITY

Flag Patrol A Banner Year

As part of the sesquicentennial celebration of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, four flags were produced to demonstrate the farflung reach of Dear Old Nebraska U. Top right, Erika Hepburn (’12) with the Office of Global Strategies captured this image in April at an informal gathering of Omani alumni at Qurum Beach in Muscat, Oman. Below, Michelle Garwood (’05, ’07), assistant extension educator with the Panhandle Research and Extension Center poses with a flag at Smith Falls along the Niobrara River. The flags are traveling the globe and being signed by alumni before returning to Lincoln in time for homecoming celebrations in October.

Find Archie!

Shuck It! Bay Area Huskers

Morrill Hall’s Archie is hiding somewhere in the magazine, like only a 20,000-year-old mammoth can.

Find him, email us with his location at alumni@huskeralum.org and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a Husker prize! Congratulations to NAA life member and longtime supporter Cheryl Mead of Elkhorn.

Mead was a founding member of the Austin, Texas, University of Nebraska alumni chapter. She spotted Archie on page 25 of our summer edition on the handle of the Moscow mule cup.

Vincent D’Adamo (’97) of Napa, Calif., participates in the corn shucking contest at the Bay Area Huskers’ July picnic held in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The first person to husk three ears of corn clean enough for eating claims the cornbead necklace and bragging rights, according to the alumni group’s president, Brian Dehning (’84). The annual BBQ and student send-off has taken place since 1986.

Bonding with the Grands Future Husker University

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brian dehning; mackenzie zaruba

The first thing soon to be seven-year-old Lynden Williams did when she opened the door to her Future Husker University suite (aka a residence hall room on campus) was to place her plush cat, named Catty, on her pillow. Over the course of two days, Williams, accompanied by Catty and her grandparents, Cheryl (’75) and Ken (’75) Hassler, explored campus, climbed a rock wall and learned about virtual reality. “I thought it’d be a great experience for Lynden, so that she has a vision of what she can do in the future, and that the possibilities are endless for her,” Cheryl said.

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

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13 14 16 20 FIRST LOOK

DEVOUR

PROTEIN

COLLEGES

The Johnny Carson Center has opened.

Class beanies and burgers at P.O. Pears

Popcorn is about to get even healthier.

Where they have been and what’s next

FALL

“It is hard to chart a wise course forward without first knowing where we come from, how we got here and what is at stake.”

—MICHAEL FORSBERG (’89)

MORRILL HALL

Cherish Nebraska

BIG BRAG As tabulated in the 2019 American Lawyer 100 rankings, Nebraska Law finished No. 6 out of 201 law schools nationwide. The results are based on the 2018 graduating class, which tallied a 94% employment rate within 10 months of earning a degree.

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craig chandler

U

pon entering the University of Nebraska State Museum’s new fourth floor exhibit, Cherish Nebraska, visitors are greeted by one of the largest bison that ever lived in the state — or a fullsized replica of the bison, that is. The looming statue sits atop a pedestal with his curved horns in the rafters. In the background, chirping birds and nature sounds whisk visitors away from the confines of the museum’s top floor back to a Nebraska that existed hundreds of thousands of years ago.

“He arrived in three parts,” said Susan Weller, the museum’s director, of the bison. “Our elevator failed, so part of him was carried up the stairs and part of him was craned through a window. And the platform itself had to be lowered six inches.” This particular type of bison — the Giant Bison — would have existed in the state 120,000 to 130,000 years ago.

Further into the exhibit stands another ancient replica, this one of a saber-tooth, cat-like animal. A threatening-looking replica of the animal’s skull and enormous jaw is perched on a platform nearby. The jaw can be cranked open and closed with a mechanical gear, demonstrating how wide the gape opened to attack prey.

“It was part of a whole lineage of carnivores that were cat-like,” explained Weller. “It’s named Barbourofelis fricki for the third director of the museum, E.H. Barbour who was also the reason Morrill Hall was built in 1927.” Dr. Barbour, was a paleontologist who arrived on campus in 1891, 20 years after the University of Nebraska State Museum was established, but before its permanent home, Morrill Hall, was built. At that time the museum’s artifacts were cramped inside of University Hall, which would soon be condemned as a firetrap. Barbour and John Morrill, head of the university’s Board of

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FALL BIG BRAG Former Husker national champion Rachel Martin has been named the head rifle coach.

The 2017 alumna is the sixth head coach to lead the Husker rifle program and she owns the highest air rifle score in Nebraska history.

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“There is no more important issue of our time than water — both quantity and quality,” he said. “Water is our lifeline, and it connects us on the planet.”

An interactive watershed table lets visitors make landforms using a paper mâché substance. The display demonstrates how water flows from high to low areas.

“Play is important in learning,” explained Weller.

“So, we have some crawl-throughs, we have some pettable turtles and otters and other tactile things.”

Mariah Lundgren (’14), producer and project manager for the Platte Basin Timelapse project, also contributed to the watershed portion. The Platte Basin Timelapse project uses multimedia content to educate people about what it means to live in a watershed. It documents the Platte River Basin, from its headwaters in the Colorado Rockies to the river’s confluence with the Missouri River on the state’s eastern border. Lundgren was first introduced to the project as a student in Forsberg and Farrell’s class.

Lundgren helped curate, gather and edit Platte Basin Timelapse imagery and video for display in the Cherish Nebraska exhibit.

“I hope visitors leave with a sense of pride for the state and the Great Plains in general. There is such rich human and natural history here, and that is something Nebraskans should be proud of,” she said.

In another area, a combination of real and fabricated plants and insects make up a life-sized diorama. Weller, who is also an entomologist, helped collect several of the insects, like a small bee sitting atop a flower petal.

“We have a few specimens in our entomology collection, however, we could not put them on display, because they are very important. So, working with Innovation Studios, we were able to get an accurate scan of the specimens and they created the 3D print,” Weller said.

Interactivity is the hallmark of the Cherish Nebraska exhibit. Touchscreen videos and games, drawers that pull out to reveal fossils and other specimens, a visible lab where scientists can be watched removing rock from fossilized bone, and bees housed in a turn-table hive invite visitors of all ages to play, touch and explore.

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craig chandler

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Regents, teamed up to find a solution.

The first rendition of Barbour and Morrill’s dream came true in 1908 when a dedicated museum was built. But, the structure was designed to be a small part of a much larger building, and due to financial constraints, it was never completed. In 1912, a fire broke out in one of the building’s stairwells causing extensive damage. As a result, the collections had to be cleaned, preserved and repaired, and Barbour and Morrill went back to the drawing board.

Finally, in 1927, Morrill Hall was completed. Over the years, the building housed the geology and fine arts departments, along with the museum, but today, it’s solely home to the University of Nebraska State Museum. Morrill Hall sits in the heart of City Campus.

Archie, a Columbian mammoth statue who found his home there in 1998, greets the visitors outside.

Before the fourth floor was remodeled, a complicated set of offices, classrooms and research labs were housed there, but that posed both a security risk and a threat to the museum’s accreditation.

Enter Cherish Nebraska. The original vision for the exhibit began in 2012, and in 2016 pieces began falling into place. The 11,000-square-foot exhibit officially opened in February, during Charter Week, when the university marked its 150th anniversary.

So, decades leader, E.H. Barbour’s dream has finally come full circle, complete with a saber-tooth carnivore’s replica bearing his name.

The saber-tooth animal existed about 7 million years ago when the state was more of a tropical savannah. Elephants, rhinos and camels also roamed the land. In fact camel fossils are well represented in the museum’s internationally recognized Vertebrate Paleontology collection, Weller noted.

Behind the bison and Barbourofelis, floor-to-ceiling murals depict Nebraska’s diverse history, from past to more present. As visitors walk deeper into the exhibit, the murals begin depicting fewer trees and more grasses until finally today’s modern prairie comes to life.

The story of the state’s modern prairie is incomplete without addressing water’s role. Conservation photographer and assistant professor of practice, Michael Forsberg (’89), and Mike Farrell, assistant professor of practice and special projects manager for the Center for Great Plains Studies, helped create an interactive experience that shows water’s journey throughout Nebraska.

Weller said she asked Farrell if there was one thing visitors should understand after coming through.

“Mike looked at me and said ‘I want them to think like a watershed.’ And I said, ‘couldn’t you choose something easier?’”

Forsberg reinforced water’s critical role in Nebraska.

OVERHEARD

Forsberg hopes the exploration extends beyond the exhibit. “I think if folks take the time and immerse themselves into this exhibit, they will be blown away by the depth and diversity of life, history and geography of this place most people consider flyover country,” he said.

“And, they may be inspired to explore it and be proud protectors and stewards of our shared natural heritage.”

As the university continues its sesquicentennial celebration this year, understanding our past is the clearest way to envision our future. If Cherish Nebraska can play a role in that by giving visitors a deeper appreciation for the state’s history, it will have been a success.

“History has many lessons to teach us. It is also the foundation upon how we live in the present and how we might live in the future,” Forsberg said. “It is hard to chart a wise course forward without first knowing where we come from, how we got here and what is at stake.” ­­—Jessica Marshall (’11)

“Growing up in Lincoln — it’s a mostly homogenous community, but we do have a large refugee population — and working with Lincoln Literacy has opened my eyes to ways we could better serve these populations. Being around refugee and immigrant populations, I’ve seen how much richness they bring to our communities.”

—SENIOR EMILY JOHNSON who was selected as a Harry S Truman scholar which provides aspiring public servants $30,000 for graduate education.

BIG BRAG The quarter-scale tractor A-Team took top honors at the International QuarterScale Tractor Student Design Competition.

The competition brought 24 collegiate teams from the United States, Canada and Israel together to test their skills at the June event.

jonny ruzzo

FIRST LOOK Opening its doors this fall, the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts will prepare students for careers in filmmaking, game design, special effects, theme park experiences, virtual reality and other rapidly growing media fields. The $9 million renovation transformed the former Nebraska Bookstore on 13th and Q streets into a 36,500-square-foot hub for technology and creativity that will build the next generation of movie makers, robot builders, app designers and more. Visit carsoncenter.unl.edu for details on the grand opening scheduled for Nov. 17.

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ION!

VINTAGE EDIT

DEVOUR IN HUSKER COUNTRY

RIDE

Horse and Buggy Long before the days of Uber, or even designated drivers, students caught rides to university parties in buggies. Men in top hats and white gloves would pick up their formal dates in a horsedrawn cab called a “hack,” and off they went to dance the night away.

1910s

WEAR

Beanies Although the alleged intention of this long-standing tradition was to honor and identify freshmen, they weren’t always fans. The new students wore a beanie every day until the freshman-sophomore Olympics event in November — or until Christmas, if they lost.

1920s

1930s

DANCE

Swing Banquets, formal parties and highly-regarded events like the Military Ball were the prime time to show off your foxtrot, Charleston and tango to the beat of lively swing jazz music.

2000s

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red eeer: brian henn

VISIT

Haymarket Park Haymarket Park opened just in time for third baseman Alex Gordon to take the field from 2003 to 2005. He was the second overall pick in the 2005 Major League Baseball draft and has since had a long career with the Kansas City Royals.

WEAR

1940s

Skirts Forget rolling out of bed and grabbing breakfast in your pajamas before class. In the mid-century, women weren’t allowed to wear pants in the dining halls — or basically anywhere else on campus.

1950s

LISTEN

James Valentine Before Maroon 5 guitarist and Nebraska student James Valentine was headlining the Super Bowl and going on world tours, he was performing for Lincolnites at the Zoo Bar and Duffy’s Tavern.

DRINK

Red Beer The day drink is said to have emerged in this decade. Today, red beer — the unique combination of light domestic beer and tomato juice — can still be seen in just about every bar before kickoff.

1990s 1970s 1960s

LISTEN

Barbara Hendricks Famed operatic soprano Barbara Hendricks (’69, ’15) performed with the University Singers during her college days. She was never allowed to perform a solo because she was not a music major.

GROOVE

Cornstock This campus concert, which began in 1970 and ran annually through the early ’90s, was the Nebraska version of Woodstock: bell-bottoms, free love and psychedelic music galore. This year a post-parade homecoming concert will carry on its legacy under the same name.

2010s

BUY

Tech gear Today’s lecture halls are filled with laptops, tablets and smartphones.

The UNL Computer & Phone Shop opened in the Student Union in 2003 (since rebranded Huskertech) to fix these gadgets when they fail.

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2000s

1980s

EAT

Burgers at P.O. Pears Collegians played sand volleyball, heard local bands (including the Tri Delt Washboard Band) and consumed monster burgers in the bright red building on 9th Street which closed in 2008.

WATCH

Tommy Lee Goes to College In 2005, the campus doubled as the set of NBC’s reality show Tommy Lee Goes to College, where the Motley Crue drummer attempted (and failed) to fit in as an everyday college student by living in a residence hall, playing in the marching band and attending a class or two.

—COMPILED BY HANNAH TRULL (’19)

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FALL BIG BRAG Three Department of Agronomy and Horticulture faculty have been awarded a grant from the Nebraska Environmental Trust to develop a decision-support tool for the successful incorporation of cover crops into Nebraska cropping systems.

craig chandler

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QUAL IT Y CONTROL Genes to Proteins Two kernels of the same idea — cultivating protein quality in cereal grains — are reaching maturity at the university.

The quality of protein often gets overshadowed amid the spotlight on its quantity. But that quality occupies the mind of Nebraska researchers. By adopting different approaches the team has roughly doubled the lysine content of popcorn and sorghum.

WHO’S IN THE PHOTO? Nebraska’s David Holding, right, and Leandra Marshall are developing lines of popcorn featuring higher levels of lysine, an amino acid essential to the diets of humans and livestock.

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FALL Love Library glows red during the 24-hours of giving on Charter Day in February.

BIG BRAG Nebraska’s Pershing Rifles were named Best Overall Company at the 2019 National Convention in Kansas City in March.

GLOW BIG RED

150 AND COUNTING WHAT STARTED OUT AS A BATTLE FOR THE STATE’S UNIVERSITY LOCATION HAS TURNED INTO A LINCOLN CAMPUS BOASTING NINE

he charter that established Dear Old Nebraska U 150 years ago was approved in an incredible feat of legislative efficiency. The seminal document also broke new ground for the Morrill Act and can trace its roots to Thomas Jefferson.

In 1855, acting Governor T.A. Cuming asked the

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Nebraska territorial legislature to establish a university. During the course of the next decade, more than two-dozen charters were issued to create Nebraska University in towns across the state. These proposals were so frequent that the legislature had blank charters printed to give out to developers as needed.

None of these early charters were successful.

An act passed in 1867 set Lincoln as the capital

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craig chandler

T

COLLEGES AND THOUSANDS OF PROUD ALUMNI

jonny ruzzo (3)

OVERHEARD

city. The act also stated that the university would be in Lincoln and that, “the State University and State Agricultural College shall be united as one educational institution.” To further establish the importance of Lincoln, the 1867 act also placed the penitentiary and insane asylum in the new capital city.

Nebraska’s state university did not exist until the first state legislature met in Omaha in 1869. In a flurry of activity on Feb. 15, 1869, Nebraska’s then twohouse legislature unanimously approved the university charter and sent it to the governor to be signed.

States had three years from statehood to accept provisions of the Morrill Act — which granted land to states that could be sold or leased to provide funds for universities — and two more years to construct a building and open a university. Nebraska met both deadlines. The legislative act that formed the university’s charter allowed Nebraska to claim some 136,080 acres for the university under the terms of the Morrill Act. The bill that established the university was written

by August Harvey, a state legislator from Nebraska City. In creating the bill, Harvey drew inspiration from the charter of the University of Michigan, the most firmly established of state universities at that time.

As written, the University of Nebraska charter established an institution open to all inhabitants of the state — not just citizens or youth. This view — that the university “shall be to afford to the inhabitants of the state the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science and the arts” — broadened the scope of the Morrill Act, making the University of Nebraska open to all regardless of age, sex, color or nationality.

From the very first day of classes, women have been enrolled along with men.

The charter outlined the establishment of six “departments,” which included a College of Ancient and Modern Literature; Mathematics and the Natural Sciences; College of Agriculture; College of Law; College of Medicine; College of Practical Science, Civil Engineering and Mechanics; and College of Fine Arts (which could only be established when the annual income of the university exceeded $100,000). The first department, the College of Ancient and Modern Literature, Mathematics and the Natural Sciences was renamed the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and opened in fall 1871. The college, since renamed the College of Arts and Sciences, is the university’s largest, with 34 majors and 59 minors. The college boasts more than 45,000 alumni.

On the following pages you’ll learn about the nine colleges in existence today.

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“It’s the honor of a lifetime for my family and me to return to Lincoln and have the chance to be a head coach. It’s something I can hardly describe. It’s something that dreams are made of.”

—COACH WILL BOLT (’03, ’06), upon being named head baseball coach of his alma mater.

“We are establishing a new rural recruitment program that builds upon the university’s strength and commitment to students from all areas of the state.”

—ABBY FREEMAN, director of admissions

“There is cutting edge research here in Nebraska.

It’s been truly exciting to see as it reinforces one of my core beliefs, that every part of the world has talent and opportunity. Major in learning, we are at our best when learning, exploring and innovating.”

—MICROSOFT CEO SATYA NADELLA, speaking to the university community at the Lied Center in April.

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FALL >>

AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND NATURAL RESOURCES

BIG BRAG The Department of Sociology is leading a five-year, $1.2 million Science Education Partnership Award from the National Institutes of Health Institute of General Medical Sciences, to fund the new Worlds of Connections project. The project’s big goal is to increase public understanding of network science approaches to health research and to increase diversity in health careers by developing and implementing informal science activities in after-school clubs.

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ESTABLISHED: June 25, 1872, as the College of Agriculture. The college moniker has changed numerous times over the decades. The term College of Agriculture was used in two different senses until the establishment of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources on April 1, 1974. After forming IANR, the College of Agriculture strictly meant the teaching division of the university. The current college name was established in 1990.

CURRENT STUDENTS: 3,199 BIG BRAG: The college has an 89% retention rate due to individualized advising, career services and guaranteed job offers.

DID YOU KNOW: The experiences of graduates are diverse, however, what unites the community is science. The foundation of the 30-degree programs offered in the college is science.

WHAT’S NEXT: The college is looking forward to renovations on East Campus including a first-class Nebraska East Union and the redevelopment of the C.Y. Thompson Library with the addition of the Dinsdale Family Learning Commons.

ARTS AND SCIENCES ESTABLISHED:

1871

5,285 Students, faculty and alumni have consistently been recognized for their scholarship, teaching and service. It is home to students recognized as Boren, Critical Language, Fulbright, Gilman and Goldwater scholars who have gone on to receive Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, and Genius Grants. The CURRENT STUDENTS: BIG BRAG:

faculty include UNL’s first female American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow, two Guggenheim fellows and a former Poet Laureate.

DID YOU KNOW: Every undergraduate takes a course in the college.

WHAT’S NEXT: The college is enhancing programs and introducing initiatives for students, faculty and staff under the new leadership of Dean Mark Button.

ARCHITECTURE

ESTABLISHED: 1877 as Industrial College; the first architecture class was offered in 1894 CURRENT STUDENTS: 513 DID YOU KNOW: Being part of a land-grant university, the students and faculty embrace projects that improve and make a difference in local communities including designing the Santee Sioux Nation Family Resource Center near Niobrara, partnering with the Omaha Stormwater Program to clean up the environment by promoting green infrastructure, teaming with NeighborWorks Lincoln to make neighborhoods more walkable and creating a new interior facility for the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha.

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FALL ENGINEERING

ESTABLISHED: 1909, the college merged with the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s School of Engineering in 1970 becoming the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Engineering and Technology CURRENT STUDENTS: 3,708 BIG BRAG: Since the college’s inception, it has produced nearly 29,000 engineers and other professionals.

DID YOU KNOW: Today’s modern subway system owes its existence to 1897 electrical engineering graduate Bion J. Arnold, who is remembered as the “father of the third rail.” As a pioneer in electrical engineering, he created an innovative electrification system that became the standard for interurban and street railway industries.

He is buried in Ashland.

WHAT’S NEXT: The college is in the first of three phases for facility upgrades. These include $75 million for a new research-focused building (to replace the Link) and to renovate Scott Engineering Center; an $85 million new building on City Campus focused on the undergraduate experience; and renovations and enhancements to The Peter Kiewit Institute in Omaha.

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LAW

1889 as the Central Law College 385 BIG BRAG: Graduates have served as presidential cabinet members, federal advisers, mayors, nonprofit directors, CEOs and business leaders. They lead in their communities on school boards, boards of directors, and even as Little League coaches. The college boasts five of the seven sitting Nebraska Supreme Court Justices and six of Nebraska’s current state senators as well as five former governors.

DID YOU KNOW: Third-year law students in the Children’s Justice Clinic serve as a guardians ad litem for children in the child welfare system.

WHAT’S NEXT: The Governance and Technology Program will bring together faculty and students across law, business and engineering to study the relationship between technology, society and the government on a transdisciplinary basis. The program will also study and evaluate the regulatory concepts that could be applied to technology governance.

ESTABLISHED:

CURRENT STUDENTS:

BIG BRAG Isaiah Roby became the highest drafted Nebraska men’s basketball player in 21 years, as he was a second-round selection during the NBA Draft. Roby was originally picked by the Detroit Pistons before his rights were traded to the Dallas Mavericks.

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FALL BIG BRAG The university has earned an $11.85 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a research center focused on understanding and addressing drug addiction in the rural Midwest.

FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS

ESTABLISHED: When the college was founded on July 1, 1993, it was as the College of Fine and Performing Arts. It became the HixsonLied College of Fine and Performing Arts in January 2000.

CURRENT STUDENTS: 872 BIG BRAG: Thanks to the $18 million endowment given by Christina Hixson and the Lied Foundation Trust, the endowment has had a total impact of more than $17 million through faculty, student and program grants.

DID YOU KNOW: The Nebraska Repertory Theatre, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, is the state’s only regional, professional theater. This year-round theater allows students to work with professional actors, directors and designers and gives them the opportunity to earn credits toward union membership in the Actors’ Equity Association before graduating.

WHAT’S NEXT: The college has opened the new Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts this fall, where students will learn to boldly leverage new and emerging technologies, master the universal art of storytelling and be entrepreneurs — across film, virtual and augmented realities, wearable computing, experience design, sound and more. The Center was made possible with a $20 million gift from the Johnny Carson Foundation.

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EDUCATION AND HUMAN SCIENCES

ESTABLISHED: Programs as early as 1895 and 1898. The current college was formed in 2003 with the union of Teachers College and the College of Human Resources and Family Sciences.

CURRENT STUDENTS: 3,877 BIG BRAG: The Preschool Getting Ready Project is an evidence-based practice started in small Nebraska towns which has spread to other states.

WHAT’S NEXT: Under new dean Dr. Sherri Jones, the college will develop a new strategic plan and explore the development of an alumni advisory board.

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FALL used today as the Husker fight song.

WHAT’S NEXT: After more than 50 years as a leader in MBA education, the program will offer a portfolio of online graduate programs including master’s degrees in business analytics and finance, as well as graduate certificate programs in business analytics, human resource management and supply chain management.

JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS The first journalism class was taught in 1894 and in 1923 the School of Journalism was formed. It wasn’t until 1985 that the College of Journalism was established. Its current name was approved by the Board of Regents in 1993.

CURRENT STUDENTS: 1,121 BIG BRAG: The college is the only collegiate winner of the Grand Prize in the 50-year history of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards.

DID YOU KNOW: The college has a tradition of winning prestigious national awards. In May 1963, President John F. Kennedy presented the college with the first-place overall award in the Hearst Journalism Competition at the White House.

ESTABLISHED:

BUSINESS

The college was established as the School of Commerce in 1913 and became the College of Business Administration in 1919. The word administration was dropped from the name in 2017.

CURRENT STUDENTS: 4,399 BIG BRAG: Since its opening in 2017, Howard L. Hawks Hall serves as a space to inspire and enable people to collaborate, innovate and congregate. The privately funded, $84 million home for the college was built by alumni for future alumni.

DID YOU KNOW: Business student Harry Pecha wrote Dear Old Nebraska U in 1923 and it continues to be ESTABLISHED:

BIG BRAG The state of Nebraska will have more than 34,000 annual openings in highskill, high-demand, high-wage jobs in the years ahead, according to the state’s Department of Labor. More than two-thirds of those will require higher education with many of them in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

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CELEBRATING UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN

WITH KIM HACHIYA CRAIG CHANDLER, DIRECTOR OF PH?TOG PHY. FOREWORD BY TED 'i { o OSE R

Unforgettable people. Beloved places. Enduring memories. From its beginning in 1869, the University of Nebraska has expanded the frontiers of opportunity for nearly three hundred thousand graduates. This

lavishly illustrated volume celebrates Nebraska's 150th anniversary with a look back at the alumni, faculty, and staff who have made an enduring impact on the world. The book also highlights the iconic buildings and landmarks on campus and the activities and experiences of students, from the East

Campus Dairy Store and the Daily Nebraskan to the Big Red sensation of Husker athletics.

There really is no place like our dear old Nebraska U.

Dear O l d Nebraska U: Celebrating 150 Years

University of Nebraska-Lincoln with Kim Hachiya

Craig Chandler, Director of Photography Foreword by Ted Kooser

$34-95 H A R D C O V E R

F UNIVERSITY O

NEBRASI(A Pili s

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Visit nebraskapress.unl.edu and use code 6DEA to receive a 40% discount.

The School of Art, Art History & Design showcased 25 artists during an exhibition entitled Nebraska Alumni Artists 1989-1992 in Richards Hall. Below is one of the pieces which was on display throughout the summer.

todd peterson

SHARING THE VIEWPOINTS OF OUR ALUMNI, FACULTY AND STUDENTS

TODD PETERSON (’89) BUT WHO WILL REMEMBER THE BUXTON WONDERS (DETAIL) Screenprint, 28” x 22” (unframed), 2007 “I create prints, paintings and drawings to honor those that are most important to me — family, friends and personal heroes. My work is about how life, memories, and meaning intertwine and how time and chance affect us all,” Peterson said.

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25

1960s

Beatniks, Hippies and Free Speech The year was 1966 when freshman Mick Lowe was enlightened as Allen Ginsberg spoke and chanted with a crowd of students

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lincoln agnew

BY MICK LOW E Award-winning journalist and author

I

was only 17-years-old when I entered the University of Nebraska’s Lincoln campus as a freshman in the fall of 1965. I didn’t know it then, but it happened to be the sweet spot between the beatnik and hippy generations. I enrolled in the Journalism School, the random result of having been awarded a scholarship to cover my full tuition ($334 per year), provided I study to become a reporter. Since I was a “townie,” I continued to live at my mother’s house on Sheridan Boulevard, commuting to school on my Honda 90.

This very outcome, my brother and I later concluded, was the reason we’d moved to Lincoln — our widowed mother was farsighted enough to realize living at home would be the only way we could afford a university education. I doubt very much, however, that she could have been farsighted enough to foresee that this would also qualify us for student deferments that would keep us out of the draft, and out of the war in Vietnam, quite possibly saving our lives.

Carl Davidson and Al Spangler also arrived, unheralded, on campus in the fall of 1965. They were philosophy grad students from Penn State who, unaccountably, never got the memo about the departure of a particularly illustrious Nebraska philosophy professor to a different school. They’d come to study with him. They were also packing some formidable baggage. They’d both been active in a newly-formed, and still little-known, organization called the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. Especially Davidson — he was prominent enough in the Movement that he’d later serve a term as National Vice Chairman of the Society following his stint in Lincoln. As devoted apostles of the New Left, I’m sure Davidson and Spangler arrived with every intention of opening an SDS chapter at Nebraska. But first, like the first-rate, savvy organizers they were, they weighed in with a more innocuous proposition: why not start a speaker’s forum, a kind of open microphone, where the issues of the day could be discussed by the student body in a public forum, similar to the famous “speaker’s corner” in London’s legendary Hyde Park? Not much would be required — maybe a raised platform where students could take turns at the mic, a public address system and a suitable space. We were in the era of the Free Speech Movement, after all. Maybe even call the event “Hyde Park.” But where could such a spectacle be staged?

Apart from the classroom, of course, there was really only one place on campus where Greek and non-Greek commingled on neutral territory as wary equals, and that was the Student Union at

daily nebraskan archives

VOICES 14th and R streets. Located directly across from the administration building, the Union was the center of undergraduate student life.

There was a fairly beat-up, but sizeable, old ballroom (the building had formally opened in 1938) on the second floor, and just below was the heart of the whole campus — a large cafeteria called, in keeping with our motif as the Cornhusker State, The Crib. The place pulsed with the rhythm of its jukebox, blaring out The Mamas and the Papas and Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone at all hours, interspersed with The Byrds’ popular cover of another Dylan tune Mr. Tambourine Man. Familiar campus characters suspected of being more hangers-on than registered, class-attending students were also in evidence there. They were dubbed “Crib rats.”

Just outside the Crib was an expansive, open-concept student lounge lined with large floor-to-ceiling windows that provided generous, natural light.

Why not move the minimal lounge furniture off to the side, wire up a mic, a stand, and a PA system at one end and hold the first Hyde Park there? One afternoon each week was set aside for the event, and Hyde Park almost immediately became part of the culture.

It was high-visibility and high-traffic. Passersby, idling Crib rats, super-straight frat boys just moving from class to class, all found themselves waylaid by some passionate, eloquent debate between the speaker and the assembled audience, which could number 100 or more, strictly standing room only, you understand. Passionate, eloquent and cogent and occasionally just downright bizarre.

And no Hyde Park was ever more bizarre than the frosty winter afternoon on Feb. 17, 1966, when Allen Ginsberg took the stage.

It was a shock. It was a scandal. It was no secret that Ginsberg had arrived in Lincoln with his boyfriend Peter Orlovsky. (The pair were on a cross-country road trip that produced, among others, the poem Ginsberg read aloud to us that day, the newly-completed Wichita Vortex Sutra.)

An openly self-admitted homosexual stood before us, with his shock of wiry, greying receding hair and scraggly beard. No one quite knew what to make of him, but a fraternity boy, attired in the frat boy uniform of navy blue jacket with his Greek letters emblazoned over his heart, clean-cut blonde hair, button-down dress shirt, sweater vest, wheat jeans and brown penny loafers decided to appeal to our common, Christian decency: where did Ginsberg get off, standing in front of us all, openly admitting to his filthy, perverse, and, quite possibly, illegal, homosexual perversions?

The most famous Beat poet of the age peered

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calmly at his inquisitor through his horn-rimmed glasses, and paused before answering, and suddenly, for me, a thousand-watt light came on for the first time.

He had it all wrong, Ginsberg told the frat boy gently. He had no interest in having sex with boys, in fact no interest in forcing himself on anyone at all. What he did advocate was the right of two consenting adults to have sexual relations as they so chose.

Homosexuality was not to be equated with perversion.

Of course! Suddenly it all made too much sense for me, although I had, just moments earlier, harbored every homophobic impulse known to all red-blooded midwestern, Lutheran boys. He might look a little weird, but this guy was talking common sense. Ginsberg thanked us for listening, and invited us to a public reading he’d be giving upstairs in the ballroom the next day. I wouldn’t have missed it, and joined a packed assemblage of more than 1,000 this time, listening with rapt attention as Ginsberg, accompanying himself on tiny finger cymbals, read poems that morphed into chanted invocations to Allah, to Buddha, to

On Feb. 17, 1966, Allen Ginsberg, center, held a news conference in student Steve Abbott’s apartment with reporters from the Lincoln press corps.

the Eternal, to the mystic Godhead, “OMmmmm, OMmmmmm, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Karma, Hare Karma.”

The finger cymbals rang out pure and clear as the words poured forth, their cadence like a trance. The hair of your neck and arms prickled.

It was all a singular, formative moment in my university education.

Excerpted from Mick Lowe’s unpublished memoir, Generation of Misfits: A Sixties Memoir.

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Stephanie Teten

Nathaniel Korth

Erica Pribil

Johnson, NE

Fayetteville, AR

Erica Marshall

Toluwalope Makinde

Johnson, NE

Kaelyse Clapper

Tessa Porter

Peru, NE

Emilie O’Connor

Stephanie Teten

Luverne, MN

Omaha, NE

Ariel Wong

Lincoln, NE

Omaha, NE

Justin Bakke La Vista, NE

Minden, NE

Nicole Berns Blue Hill, NE

Soon Lau

Albion, NE Lincoln, NE Ed Cornish has been helping students for more Shane Korte Kristen Drvol Geraldine Spinner Columbus, NE Travis Burger Omaha, NE Lincoln, NE than 80 Columbus, years, even though he Emilie diedO’Connor in 1938.

NE

Bailey Harris

Lance Sorensen

Lincoln, NE

Kearney, NE

Ashley Bernstein

Nicole Berns

Elkhorn, NE

Crystal Pribyl Geneva, NE

Blue Hill, NE

Laura Hargarten Clinton, WI

Katherine Drehs Lincoln, NE

Olivia Kunzman Albion, NE

Tessa Porter Albion, NE

Susan Hammons

David Schroeder

Weeping Water, NE

West Point, NE

Charles Caruso Pilger, NE

Heather Sasse Nebraska City, NE

Lori Rezac

Amber Talbott Hoskins, NE

Sally Steele Morrill, NE

Gothenburg, NE

Kathleen Sackett Gretna, NE

Emily Williams

Omaha, NE

Omaha, NE

Jennifer Pickering Aurora, NE

Brooke Grossenbacher

Jamie Eggerss

Overland Park, KS

Pei Ang

Woodbury, MN

Travis Burger

Lincoln, NE

Columbus, NE

Tessa Porter

Kristen Cochran

Lincoln, NE

Omaha, NE

Bailey Harris Lincoln, NE

Steven Kaiser

Grant Wallace Craig, NE

Davey, NE

Amanda Walls Loveland, CO

Miranda Schurr Eustis, NE

Effie Epke Lincoln, NE

Travis Lucas Raymond, NE

Elizabeth Pfeifer Madison, NE

Natalie Souder Wilber, NE

Amber Cleveland Carson City, NV

Ed Cornish was one of the first donors to establish a scholarship fund for students at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. The very next year, he passed away. But students have benefited from Mr. Cornish’s generosity every year since — including the students listed here.

The legacy of Ed Cornish lives on. Yours can, too. To find out how, visit us online at nufoundation.org/giftplanning or call a gift planning officer at the University of Nebraska Foundation at 800-432-3216.

Part 3 of 4

VOICES

ol

BY BOB HALL ’67, ’71, ’17

E

er

eifr NE

bob hall

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The Ghost of Temple Past

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Part 3 of 4

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1910s

Campus Vibes at the Turn of the 20th Century Nebraska’s 1913 May Queen recalls men calling for her in horse and buggy

BY HEL EN DI NSM ORE W I ESE ( 1891- 1989 ) Class of 1913

This letter was handwritten in 1971 by Helen Wiese as she prepared to speak at the Founder’s Day banquet for her sorority, Delta Delta Delta. She was 80 years old at the time of this speech and recalled her days on campus which culminated with her graduation in 1913. The letter was recently discovered by her great nieces and great nephew, Jane Schorr Penoyer (’82), Debra Blair Schorr (’83) and Mark Schorr (’78, ’82).

B

eing May Queen on Ivy Day was an honor, but one needs to be wary of such honors, for they sometimes follow you throughout your life and can be a bit embarrassing, especially when the years creep up on you. Although a major event in university days, it was minor as compared to the day when I and a number of my friends were pledged Tri Delt. Having been raised with four brothers, it was a thrilling new experience to belong to a group of girls, to really be one of them. I sometimes wished that I could live in the sorority house, but that was not to be. Town girls really miss a lot of discipline and polishing up which girls in a sorority house have to offer them.

In my day students walked to school. For me it was 18 blocks to and fro, often at noontime too, if schedule permitted, and in rain or snow. I once walked up the middle of the street with snow almost to the knees, perhaps not necessary on that day, but just fun, because neighborhood boys were going too. Of

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course, at times, there was the little streetcar with its coal stove and five cent fare, benches along the sides and straps from the ceiling to steady one when standing, or a newer type with rows of seats facing to the front and an aisle between. If one rode to the end of the line, the conductor would reverse the seats and the trolley, held by rope, then take his place at the other end of the car.

After informal parties, if a boy and his date missed the “owl” car, leaving O Street promptly at 12:05 a.m., it was a long walk home.

For formal parties, the escort came for his girl in a horse-drawn cab, called a “hack,” he in his black dress suit with coattails (often rented for the occasion), with stiff-bosomed shirt, shiny top hat and white kid gloves.

You know, those were the “Horse and Buggy Days,” the days of horse-drawn buggies and carriages, sleighs with fur robes, hot bricks for the feet and jingle bells. Oh, what fun!

Bicycles were in vogue too. Even some professors rode bicycles to university, with their books in the basket on front, wearing their bowler hats and with their pant legs folded and held in place by clips.

Funny old profs they were!

Also in this era came the first automobiles. Before taking his seat, the motorist had to turn the crank, usually in front of the car, to start the motor. Horses on the street were frightened by both noise and vehicle. Soon the Model T Fords began to arrive and even a small closed electric car guided only by moving a lever across one’s lap.

Now I’ve rambled on, but let’s go back to the university listing a few items of interest: • No overall tuition, just an incidental fee, about $3, as I recall, and small fees for certain laboratory courses.

• The downtown campus extending north from R street, between 10th and 14th, not too many red brick and stone buildings.

• No dormitories, for out-of-town students lived in rooms or boarding houses, if not members of sororities, fraternities or clubs.

• The elaborate iron fence fronting on R street, outside of which cigarette stubs, if any, were supposed to be left.

• The old library and, of course, the steps of same which were the meeting places for students in between classes.

• The “farm” campus reached by streetcar, with its few buildings around the mall and the main agricultural buildings off to the east.

•Home economics was in its infancy with sewing and cooking classes, a cafeteria, and some sleeping accommodations.

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VOICES

courtesy photo

Helen Dinsmore Wiese was crowned May Queen at Ivy Day in 1913.

As students in this smaller university, we were each acquainted with a large percentage of the student body, acquainted with our teachers and deans. It was a friendly place to be.

You might be interested in our apparel of that era.

There was long woolen underwear for the cold winter months, a corset laced up the back, sometimes too tight for comfort, yet preserving a small waistline. Lingerie consisted of lawn fabric and muslin undergarments, namely “corset cover” and “drawers,” or perhaps “chemise,” then long, ruffled undershirt, all usually made in the home and trimmed with tucks and lace. In fact, these and most of the dresses — even party dresses — were made by a “sewing woman” who spent a number of days in the home, using the old treadle-type Singer or White sewing machine. Woolen dresses, shirtwaists of cotton or silk with high collars and long sleeves, party dresses of mull or chiffon, with or without short trains.

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Oh, the parties! The informal ones at the Tri Delt house and the fraternity houses. I met my future husband on a blind date at a fraternity house. Formal dances were held at the Lincoln Hotel, a grand march first — it was fun because you could see everyone.

Then began the waltz, two-step and occasionally the Virginia Reel. All the girls had programs, filled by their escorts who traded dances with others, or in answer to, “May I see you program, please?”

I was fond of the Tri Delts in our chapter and we, who were Lincoln girls, enjoyed knowing those from out state. Belonging to DDD helped us to become acquainted with so many people on campus that it was great. We had opportunities through our sorority that never would have come to us otherwise. Knowing each other so well and feeling that we could depend on each other was and is wonderful, for even at my age, Deltas are among my dearest lifelong friends. They are indeed tried and true.

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The Eyes to See Us

BY ANDREW JEWELL (’04)

The writings and reflections of famed alumna Willa Cather remain a precious heritage worthy of reading and studying a century later.

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In the spring of 1962,

Early portrait of Willa Cather

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John Neihardt, the poet laureate of Nebraska, came to Red Cloud, Nebraska, to dedicate the new Willa Cather Museum. During his remarks, he noted, “It is usual, I believe, to regard such ceremonies as being concerned with honor paid to the dead, and yet those whom we call the dead can need nothing that we who linger here a little while can give.” He continued, “it is for us, the living, and for the living who shall follow us, generation after generation, that we set this Willa Cather Memorial against the flowing years, lest we forget the precious heritage that is ours through her.”

Fundamentally, this is what my work is all about. My colleagues and I research and teach Cather’s writings, edit and publish her correspondence, because we believe it is worth knowing and remembering. But what is this “precious heritage that is ours through her”? What are we inheriting? What is worth knowing?

Willa Cather is an exceptional alumna of the University of Nebraska, a woman of incredible gifts who has created works of tremendous meaning for a huge number of readers across a broad span of time. These works — O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, The Professor’s House, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Old Mrs. Harris and so many more — are still living and resonating creations. Her life story, too, is a narrative that connects with many people, as it contains elements that speak to different audiences at different times. Born in Virginia in 1873, she moved with her family to south central Nebraska when she was nine years old. Initially devastated by the move and the bewildering landscape, she grew to love the people and the prairie that surrounded them.

Intellectually gifted and independently-minded, she refused the trappings of late-19th century femininity, cut her hair short, studied Latin and Greek, and planned to become a doctor. At the University of Nebraska, she discovered her vocation as a writer, creating fiction, poetry and reviews for student publications and the local newspaper. After graduation in 1895, she started her first career as a journalist, moving to Pittsburgh and, later, New York, to

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work at newspapers and magazines. In 1912, at age 38, she published her first novel and left her job at McClure’s Magazine to be a professional novelist.

For most of her adult life she lived in New York with her partner Edith Lewis, an editor and advertising copywriter. From that home base she traveled the country and world, often coming back for extended periods to be with her family in Red Cloud, and produced a dozen novels and a few other books. By the end of her life in 1947, she was widely celebrated as one of the most important writers in the United States, and in the decades since her death her stature has continued to grow.

There is, as Neihardt noted, a “precious heritage that is ours through her,” and what follows are five realizations that have been reinforced by my study of Willa Cather.

1.

Diverse Cultural Practices Enrich Our Lives

In 1921, Cather visited Nebraska and lectured on Standardization and Art in Omaha, underscoring the celebration of diverse cultural practices as key to creating rich artistic work. Living and working in decades that witnessed an enormous influx of immigrants from Europe and other parts of the world, Cather actively resisted the efforts to standardize American identity. She specifically called out the Nebraska Legislature for prohibiting the instruction of foreign languages for young children.

“Will it make a boy or a girl any less American to know one or two other languages?” she asked.

Cather’s art recreates this transnational vision on the page repeatedly throughout her career. Her novels set in the Midwest, like My Ántonia and O Pioneers!, unfold in cosmopolitan communities.

Swedes, Bohemians, French Canadians, Danes, Russians, Mexicans, Germans, Norwegians and Virginians all populate Cather’s Great Plains, and each of them proudly bring with them ways of life established in different lands. As Cather and her work matured, her commitment to cultural pluralism broadened to include more than European traditions.

Her novel Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is set in the American southwest among intersecting Native American, Mexican and European American communities, and features a conversation between a French bishop and Jacinto, his Pecos guide.

“The Bishop seldom questioned Jacinto about his thoughts or belief,” Cather writes, “He didn’t think it

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polite, and he believed it to be useless. There was no way in which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization into the Indian mind, and he was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to him.”

There is, embedded in this passage, the twin values that are crucial to Cather’s embrace of cultural pluralism: respect and humility. One must respect both one’s own cultural history and identity, but also that of others, which cannot be easily perceived. We must humbly admit that we do not and cannot fully know the experiences of another, but, despite that lack of access, we can value it and believe in it. Our differences are real, but we can be comfortable with them, and we can connect across them.

2.

Our Lives Are Embedded In Our Communities

For several years now, I have been working as one of the editors of Willa Cather’s letters. In January 2018, we began the publication of the Complete Letters of Willa Cather, a digital edition published on the Willa Cather Archive website. As part of our approach to editing all 3,155 letters currently known, we are tracking the people Cather mentions in her correspondence. We are at about the halfway point and have identified over 1,700

individuals. These references suggest the thousands of social interactions that shaped Cather’s experiences and perspectives. The vision of Cather one gets through editing her letters is of a woman always living in relationship to another. Her choices and behaviors, her very ways of thinking and writing, are responses to other people who populate her lived experience.

This vision is especially striking when one considers that Cather has previously been characterized as an extremely private woman who sacrificed her personal life in service to her art. Influenced by the relative inaccessibility of her correspondence and a private life that did not conform to heteronormative expectations, biographers often have presented her as aloof and isolated.

Such a view seems impossible to me now. Cather’s associations reveal a life that is embedded, simultaneously, in multiple communities. Even in her last decade, when Cather had significant struggles and desire for a life uninterrupted by unwelcome intrusions, she was not alone.

She was with Edith Lewis, she was with her nieces and nephews and friends, she was visit-

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Willa Cather, right foreground, sits outdoors with Isabelle and Jan Hambourg, and their dog, Giotto, in Ville d’Avray in France in 1923. On the back of image is a note in Isabelle’s hand: Us at lunch — the sun makes Jan look cross — and he is never cross.

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ing the library and traveling to Maine, she was going to concerts and writing letters to dozens of different people, and, sometimes, she was in a quiet room, by herself, writing fiction that reflected the meaning of those relationships in her life. “Human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life,” Cather writes, and in them “there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day.”

3.

Beauty and Meaning Are There, if Only We Can See Them

I grew up in North Platte, and when I was a young English major I had no interest in reading Willa Cather. I thought all that pioneer stuff was deadly boring. I had no idea what her works were really like, and I had a stack of assumptions that prevented me from learning (like the foolish assumption that real art came from cities a long way from Nebraska).

Eventually, I was assigned to read a Cather story in a class. It was Neighbor Rosicky, a story set among farming people in 1920s Nebraska. It hit me hard: the lives of these obscure people are presented with vitality and complexity; their simple kindnesses are made profound, not through flowery language, but through subtle evocation of emotion and a basic respect for their dignity and importance as people.

I kept reading Cather, and I discovered that her un-ironic appreciation of human lives, of the impulses and affections and fears that shape them, is one of her greatest gifts as an artist. Though her books often feature remarkable people, their distinction is typically found through their capacity to accept their own true selves. Anton Rosicky’s farm is not that big or profitable. His family does not “get on” as fast as some neighbors. But they are kind to one another and unconcerned about their lack of wealth. “Maybe,” the local doctor reflects, “people as generous and warm-hearted and affectionate as the Rosickys never got ahead much; maybe you couldn’t enjoy your life and put it into the bank, too.”

It wasn’t until Cather was nearly 40 years old that she really committed to narratives set in a community that, she reflected, was very unfashionable.

Beginning in earnest with her novel O Pioneers! in 1913, Cather created novels that represented Nebraska with depth, literary sophistication, and an implicit insistence that life there had as much drama, nuance and mythical weight as life anywhere on the planet. “Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material,” she told an interviewer in 1921. “The only need is the eye to see.”

Willa Cather had the eye to see, and in representing that vision, she empowered others to see as well. That interviewer in 1921 felt it. She writes, “the longer Miss Cather talks, the more one is filled with

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the conviction that life is a fascinating business and one’s own experience more fascinating than one had ever suspected it of being.”

4.

Learn More or Less All the Time

In the fall of 1908, deep into her job as managing editor at McClure’s Magazine, Cather wrote a friend that she felt like she was “going round the world in a railway train and never getting off to see anything closer.” The constant stimulus of deadlines and office drama could not sustain her, and, only a few years later, she left the magazine and published O Pioneers! What she was seeking, she said in 1908, was a life that gave her space to think and to grow. She had “learned more or less all the time” while teaching in Pittsburgh, and she would be able to do so again during her life as a novelist.

In ways big and little, Cather’s whole life can be seen as an effort to keep learning. She was engaged, she was curious, she was reflective, and she surrounded herself with other people who shared those qualities. Cather resisted a hardening of thought and embraced expansion, development. She threw aside the habits that could lull one into complacency and instead opened herself to new possibilities.

Consider two very different efforts Cather made to create characters with life experiences outside of her own. Cather’s 1918 novel My Ántonia contains a brief scene of an African American musician performing in the local hotel. The character, Blind D’Arnault, is a sympathetic one, but Cather’s language describing him indulges in essentialist, racist rhetoric common to the period: he is depicted as a vital musician, but somewhat simple-minded, as if his whole human self is manifest in his performance for a white audience.

It is an ugly moment in a beautiful book.

Twenty years later, when Cather decided to write a novel based on her family history in Virginia, she confronted her own ignorance of African-American life. The seed for this novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, was a memory from childhood, when Cather witnessed the reunion of Nancy, a woman who had escaped slavery, with her mother, Matilda Jefferson.

To construct this narrative, she delved into research on life in antebellum Virginia, the underground railroad and the middle passage. Though she drew heavily upon her memories in constructing the novel, her reading and maturing mind allowed her to reinterpret those memories with deeper empathy and humility. The African-American characters in this novel are not hollow stereotypes like Blind D’Arnault, but reflect Cather’s attempt — one that was, of course, not completely successful — to fully imagine the lives of enslaved people. As Toni Morrison wrote at the end of her consideration of Cather’s novel, “She may not have arrived safely, like Nancy, but to her credit she did undertake the dangerous journey.”

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Willa Cather drives a handcar in Wyoming, possibly during a summer vacation in 1898.

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Courage To Be Honest and Free

In January 1947, just a few months before she died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage, Cather ended a letter with this observation: “We learn a great deal from great people. The mere information doesn’t matter much — but they somehow strike out the foolish platitudes that we have been taught to respect devoutly, and give us courage to be honest and free. Free to rely on what we really feel and really love — and that only.”

Of all we’ve inherited from Cather, it is this vision that is for me one of the most important. Through her life and many of her characters, she demonstrates the power and joy in self-acceptance. As the phrase in this letter indicates, an honest reckoning with oneself takes a measure of courage and a good deal of practice, but with acceptance comes liberation.

Self-assuredness was present in Cather from an early age, thanks in part to the good luck of being born into a family that provided a reasonable degree of economic security and a generous amount of love and attention. When she was 14, she signaled her difference from her peers when she noted in a friend’s autograph album that her favorite “amusement” was “vivisection” and her pet hobbies were “snakes and Shakespeare.” Later, unlike most young women in Nebraska, she went to the university and continued her learning. While in Lincoln, she also began to earn money in writing and journalism. She financially supported herself — and others — with

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these skills for the rest of her life, proclaiming to a friend while working in Pittsburgh, “O I have grown enamoured of liberty! To be wholly free, to really be of some use somewhere, to do with one’s money what one likes, to help those who have helped me, to pay the debts of one’s loves and of one’s hates!”

Cather’s romantic and sexual attachments, her loves, were women rather than men, and surviving letters suggest she was open about this part of herself, too. Cather rarely made explicit comments on her love life in her letters, but she did not try to hide it, either. Her profound attachment to Edith Lewis, for example, with whom she lived for 38 years, is present everywhere. In correspondence with family, friends, and associates, Lewis is mentioned regularly, and their intimacy is illustrated openly in simple gestures, as when they together send Cather’s niece a wedding present.

Though Cather suffered from self-doubt and insecurity like all of us, she managed to live her life largely free from crippling neurosis. She made a commitment to be “honest and free,” and she brought into literature characters with humble backgrounds who are ennobled by their ability to live an authentic life. Consider Ántonia Shimerda Cuzak, from Cather’s My Ántonia. The power of the character, the achievement of Ántonia, is her full possession of herself. Cather’s art lifts up human qualities that are simultaneously rare yet accessible to all of us.

Our inheritance, one we should acknowledge as sacred, is Cather’s vision of a meaningful, connected, expansive, diverse and honest human life.

WILLA ON THE WEB The Willa Cather Archive cather.unl. edu is a rich, useful, freely accessible site for the study of the author’s life and writings.

Published by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities in the UNL Libraries, the Archive features thousands of texts, images, and other resources.

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Time Travel

BY LAURYN HIGGINS (’18)

ne hundred and fifty years ago the University of Nebraska was chartered and charged with its land-grant mission of public education and service to Nebraska. What exactly has transpired since Feb. 15, 1869, and what does the future hold? We need look no further than the rudimentary archiving system of the time capsule.

While digital archives are now commonplace, 3D artifacts frequently offer a sense of what mattered most long ago. Our campus encompasses everything from official items placed in cornerstones while buildings were erected to co-eds shoving N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

beer cans and football posters into wall vents of dormitories.

“People who create a time capsule want their observations to last and to inform others. In some ways, it is like keeping a diary or leaving a narrative with a will — it’s the testament,” said John Wunder, emeritus professor of history. While capsules preserve a moment in history, it is difficult to pinpoint the origin of their own narrative. “One thing I would suggest is that the term ‘time capsule’ might be flexibly defined. For example, pyramids and the burials of Egyptian royalty have proven to be highly sophisticated and valuable time capsules,” Wunder said.

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Buried Treasures Time capsules have been buried across campus since the beginning; here’s a few we tracked down. Some remain unopened. The 1924 Cornhusker yearbook mentions “the history of Memorial Stadium was included in the cornerstone that was put in the center box of the center section of the west stand.” No word on what became of those items.

AVERY HALL BURIED: 1916 OPENED: 2014 On May 12, 2014, an 18-inch-wide by 12-inch-tall copper box nestled into the cornerstone of Avery Hall was removed. The box, buried in the chemistry building during its construction in 1916, held a rare photo of Rachel Holloway Lloyd the university’s second chemistry professor whose research launched sugar beet growing across the state.

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MEMORIAL STADIUM BURIED: 2013 TO BE OPENED: 2062 To celebrate 50 years of consecutive sellouts at Memorial Stadium, the athletic department buried 200 tiny time capsules. Two vaults, each with 100 capsules packed with Husker football T-shirts, pins, ticket stubs and memorabilia selected by fans, were buried near Gate 20, which is considered the original welcoming place for Husker fans when Memorial Stadium opened in 1923. The capsules will be opened in 2062, when Nebraska anticipates celebrating 100 years of consecutive sellouts.

FERGUSON HALL BURIED: 1954 TO HAVE BEEN OPENED: 2004 In 1954 Sigma Tau (the engineering fraternity) buried a time capsule on campus to commemorate its chapter’s 50th anniversary. A stone pyramid, the symbol of the fraternity, was dedicated in honor of the founding members. Inside were predictions made by students of what they believed the future of engineering would look like. The time capsule was to be opened in 2004, but there is no evidence that it was ever unearthed. The pyramid now sits outside Othmer Hall … perhaps the capsule is still there.

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UNIVERSITY HALL BURIED: 1877 OPENED:1948 In 1948, University Hall was demolished (because it was structurally unsound and only one floor of the building was left) to make room for Ferguson Hall, the new engineering building.

Inside the University Hall cornerstone, items were retrieved that painted a picture of the campus in the 1800s through the eyes of the administration. Items included: Chancellor Edmund Burke Fairfield’s letter explaining the items that were placed in the cornerstone, the chancellor’s report to the regents for 1873, 1874 and 1876, the bylaws of the Board of Regents at the time and an Aug. 17, 1877, copy of the Lincoln Daily Globe newspaper which discussed the trouble with University Hall.

GYMNASTICS TRAINING COMPLEX TO BE BURIED: 2020 When the new 46,000-square-feet gymnastics facility is dedicated next year, the athletic department will honor the occasion by asking student gymnasts, contractors and athletic staff to place items they deem worthy of being saved and archived for future Husker gymnastics teams to find.

ABEL HALL BURIED 1974 OPENED: 1984 In 1974 residents of Abel Hall placed an artifact-filled, gallon pickle jar in the vent of the dorm’s first floor lounge that they hoped future students would find. In 1984 someone did. Dared by friends to crawl through the dorm’s smallest vent, Aaron McDowell told The Daily Nebraskan, “I had just got in a little way when I found this thing.” Inside McDowell found a floor newsletter called Floorplay, football posters, a Coors beer can and a pregnancy pamphlet.

Perhaps keys to our past can be found in such buried treasures. We located some of those that had been hidden away and since opened, as well as some buried, yet to be unearthed. We now prepare to create a new time capsule in celebration of the university’s sesquicentennial.

We can learn a lot about what communities value by opening time capsules. In many ways, it’s the perfectly curated social media highlight reel, complete with photographs and stories. While it’s impossible to encapsulate an entire generation or a feeling into a single hand-held vessel, it is possible to create an immediate moment in time and provide the future a glimpse of the past.

It seems only natural for a celebration as grand as the sesquicentennial for the university to create a time capsule at this point in time. To be located inside the Wick Alumni Center, the N150 time capsule will be filled, buried in the Seacrest Library wall and sealed with items hand-selected by each college, the chancellor’s office and other campus stakeholders.

The capsule will be sealed at the end of the year and opened in 50 years when the university celebrates its 200th anniversary.

“I am really proud to be invited to contribute to SCOTT ENGINEERING CENTER this time capsule, and my artist book LandEscape will BURIED: 1987 TO BE OPENED: 2037 be a great complement in the collection,” said Karen Students drafted, built, filled and buried a time capsule Kunc, Cather Professor of Art at the School of Art, in front of the engineering building to commemorate the Art History and Design. One of Kunc’s books was 75th anniversary of Engineering Week. The plan was to selected by the fine and performing arts college to be open the capsule 50 years later in the year 2037. Due placed inside the time capsule. to new construction and renovation of Scott, the capsule The College of Arts and Sciences will include facwas unearthed this summer and put on display until ulty work as well, along with a T-shirt signed by varit can be reburied. The capsule, which was carefully ious staff and students, and a flash drive containing engineered to ensure preservation of its items, includes photos and documents. The College of Journalism and floppy disks, a voltage regulator and videocassette tapes.

Mass Communications will contribute a small drone to showcase the continuing innovation that is occurring in the journalism field. The College of Architecture will include a 3D printed model of its historic building made with its own 3D printer and a T-shirt designed by a student. Sheldon Museum of Art is including a piece of the travertine from the building itself.

There will be branded items from each of the restaurant vendors on campus ­— think Valentino’s pie-shaped pizza box, but clearly not the pizza itself.

The Chancellor’s Office has selected items that represent The College of Education and Human Sciences is planting its own the university as a whole and time capsule this fall with a plan to open it in 2069. “As we wonits lasting legacy. That office dered about ways we might celebrate the 150th anniversary, we will include a N150 chancellor’s were also completing the schematic-design phase of a new building. coin, a collection of Chancellor This historic context made it appropriate to honor the anniversary Ronnie Green’s tweets and a letby constructing a (college specific) time capsule to be installed in a ter to the 2069 chancellor. public space inside our new building,” said Dr. Julie Thomas, interim Bursting with history and stoassociate dean for research. Each college department will coordinate ries of today worthy of saving, its artifacts to be placed in the capsule. “It will reflect and represent the N150 time capsule will hold who we are today, at this historic moment in time, and describe us in pieces of the present in which the the way we want future college faculty, staff, students and alumni to future can take delight.

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remember and consider the legacy we left for them.”

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Eyewitness to History

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WINTER 2017

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Alumni recall what transpired on campus when history played out during their college days ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN STAUFFER N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

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There are pivotal historical events, frequently the unexpected, in which we all can pinpoint where we were when the news broke. All too often it is a tragedy that binds us together for a day or so, or more, as we try and make sense of it all. With that in mind, we asked alumni to describe what the campus was like on those momentous days. We heard from alumni in their 90s who recalled Pearl Harbor and those in their 20s who watched Barack Obama be elected president. Here’s what they had to say...

DECEMBER 7, 1941

Attack on Pearl Harbor

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Back in the day: John Norall, left, and Margaret Peters Lutton

That day I had gone to the Student Union for a presentation of art films in the afternoon. The films were from the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. As I recall it, they stopped the film to announce the attack.

I’m not sure but they may then have resumed the film after the announcement. Reason I say this is because I logged in my diary that night, “Heard today that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor wonder where that is? Also wonder if it will have any effect on my life?”

Within the next couple of days I found the answer: It changed everything, as shortly thereafter I enlisted and was later commissioned in the United States Coast Guard.

P r i o r to t h e Pe a rl Harbor attack I remember so clearly sitting on the porch of the boarding house and listening to the voice of radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn describing the 3rd Reich’s march across Europe in the late 1930s. I was uneasy as I left the Midwest for the service as President Franklin D. Roosevelt was giving aircraft to Europe using that surreptitious route through the West Indies. In the face of all the signs, I think we still had faith in the shield of the two oceans. Truly that Dec. 7 became the anchor by which everything in life was measured. I regret that the class of 1942 never had any reunions of much consequence, no doubt because we all got so scattered.

Pearl Harbor. I’m sure I went to church and then probably went to the concert in the afternoon. I just remember that we had no idea what was going to happen. It all seemed very far away.

The war changed everything. When I first enrolled in the university there were dances, many activities and we would go to the Crib in the Student Union for a Coke and that kind of thing. By second semester we had already launched some of our fellows into the service. By the next year there were many men who had left and the classes were basi-

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I graduated in 1944 but I was a freshman in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. It was a Sunday and I think there was a Messiah concert.

And that’s where I heard about the bombing of

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cally all women. The university ended up housing the ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program), which was a military group on campus. Love Library was just being built at that time. (Ground breaking was spring of 1941. The basic building was completed in 1943 and was used initially as living space for cadets in the Army program).

The soldiers would march down the street and the leader would say, “Hut two.” And then he’d say “eyes right” if he saw a pretty girl going down the street. And all the soldiers would turn their eyes right and get back to normal. So it was interesting for us.

—MARGARET PETERS LUTTON (’44)

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

I was one of thousands of students from all over Nebraska and the rest of the world arriving on campus for our freshman year in the fall of 1963. We were the leading edge of the Baby Boomers off to college. We filled the sidewalks and classrooms and dormitories to bursting. The university in Lincoln was ready, including the gleaming new Cather-Pound high-rise dormito-

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Assassination of JFK

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JFK speaks to supporters in the rotunda of the Nebraska State Capitol in March 1960.

ries. We lowly freshman women lived in the adjoining women’s residence halls, we mixed with old and new friends in the bright new dining hall of the twin-towers.

In our scattered high schools most of us had access to TV to see Alan Shepard and John Glenn go into space and return. I witnessed my parents watching the Nixon-Kennedy debates. The TV was wheeled into my high school study hall in 1961 to watch John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. But once we got to college, TV was mostly ignored. There was one lounge with one TV in the whole freshman women’s dormitory complex.

We were involved in our own new world and nearly ignored the outside one. The pastor at the campus church brought us up to date on the Fischer quintuplets. Dr. Robert Knoll, beloved English professor, alerted us to the fact that the Beatles were coming, and soon, except during quiet hours, the hallways of our dorms brought their message that I Want to Hold Your Hand. Any news that did not sneak in between the tunes on KLMS-radio or get published in The Daily Nebraskan was likely off our radar.

In defense of student apathy toward national affairs, and in all fairness, it must be noted that although no mention of the presidential plans for the day were included in The Daily Nebraskan, the front page of the morning edition of The Lincoln Star on Nov. 22, 1963, also made no mention of the President or his plans for that day in Dallas. However, there was a frontpage story regarding football. The upcoming Saturday game with Oklahoma had everyone excited because a win could send the Cornhuskers to the Orange Bowl.

The paper described a Thursday evening campus pep rally which was moved to Selleck and enticed the team to attend. Then “about a third” of the 2,000 to 3,000 students, led by a pep band, headed off toward downtown Lincoln with much exuberance (but with no property damage according to the police). Some dropped out along the way but part of the group took their enthusiasm on to the Governor’s Mansion, only to learn that he was in Omaha.

Friday was a lovely late-fall day on campus. I remember having a busy Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule but with an hour break for lunch at the dining hall. My

7.16.69 WHERE WERE YOU?

Moon Walk I had just arrived from Peru to continue my engineering studies. I was having a sandwich at the Student Union, when I saw Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.

I was completely amazed and couldn’t believe what was happening. I just couldn’t get the images off my mind.

—ERWIN EBERHARDT (’73)

Soldiers muster on the north side of Love Library during WWII.

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11.18.78 WHERE WERE YOU?

Jonestown Massacre I came home from my student teaching assignment at Lincoln East High school, turned on the television, and there it was ... on the network news. It was something that I couldn’t turn away from because of all the questions running through my head. Why? How? What? I can still picture the video image of the tractor pulling up to the airfield landing strip and all hell breaking loose as gunman were trying to kill those who were about to leave on an airplane.

The cameraman, who was killed (along with Congressman Leo Ryan), his camera falling to the ground but still filming.

—LEE R. TALLEY (’78)

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WHERE WERE YOU?

“I do not like recalling that day; it was the worst day of my life.

And it has devastated me personally. Changed my life. I was in Washington. I was in my White House car coming back from a luncheon meeting and received word to get back to the White House immediately. I returned and I heard that terribleness. This was my closest friend — and for 11 years he had been my closest friend — my leader, my guide, my hero, my role model, my champion. He was the center of my life and my attention, and suddenly he was gone. And I was determined to do what I could to make certain that his principles remained and that his legacy was carried out.” —TED SORENSEN (’49, ’51), President Kennedy’s speechwriter speaking to MSNBC

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before Thanksgiving break but Chancellor Clifford Hardin decided that because of the win and the tragedy classes would not meet again until Dec. 4, after the holiday break.

The dorms would close at noon Sunday. I knew my family (farmers) would not be able to come all the way to Lincoln to pick me up by then. So one of my high school classmates found us a ride home that night. The President was dead but my biggest concern was how to handle an awkward situation: I had a first date that night with a guy I knew from church but had no idea where he lived or how to reach him to cancel. I had to wait until he arrived to pick me up and tell him the change of plans. (He never asked me out again.)

So we all had two weeks at home with our families and watched the funeral parade over and over on TV and cried about the little boy saluting the coffin of his dead father. The world changed forever that week and most of us were too young and innocent to realize it, but perhaps our innocence protected us.

—LINDA ULRICH MURPHY (’89, ’97)

NOVEMBER 4, 1979

Iranian Hostage Crisis

Forty years ago, Nebraska students faced death threats and the Lincoln police vowed protection. University officials reviewed visas to deter-

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sorensen: don wright

JFK and adviser Ted Sorensen (second from left) visit the office of the Nebraska Secretary of State in March 1960.

memory of that afternoon was of retrieving my books from my room and heading toward the front door of the Women’s Residence complex and passing by the old wrought iron open elevator on the northwest side of Raymond Hall. A girl who got off the elevator was saying that someone had been shot. I did not understand the name, and thought it was a woman who played a nurse on a TV show. So I joined my friends and walked to Bessey Hall auditorium for Dr. Paul Johnsgard’s Beginning Zoology lecture.

He was a brilliant, popular and entertaining teacher and it was nice to get a good seat. The room was buzzing but not all seats were filled (although most were) and Dr. Johnsgard did not appear. This was long before the days of cell phones and 24/7 news but a classmate had a transistor radio and spread the word that President John Kennedy had been shot. A few people left but a lot of us stayed until one of Dr. Johnsgard’s grad students came in and announced there would be no class because of the national tragedy. I cannot remember where I went next. I think we all went back to our residence halls to get more information instead of heading for our next classes. I know we listened to the radio and gathered for a while in the crowded TV lounge and saw the replay of Walter Cronkite in tears announcing the death of our president.

We were sad and we were shaken. But we were also young and naïve. The topic on campus underlying the tragedy was about the football game the next day. The powers that be decided the game would be played. Nebraska won. However, all preplanned festivities were canceled and the huge crowd stood in silent tribute to Kennedy prior to the kickoff. Flags were at half-staff.

We were to have two days of class the next week

mine if any students were subject to a presidential deportation order.

As the news editor of The Daily Nebraskan in November 1979, the Iranian hostage crisis pushed momentous world news squarely and suddenly onto my daily story list.

It’s one of several moments during my university years that I cherish as helping shape me as a journalist. It was the opportunity for a group of independent student journalists to apply all the classroom, professional internship and student paper experience to a wholly new situation.

We needed to represent student voices and angles unique to the university, but also provide a global context for what amounted to a shocking attack on U.S. sovereignty.

In the moment, I felt like we rose to the occasion, tapping the academic expertise at the university, sharing Iranian students’ views, covering protests and politicians. A couple of times, I went to the Journalism School, then at Avery Hall, to tear wire stories off the teletype so we could include global developments in our normally allstaff produced paper.

In retrospect, it was an even bigger story than it felt like at the time — and it seemed huge. It was a pivot point in American and world history whose

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implications still play out today.

It was: • The first time Americans were attacked directly by Islamic extremists.

• The genesis of the nonstop news cycle.

• A death blow to Jimmy Carter’s presidency, fostering the ascendance of Ronald Reagan and the new Republican Party.

On the first point, sectarian enmity in the biblical lands, to the extent that college students in Nebraska even thought about it, had to do with Arab-Israeli conflict. We knew of the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1972 Olympic terror attack on Israeli athletes in Munich.

Arrogantly and ignorantly, we felt apart from such nastiness, with U.S.-backed strongmen in Iran — Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and Iraq — Saddam Hussein.

So chants and protest signs declaring “Death to America,” were shocking. Americans didn’t grasp the Iranian revolutionaries’ anger over the United States helping install the shah in the 1950s and then Carter admitting him into the United States for cancer treatment a month before the embassy takeover.

As we got our first taste of the radicalism that has so dominated our foreign policy since then, TV news coverage became a couple octaves more shrill than Walter Cronkite’s traditionally sober assessments of events. On Nov. 8, 1979, after the late local news, ABC debuted “America Held Hostage: Day XX,” with Ted Koppel, the forerunner of “Nightline.”

It was in this swirl that CNN was born on June 1, 1980, and the beginning of the earnest breathlessness that would become the trademark of Wolf Blitzer and others.

I didn’t know, as we put out a student paper from the basement of the Nebraska Union, that we were watching the world change, but I got a fabulous lesson in localizing news events that would serve me well through the coming decades.

The hostage crisis also had a coincidental nexus to my studies. In addition to my journalism major, I was a political science student focused on international relations. From those professors, particularly Bill Avery and Dave Rapkin, I’d learned not to view world events exclusively from an American perspective.

That made me eager to talk with my Iranian linguistics professor — who despised the shah and feared the ayatollah. Hasan Sharifi became a background source who helped me understand the division in Iran and the feelings and fears of Iranians on campus. Through my rapport with him, I began to see how being a good journalist happens in paying attention to everyday life and relationships — that my job really is to try to understand the world and explain it to our audience.

It’s no small task that is as fulfilling today as it was that fall 40 years ago. —RANDY ESSEX (’83)

An anti-Iranian protest in Washington, D.C., in 1979.

1.28.86 WHERE WERE YOU?

Challenger Explosion I had just left class and arrived at the Student Union’s TV area, where a crowd had gathered to watch the space shuttle liftoff. When the launch went amiss, I was dumbfounded, in disbelieving shock. At first I thought the ball of smoke was maybe a booster or something disengaging from the shuttle as planned, but then I heard gasping from the crowd gathered and the TV announcers bursting in reaction. I then realized it was an explosion and a flood of tears was instantaneous.

I was glued to the TV for the rest of the day and skipped all my remaining classes.

—CHRISTINE VU (’89)

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9.11.01 WHERE WERE YOU?

9/11 Attack I went to Andersen Hall after marching band rehearsal to wait for class.

A professor told us to go to the main lobby televisions and watch what was happening. I saw the second plane hit and the buildings fall. I was supposed to have classes that afternoon, but they all ended up being canceled so I hung out at the Union. They brought in extra TVs so people could watch.

There were no empty chairs, and it was eerily quiet. The football game that week was postponed to the following week. There was no marching.

We stood in the middle of the field and played Proud to be an American, the Star Spangled Banner and Amazing Grace with tears in our eyes.

—Heather Rempe (’03)

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APRIL 19, 1995

Oklahoma City Bombing

It was a Wednesday morning and The Daily Nebraskan newsroom was quiet — typical of a student newspaper, tucked in the windowless basement in the corner of the Nebraska Union, which rarely came to life before noon.

I was the editor in chief and stopped by the office before class. I heard a series of beeps — from a single computer, sitting on the “wire desk” — that was the first indication April 19, 1995, would be no ordi-

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nary day on campus or in America.

That little computer, which surely would be unrecognizable to students today, was our window to the world. It carried news from The Associated Press wire and shortly after 9 a.m., a string of urgent alerts began relaying reports of a bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.

It’s been nearly a quarter century since that day, but somehow it seems even longer, given how our communications have so dramatically changed.

Before iPhones, laptops and Wi-Fi, we checked our email from a computer lab on the first floor of the Union and largely got our news and information from the newspaper or on television.

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The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

11.04.08 WHERE WERE YOU?

But on this day, as news from Oklahoma City began to unfold, we sprang into action and dispatched a reporter and photographer to the federal building in Lincoln, which also had a daycare center on the first floor. A few hours later, a bomb threat forced the evacuation of Omaha’s federal building. That afternoon, Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.) told The Daily Nebraskan: “I don’t think we have any security measures here.”

Nerves were rattled and a sense of fear was palpable across campus and the city.

Two UNL graduates, and Daily Nebraskan alumni, were living in Oklahoma City. We called upon them for first-hand accounts, with Mindy Leiter Kepfield

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describing how the blast knocked her down in the newsroom of The Journal Record in Oklahoma. “I had to get the hell out,” she said, in a quote that became a front-page story for us the next day.

Looking at that newspaper today takes me back to our days at the DN, when we had wide eyes and big ambitions — and viewed the paper as essential reading for students and faculty. We rarely put national or international news on page one, but this was an obvious exception, with conversations across campus filled with talk of the bombing.

Late that night, I remember huddling around the typesetting computer as we settled on a headline: “It was like Beirut,” a quote from the story that brought home the scope of the horror. Back then, we didn’t merely hit a “send” button, we physically pasted stories onto large sheets of paper, placed them in a box and drove them across Lincoln to a printing press.

The goal was to finish before last call at O’Rourke’s, where we would chew over the day’s news. I was a political junkie back then, too, and I recall thinking the biggest national story of the day should have been Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the longtime chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, declaring his bid to challenge President Bill Clinton in 1996.

In fact, Lugar made his announcement earlier that morning in Indianapolis, but it was overshadowed by the Oklahoma City bombing, which took place about an hour later.

While we didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, April 19, 1995, marked the beginning of a vastly different mindset for our nation’s security. And six years later, an even deadlier act of terrorism would unfold on our nation’s soul, which truly did change everything for our generation and all Americans.

Barack Obama elected I was on the fourth floor of Abel watching the results on The Daily Show when it was announced.

People were happy and screaming in the hall. I had to do PT in the morning with the UNL Army ROTC so I didn’t celebrate, I just stayed up late watching the results and the Obama speech where he told his girls that they would be getting a puppy since he had won.

—DANE PATTERSON (’10)

—JEFF ZELENY (’96)

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51

Today is the day to stop saying “someday.”

Jaime Ristow Master of Engineering Management (MEM) University of Nebraska–Lincoln My today started when I took the step to strengthen my engineering career. I had a strong technical background but knew I wanted more in-depth knowledge in business and operations concepts.

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s online Master of Engineering Management (MEM) program offered the perfect opportunity to customize my learning experience and broaden my perspective, all with the flexibility I needed as a working professional. I appreciated the accelerated 8-week class format, the responsiveness of professors and the opportunity to learn and interact with other working professionals.

I was able to directly apply what I learned from the courses into my work. As a result, I have become a more well-rounded engineer.

125+ online programs. online.nebraska.edu

55 58 60 62 64

CLASS OF 1873 Whatever happened to the first two graduates of the university?

ALL IN The wedding was Husker red and the bride tossed a football, not her garter.

CLASS QUOTES Alumni tell us what they would put into a time capsule from college.

OBITS Greg Snow, 65, was a professor of physics and astronomy.

MEMORY LANE Bob Kerrey recalls what he loved most about his days on campus.

BULLETIN

OCT. 3-6 LINCOLN Multicultural Alumni Reunion Hosted by the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center and the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of People of Color, the theme of this reunion is Space Makers.

OCT. 11 MINNEAPOLIS Football Friday at Minnesota Meet up with other Husker fans in downtown Minneapolis for our free, family-friendly event from 6-8 p.m. Enjoy games, giveaways and entertainment at The Pourhouse (10 S. 5th St.) OCT. 24-25 LINCOLN Nebraska Women’s Leadership Network Fall Conference Celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Network this fall with another enriching event for students and alumnae featuring keynote speakers from Pantsuit Politics.

jim mckee

NOV. 21-24

Blame it on the Rain N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

The 1908 Lincoln flood brought some interesting occurrences according to historian Jim McKee. “It brought waters from Salt Creek on the west to Antelope Creek to the east, though this two-foot depth at 12th and O streets (shown here) was probably more due to storm sewer backup than water from the creek reaching this far to the east,” McKee said.

>>

WASHINGTON, D.C. Nebraska vs.

Maryland football game Join the official Nebraska Alumni land-only travel package to the nation’s capital for a three-night hotel stay, game day bus to the stadium, plus Football Friday and game day events.

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53

BULLETIN Alumni Profile

Star City Historian Jim McKee knows Lincoln better than just about anyone else

BY CHARLYNE BERENS (’05, 10)

Y

ou might say Jim McKee has a gift — although he may call it something different.

“It’s a hobby gone bad,” Lincoln‘s unofficial historian said of his enthusiasm for and expertise about his community’s past.

McKee graduated from the university in 1963 with a B.A. in psychology and a B.S. in economics. He was sales and advertising manager of Cliffs Notes for the next 15 years and married the boss’s daughter, Linda Hillegass.

They set out on their own in 1978 to open Lee Booksellers, a chain of bookstores in Lincoln and Omaha that lasted until 2010.

But McKee’s underlying passion has always been history. It started with his own history.

McKee was born on South Cotner Boulevard, just outside the northeast boundary of Lincoln’s city limits. For a Cub Scout project, McKee assembled a wooden cigar box with memorabilia from his great-grandfather, the first postmaster in what was then the neighboring town of Havelock and is now part of Lincoln.

“That kindled my interest” in local history, McKee said.

As a child, he watched Lincoln grow up around him and began to discover his special gift. “My brain connects things,” he said. When someone asks what was on the southwest corner of 26th and B in 1923, McKee is likely to know.

“That’s my big claim to fame,” he said: “who was where and when.”

His family would go for a drive on Sunday afternoons in the summer, and McKee’s dad would recount the history of an impressive house they passed. Over time, McKee watched mansions dis-

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appear and become parking lots or commercial buildings or churches.

He loved stories like the one about the Fitzgerald estate in what is now Lincoln’s Near South neighborhood. “One day when no one was home, the house blew up,” McKee said. Turned out Mr. Fitzgerald was head of the local Irish National League in the early 1900s and was buying and storing ammunition and guns, intending to export them through Canada to the rebels fighting to expel the British from Ireland. Stories like that “just keep adding to my inventory, my memory,” McKee said.

He has supplemented the oral history from his dad and others with information from history books about Lincoln and from Lincoln City Directories.

The directories go back to the 1870s, McKee said, “so as you read, you begin to put things together.”

Attempting to downsize a bit, McKee has given “two station wagon-loads” of directories and books to the City of Lincoln and, specifically to Ed Zimmer, Lincoln and Lancaster County’s historic preservation planner. Although Zimmer, an architectural historian, has the paid job, he said he considers McKee the “official” local historian.

And he emphasizes McKee’s special gift: “He can put up one good historic picture and speak to

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William Snell, left, and J. Stuart Dales both graduated with bachelor of philosophy degrees in 1873, then master of philosophy degrees in 1876.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO?

THE FIRST GRADUATES

craig chandler

W it in an engaging way for half an hour,” Zimmer said. “He’ll tell you about the building and what’s in the alley behind it and what happened to that spot later — and then before. His brain is really good at synthesizing information.”

Since 1993, McKee has shared his gift with Lincoln via a weekly column in the Lincoln Journal Star — nearly 1,500 pieces to date. He’s written half a dozen books about Lincoln’s history. He also speaks to scores of groups around Nebraska, offering 50 different programs. “It’s never exactly the same twice,” he said.

McKee attributes some of his success to one of his UNL professors, Curtis Elliott, who taught a course about insurance. “He showed me how to make a pedestrian topic fascinating and entertaining,” McKee said.

It might seem that learning what was in the alley behind the building in the 1930s photo is entertaining but pretty unremarkable. McKee would disagree. It helps root people in their community, makes them feel part of its story, he said.

“You can learn from what happened so you might know what to expect” in the future he said.

But here’s what really keeps McKee focused on history: “It’s just fascinating.”

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hile the university handed out 3,490 diplomas at May graduation, its first class of graduates in 1873 was a class of just two — J. Stuart Dales and William H. Snell.

Post-graduation, Snell practiced law in Nebraska before moving to Washington to serve as a district judge in 1888. Dales, on the other hand, worked at his alma mater for more than 50 years, making a noteworthy impact on the university.

Both graduates began college elsewhere but completed their coursework at Nebraska. Snell’s motivation for transferring is unknown, but Dales’ was clear. He decided to follow the first chancellor Allen Benton — or rather, Benton’s daughter and love interest, Grace Benton — to Lincoln to pursue his degree in 1871.

The same year Dales arrived at the university, he founded its first student organization, the Palladian Society, which met every Friday night for literary readings, music and debates.

Shortly before that, in 1875, Dales was named the secretary to the Board of Regents for the university while at the same time serving as a judge for the city of Lincoln and studying law.

When Dales retired in 1932, he was awarded an honorary doctorate-level law degree by the Board of Regents to recognize his almost 60 years of devotion to the university. After all, he had seen it though 10 chancellors, two wars, two economic depressions and significant expansion.

Shortly before Dales’ retirement, the university held a “homecoming reunion” for the class of 1873. Both men gathered in 1929, 56 years later, to reminisce on their time at Nebraska.

“The reunion was a great success,” according to the Sarpy County Agriculturalist.

“Attendance was 100 percent.”—Hannah Trull

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BULLETIN Alumni Profile

Making History Journalism grad working in D.C. helps brands celebrate their past

BY MEKITA RIVAS (’12)

M When brands look to celebrate their past, Marissa Piette and History Factory get hired.

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few of the names on Piette’s client roster. “I’m kind of a brand geek,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to work with the biggest and the best brands. This job has enabled me to do that.”

With the NFL, for example, she recently helped the league set its strategy for its upcoming 100th season, which is set to roll out this fall.

Another exciting aspect of her job, especially for a history buff? Getting to dig through corporate archives that are filled with rare relics and one-ofa-kind pieces.

“We have Wrigley’s corporate archives, and it’s just this rich, unbelievable collection,” Piette said. “We’ve got 100-year-old pieces of gum in the archives. It’s so cool and interesting because business history is American history.”

In the case of someone like Wrigley, Piette

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courtesy photo

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arissa Piette (’09) found her dream job — without realizing that it was, in fact, her dream job.

“It wa s somet h i ng I never k new existed,” said Piette, director of client strategy and development at History Factory, a strategic communications agency in Washington, D.C. “I always wanted to work at a big ad agency because that was all I knew. At ages 18 through 22, you only have so much awareness of what’s out there.”

As an advertising undergraduate in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, she didn’t know much about companies like History Factory — which helps its clients leverage their heritage to create authentic content and brand storytelling.

But that all changed with a simple LinkedIn message.

“They were looking for account managers and found me on LinkedIn,” Piette recalled. “I landed the job, and now I’ve been there for seven years.”

Within that time frame, her responsibilities have expanded and her titles have evolved, but in many ways, the central aspects of her role have remained the same.

“Client relationship management, managing projects, strategic planning, and supporting business development are the four big areas,” Piette explained. “For the last two years or so, I’ve been in what’s effectively an account director role. I’m overseeing the health of many of our clients — it’s a little bit less of a tactical project management role, although I still do some of that.”

The NFL, Verizon, Southwest Airlines, Brooks Brothers, New Balance and Wrigley Gum are just a

“The history provides the context for you to be able to talk about your strong position today. Because you don’t just wake up in the morning, start a company, and then immediately be a leader.” explained, it’s getting to work with “a titan of industry” and unpacking their brand story from the very beginning to the present day.

“I enjoy learning about what their motivations were, what their purpose was for starting these companies, how they grew them, how they treated

their employees,” she said. “All of that has really shaped American society and the work environments we have today.”

Of course, every job comes with challenges. For Piette, it’s ensuring that people effectively understand the value of what History Factory brings to the table.

“It’s not history for history’s sake,” she said. “The history provides the context for you to be able to talk about your strong position today. Because you don’t just wake up in the morning, start a company, and then immediately be a leader. That has to come from somewhere.”

And history doesn’t necessarily mean it happened years, decades, or centuries ago. “The history could have been made yesterday,” Piette said. “It’s about getting the inside story behind a lot of these companies, a lot of these brands that I grew up with. We get a lot of access, and we end up knowing so much about key events that might have happened in the brand’s history. I find that eternally fascinating, and it really gets me up in the morning.”

A D V E RT IS E ME N T

NEBRASKAAUTHORS Featured books by Nebraska alumni, faculty and staff

Kenneth F. Dewey

Nadine Turner Jordan

I Am Loved

Nurturing Children’s Talents

The weather of the Great Plains is extreme and highly variable, from floods to droughts, blizzards to tornadoes. In Great Plains Weather Ken Dewey explains this region’s unique climate by presenting a historical climatology of extreme weather events.

Children often make mistakes, have accidents, or are naughty. Parents and siblings may not always like what they do or how they act. The purpose of the book is to reassure children everywhere that no matter what, they are loved unconditionally.

Nurturing Children’s Talents offers all parents step by step plans to help children reach their potential in any domain. Recommendations stem from Dr. Kiewra’s experience raising a chess champion and his research interviewing talented performers—including national, world, and Olympic champions—and their parents.

Great Plains Weather

Kenneth A. Kiewra

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BULLETIN When they tied the knot on March 30 at the Rococo Theatre in Lincoln, Dustin and Marilyn chose a theme close to their hearts — the Huskers. Guests dined on Husker-red desserts and watched Marilyn throw a football instead of a garter. There was even a surprise appearance by Scott Frost (according to their guest book, anyways).

WHAT DID YOU STUDY AT THE UNIVERSITY? MARILYN: I studied management with a minor in communications and graduated in 2013. Dustin studied mechanical engineering and graduated in 2011.

HOW DID YOU TWO MEET? MARILYN: As our best lady said in her speech, “Dustin and Marilyn are the classic boy-meetsgirl. They each opened an app and swiped right.”

HOW DID DUSTIN PROPOSE? MARILYN: He surprised everyone by proposing in front of his family at the top of a mountain in Utah on July 1, 2018. It was my first time going to Utah, where he grew up vacationing. When we travel, we always have a “Husker Day” where we sport our Husker gear, and my skin is very sensitive to the sun, so I wore my Husker safari hat despite Dustin urging me to pick a different, less goofy-looking hat.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE A HUSKER THEME? MARILYN: We love the Huskers! I didn’t feel strongly about a color, so Dustin picked Husker red. It all stemmed from him wanting to emulate Scott Frost’s look at his first press conference when Bill Moos introduced him as our head coach. He even repped Adidas, wearing grey Ultraboosts with his suit.

ALL IN

Memorial Stadium served as a background for wedding photos.

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Each year couples are on the hunt for a unique wedding theme that will make their special day one of a kind. Nebraska natives Dustin John (’11) and Marilyn Buresh (’13) were one such couple.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MEMORY OF BEING A HUSKER FAN? MARILYN: Dustin says that is an impossible task.

His favorite is either the Northwestern Hail

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bailey sturgeon photography (3)

WEDDING GAME DAY

WHAT WAS A MEMORABLE MOMENT FROM THE WEDDING RECEPTION? MARILYN: Instead of having a garter toss, I hiked a football that read “You’re Next” to Dustin who tossed it back to a group of single gentlemen.

I loved people’s reaction to the photo montage video, and I noticed probably 40% of the photos of us were in Husker gear. And although we didn’t walk out to the tunnel walk (too cliché), our band did sing the fight song.

Dustin and Marilyn are the classic boy-meets-girl.

They each opened an app and swiped right.

Official wedding photos were taken on campus at Sheldon Museum of Art.

Mary or when we won a National Championship on his birthday. His family proceeded to fly to Disney the next day. I was in the Cornhusker Marching Band’s drumline, so it’s hard to pick one memory but probably my last bowl trip with the band to the 2013 Capital One Bowl in Orlando.

IS FOOTBALL YOUR FAVORITE HUSKER SPORT? MARILYN: Football is the ultimate favorite but we’re also huge volleyball and basketball fans.

HOW OFTEN DO YOU ATTEND FOOTBALL GAMES? MARILYN: We’ve had football season tickets since 2015 and they’ve been among our favorite dates. We haven’t missed a game.

—Michael Mahnken

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59 9P9

BULLETIN

Class Quotes

QUESTION

What would you have put in a time capsule from your college days?

1962

“Valentino’s pizza. A friend drove several of us to Valentino’s on Holdrege Street on my first Sunday in the dorm in 1960.

(Selleck Quadrangle didn’t serve meals on Sunday evenings.) I hardly knew what pizza was, but after tasting it I was hooked and still am.”

Phil Beckenhauer is retired from Sitel Corp. and lives in Omaha.

1964

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team. 3) Journalism Professor Jack Botts’ bowties. It always seemed to match the smile he had on his face.

Kevin Ruser has been reappointed to the Nebraska Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission.

Ruser is the Richard and Margaret Lawson and M.S. Hevelone Professor of Law at the UNL College of Law.

Lee Talley, a retired educator, is working as an independent filmmaker whose latest topic is the effects of gun violence in Chicago.

1978 Ken Aylor, Plattsmouth, retired in 1992 as a civilian supervisory engineer at SAC headquarters.

These days he “supervises” eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

“My motorcycle. I would ride it each day and park near the Student Union.”

Thomas E. Carey is a resident of Maplewood, Minn., and a former international student adviser and immigration specialist. His retirement travels

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have taken him to visit a son in Australia, a daughter in Ireland as well as sojourns to Tanzania and Ghana. After a trip to Alaska he completed a goal of setting foot in all 50 states.

1965

“A whiteribbed sock for the sock hops at the Student Union early 1960s.”

Nadine Jordan of Minneapolis has toured different parts of Europe the past few years and is planning a trip to South America. The

retired church secretary also is the author of two children’s books and is writing a third.

1974

“The 1971 marching band album. I played trumpet and sat in front of the awesome percussion section. We couldn’t have missed a beat if we tried.”

Ernestine Olson is a family nurse practitioner in Lawton, Okla.

1975 “The Norton Anthology of Poetry which

“1) The Daily Nebraskan newspaper: After Watergate, end of the Vietnam war, and Nixon resignation, journalism was never so important. People depended on getting the news and the DN delivered it.

2) The scoresheet (which I still have) from when we won the All-University Bowling Championship in 1976-77. My team beat a heavily favored team that included two bowlers on the university

1980

“A reel of quarter-inch audio tape.

Broadcasting students in the

J-School edited projects on tape using single-edge razor blades. Now that it’s all digital, if you don’t like how the edit sounds just click the “undo” button.”

David Hutchings has earned a Master of Arts degree from Saint John’s Roman Catholic Seminary in Brighton, Mass.

Hutchings serves as the spiritual care associate/ chapel minister at the Maristhill

drue wagner (4)

“Knowing what has happened with calculators and computers, I would include my slide rule. Who today knows what one is or how to use it? I can do division and multiplication but would have to refresh my memory to do much more.”

we read in two of my poetry classes. It first introduced me to the beauty of poetry down through the ages.”

I decided on Nebraska.”

Katie Czapanskiy is an immigration attorney in Los Angeles.

of Business at Penn State University while Ciara is pursuing a doctoral degree at Penn State.

2015

2016

“We would place our graduation caps, varsity letterman jackets, Ciara’s swimming cap, Ian’s wrestling shoes, and a pair of coffee mugs from The Mill.”

Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Waltham.

1986

the 900 antique and art quilts that Robert and Ardis James had donated to start the museum.”

“My pica pole and proportion wheel that I used for four years at The Daily Nebraskan.”

Andrea Curtis is a resident of Sidney and employed

by Sorini, Samet and Associates as rulings manager.

Thom Gabrukiewicz

2003

1997

“A quilt. As a graduate assistant for Pat Crews, founding director of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum, I was honored to travel to upstate New York and help pack up

“My TI-85 calculator that was so cool with the games we’d download from each other, like Snake and Tetris!”

Angel McMullen-Gunn serves as the quality manager at UTC Aerospace Systems in York.

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

2007

“Andrews Hall summons the image of the two busts (statues) that were located in the library. I don’t remember who they represented, but one year we held a LGBT teach-in and someone decorated them with rainbow colored jewelry and accessories.

It completely re-made the library, which often seemed rather stuffy.”

Christine Stewart of Brookings, S.D., has been selected the poet laureate for the state of

South Dakota.

Stewart is an English professor at South Dakota State University.

2013

“I would put a Runza, a cup of coffee from the cafe in Oldfather Hall and the signed photograph of Tommie Frazier I won from a promotion at a Husker football game. The first two are essentials from when I was a student, and the third because I gifted the photo to my grandfather, who also went to Nebraska and was the reason

Ian and Ciara (Jenkins) Ousley got married in April and live in Bellefonte, Pa. Ian is the assistant director of development in the Smeal College

with those weekly books assignments in English.”

“Music albums that helped me get through both good and tough days, pictures of campus and postcards from the places I traveled while studying abroad.”

Davielle Phillips is an architect with Holland Basham Architects in Omaha.

“My printouts from Cliffs Notes to help

Rebekka Schlichting is the assistant director of Vision Maker Media, a nonprofit located on the East Campus of UNL which helps Native American filmmakers share their stories with the world.

2018

“My laptop.

Between my Pharm.D. and MBA degrees, the weight of laptops dropped from 10 pounds to 3 pounds. The dramatic change over a decade exemplifies the importance of lifelong learning as a means of adapting and innovating in an age of rapid advancement.”

Bryan Buechel is the director of pharmacy/managed care at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

SHARE YOUR MEMORIES

What was the most impactful book you read in college?

Do you want to be featured in the winter issue? Email your answer to this question to kwright@huskeralum.org.

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61

BULLETIN Obituaries

1939

Stanley J. Slosburg, Omaha, June 7

1940

Alvin L. Rippen, East Lansing, Mich., April 6

1941

Thomas E. Brogan, Norfolk, April 24; Ann Therese Yockey Rothwell, Lincoln, May 13

1942

Lucille Maxwell Brown, Lincoln, May 10

1943

William K. Hashimoto, Concord, Calif., Feb. 18; Eugene V. Kindig, Holly Springs, N.C., April 18

1944

Mary Stephenson Durrie, Lincoln, March 22; Edward Langdon, Omaha, May 27

1947

Doris Martens Buxton, Tulsa, Okla., May 27; Paul R. Eveland, Fremont, May 2; Roy J. Long, Omaha, April 17; Elaine Osterman Thayer, Denton, May 11

62

1949

Joan Harrison Bartlett, Omaha, April 7; Earl T. Brodman, Grand Island, April 2; Evelyn E. Caha, Ceresco, May 8; Charles E. Hines, Lincoln, May 29; Agnete Nelson Lind, Stanton, Iowa, May 30; Donald E. Walker, Cedar Falls, Iowa, March 23

1950

Katherine Albert Gilbert, Kearney, May 11; Joyce Lehl Krueger, Lincoln, June 2; Marilyn Beyer Lytle, Clovis, N.M., May 6; Edward W. Racely, Jupiter, Fla., April 10; Howard E. Schneider, Evans, Ga., April 14; Donald S. Waters, Des Moines, May 11; Harold H. Werner, Lincoln, March 10; Carol Joyce Wolph, Prospect, Ky., April 9

1951

Joseph J. Brown, Eugene, Ore., March 12; Norman L. Case, Denver, April 26; Herbert A. Engdahl,

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Omaha, April 15; Francis G. Laymon, Mira Loma, Calif., April 5; Roger T. Logan, Moline, Ill., March 26

1952

Max A. James, Omaha, April 27; Donna Prescott Mosher, Bloomington, Ill., June 1; Rogers C. Ritter, Charlottesville, Va., April 17; Patricia Hasson Smith, Nellysford, Va., Feb. 10

Hemke, Lincoln, April 6

1955

Brien E. Hendrickson, Sun City West, Ariz., April 11; Rudolf W. Link, Middleton, Wis., March 7; Robert C. Sorensen, Lincoln, June 4

1956

Gilbert M. Gunderson, Gretna, May 12; John P. Malloy, Hartford, Wis., March 18; Donald W. Pederson, Lincoln, June 2; Robert L. Pitlor, Lincoln, May 20; Stanley W. Smith, Lynchburg, Va., April 28; Suzanne Tewell Wagner, Lincoln, April 4; Wayne A. White, Rio Rancho, N.M., April 15

George W. Barlow, Weeping Water, May 5; Eugene L. Beran, Omaha, March 30; William G. Campbell, Washington, D.C., April 13, Charles F. Fitzke, Bellevue, June 7; Gordon W. Mickelson, San Jose, Calif., April 9; Ann Lindley Spence, Omaha, May 10; Philip E. Vogel, Olathe, Kan., March 1; Eleanor A. Von Bargen, Denver, April 29; Marilyn Mills Weber, Bethlehem, Pa., April 27; Richard H. Wells, Olathe, Kan., May 30

1954

1957

1953

Melvin A. Brydl, Lincoln, May 23; Eleanor Sklenar Bucknam, Omaha, April 7; Sheila Overgaard

Virginia M. Haba, Grand Island, March 16; Harvey L. Schmidt, Lincoln, May

1; Donald D. Siffring, Juniata, May 25; Floyd D. Urbach, Mishawaka, Ind., May 25; Sarah Gaughan Waddle, Lincoln, June 8

1958

Va., March 21; Larry L. Ruff, Lincoln, May 29; William D. Sapp, Ashland, April 4; Sharroll Wheeler Vrba, Bellevue, April 25

1960

Robert D. Anderson, Herman, March 31; Raymond P. Barkley, Wilmington, Del., June 7; Joseph I. Dappen, Lincoln, May 2; Barbara Erickson Gibbons, Comstock, April 20; Alfred J. Kortum, Scottsbluff, April 10; George R. Mackey, Santa Maria, Calif., May 6; William M. Spilker, Helena, Mont., April 20; Dorothy McCartney Vifquain, Lincoln, May 27; Thomas A. Witty, Lincoln, April 11

Richard R. Herzog, Sioux City, Iowa, May 29; Larry E. Hill, Amarillo, Texas, April 25; Lawrence C. Romjue, Lincoln, April 16; Donn M. Simonson, Fullerton, April 26

1959

Darrell G. Knecht, Lake Park, Fla., March 5

Florence Stern Dalby, Lincoln, March 29; E. Louise Frederick, Grand Island, April 1; David L. Herzog, Omaha, April 16; Rady A. Johnson, Richmond,

1961

Ronald L. Bebernes, Roswell, Ga., Feb. 12; David K. Carter, Centerville, Iowa, March 15; Dennis E. Emanuel, Lincoln, April 21; Dewayne R. Triplett, Green Valley, Ariz., April 9

1962 1963

James L. Backencamp, Lincoln, June 12; Stephen C. Nelsen, Lincoln, June 5;

Phyllis Timmons Noynaert, Laguna Woods, Calif., March 7; Leanne Jensen Rumery, Flagstaff, Ariz., May 25; Leah Smith Stuart, Wayzata, Minn., May 3

1964

Fay E. Blair, Chambers, March 10; Anne Seward Crosby, New Hope, Pa., May 18; Paul O. Davey, Lacombe, La., May 5; Thomas H. Dorwart, Sidney, April 28; James D. Krantz, Bayard, March 2; Dwaine H. Mapel, Olathe, Kan., May 3

1965

Willa Grossart Berney, Wolbach, April 17; Paul L. Williams, Superior, Wis., Feb. 19

1966

Janet Goldenstein Ahler, Grand Forks, N.D., April 23; Marietta Mapson Epler, Omaha, March 20

1967

Frederick L. Crouter, Council

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

Bluffs, Iowa, May 4; David W. Cummings, New York, May 4; Fred C. Kujath, Fairbury, March 17; Gary L. Meyer, Tucson, Ariz., March 8; Terry R. Schaaf, Lincoln, May 30; Ruthelen S. Sittler, Lincoln, June 3; George A. West, Brookings, S.D., April 22

1968

Kenneth E. Anderson, Kearney, March 19; William L. Booker, McCool Junction, June 5; Truman L. Burton, Lincoln, May 11; Glen C. Hadsell, Honolulu, May 3; Arlene Rath Hanthorn, Lincoln, April 11; Robert O. Hippe, Gering, April 27; Robert J. Long, Minden, April 16; Paul J. Rutten, Lincoln, March 20; Lloyd D. Scarrow, Fairbury, May 20; Gene L. Thomas, Fairbury, March 16

1969 Franklin P. Mintken, Cincinnati, April 4

1954-2019

Greg Snow Greg Snow, 65, professor of physics and astronomy, founder of the High Energy Physics Team, died May 4. Snow joined the Husker faculty as an associate professor in 1993 and was promoted to full professor in 2008. Snow also served as associate dean for research in the College of Arts and Sciences from 2008 to 2013.

Hired to build a research group to work at the Superconducting Super Collider, he sought and secured membership for Nebraska in the DZero collaboration at the Fermi National Laboratory.

Snow was a contributing member of partnerships that made key discoveries in the past 25 years, including the search for the Higgs-boson particle, discovered in 2012, and winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 2013.

1970

Jackson A. Byars, Manhattan, Kan., Feb. 24; John H. Fischer, Columbia, Mo., May 14; Jeanne Addison Marre, Columbus, Ohio, April 2

1971

Cherrie Moore Anderson, Omaha, April 5; David L. Benedict, Dubuque, Iowa, April 10; Daryl E. Blue, Lincoln, April 19; Antonino Piccolo, Coral Gables, Fla.,

N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

George O. Blocher, Lincoln, March 16; Melvin R. Cerny, Ashland, April 9; Gregory L. Grafft, Los Angeles, April 2; William W. Hull, Loup City, April 25; Robert P. Wintz, Omaha, March 25

Kiester, Des Moines, March 1; Kathryn Hall Kluska, Grand Island, April 28; Eugene M. Oetting, Seward, May 29; Thomas L. Peters, Lincoln, May 27; John W. Post, Norfolk, March 14; Phyllis Grabenstein Svoboda, Elkhorn, April 11; Larry D. Swanson, Missoula, Mont., April 8

1973

1974

March 18; Dennis L. Stuhr, Prescott, Ariz., April 25

1972

Billie C. Bellinger, Seward, May 29; Jerry D.

Dale L. Benson, Chapman, May 14; Kathryn A. Gillaspie,

Omaha, June 12; Joe R. Renteria, Lincoln, May 15; Patricia S. Shelton, Lincoln, April 21

1975

Sara Salisbury Stoddard, Lincoln, May 13; Ikpe B. Udofia, Fairfax, Va., April 1

1976

Linda Kuchmak Kellar, Mukilteo, Wash., March 5

1977

Marilyn K. Henry, Centennial, Colo., May 14; LaRena Stanley Spencer, Beatrice, May 18

1979

Donna Huck Block, McGregor, Texas, April 7; Mark E. Dalka, Omaha, May 20; Edward A. Jacobsen, Denton, May 4; Lori Smith Wilson, Lincoln, May 12

1982

Charles J. Hadwick, Lincoln, April 6; Bonnie Priest Schroeder, Lincoln, March 15; Sandra Brown Smith,

1993

Beatrice, March 24

1983

Danial R. Watson, Lincoln, May 12

1984

Robert L. Christensen, Taylor, April 4

James L. Berryman, Grand Island, May 24

1994

Diane McCormick Derks, Omaha, May 22; Donald F. Miller, Omaha, June 10; Todd A. Regier, Omaha, May 1

1995

1987

Michael R. Gill, Lincoln, April 22; Jennifer Ramsour Miller, Derby, Kan., March 21

Lisa Ford White, Lincoln, May 16

1988

Craig T. Wilberding, Walton, April 17

1997

Rachel Swetland Garten, Lincoln, April 16; Charles T. Svajgl, Omaha, April 1

1999

1991

2000

Noah J. Amland, Dallas, Feb. 28; Jill Anderson Hoskins, Lincoln, April 27; Jane L. Whitmer, Salida, Colo., May 30

1992

Sheri Luebbe Gulbranson, Lincoln, May 19; Thomas B. Stout, Apollo Beach, Fla., Feb. 25; Jeffrey W. Waller, Lincoln, March 30

Terri Kresha Stuart, Columbus, March 21

Virginia Sees Meyer, Elkhorn, May 12

2001

Rebecca Rutledge Scheele, Utica, March 31

2002 Matthew L. Jones, Lincoln, March 30

2005 Jill N. Casten, Manhattan, Kan., April 23; Jeremy P. Knott, Omaha, June 12

FA L L 2 0 1 9

63

Love Story

Memory Lane It was the 1960s and Bob Kerrey was grooving to the sights and sounds of the university life … right on

BY BOB KERREY ( ’ 65) 35th Nebraska Governor (1983-87) U.S. Senator from Nebraska (1989-2001)

64

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N E B R A S K A Q U A R T E R LY

mario zucca

N

ostalgia is like a cataract that makes the past look better than it actually was. It can be a dangerous condition that makes me long for good old days that weren’t necessarily so good at the time especially for African Americans and women.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972

would begin to right that wrong, but I digress.

What did I love about my alma mater, the University of Nebraska? I loved the chemistry lab in Avery. I loved the Nebraska museum. I loved Sheldon. I loved walking the campus late at night when the only sounds were of the trains moving in and out of the Burlington Northern yards. I loved football at Memorial Stadium and basketball games in the old Coliseum. I loved the Diamond Bar and Grill. I loved driving to Lawrence, Kansas, to drink 3.2 beer.

I loved my only visit to Chancellor Cliff Hardin’s office during my senior year to thank him for changing the university’s policy from one that required four semesters of ROTC to a voluntary program. I had failed Air Force ROTC and would not have graduated if the policy had not been changed.

I loved the summer of 1963 that I spent in Rushville working at Wefso Drug to earn three months toward the year apprenticeship needed to become registered as a pharmacist. I lived with the family of a fraternity brother and learned more about Nebraska than any other 90-day period of my life.

I read Mari Sandoz’s Old Jules and Capital City that summer and began — just began — to fall in love with the good, bad and the ugly of our past including the past of our university. I fell in love with the Sandhills, the Niobrara River and being able to see stars from horizon to horizon.

What I love most about the University of Nebraska is its location. I love the high plains, the place my father chose to return to after the Second World War. I chose to return after my war because of Willa Cather. While I was a patient at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, I decided to go to business school when I was discharged. I applied and was accepted to Stanford. During the summer of 1970 I moved into an apartment in Palo Alto and met with the registrar to discuss the courses I would be taking.

He was very excited to meet me because I was from Nebraska and he loved Willa Cather. He asked me about her. I told him I did not know who she was. Back in my apartment I decided that I did not need to spend two years studying finance. I needed to read Willa Cather. And I did, thanks to the American taxpayer who paid my tuition at the University of California at Berkeley where I was a student at large for a year. I fell in love with her and came home to Lincoln.

My professors were the generation we celebrated in June on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing in France which happened nine months after I was born at Bryan Memorial Hospital. My professors were serious about life. They knew how freedom and gratitude should co-habituate our daily routine.

They are what I love most about our university.

More than 32,950 people donated to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln last year.

This remarkable generosity will make a lasting, positive impact on our students’ futures, as well as the future they shape for our state and our nation. Thank you.

Nebraska Alumni Association WICK ALUMNI CENTER 1520 R STREET LINCOLN, NE 68508-1651