Nebraska Magazine Spring 2014 by Nebraska Alumni Association

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QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS / SEA TO SHINING SEA / THE ENGINEER WHO COULD

NEBRASKA Magazine EXCLUSIVELY FOR MEMBERS OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN

The

Bean

Counter Ph.D. ’04

Jim Croft

Volume 110 / No. 1 / Spring 2014 huskeralum.org

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INSIDEspring 4 Alumni Voices 7 University Update 20 Alumni Authors 22 Alumni Awards 44 Alumni News 52 Chapters & Affiliates 53 Class Notes & Alumni Profiles Chuck Bukin, ’60 Karen Jennings, ’93 Todd Lemke, ’81

The Magic of Pinnacle Bank Arena. Huskers fans filled it to the rafters for the Nebraska’s men’s basketball victory over 9th-ranked Wisconsin March 9 … a few hours after the Husker women won the Big Ten Basketball Tournament in Indianapolis. The two Husker teams went 33-3 at Pinnacle during the regular season and both received invitations to the NCAA tournament. (Photo by Nathan Olsen of Nebraska Media Relations)

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Questions, Questions

That’s how UNL grad Steve Tamerius has spent his days for the last 28 years as a writer on TV’s “Jeopardy” quiz show. And if he, and his Nebraska cohorts on staff can get away with it, he even throws some Nebraska questions in – like the time he created a “Fairbury, Nebraska” category for the ever-popular show, in honor of his hometown.

Sue and the Bean Counter

He’s the chief financial officer at one of the world’s great natural history collections – Chicago’s vast and sprawling Field Museum, which houses more than 25 million biological and cultural specimens. But Jim Croft’s job is anything but tame and predictable – particularly when he’s helping the museum acquire such notable specimens as a T. rex named Sue.

Sea to Shining Sea

As a UNL freshman in 1987, Jennifer Sinor was 4,000 miles from home and “epically lonely” – until she took a class on “What it Means to be an American,” taught by the late, revered Professor Robert Knoll, who told her about the “power of being on the outside” and how “outsiders can often see what those on the inside can’t.”

The Engineer Who Could

Ernest Haight was a UNL agricultural engineering graduate who made more than 300 quilts from 1934-1987 – all on a dare from his wife after he criticized her quilting technique. But Haight made them his own way – employing his skills as an engineer and machinist. NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 3

alumnivoices

Spring 2014 n Vol. 110, No. 1

A Note From Diane NEBRASKA Magazine For alumni and friends of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Diane Mendenhall Executive Director, Nebraska Alumni Association Andrea Wood Cranford, ’71 Editor Move Creative Design Kevin Wright, ’78 Layout and Photography; Class Notes Editor Andrew Washburn, ’00, ’07 Advertising Sales Nebraska Magazine (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 $50.00 annually of which $10.00 is for a subscription to Nebraska Magazine. Periodicals postage is paid at Lincoln Nebraska 68501 and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster send address corrections to: Nebraska Magazine in care of the Nebraska Alumni Association, 1520 R St., Lincoln, NE 68508-1651. Requests for permission to reprint materials and reader comments are welcome. Send mail to: Nebraska Magazine 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 Magazine 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.

Alumni Association Staff Diane Mendenhall, Executive Director Claire Abelbeck, ’09, Director, Digital Comm. Andrea Cranford, ’71, Sr. Director, Publications Charles Dorse, Custodian Derek Engelbart, Director, Alumni Relations Jenny Green, ’07, Director, Alumni Relations Andy Greer, Assoc. Director, Alumni Relations Sarah Haskell, ’09, Assoc. Dir., Alumni Relations Wendy Kempcke, Administrative Assistant Carrie Myers, ’03, ’11, Director, Venues Pam Penner, ’01, Programs Assistant Larry Routh, Alumni Career Specialist Viann Schroeder, Special Projects Assistant Deb Schwab, Associate Director, Venues Shannon Sherman, ’00, ’04, Sr. Dir., Comm. Sarah Smith, ’11, Asst. Dir., Communications Andy Washburn, ’00, ’07, Sr. Dir., Operations Judy Weaver, Assistant to the Executive Director Paul Weber, Venues Coordinator Katie Williams, ’03, Director, Alumni Relations Kevin Wright, ’78, Director, Design Shelley Zaborowski, ’96, ’00, Assoc. Exec. Dir.

JLynn Hausmann, a 2013 Zappos Emerging Designer, is president and owner of JHaus. It’s a premium denim collection manufactured in downtown Los Angeles, with a company logo that is also the Hausmann family’s cattle brand. A little bit of Butte, Neb., in Beverly Hills. JLynn is a 2004 graduate of UNL’s fashion merchandising program, and one of 19 alumni we will honor May 8 at the Nebraska Alumni Association’s Alumni Awards Banquet. It’s an annual event that features outstanding Husker graduates of all ages and professions, scattered across the country. We also recognize promising students, a retired faculty member and a third- or fourth-generation alumni family. I love this event. Just thinking about it makes me smile. The Alumni Awards Banquet is a favorite of many NAA members, too. We can tell, based on members’ comments, our website traffic, ticket sales and other feedback. I was considering why the awards banquet, which the majority of NAA members will never attend, generates great interest. Obviously, the winners are amazing people. Their accomplishments are always impressive – inspiring, even. But I think it’s more than that. No matter where our award winners have been or where they’re going, their stories started here, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And like JLynn’s company logo, there is something uniquely Nebraskan in each of the award winners. We see our values – hard work, kindness, innovation – reflected in them. Take Ed Trumble, a 1949 College of Business Administration graduate. He moved to Denver to work for a livestock magazine. There, he met artist Robert Lorenz, and the two men began marketing cowboy Christmas cards. Today, Trumble is the chairman of Leanin’ Tree Inc. and Trumble Greetings Inc., a business that has thrived for more than half a century. The company licenses the work of 450 artists and distributes merchandise in all 50 states and 40 foreign countries. Another honoree is Deanna Sands. A 1972 graduate of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, she was the first women to serve as managing editor of the Omaha WorldHerald and led the national Associated Press Managing Editors group. For the past 15 years, Deanna has been dedicated to mentoring dozens of UNL students and young alumni through Cather Circle, the NAA’s professional development group for women. Ross Pesek, a 2010 graduate of the College of Law, created a free legal clinic at a church in South Omaha to help people receive Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA or “Dream Act”) legal immigration status. He was the Nebraska Bar Association’s Outstanding Young Lawyer of 2013. Please take a few minutes to read about all of the 2014 winners. Their bios are on pages 22-29. We know you’ll be impressed – and hopefully a little proud – of your Husker family.

2013-2014 NAA EXECUTIVE BOARD Bill Mueller, ’77, ’80, President, Lincoln Eric F. Brown, ’67, Lexington Jennifer Carson, ’98, Kansas City, Mo. Erleen Hatfield, ’91, ’96, New York City, N.Y. Joe Selig, ’80, ’87, NU Foundation Bill Nunez, UNL Steve Toomey, ’85, ’89, Lenexa, Kan.

4 SPRING 2014

Diane Mendenhall Executive Director

ALUMNI book club Nebraska Alumni Association

// From the University of Nebraska Press

Painting

from the collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art

Edited by Brandon K. Ruud and Gregory Nosan In honor of the 50th birthday of the Sheldon Museum of Art’s Philip Johnson-designed building and the 125th anniversary of the Sheldon Art Association and the University of NebraskaLincoln art collection, this book showcases the Sheldon’s impressive collection, featuring reproductions of 125 major works along with smart, engaging entries by a team of respected scholars. List $75 (cloth), Members $60

Standing Bear of Ponca

Wide Open Fairways

By Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve Imagine having to argue in court that you are a person. Yet this is just what Standing Bear, of the Ponca Indian tribe, did in Omaha in 1879. And because of this trial, the law finally said that an Indian was indeed a person, with rights just like any other American. List $14.95 (paper), Members $11.96

A Journey across the Landscapes

By Bradley S. Klein A meditation on what makes golf courses compelling landscapes, this is also a personal memoir that follows the author’s own unique journey across the golfing terrain, from the Bronx and Long Island suburbia to the American prairie and the Pacific Northwest. List $24.95 (cloth) Members $19.96

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alumnivoices Some buzz from the winter 2014 issue E-MAILS

LINKS

“Dear Aaron Duncan and [Speech and Debate] Team, What a fabulous championship for the university and these great students! And you didn’t need a Hail Mary at the end to beat Northwestern! Keep up the hard work and know that you have made all UNL alumni proud. P.S. Thank you Alumni Association staff for always publishing a great magazine from my home state. I look forward to it each quarter. Your work is appreciated.” – Dina Cox, Topeka, Kan. “Thanks for choosing to feature me in the latest Nebraska Magazine. Judging from the e-mails I’ve gotten, you have a lot of readers. I even heard from my first grade teacher and a kid I babysat in high school. (He’s now a venture capitalist, sigh).” – Jane Hirt, Chicago “I was very flattered to be on the cover of Nebraska Magazine! I’ve gotten calls, e-mails and notes about this from lots of folks. I’m so glad that [the enthusiasm] about what hematology is doing to save lives ... came through in the story.” – Marty Liggett, Washington, D.C.

LETTERS “I enjoyed reading the article in the Winter 2014 issue of Nebraska Magazine about Sam Boon and his cadre of wood turners. I was especially drawn to the article because I recently had the pleasure of becoming a docent at the museum of the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts. …” – Bob Boller, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

TWEETS PGA grad making mom proud http://norfolkdailynews.com/ news/pga-grad-making-mom-proud/article_f549cbc4-7a0d11e3-a151-0019bb30f31a.html#.UxUSFvhY07s.twitter via @ norfolknews – Carly Ulrich alumni profile

“Nebraska Magazine, the official publication for UNL alumni and friends, did a nice job of chronicling Shawn Eichorst’s first year as Nebraska’s Director of Athletics.” – Randy York’s N-Sider, Official Blog of the Huskers, Jan. 5 “Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst has already passed the one-year mark of leading Husker athletics, and Nebraska Magazine recapped some of Eichorst’s goals, activities, projects and achievements in year one. …” – Sam McKewon, Omaha World-Herald, Jan. 29

FACEBOOK “I was quoted saying... ‘The scary ones (ideas) are the ones that stick.’ I wish I would have followed it up with... ‘because the only way to get them out of your head is to try that idea out.’ That’s what I was trying to say.” – Paul Jarrett of Bulu Box on his alumni profile Cather Circle “Congratulations to Marty Liggett and Jane Hirt whose career stories are featured in the current issue of the Nebraska Magazine! I’m proud to know both of these women and share the stories of their successes and challenges.” – Juanita Reed-Boniface “Ditto. It was exciting to read about them. Speaks well of Cather and its membership. Special congratulations to Marty and Jane and their accomplishments.” – Carla Tortora Hartsell Hoosiers for Huskers “Check your Nebraska Magazine. Two H4H hits: pg. 37 and pg. 46. … another one; pg. 48 CORNy salute.” – Mike Herrell

Keep the feedback coming; we love to hear from you!

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UNIVERSITY UPDATE NU STATE MUSEUM

Museum Named Smithsonian Affiliate

7. The exhibit, which features the research of State Museum curator Jason Head, assistant professor in the UNL Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, delves into the discovery, reconstruction and implications of Titanoboa. Smithsonian Affiliations is a national outreach program that develops longterm, collaborative partnerships with museums and educational and cultural organizations to enrich communities with Smithsonian resources. Jason Head, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UNL and curator of vertebrate paleontology in the NU State The partnership Museum, shows the vertebrae size difference between a modern fosters resource Anaconda (right) and Titanoboa cerrejonesis (left). (Courtesy photo.) sharing, educational initiatives, scholarly exchange and research efforts. “The State Museum’s new designation as A visit to the NU State Museum this spring and summer will bring you face to face with “Titanoboa: Monster Snake.” The snake’s visit is in celebration of the museum being accepted as an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. Titanoboa cerrejonesis, the undisputed largest snake in the history of the world and a part of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, is on display in Morrill Hall until Sept.

a Smithsonian Affiliate builds on our long-standing research collaborations with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History,” said Priscilla Grew, director of the museum. “Three of our curators are Smithsonian research associates, and the Smithsonian’s national scarab beetle research collection has been on long-term loan to the State Museum for many years.” “Today, the Smithsonian is doing more than sharing its treasures with the museums of America,” said Harold A. Closter, Smithsonian Affiliations director. “Through the Nebraska State Museum we hope to share the rich natural history of Nebraska through collaborative educational programs, exhibitions and research projects.” – Mandy Haase, NU State Museum

CONNECTION BOX affiliations.si.edu museum.unl.edu NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 7

UNIVERSITY UPDATE

college of business administration

Business Analytics Program Offered

Xu Li

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

Fighting Antibiotic Resistance Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a growing public health threat, infecting at least 2 million Americans each year and killing 23,000. A University of Nebraska-Lincoln engineer’s research to understand how bacteria and antibiotics interact in the environment may one day help reduce the danger. Xu Li, assistant professor of civil engineering, recently earned a fiveyear, $400,000 Faculty Early Career Development Program Award from the National Science Foundation to continue his research. Hospitals have long been implicated as a major source of antibioticresistant bacteria, but antibiotics in the environment now also are recognized as a significant contributor. Human and livestock wastes are considered major sources of the antibiotics in the environment. Microbes interact with antibiotics differently whether in the gastrointestinal tract, water, soils and other settings, but those interactions are not well understood, Li said. He’s using an approach called quantitative 8 SPRING 2014

proteomics to understand how antibiotics and microbes interact under different nutrient levels and types. “The overall goal is to minimize both the microbial resistance and the antibiotics – the chemical itself – in the environment,” he said. Decreasing antibiotic use also is critical to reducing public health and environmental threats. Li’s award allows him to pursue several outreach and educational programs aimed at Nebraska livestock producers and rural students. “Antibiotics are used extensively in the livestock industry, but a lot of the antibiotics are not absorbed by the animal, so it ends up in the waste,” he said. “Without proper waste management, it’s directly introduced to the environment. If we can raise awareness among livestock producers and help them develop waste management practices, maybe we can reduce the total load of antibiotics in the environment.” – Gillian Klucas, Research and Economic Development

Big data. Business analytics. Data analytics. Behavioral analytics. Companies are collecting volumes of data like never before, about everything from customer shopping habits to how people use the Internet to other aspects of life. Managers need to know how to analyze customer behavior – though the amount of data can be overwhelming. The UNL College of Business Administration offers a solution to this problem. In January, they launched the first of four business analytics courses online. The courses include: • Graduate Business 851: Business Analytics (offered in January) – Broad understanding and knowledge of important business analytic topics and how they can be used to support decision-making in all business areas, government, education and agriculture. • Economics 817: Intro to Econometrics (offered in March) – An introduction to basic econometric methods, including economic model estimation and analyses of economic data. • Marketing 850: Strategic Database Marketing (offered in July) – Theory and strategic use of large marketing databases. • Management 853: Data Mining Applications (offered in October) – Application of quantitative analysis to support managers in identifying actionable information from large amounts of data.

The program is designed to be completed in one year. Students must complete the graduate business and economics courses prior to taking the marketing and management courses. It is recommended to start the program in January and progress through the curriculum in order.

CONNECTION BOX cba.unl.edu/programs/business-analytics

ARCHITECTURE/HIXSON-LIED FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS

Two UNL Colleges to Merge Two University of Nebraska-Lincoln colleges will consolidate to build new programs that attract today’s students and expand research collaborations. In February, Chancellor Harvey Perlman and Ellen Weissinger, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, announced an initiative to create the new UNL college, which will unite the College of Architecture and the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts, pending approval by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. Faculty and staff from both colleges are developing a strategic plan to successfully launch the new college, which will continue to carry the prestigious Hixson-Lied name, by July 1, 2015. The steering committee is led by Kim Wilson, interim dean of the College of Architecture, and Charles O’Connor, dean of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts. O’Connor will become the inaugural dean of the new college. “The primary justification for creating a new college is to take

advantage of the extraordinary opportunities that can be achieved by bringing talented design-oriented faculty into a single academic unit,” Perlman said. The initiative will allow faculty to create new design programs of national distinction that meet student demand while also building connections across the design curriculum in areas such as industrial, environmental and architectural design; visual communication design; and interactive and new media design. “This new college will be an incubator for entrepreneurs in the arts and design fields. It will allow more students to study traditional majors in the arts or architecture and also practice broader skills at the intersection of design and computational thinking,” Weissinger said. “It will accelerate our ability to create new majors that connect to arts and design-related industries. “Our students want and need to learn in environments that bring together diverse fields and professions.

UNIVERSITY UPDATE We hear that consistently from employers and families alike.” In addition, combining operations and administrative structures of two colleges will create efficiencies that better support and sustain growth. Combinations of colleges of architecture and other disciplines are common; Penn State University, the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and Carnegie Mellon University have consolidated fine and performing arts and architecture colleges. “UNL is a medium-sized research university, and we have to be even more strategic than our peers about maximizing our existing resources,” Weissinger said. “The creation of the new college is just the latest example of a trend on our campus to create larger, more diverse academic units that can achieve at a much higher level.” – Steve Smith, University Communications

university of nebraska system

Milliken to Lead CUNY After 10 years at the helm of the University of Nebraska System, President J.B. Milliken is headed to the City University of New York to take over as chancellor of the 24-campus, 270,000-student institution June 1. “As a Nebraskan from a family with four generations who attended the University of Nebraska, I have been enormously proud to serve as the president of this great university,” Milliken wrote to NU employees on Jan. 15. “With the work of an outstanding faculty and staff, the leadership of the Board of Regents, and the commitment

of state political leaders and supporters from across the country, the university has been on a remarkable trajectory. With the current leadership and enthusiastic support of alumni and friends I know that momentum will continue.” As the magazine went to press, an interim president had not yet been designated by the NU Board of Regents. The board will conduct a national search for the next president, with assistance from Isaacson, Miller, a national executive search firm.

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 9

UNIVERSITY UPDATE

Traci Robison examines historical photos in UNL’s collection (Photo | Troy Fedderson, University Communications)

UNL ARCHIVES

Historypin Showcasing UNL Photo Collections An online historical archive is helping expand access to and information about the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s historical photograph collections. The project, led by Traci Robison, an archives associate in the University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections, has regularly posted images to the Historypin website since 2012. The website, created by the nonprofit company We Are What We Do, allows users to post historical photos, videos, audio recordings and personal recollections, using the location and date of an item to “pin” it to Google Maps. If Google Street View is available, users can overlay historical photographs and compare it with the location today. They are also encouraged to add information – including names of people, historical facts and related memories – to the

individual photos. “What really attracted us to Historypin is the fact that it is global and interactive,” Robison said. “We are using it primarily for images that really aren’t available online anywhere else. We don’t want to duplicate efforts. We want the Historypin posts to be unique, something new the public may not know about.” The project is also designed to use crowdsourcing to build knowledge about items posted. “Sometimes, we have only a little bit of information available on items in the collections,” Robison said. “Historypin allows the audience to share what they know about a post. It has the potential to build history about the individual images.” The UNL posts – which have grown to span a variety of topics, from campus life and agriculture, to Cornhusker

athletics and San Francisco after the earthquake of 1906 – are often featured on the Historypin main page and blogs. The UNL Archives and Special Collections Historypin site includes more than 650 photos. Those pins have drawn more than 24,000 individual views and, each day, the site attracts about 100 new views. Posts to the site are also being incorporated into the Archives and Special Collections’ Twitter feed. Robison is planning the addition of historic tours of City and East campuses to the website. She also hopes the public can contribute to information on photos posted and/ or request certain topics for future exploration. CONNECTION BOX – Troy Fedderson, go.unl.edu/att2 University twitter.com/UNLarchives Communications trobison2@unl.edu

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COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS

Maria Marron Named Journalism Dean Maria Marron, chair of the Department of Journalism at Central Michigan University, will begin her duties as dean of the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications June 1. Marron succeeds Gary Kebbel, who stepped down June 30, 2012, to lead a universitywide mobile media initiative. James O’Hanlon is the interim dean of the journalism college. Marron has been department chair at Central Michigan since 2002. In that time she led two departmental reaccreditations; strengthened local, statewide and national media connections; built partnerships with local companies, alumni and academic organizations

in support of her unit; raised funds for program initiatives, including a grant to attract more minority students into journalism; pioneered a program of visiting professionals and international exchange partnerships; and worked with curricular and faculty committees to develop a new master’s program. Her teaching areas are in journalism, media law and ethics, and her research spans journalism Maria Marron pedagogy, investigative journalism, health, and aging issues in the media. She is the editor of Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, one of the three journals published by Sage for the Association for Education in

UNIVERSITY UPDATE

Journalism and Mass Communication. She is a former president of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication. Marron holds a B.A. and postgraduate diploma from University College Dublin; an M.A. in journalism from The Ohio State University, where she was a Rotary International fellow representing Ireland; and a Ph.D. in journalism and mass communications from Ohio University. She has worked as a journalist, editor and public relations professional in Ireland and the United States. She also has held faculty positions at Ohio State and Texas State University-San Marcos. Marron was on the initial planning team for the College of Communication and Media Sciences at Zayed University, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. – Steve Smith, University Communications

INTERNATIONAL QUILT STUDY CENTER AND MUSEUM

UNL Quilts on Google Art Project The International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has added nearly 100 high-resolution art works to the Google Art Project, allowing virtual visitors to explore its quilt collection online. In the museum’s first wave of uploaded content, it shares a selection that represents contemporary and traditional quilts made since the 18th century around the world. Notable pieces include Lucinda Ward Honstain’s “Reconciliation Quilt,” Michael James’ “Aurora” and the recently acquired “Long Po Yi,” or “Dragon Wife’s Robe” from China. The resolution of these images, combined with a custom built zoom viewer, allows art-lovers to discover minute aspects of paintings they may never have seen up close before. Visitors to the Google Art Project can browse works by the artist’s name, the artwork, the type of art, the museum, the country, collections and the time period. Google+ and video hangouts are integrated on the site, allowing viewers

to invite their friends to view and discuss their favorite works in a video chat or follow a guided tour from an expert to gain an appreciation of a particular topic or art collection. The “My Gallery” feature allows users to save specific views of any of the artworks and build their own personalized gallery. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole gallery can then be shared with friends and family. In addition, a feature called “Compare” allows users CONNECTION BOX to examine two pieces of artwork go.unl.edu/wnbu side-by-side to look at how an artist’s style evolved over time, connect trends across cultures or delve deeply into two parts of the same work. More than 57,000 high-resolution artworks are available in the Art Project, which has nearly 400 partners in 50 countries, with more being added all the time. – Laura Chapman, International Quilt Study Center and Museum NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 11

UNIVERSITY UPDATE

Physics professor Donald Umstadter (left), project director, and doctoral student Nathan Powers, first author, are part of a research team that has created a laser-driven synchrotron X-ray device. (Photo: Greg Nathan | University Communications)

EXTREME LIGHT LABORATORY

X-ray Device Powered by Compact Laser Developed at UNL Using a compact but powerful laser, a research team at UNL’s Extreme Light Laboratory has developed a novel method to generate synchrotron X-rays using a “tabletop” laser. Although the high quality of synchrotron X-rays make them ideal for research ranging from the structure of matter to advanced medical images,

X-ray radiographic image of a half-inch thick, N-shaped, steel plate, obtained with a novel x-ray light source. (Photo: Powers et al.)

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access to the technology has been limited until now. Most traditional synchrotron X-ray devices are gigantic and costly, available only at a few sites around the world. “Our hope is that this new technology will lead to applications that benefit both science and society,” said Nathan Powers, a Ph.D. student and first author of the journal article announcing the development. Physics professor Donald Umstadter, director of the Extreme Light Laboratory, led the research project. He compared the synchrotron X-ray breakthrough to the development of personal computers, giving more people access to computing power once available only via large and costly mainframe computers. Shrinking components of advanced laser-based technology will increase the feasibility

of producing high-quality X-rays in medical and university research laboratories, which in turn could lead to new applications for the X-rays, he said. Because the new X-ray device could be small enough to fit in a hospital or on a truck, it could lead to more widespread applications for advanced X-ray technology, the UNL scientists said. New applications might include Homeland Security detecting nuclear materials concealed within a shielded container; doctors finding cancerous tumors at earlier stages; or scientists studying extremely fast reactions that occur too rapidly for observation with conventional X-rays. “The X-rays that were previously generated with compact lasers lacked several of the distinguishing characteristics of synchrotron light, such as a relatively pure and tunable color spectrum,” Umstadter said. “Instead, those X-rays resembled the ‘white light’ emitted by the sun.” The new laser-driven device produces X-rays over a much larger range of photon energies, extending to the energy of nuclear CONNECTION BOX gamma rays. Even fewer unl.edu/diocles conventional synchrotron X-ray sources are capable of producing such high photon energy. Key to the breakthrough was finding a way to collide two micro-thin beams – the scattering laser beam and the laser-accelerated electron beam. “Our aim and timing needed to be as good as that of two sharpshooters attempting to collide their bullets in midair,” Umstadter said. “Colliding our ‘bullets” might have even been harder, since they travel at nearly the speed of light.” – Leslie Reed, University Communications

UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

UNIVERSITY UPDATE

Book of Cather’s Letters Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2013 In April, Andrew Jewell, an associate professor in the University Libraries at UNL, published “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather.” The book, co-edited with Texas A&M professor emerita Janis Stout, represented the first time that the correspondence of the intensely private Cather was opened to the public. For the next six months, the 700-page work received international attention and praise – which reached a crescendo in December when Time magazine named “Letters” to its list of Top 10 nonfiction books of 2013. The9302HGFads7.375x4.75_4_14.pdf magazine’s editors lauded the 1 work, 3/4/14which 9:08 includes AM more than 550 never-before-released Cather letters, as

“a robust volume that deepens our understanding of the novelist’s witty, tenacious and richly intelligent character. Whether Cather is joking with her family, pressing her publisher for a better dust jacket or despairing of the losses of World War II, her voice comes through on every page as a true American original.” Jewell said when he learned of the honor, he was a bit surprised that “Letters” was included in the list, which also includes works by well-known writers Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lawrence Wright and Erik Schlosser. “It’s a bit surreal,” he said. “I see this as a sign of Cather’s importance – through her letters, we were able to remind people about her remarkable life and work. And that is what made the book notable and worthy of this honor.” After graduating from the university in 1895, Cather became a prominent international author, winning the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for “One of Ours.” Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages. – Steve Smith, University Communications

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 13

COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS

Are Students Digitally Distracted?

The typical college student plays with his or her digital device an average of 11 times a day while in class, according to a new study by a UNL associate professor. More than 80 percent admit that their use of smart phones, tablets and laptops can interfere with their learning. More than a fourth say their grades suffer as a result. Barney McCoy, an associate professor of broadcasting, embarked upon his study after launching his teaching career seven years ago and noticing the instructional challenges presented by students’ digital devices. From the front of his classroom on multimedia, he often saw the smart phones creeping out. The view from the back of a classroom while a colleague taught Mass Media Principles was equally telling. “They’ve got their laptops open, but they’re not always taking notes,” McCoy said. “Some might have two screens open – Facebook and their notes.” Rather than rely on anecdotal evidence, McCoy decided to try to quantify how often college students tune out their instructors in favor of tweets and texts. During fall 2012,

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he surveyed 777 students at six universities in five states about their classroom use of digital devices for non-instructional purposes. He also asked the students how often they are distracted by others using digital devices and for their perspective on how digital devices should be policed. “I don’t think students necessarily think it’s problematic,” McCoy said. “They think it’s part of their lives.” Here’s how often respondents said they used their digital devices for nonclassroom purposes during a typical day (percentages equal more than 100 percent because of rounding): > 1 to 3 times per day: 35 percent > 4 to 10 times per day: 27 percent > 11 to 30 times per day: 16 percent > More than 30 times per day: 15 percent > Never: less than 8 percent. Nearly 86 percent said they were texting, 68 percent reported they were checking e-mail, 66 percent said they were using social networks, 38 percent said they were surfing the Web and 8 percent said they were playing a game. McCoy said he was surprised by one response: 79 percent of the students said they used their digital device to

UNIVERSITY UPDATE

check the time. “That’s a generational thing to me – a lot of young people don’t wear watches,” he said. The top advantages of using digital devices for non-class purposes, according to students, are staying connected (70 percent), fighting boredom (55 percent) and doing related classwork (49 percent). The most commonly cited disadvantages were that they don’t pay attention (90 percent), miss instruction (80 percent), or get called out by their instructor (32 percent). More than a fourth said they lose grade points because of their digital habits. Students do not want to leave their smartphones at home, however. More than 91 percent said they opposed a classroom ban on digital devices. Their preferred policy (72 percent) for dealing with digital distraction is for the instructor to speak to the offender. They also preferred a first-offense warning, followed by penalties (65 percent) for those caught using devices for nonclassroom purposes. McCoy said digital distraction is a challenge with which instructors will continue to wrestle. A 2012 study showed that two-thirds of students age 18-29 own a smartphone, which gives them mobile access to the Internet as well as texting and e-mail capabilities. “It’s become automatic behavior on the part of so many people – they do it without even thinking about it.” – Leslie Reed, University Communications

CONNECTION BOX go.unl.edu/fbov

UNIVERSITY UPDATE UNL-led Project No. 12 Science Story of 2013 ANTARCTIC GEOLOGIC DRILLING SCIENCE MANAGEMENT OFFICE

University of Nebraska-Lincoln scientists and hot water drillers figure into Discover magazine’s 12th-biggest science story of the year. The magazine, which ranks the year’s top 100 science stories each December, featured the WISSARD project as its No. 12 story for 2013.

CONNECTION BOX go.unl.edu/mczq go.unl.edu/q699

WISSARD stands for the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling – in which a team of scientists and engineers succeeded in drilling through the West Antarctic ice sheet to reach a subglacial lake in January. It was accomplished with a clean access

hot water drill system designed and manufactured at UNL. The National Science Foundationfunded team drilled a 30-centimeterdiameter hole through a half-mile of ice to reach Subglacial Lake Whillans to retrieve water and sediment samples that have been isolated from direct contact with the atmosphere for many thousands of years. “Within hours, they found bacterial cells, more than 450,000 per teaspoon. Deprived of sunlight, some of these bacteria may instead eat iron and sulfur minerals generated as glaciers grind up the bedrock,” the magazine wrote in the two-page story titled “The Search for Life Trapped Under Ice.” Frank Rack, UNL associate professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences

and the executive director of the Antarctic Geologic Drilling (ANDRILL) Science Management Office at the university, said that for the UNL team, punching through to the lake was the culmination of a sustained, 18-monthlong effort to design, fabricate, test and deploy a new hot water drill system capable of providing clean access to a previously unexplored subglacial environment. “The scientific outcomes of this project mark the beginning of a new era in Antarctic subglacial exploration, and the UNL team is both excited and pleased to be able to contribute to this ongoing process of discovery,” he said.

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 15

NET/IQSCM

‘Tiny Stitches, Big Life’

Grace Snyder’s lively eyes gaze out of her 1903 wedding photograph. There’s an astonishing hat atop her head and a tiny, cat-got-the-cream smile on her lips. She perches just behind her cowboy husband, her clasped hands resting near his left shoulder. Her story, in many respects, mirrors Nebraska’s history in the late 19th century and much of the 20th century. Born in 1882, reared in a sod house on a Custer County homestead and married to a Sandhills cowboy and rancher, she recounted her pioneer life in the 1963 book “No Time on My Hands,” as told to her daughter, author Nellie Snyder Yost. Along the way, she

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became nationally known for her quilting expertise. Two of her quilts were designated as among the 100 best 20th-century quilts by Quilters Newsletter Magazine in 1999. She was named to the National Quilters Hall of Fame in 1980, two years before her death at 100. Now Grace Snyder is the focal point of an innovative new history curriculum developed jointly by NET Learning Services, the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Nebraska State Historical Society. Called “Tiny Stitches, Big Life,” the online multimedia project uses Snyder’s quilts and her life experiences to bring pioneer history to life for Nebraska elementary school students. It is the first module of a larger project, “Stories of Nebraska Quilters,” with plans to develop additional material about other Nebraskans who are remembered through their quilts. The project supplements Nebraska’s

UNIVERSITY UPDATE fourth-grade curriculum, which requires students to learn about state history. It is a way to connect family history with local and state history, said Patricia Crews, the recently retired director of the quilt museum at UNL. She helped develop website content. “Grace Snyder was a child of homesteaders,” Crews said. “She made her home in the Sandhills; she was a ranch wife. Grace’s life story provides a wonderful lens on state history.” The website details the chapters of Snyder’s life, using her quilts to illustrate its major themes. The site includes a magnifying feature to allow a close examination of the many quilt images and photographs included on the site, as well as an interactive timeline that links Snyder’s life and times with historic events. Sarah Winans, a Lincoln fourthgrade teacher and Nebraska’s 2013 History Teacher of the Year, wrote accompanying lesson plans for teachers, adapting and expanding upon previous work by Di Kitterer Ryter. The site has been live since September, said Chet Kincaid, a senior producer for Interactive Educational Media at NET Learning Services. “We use CONNECTION sound and nequilters.org images to tell Grace’s story, relating it to historic events and her quilts,” Kincaid said. “Nebraska history inspired her quilts.” – Leslie Reed, University Communications

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CAMPUS BRIEFS Appointments n The International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has named Leslie Levy the new executive director of Quilt House and the International Quilt Study Center. Levy has been executive director of the Willa Cather Foundation. She will assume her new position July 1. n Christin J. Mamiya, associate dean of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts at UNL is interim director of the Sheldon Museum of Art. She replaces Jorge Daniel Veneciano, who resigned in December to become director of El Museo del Barrio in New York. Veneciano had directed Sheldon since 2008. n Brad Roth was named president of NUtech Ventures, the nonprofit corporation responsible for Brad Roth commercializing technologies developed through UNL. He came to NUtech from LI-COR Inc.

Exchange Center at Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xi’an China. n The online Master of Business Administration program offered by UNL’s College of Business Administration jumped 11 spots to sixth overall in the 2014 U.S. News & World Report Best Online Graduate Business Programs rankings. The report, released Jan. 8, ranks 172 programs, including four current or future Big Ten programs. n Six UNL faculty members have Judy Diamond been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society. UNL’s new AAAS fellows are: Judy Diamond, Concetta DiRusso professor and curator of informal science education at the University of Nebraska State Museum; Concetta DiRusso, professor of biochemistry; Sherilyn Fritz, George Holmes University Sherilyn Fritz Professor of Earth and atmospheric

KUDOS n Chancellor Harvey Perlman is one of 30 individuals from around the world to receive a 2013 Confucius Institute Individual Performance Excellence Award. The honor was presented during the Eighth Confucius Institute Conference held Dec. 7-8 in Beijing, China. The citation noted Perlman’s assistance in the creation of UNL’s Confucius Institute and the American 18 SPRING 2014

Chancellor Perlman with Liu Yandong, vice premier of state council of the People’s Republic of China.

sciences; Alan Kamil, George Holmes Professor of biological sciences; David Sellmyer, George Alan Kamil Holmes Professor of physics; and Charles Wood, Lewis Lehr/3M Professor of biological sciences. n The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education David Sellmyer has awarded the University of Nebraska-Lincoln a STARS Bronze Rating for demonstrating commitment to sustainability. STARS – the Sustainability Charles Wood Tracking, Assessment and Rating System – measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education, including academics, engagement, operations, planning and administration. n UNL advertising and public relations senior Jessica Robertson has been selected by the American Advertising Federation for its Most Promising Minority Student Program. Robertson will be featured in Advertising Age, USA Today and the Most Promising Minority Student program book. Additionally, her resume will be included in the 2014 Most Promising resume database that will be available to human resources and media professionals across the nation. n UNL student Jenna Jaynes placed first in the Hearst Broadcast Television News Competition, making her one of five national finalists who qualified for the television news semifinal competition of the Hearst Journalism Awards Program. The UNL College of

Mary Weatherholt

graduate, was named one of the NCAA Today’s Top 10 for 2014, bringing Nebraska’s nation-leading Top 10 total to 17. The athletes are recognized for their successes in athletics, academics and the community. n John D. Turner, Cotner Professor of Religious Studies at UNL, has been honored with a “Festschrift” – a collection of scholarly essays by those who have been influenced by his work. Turner is recognized worldwide for his study of the Nag Hammadi codices, ancient papyrus documents discovered in Egypt in 1945 that changed scholars’

Journalism and Mass Communications is tied for fourth place in the Intercollegiate Broadcast News Competition. The winners will be named this month. n Two-time Big Ten Women’s Tennis Athlete of the Year Mary Weatherholt, a 2013 UNL

understanding of how Christianity developed. More than 30 scholars from around the world contributed to the Festschrift, “Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World.”

GRANTS n Dr. Anne M. Hubbard, on behalf of the Claire M. Hubbard Foundation, made a gift of $150,000 to the University of Nebraska Foundation to establish the Claire M. Hubbard Museum Fund for Excellence to support the NU State Museum. The funds will be used to establish a volunteer program, launch a new distance learning program and begin a program to help underserved populations access the museum.

John D. Turner

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NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 19

Black Print with a White Carnation Amy Helen Forss ’10

mildred brown and the omaha star newspaper, 1938-1989 University of Nebraska Press, 2013, (paper) $30 www.nebraskapress.unl.edu

Mildred Dee Brown (1905–89) was the cofounder of Nebraska’s Omaha Star, the longest running black newspaper founded by an African American woman in the United States. Known for her trademark white carnation corsage, Brown was the matriarch of Omaha’s Near North Side – a historically black part of town – and an iconic city leader. Amy Forss draws on more than 150 oral histories, numerous black newspapers and government documents to illuminate African American history during the political and social upheaval of the 20th century. During Brown’s 51-year tenure, the Omaha Star became a channel of communication between black and white residents of the city, as well as an arena for positive weekly news in the black community. Brown and her newspaper led successful challenges to racial discrimination, unfair employment practices, restrictive housing covenants and a segregated public school system, placing her at the center of America’s changing racial landscape.

ALUMNI AUTHORS 20 SPRING 2014

The Swan Gondola a novel Penguin Group, 2014, (cloth) $27.95 Penguin.com

Timothy On the eve of the Schaffert 1898 Omaha World’s ’91

Fair, Ferret Skerritt, ventriloquist by trade, con man by birth, isn’t quite sure how it will change him or his city. Omaha still has the marks of a filthy Wild West town, even as it attempts to achieve the grandeur and respectability of nearby Chicago. But when he crosses paths with the beautiful and enigmatic Cecily, his whole purpose shifts and the fair becomes the backdrop to their love affair. One of a traveling troupe of actors that has descended on the city, Cecily works in the Midway’s Chamber of Horrors, where she loses her head hourly on a guillotine playing Marie Antoinette. And after closing, she rushes off, clinging protectively to a mysterious carpetbag, never giving Ferret a second glance. But a moonlit ride on the swan gondola, a boat on the lagoon of the New White City, changes everything, and the fair’s magic begins to take its effect.

You Will Never See Any God stories University of Nebraska Press, 2014, (paper) $17.95

Ervin D. www.nebraskapress.unl.edu Krause A farmer perishing

’57 Edited by under a fallen tractor Timothy makes a last stab at Schaffert philosophizing: “There ’91 was nothing dead that was ever beautiful.” It is a sentiment belied not only by the strange beauty in his story but also in the rough lives and deaths, small and large, that fill these haunting tales. Pulp-fiction grim and gritty but with the rhythm and resonance of classic folklore, these stories take place in a world of shadowy figures and childhood fears, in a countryside occupied by men and women mercilessly unforgiving of one another’s trespasses, and in nights prowled by wolves and scrutinized by an “agonized and lamenting” moon. This collection includes award-winning stories like “The Snake” and “The Quick and the Dead” as well as the previously unpublished and once controversial “Anniversary.” Krause’s portrayal of the matter-of-fact cruelty and hopeful fragility of humanity is a critical addition to the canon of 20th-century American literature.

Randy Lippincott ’99

Three Days of the Condor

Around Granby

or fifty shades of dry

images of america

Trafford Publishing, 2013, (paper) $14.77

Arcadia Publishing, 2013, (paper), $21.99

www.trafford.com

www.arcadiapublishing.com

This is a trilogy about three separate, epic climbs – difficult climbs that were made more grueling by the common thread of lifethreatening heat. The insidious sun sucking energy, water and even willpower from a wellconditioned man made the hard climbs a more arduous task. Included in these stories are many other true-to-life adventures and narrow escapes for Randy Lippincott. The ensuing vignettes are about more than just climbing rocks, according to the author. They are about that one thing in life that truly sets you free.

Contact Sheet Poems CreateSpace, 2013, (paper) $8.96 www.WideSky.biz

The roots of the word “photography” mean to “write with light.” In “Contact Sheet, David M. David M. Frye uses words as the lights and shadows that Frye describe the fine-grain details of the ordinary ’00 world. This work, his first collection of poetry, reflects his posture as a poet and photographer, a Pennsylvania native who lives in Nebraska, and a lifelong traveler of the pathways between the analytical and creative realms.

The area around Granby, Colo., was developed in the late 1800s and today remains true to Penny the “Spirit of the West.” It once was the Utes’ Rafferty summer hunting ground and was shared by Hamilton fur trappers and mountain men in the winters. ’78, ’81 Later, prospectors came to Lulu City and mined for gold while loggers and homesteaders built schools and churches, forming the towns of Monarch, Selak and Coulter. In 1905, the Moffat Railroad created a new town, putting Granby on the map. The Victory Highway offered motorcars a route through the Arapaho National Forest and Rocky Mountain National Park, bringing tourism to dude ranches. After World War II, the completion of the massive Colorado–Big Thompson Water Project changed the landscape when Lake Granby buried ranches and the Lindbergh airstrip. Soon, locals discovered “white gold” when skiing and winter sports expanded the four-season, mountainresort community.

Red Geraniums iUniverse, 2013, (paper) $16.95 www.iuniverse.com

Sally Salisbury Stoddard

’75, ’84

Set in rural Nebraska in the early 1900s, “Red Geraniums” is an engaging tale of the successes and failures experienced by a woman ahead of her time. The fictional Kate MacLean has taught in a country school, has owned a photography studio in Tingle Creek and has been a farm wife – raising her husband’s adopted son, Will; his hired boy, Hjelmer; and Margaret, who came to them from the Orphan Train.

Show US YOUR TALENT Featured books are not sold or distributed through the Nebraska Alumni Association. Publishing information is provided to help consumers locate the title through local booksellers or online retailers unless otherwise noted. To be considered for inclusion in Alumni Authors, send a complimentary copy of a recently published book and a description of its contents to: Alumni Authors Editor, 1520 R Street, Lincoln, NE 68508-1651 Please include the author’s full name, class year, current mailing and e-mail addresses and telephone number. The author must have attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 21

’14

Alumni Awards

On Thursday evening, May 8, 19 alumni, seven students, a retired faculty member and an alumni family will be recognized during the Nebraska Alumni Association’s annual Alumni Awards Banquet, An All-University Celebration

Ann Himes

Katelyn Dickes

Emily Murtaugh

Brooke Busboom

Ann Himes, a sophomore from Omaha majoring in Russian, history and global studies, completed an eight-week intensive study of Russian last summer at Middlebury College. A UNL Regents Scholar and Top Scholar, she also is an IC Center For Academic Excellence Associate Scholar and an E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues International Scholar. Himes represents the College of Arts and Sciences as an ASUN senator, and serves as an ASUN women’s issues representative. She is assisting in a research project about the effects of international criminal accountability on war crimes and conflict, and has held internships at Nebraska Appleseed and the Nebraska Legislature. She plans to study abroad in Russia.

Katelyn Dickes is completing her freshman year at UNL as a nutrition health and exercise major. Raised on a small farm in Fordyce in the northeastern corner of Nebraska, she is a graduate of Cedar Catholic High School in Hartington. She has worked as a certified nursing assistant and dietary aid at the Golden Living Center and a summer intern at the Cedar Country News. At UNL, Dickes is active in Scarlet Guard Knights, Med Life and NU Meds and is a peer mentor leader for the Honors Program. She also is a note-taker for UNL Services for Students with Disabilities. Dickes holds a UNL Regent’s Scholarship and a Nebraska Top Scholars Scholarship.

Emily Murtaugh is a junior majoring in textiles, merchandising and fashion design/communications at UNL. The Omaha native has served as a peer mentor in the UNL Honors Program and a peer tutor for genetics students. Now in her third year as a Scarlet Guard member, Murtaugh designed the SG clothing line and served on the SG executive committee as public relations chair, managing all social media and creating advertisements and promotional pieces. She has worked as a nanny and summer camp counselor, and currently is a sales associate at Forever 21 and holds an internship at Blush Bridal Boutique.

Brooke Busboom is a UNL senior hospitality, restaurant and tourism management major from Hastings, who plans to graduate in December. Serving as the venues intern for the Nebraska Alumni Association since March 2013, she is actively involved in a wide variety of NAA programs such as Chancellor Outreach Events, Cather Circle, Scarlet Guard, chapters and groups, Football Friday and the Young Alumni Academy. She manages the association’s VIP travel program, oversees game day at the Wick Alumni Center and has taken the lead on several reunions. Busboom has participated in mentoring programs with Cather Circle and Life 101. She is also an intramural champion in indoor and sand volleyball.

Charlotte Kramer Foreign Study Scholarship

22 SPRING 2014

Jack Miller Scholarship

Roy and Catherine Yaley Student Leadership Award

at the Nebraska Champions Club. Tickets are $37.45 per person, tax included. Reservations will be accepted through May 1 or until sold out. Register online, by phone or by e-mail.

CONNECTION BOX huskeralum.org/2014-awards Pam Penner, 402-472-2841 ppenner@huskeralum.org

Sunny Russell

Cadet James Yong

Carolyn Clark

Deanna Sands, ’72

Sunny Russell, a senior from Stratford, Texas, majoring in child, youth and family studies, is co-captain of the Nebraska NCAA Women’s Rifle Team. Selected by fellow student-athlete leaders, Russell serves as president of the StudentAthlete Advisory Committee, the voice of all Nebraska student-athletes. The fouryear Dean’s List honoree works as a student intern in the Nebraska Life Skills Department for Husker Athletics and was named to Student Affairs Vice Chancellor Juan Franco’s List in 2013 for her outstanding leadership, integrity and character. Russell plans to obtain a master’s degree in order to pursue her dream of developing a values-based leadership development curriculum.

AFROTC Cadet James Yong is a junior from Omaha majoring in biological systems engineering and on track to graduate with honors, having made the Dean’s List every semester. A 2012 AFROTC InCollege Scholarship Program recipient, he has earned an additional eight AFROTC awards for his achievements in and out of the classroom. Yong has served as AFROTC chaplain liaison, vice wing commander technician and fall 2013 flight commander for the freshman class. He is Arnold Air Society’s deputy squadron commander, secretary of the Biomedical Engineering Society and on the UNL Navigator’s leadership team. He’s also a fitness guru, having received AFROTC physical fitness ribbons each semester since fall 2012.

Carolyn Clark, a senior in fashion merchandising and marketing from Scottsbluff, has been a strong advocate for Cather Circle, while taking advantage of the group’s many opportunities. She was integral in soliciting student membership by providing residence halls and colleges across campus with promotional materials. Clark has built lasting relationships with mentors and other members that led her to apply for and receive an internship scholarship. Last summer, she was chosen to be a merchandising intern with Jones New York in White Plains, N.Y. She was an assistant buyer and gained valuable knowledge from her team, which included full-time associate buyers, a buyer and the vice president of merchandising.

Deanna Sands, ’72, is one of the original members of Cather Circle and has actively recruited members, both alumnae and students, for the past 15 years. In addition to her ongoing mentoring of students and new members, Sands has served on the group’s executive committee and as chair. Under her leadership, Cather Circle continued to grow in stature, and Sands was instrumental in securing funding for the group’s ongoing staffing needs. A UNL journalism graduate, she was the first woman to serve as managing editor of the Omaha WorldHerald and led the national Associated Press Managing Editors group. Sands now runs the family farming operation outside Nebraska City.

Howard and Judy Vann Student Leadership Award

Shane Osborn Student Leadership Award

Cather Circle Collegian of the Year

Cather Circle Alumna of the Year

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 23

Earl Ellington Doc Elliott Award

Janet Anderson Lightner, ’61, ’65

Donnie Arant, ’03

Jennafer Glaesemann, ’03

Janet Anderson Lightner, ’61, ’65, has served Nebraska alumni chapters across the country – including the Californians for Nebraska and the St. Louis alumni chapters in the 1960s, and the Philadelphia chapter (which she and her husband helped organize), the Puget Sound Chapter and the Washington Cornhuskers (which she also helped establish) from the 1970s on. A native of Arapahoe, Lightner earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UNL, joining chapters wherever she worked as a speech therapist and counselor. After a brief move to Virginia, the family settled once again in Washington. Lightner rejoined the Washington Cornhuskers and held numerous positions, including president and scholarship chair, helping the chapter start two UNL scholarships. She also established a scholarship in her husband’s name. Lightner has participated in the NAA’s Postcards of Pride Program as well. She and her husband, Gene, have two children and live in Federal Way, Wash.

Donnie Arant, ’03, is a project sponsor at Kiewit in the Florida area office. A UNL construction management graduate, he joined Kiewit in May 2002 and has been an integral part of multiple projects during his career there. From 2007-2012, he was first a project engineer and later a construction manager for several major transportation projects in Arizona. In his current position as sponsor, his responsibilities include strategic and business planning, pursuing new projects, estimating and managing active work. He is assigned to the Tampa Bay Water project and is serving a key role in the soil cement group. Arant is a member of the Florida Transportation Builders Association.

Jennafer Glaesemann, ’07, is owner and veterinarian at Blue Valley Veterinary Clinic in Beatrice and Pickrell Veterinary Clinic in Pickrell. She received her bachelor’s degree from UNL, and as an undergrad did research for associate professor Brett White and wrote an honors thesis. She was also a member of the A.C.E. Learning Community steering committee. Glaesemann serves on the Animal Welfare Committee of both the America Association of Bovine Practitioners and the American Veterinary Medical Association. She is a member of the American Animal Hospital Association, American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners, American Oxford Sheep Association and Nebraska Veterinary Medical Association.

Early Achiever Award

Distinguished Service Award

Earl Ellington, a Kentucky native, joined the University of Nebraska faculty in 1968 as a member of the Department of Animal Science. In 1978, he began his tenure as assistant and associate dean in the College of Agriculture until 1991, when he returned to teaching as professor of animal science. He retired in 2002 as professor emeritus. The recipient of many teaching awards and the CASNR Alumni Association’s Service, Honorary Life Membership and Legacy awards, Ellington served as president of the National Agricultural Alumni and Development Association and president of the Nebraska chapter of Gamma Sigma Delta and Phi Beta Delta as well as international president of the latter. He and his wife, Norma, celebrated 60 years of marriage last June 30 and enjoy attending university events, Husker sporting events and traveling. They have two daughters and four grandchildren, and proudly welcomed their first greatgrandson last November.

24 SPRING 2014

Jessie Graff, ’07

JLynn Hausmann, ’04

Caleb Jensen, ’01

Lena Raksin Kitson, ’01

Jessie Graff, ’07, is living out her dream as a stuntwoman in Los Angeles. She has done stunts or performed as a stunt double on such TV shows as “Leverage,” “Castle,” “The Ellen Show” and “Southland” and films such as “Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon,” “X-Men: First Class” and “Live Free or Die Hard.” As a UNL student, she competed in pole vaulting for the Huskers track and field team and majored in theater. Among the other skills Graff, a member of the Screen Actors Guild, uses in her profession are gymnastics, free running, high diving, high falls, circus arts, sky diving, stunt driving, boxing and kick boxing, wire work, horse work, Tae Kwon Do (Black Belt) and Kung Fu (Black Sash).

JLynn Hausmann, ’04, is president and owner of JHaus, an American-made premium denim collection, manufactured in downtown Los Angeles. Responsible for the creative direction of the brand; managing budgets, sales goals, production and quality control; and overseeing the PR/marketing plan, her progressive style is gaining momentum and drawing critical acclaim. She was named a 2013 Zappos Emerging Designer. Raised on a farm and ranch, Hausmann has lived a less-is-more mentality, evident in the fact that she eschews traditional denim embellishments while achieving beauty with tough, strong and basic fabrics. She studied in London and Paris in 2003 and graduated from UNL in fashion merchandising.

Caleb Jensen, ’01, is a creative director at Wieden + Kennedy in New York City. Prior to that, he headed up the agency’s office in Tokyo, worked as a copywriter at W+K’s headquarters in Portland, Ore., and completed the agency’s WK12 school. He has helped create awardwinning campaigns for Nike, including Creativity’s top commercial of 2012, “Jogger,” which debuted at the Summer Olympics. In Tokyo, Jensen led daring moves for Nike Japan such as the “Vapor Trail” soccer spot and the bold “Pledge” baseball spot that stressed individuality in a country with a teamwork culture. Jensen is a graduate of the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications. He and his wife have two children.

Lena Raksin Kitson, ’01, is a senior associate in the Chicago office of Gensler, a global design and architecture firm. Prior to joining Gensler in 2007, she was a designer at DeStefano Partners and an interior designer with JM Architects. At Gensler, Kitson has worked on projects for clients such as Kohler Global Communications, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago’s new hospital, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the University of Chicago Department of Economics and Becker Friedman Institute, Chicago Trading Co., DRW Trading and Leo Burnett, among others. She has also worked on mixed-use and entertainment projects in the United Kingdom and Dubai. Kitson is an interior design graduate of the UNL College of Architecture.

Early Achiever Award

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 25

Ross Pesek, ’10 Early Achiever Award

Brian Poppe, ’06 Early Achiever Award

John Schiel, ’04, ’09 Early Achiever Award

Ann Elisabeth Brown, ’70, ’74 Alumni Achievement Award

Ross Pesek, ’10, has been practicing law at Dornan, Lustgarten and Troia law firm in Omaha since he graduated from the University of Nebraska College of Law. A native Omahan fluent in Spanish, Pesek created a free legal clinic at Our Lady of Guadalupe catholic church in South Omaha, helped nearly 50 people receive Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA or “Dream Act”) legal immigration status and created the “True Potential” scholarship fund for those with DACA status. As a private attorney building his own practice, Pesek focuses on criminal defense, immigration, and accident and injury cases. He was recognized by the Nebraska Bar Association as Nebraska’s Outstanding Young Lawyer of 2013.

26 SPRING 2014

Brian Poppe, ’06, is director of enterprise risk management at Mutual of Omaha. Recent accomplishments include leading an enterprisewide governance, risk and compliance software installation; developing key risk indicators to monitor the company’s risks; and supporting the implementation of a company-wide model risk management policy. He began his career in 2007 at Lincoln Financial Group, and moved to Mutual of Omaha in 2009. A UNL grad with a BSBA in actuarial science, Poppe achieved Fellowship in the Society of Actuaries in 2010, recently attained his Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst designation, and is a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. He is also president of the Nebraska Actuaries Club.

John Schiel, ’04, ’09, is a research chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology coordinating bioanalytical efforts of the Biomanufacturing Program. A native Nebraskan, he earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees at UNL and then served as a postdoc at NIST for two years. Schiel is currently developing a recombinant IgG1K monoclonal antibody as a National Reference Material to support the bio-manufacturing industry. As part of this project, he is coordinating a roundrobin characterization of the NIST mAb that includes more than 60 contributors from industry, academia and regulatory agencies. Results will be published this year in a three-volume book series co-edited by Schiel.

Ann Elisabeth Brown, ’70, ’74, has been mother to five children, including two with severe birth defects; a recognized special education teacher; an honored senior athlete; a dynamic bike safety advocate; and a safe community champion. After caring for her children, Brown went back to school and then taught Lincoln Public Schools children with special needs for 30 years. She and her family also funded an annual UNL scholarship in memory of her two special needs sons. In her 50s and 60s, Brown was nationally ranked in long distance endurance sports (running and biking), and survived a horrific bike-car accident. Now in her 80s, Brown bikes more than 100 miles a week and champions bike safety. In 2013, she was named a Safe Community Champion by the National Safety Council-Nebraska Chapter and a Heartland Hero by the Lincoln Journal Star. She and her husband, Robert, a retired UNL professor, live in Lincoln.

Lynn Wright Brown, ’62

Gary L. Clark, ’80

W. Wyatt Hoback, ’99

James L. Kroeker, ’92

Lynn Wright Brown, ’62, is an award-winning artist, a founder of the Mustard Seed Neighborhood Center in Wenatchee, Wash., and a part-time pastor for various local churches. After graduating from UNL with a fine arts degree, she worked at the American Medical Association in Chicago where she designed the emergency medical symbol (now the blue asterisk) marking every ambulance in the United States and overseas. In 1989, concerned about the struggling lowincome families in her community, she and four other women raised money for construction of a preschool, after school, day care and infant care center. Brown served as director the first two years, and the Mustard Seed Neighborhood Center is still going strong after 22 years. Brown also went back to school to earn a master’s degree in theology studies and continues to paint pastels, with profits supporting the Mustard Seed Center. She and her husband, James, live in Wenatchee.

Gary L. Clark, ’80, is senior vice president for Bank of America. He has more than 20 years of experience in electronic commerce and emerging technologies with the last 15 years dedicated to the financial services industry. A native of Auburn, Clark served as a student football manager under Tom Osborne and George Sullivan, and graduated from the UNL College of Business Administration. He began his financial services career with the First National Bank of Omaha and continued his efforts with Bank One, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. Clark has successfully developed progressive electronic commerce departments at two prestigious financial services organizations and co-founded a prominent Midwest EC user’s group. He has co-developed several EC standards, co-authored many articles and is a frequent national and international speaker on electronic concepts. Clark and his wife, Kim, have four children and one grandchild and live in Honolulu.

W. Wyatt Hoback, ’99, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, earned his Ph.D. in entomology from UNL in 1999 and has continued his research in ecology and physiology since joining the UNK faculty that year. He has served as graduate chair and director of the distance M.S. degree in biology while teaching traditional and online classes in entomology, evolution, professionalism, freshwater biology and ecology. Hoback’s scientific interests lie in understanding the community structure of closely related organisms, and he is passionate about the conservation of invertebrate and vertebrate species. He has published more than 95 peer-reviewed papers, has obtained more than $2.5 million in grant funding, and has received the PrattHeins Foundation Faculty Award for scholarship and research at UNK. Active in international education, he has visited Brazil, South Korea, Bangladesh, Russia and China, facilitating the exchange of international students.

James L. Kroeker, ’92, was appointed a member and vice chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on Sept.1, 2013. He formerly served as deputy managing partner for professional practice at Deloitte, and prior to that was chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the latter capacity, Kroeker served as the senior accounting professional for the commission and the principal adviser on all accounting and auditing matters. He joined the SEC in 2007, playing a key role in efforts to improve the transparency and reduce the complexity of financial disclosure. Kroeker served as staff director of the SEC’s Congressionally mandated study of fair value accounting standards, and was responsible for the day-today operations of the office. Before joining the SEC, he was a partner at Deloitte in the firm’s Professional Practice Network. Kroeker received a B.S. degree with an emphasis in accounting from UNL. He lives in Norwalk, Conn.

Alumni Achievement Award

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 27

Cella Quinn, ’71

Edward Trumble, ’49 Alumni Achievement Award

Outstanding International Alumnus

Cella Quinn, ’71, is the owner of Cella Quinn Investment Services in Omaha. A graduate of UNL in journalism and political science, she became a reporter for the Lincoln Journal and the Associated Press. Intrigued by a magazine ad for broker trainees, she contacted Merrill Lynch and, in 1972, was one of the first women they hired. After seven years with Merrill Lynch, she was recruited by Smith Barney and quickly promoted to sales vice president. She later became an independent financial planner, starting her own firm in 1992. Quinn became the first woman president of Rotary Club of Omaha in 1996. She was recognized in 2011 as Omaha’s Businesswoman of the Year and now serves on the board of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. She and her husband, Mac McCallum, live in Omaha with their Bernese mountain dog and a calico office cat, both rescues.

Edward Trumble, ’49, is chairman of Leanin’ Tree Inc. and Trumble Greetings Inc., Colorado corporations owned by the Trumble family. After graduating from UNL with a business degree, Trumble went to work for Western Livestock Magazine in Denver. There he met cowboy artist Robert Lorenz, and the two men began marketing cowboy Christmas cards under the Lazy RL Ranch name. They built the business over the next decade and, when Lorenz died in 1965, Trumble changed the company name to Leanin’ Tree. New company headquarters were completed in 1973, and the Leanin’ Tree Museum of Western Art, which Trumble still serves as curator and director, opened. The company now licenses the work of 450 artists and distributes merchandise in all 50 states and 40 foreign countries. The museum attracts nearly 50,000 visitors annually. Trumble has two sons and two daughters, and lives with his wife, Lynn, in Boulder, Colo.

Srikanth Yamala, ’09, was appointed director of planning for Hall County (Ga.) Government in July 2012. He oversees daily activities and long-range initiatives, including land use, zoning, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the Gainesville-Hall Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). He is principle policy adviser on development patterns and transportation issues to the County Administrator, Planning Commission and Transportation Board. Yamala previously served as Hall County’s senior transportation planner for three years and then transportation planning manager for four years. Prior to that he worked for the City of Wichita (Kan.) Planning Department and interned with the Nebraska Department of Economic Development. Yamala earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Andhra University in India and his master’s degree in community and regional planning from UNL. Yamala and his wife, Shaistha, have one child, Neha.

Alumni Achievement Award

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Srikanth Yamala, ’09

CONNECTION BOX huskeralum.org/2014-awards

Jessie Graff, ’07

Alumni Achievement Award

Members of the Lienemann family pose with CBA Dean Donde Plowman. They are (left to right): Doug; Dorothy; Del, Jr.; Del, Sr.: Dan; Dean Plowman; and Denise.

Family patriarch Del, Sr., started his own accounting Family Tree Award office in Lincoln in 1945, and continues to work from his office at the D.A. Lienemann CPA firm today, making him Nebraska’s oldest certified public accountant. Through the Lienemann Charitable Foundation he established a $1 million permanently endowed chair to help ensure future generations receive an outstanding accounting education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Lienemann is also president and CEO of the Ethel S. Abbott Charitable Foundation, created by family friend Ethel Abbott, which makes private and charitable grants to Lincoln, Omaha and Western Nebraska.

Del Lienemann, Sr. Family

Del, Jr., is president and managing partner of D.A. Lienemann CPA. He was the first president of the Lincoln Sports Foundation, which operates the Ethel S. Abbott Sports Complex, and he serves as treasurer and a board member of the Abbott Foundation, the Grassland Foundation and the Sterns Charitable Foundation.

Twelve members from three generations of The Del Lienemann, Sr., Family have graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They are: Del Lienemann, Sr., ’41 Charlotte Peck Lienemann, ’45 Del Lienemann, Jr., ’72 Diane Lienemann Carpenter, ’76 Douglas Lienemann, ’78 Dorothy Lienemann Pflug, ’80 Daniel Lienemann, ’85 Denise Lienemann Scholz, ’87 Laura Lienemann Bishop, ’00 Elizabeth Pflug, ’12 James Lienemann, ’13 Rebecca Pflug, ’14

Doug Lienemann is CFO of Midwest Steel works, a member of the UNL CBA Advisory Group and a vice president and board member of the Lienemann Foundation. Other second generation Lienemanns also serve on the Abbott Foundation board, including Denise Scholz as first vice president and secretary, Dan Lienemann as second vice president and Dorothy Pflug as trustee.

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 29

questions, questions category

Longtime TV Quiz Show Staffers

clue This UNL-trained writer has spent 28 years on “Jeopardy.”

question

Who is Nine-Time Emmy Winner Steve Tamerius?

By Tom Nugent When the telephone rang on that December afternoon in Burbank, Calif., Steve D. Tamerius (UNL, 1967-71) felt so depressed that he hardly had the strength to pick it up. After several months of looking for a job in television – any job – the former UNL music education major was ready to concede defeat. It was all very sad. “I’d spent the entire autumn [of 1983] jobhunting and pitching a new TV special about how famous movie stars got their start,” he told Nebraska Magazine 31 years later. “And I’d gotten nowhere. I’d knocked on doors all around LA, but they just wouldn’t open. “I was out of money, had no car, and I barely had enough to eat on. As a matter of fact, things looked so hopeless that I’d already bought a one-way plane ticket back to Lincoln. “But then the phone rang. I remember, it was on a Friday afternoon, and my plane would be leaving for Lincoln the 30 SPRING 2014

following Monday. I was 72 hours from giving up and going back home with my tail between my legs.” The caller was a well-known producer seeking to launch a brand-new daytime game show on NBC that featured the late Bill Cullen ... a national celebrity who was the original host of “The Price Is Right,” the longest-running game show in the history of television. Hardly daring to breathe, Tamerius listened while the producer explained that the new show would be called “Hot Potato.” Then he asked the terrified young man on the other end if he wanted to join the enterprise as a full-time writer and production assistant. Tamerius meditated for a moment. Q. Does it ever rain in Indianapolis in the summertime? Q. Is Ulysses S. Grant entombed in Grant’s Tomb? Yes, Tamerius gasped. “I’d grown up as a kid in Nebraska watching Bill Cullen on ‘I’ve Got A Secret’,” he recalled, “and now I was going to work with him. That phone call saved me. I stayed on in Los Angeles, and I joined the production crew on Hot Potato. And that job led me to jobs on other quiz shows like ‘Tic Tac Dough’ and ‘Trivia Trap’ ... and then finally to my job as a writer on ‘Jeopardy!,’ where I’ve spent the past 28 years [except for one brief interruption in the mid-1980s].” Remembering the moment when the phone jangled in his tiny apartment, Tamerius sighed with a mixture of sweet nostalgia and immense relief. “I came very close to giving up,” he recalled, “and then the phone suddenly rang. And it’s like ... well, I just felt blessed. And that’s how it all began. I’ve had a wonderful career in Southern California, and I never thought about going back to Lincoln again, except to visit. “I’ve spent nearly 30 years working on one of the great quiz programs of our era. I’ve written books and I’ve syndicated a radio show on trivia, and I’ve also gotten to know some of the most accomplished people in the world of television. And to think it all began with a single phone call. It wasn’t always easy, of course: with no car, I had to ride the bus to Century City each day, working on ‘Hot Potato.’ That was an hour and a half each way. “But I hung on, and one job led to another, and it all worked out beautifully. I’m very grateful, really, and whenever anybody asks me about my life in Los Angeles today, I tell them: I’m blessed.”

in love with jazz drumming, at UNL

He grew up in Fairbury, the son of a former Marine, the late Dean Tamerius (“I miss him a lot”) who ran a sprawling greenhouse operation in their southeastern Nebraska town for several decades. His “wonderfully supportive” mother, Bonnie Tamerius, is a lifelong florist. “It was a Tom Sawyer existence,” the “Jeopardy!” clueguru recalled the other day while sitting over a Bob’s Big Boy hamburger on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake. “We spent time

on the banks of the [nearby] Little Blue River and did all the things Tom Sawyer had done. A friend and I built a raft, and we fished a little and camped. We played baseball in the park and probably ran around barefoot on occasion in the summer. “That was a great place for a kid to grow up, and it taught me the same small-town values I still hold today. You know, a lot of people come out here [to Southern California] and get jaded, but I’m still the same basic guy I was back then. I love life, and I’m doing what I love to do.” After arriving on the UNL campus and settling down in Harper Hall, Tamerius began studying music education at the old UNL Teachers College (today the College of Education and Human Sciences). A talented drummer in high school, he was also struggling with an inner conflict: should he continue with his UNL studies and become a public school music teacher ... or should he take a bold leap into the deep end of the pool and attempt a career as a professional musician? It was a thrilling – and at times anxiety-provoking – choice to

make, he recalled. “I was working on a BME [bachelor of music education] degree at UNL, but I was also continuing to play the drums a lot. And that led to one of my rewarding experiences at UNL – which happened after my freshman year when I was selected as first chair drummer in the All-American Band that toured Europe during the summer. “The audition process was extremely demanding but I did my best and I survived it somehow. And then to be named first chair – that was the icing on the cake for me!” A passionate musician who wanted to learn everything he could about his art, Tamerius was also “spending a lot of time chasing big-band and jazz drummers around the Midwest. I would follow those guys everywhere,” he remembered. “I followed Buddy Rich to Norfolk, and I got to sit at his table for an hour between sets talking with him about playing drums. “He showed me how to do a roll with one hand. He was a fabulous drummer ... but I also loved Gene Krupa, Louie

A. Because Producer, Senior Writer Are Both Huskers! Q. Why do Jeopardy! Clues So Often Feature Nebraska? If you’re like many daytime quiz-show addicts, you may have noticed a curious phenomenon on “Jeopardy!” in recent years: the uncanny way in which UNL and the State of Nebraska keep popping up in the “clues” that contestants are fed. The Los Angeles Times has certainly noticed the phenomenon ... and even devoted a full-length feature to the “Nebraska factor” a few years back. In a major Hollywood story, the paper pointed out that no fewer than four of the staff and producers on the show hailed from Nebraska ... and that they were constantly planting info about Willa Cather, University of Nebraska football and other Cornhusker-related topics in the lineup of clues. It got so bad at one point, in fact, that longtime “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek moaned with frustration: “Come on – there are only so many questions you can ask about Nebraska!” According to senior writer Steve Tamerius, the explanation for the frequent Nebraska references is actually quite simple: veteran “Jeopardy!” producer Harry Friedman is a former Nebraskan – and former UNL undergraduate Tamerius grew up in Fairbury. Along with inserting clues linked to his hometown (such as the fact that a key Pony Express station was located nearby), Tamerius loves to sneak tidbits about Husker football into the show’s format. “I look forward to each fall,” the senior writer enthused in a recent posting on the show’s website, “not only because it’s the beginning of a new season on “Jeopardy!” but it’s also the kickoff of the college football season. A fanatical and somewhat demented college football buff, I live and die with the success (usually) and failure (rarely) of my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers. Normally a God-fearing, decent fellow, I’ve been known to be downright cantankerous with the unsuspecting salesman who calls or knocks on the door during a telecast. (“Now, if I could just talk the producers into moving the ‘Jeopardy!’ production offices to Lincoln ...”) NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 31

Want To Live in Bob Hope's Old Mansion? No Prob: Mortgage is only $107K a Month! What’s it like to inhabit a glitzy neighborhood in Los Angeles, where the movie stars and TV celebrities are almost as plentiful as the palm trees? Jump into Steve Tamerius’ “Kona Coffee”-colored Honda CR-V, and you’ll soon find yourself eyeballing some of Tinseltown’s most unforgettable landmarks. “Do you see those big wooden doors on the corner?” the former UNL music education major asked, after zipping to a stop at 10346 Moorpark Street in the exclusive LA neighborhood of Toluca Lake. “Those doors over there are where Bob Hope would hand out candy to all the neighborhood kids on Halloween night!” Behind the massive doors loomed the fabled mansion (eight bedrooms and eight baths) where the legendary comedian stayed when he was in town. Perched on five acres of carefully manicured lawn, the Hope manse also included outdoor and indoor swimming pools ... and even a one-hole golf course where former President Richard M. Nixon once lined up a putt after descending from the Southern California sky in his helicopter. “If you live in Los Angeles, you get pretty accustomed to seeing landmarks like this one,” said the senior writer on “Jeopardy!” while describing the lush homestead where Hope lived until his death in 2003. “In Soundstage 27 at Sony Studios, they’ve still got the Yellow Brick Road from “The Wizard of Oz” – it’s right beneath the current flooring of the stage.” As you might expect, however, the cost of such highprofile real estate seems rather high. Example: When Hope’s exalted domicile went on the market in the fall of 2013, the list-price turned out to be an eye-catching $27.5 million ... which meant that the mortgage payment for a typical buyer would amount to just over $107,000 per month, according to published reports. A couple of miles down the road from the Hope mansion, as the Honda skimmed along a major thoroughfare in Burbank, Tamerius pointed to a black-painted, iron fence that surrounded one of the late Walt Disney’s major studios. “If you look closely at the top of that fence, you’ll get a surprise,” he said. And he was right. Every ten yards or so, the fence was crowned with a set of perfectly sculpted iron mouse ears. 32 SPRING 2014

Bellson, Joe Morello of the Dave Brubeck Quartet. I was hanging out a lot at The Black Coach [a Lincoln nightclub] and the East Hills Supper Club, and they were bringing these big-time bands in. I saw Count Basie live, right there at The Black Coach. And I got to be friends with his drummer. I knew when their bus was gonna arrive. I’d go out there when it pulled in and help ’em unload their equipment.” Tamerius was crazy about the big-band drummers ... but he also knew they lived an insecure, hand-to-mouth existence out on the road. “One night I overheard a guy [a well-known drummer] talking on a pay phone at The Black Coach, and he called his wife, and he said he’d try to get some money to her as soon as he could.” Alarmed by the prospect of such an insecure, “nomadic” life, Tamerius reacted by becoming an entrepreneur – even as a UNL undergrad who was still living in Harper Hall. “By my junior year [1969), I had really gotten into customizing cars,” he said, “and I started selling speed and custom auto parts right out of my dorm room. And within a few months, I was making almost half as much as a first-year public school teacher would make. I got very excited about that ... so I dropped out of college only a few months before my graduation and went down to Dallas, the headquarters for Speed Equipment World, and I signed up as a franchisee. I opened my own parts business in Grand Island. “It was a gamble, and the first year was really tough, but I was eager to start a business career and just too impatient to finish school.” After four years of struggle at the speed shop in Grand Island, however, Tamerius decided he was tired of “working six days a week from nine to nine” and pulled up stakes. By the mid-1970s he was back in Lincoln and selling real estate at a furious clip. But his boundless energy and his entrepreneurial spirit eventually led him into yet another venture: launching a magazine, Trivia Unlimited, dedicated to lovers of the unusual or provocative or quirky fact. (Did you know that both Henry Fonda’s mom and Marlon Brando’s mom went to the same high school in Omaha?) By the early 1980s, Tamerius’ growing reputation as a trivia expert had boosted him into the world of radio entertainment ... where he was able to syndicate a five-minute version of Trivia Unlimited at more than 50 stations scattered all across the United States. In 1983, convinced that his growing skill at selling trivia content had prepared him for the move, Tamerius took a deep breath and headed for the Lincoln airport. Having discussed the leap with his father (“If you don’t do it now, Steve, when will you do it?”), he put together a treatment for a TV special and boarded a jet for LAX. He was going to try and break into the world of bigtime television, sink or swim.

all this ... and powerlifting, too? He’s the author of several books – including two volumes on trivia, a “how-to” manual on TV gameshow strategy and an encyclopedia celebrating the life and times of a world-renowned rock star named Elvis. He’s also a former Nebraska drag racer who piloted a stable of Ford Mustangs through blistering, 120-mile-an-hour races that often ended with new trophies for his recreation room. Sounds pretty exciting, right? But if you ask former UNL music education major Steve Tamerius what really turns him on, he’ll startle you with his off-the-wall answer: “Powerlifting!” It’s true. In addition to his other accomplishments, the relentlessly self-challenging senior writer at “Jeopardy!” frequently hoists more than 300 pounds into the air – as a nationally ranked weightlifter whose specialty is the bench press. A U.S. record-holder in the 148-pound class for his age group, Tamerius today owns the official

a huge fan of alex trebek

During his 28 years of working as a writer on “Jeopardy!,” Tamerius has become a huge fan of the program’s Canadianborn host, Alex Trebek, who long ago became well-known for his quiet, studious manner and his thoughtful regard for the show’s super-stressed contestants. (“My favorite color is gray, because it matches my personality so well,” the veteran quiz show host has more than once quipped.) “Alex is very congenial, very easygoing and relaxed,” said Tamerius, while describing the show’s incredible 50-year run since it was created by legendary TV talk-show host Merv Griffin in 1964. “He sets the tone and he’s an enormously skilled host, so it’s no wonder ‘Jeopardy!’ has lasted so long.” Tamerius said he also likes the daily routine and the laidback atmosphere at his office at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City where the show is produced. Describing how he puts together the “Clues” and “Categories” which make up his typical workday, he pointed out that “quite often I’ll get an idea while I’m driving to work. “I’ll think of something quirky, something off the wall. For example, a few years ago I started thinking about my hometown,

American Powerlifting Federation bench-pressing mark, after recently elevating a staggering 281 pounds while lying flat on his back. “I’ve been interested in weightlifting since I was a kid,” Tamerius noted during a recent interview in Los Angeles, “and a few years back, while lying around the house and recovering from glaucoma surgery, I decided I needed to get back into some kind of athletic activity. “I started visiting a local gym, and I signed on with a terrific coach – Scot Mendelson [himself a multiple world-record-holder] – and began pushing myself as hard as I could.” The rest, of course, is powerlifting history. But the question remains: why would anybody want to torture his muscles so much, after a long day of thinking up new clues and categories for “Jeopardy!”? His answer; “Life is so precious, and time is at a premium – so why not try to squeeze as much into it as you can?”

Fairbury. And right away, I remembered that it was on the Oregon Trail. And then I recalled that Wild Bill Hickok had killed his first man at the Pony Express station there. So now I’m thinking, yes, I’ve got enough stuff – I can create a Category, and I can call it ‘Fairbury, Nebraska.’ “How does the process work?” he continued. “Well, if I give you a clue ... what if I told you that this famous ‘Wild’ West gunslinger killed his first man at Rock Creek Station near Fairbury, Nebraska, in July of 1861? The ‘Wild’ in quotes is a clue leading you to the gunslinger’s identity. And with that clue in hand, you’d probably come up with the correct question: ‘Who was Wild Bill Hickok?’” See how simple it is? And when that Category and Clue actually did make an appearance on “Jeopardy!” a few years back ... well, Steve Tamerius was thrilled by the way the townsfolk reacted to the show. “The whole town was ecstatic!” said the longtime questionand-answer man. “For me, entertaining people by thinking up quiz questions for them each day isn’t just a job – it’s a creative challenge I enjoy working on constantly, from one minute to the next.” v

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 33

and the

Bean Counter H

e’s the chief financial officer (CFO) at one of the world’s great natural history collections – Chicago’s vast and sprawling Field Museum, which today houses more than 25 million

biological and cultural specimens gathered from every corner of Planet Earth. Like most other corporate and institutional CFOs, Jim Croft (Ph.D. 2004) usually spends his workday crunching numbers, analyzing balance sheets and making sure his far-flung organization doesn’t exceed its yearly operating budget. (At the 111-year-old Field, that’s currently about $68 million a year.) At first glance, Croft’s job looks rather tame and predictable. But every once in a while, the bespectacled and carefully buttoned-down CFO finds himself caught up in a high-stakes drama – the kind of thrill-a-minute showdown that can’t be avoided when your enterprise depends on giant dinosaur bones, glowering Egyptian mummies and fearsome Amazon crocodile replicas to bring visitors hurrying through the turnstiles. During his first 13 years as the Field’s reigning money man, Croft thought he’d seen it all. But nothing could have prepared him for what happened on the morning of Oct. 4, 1997 – the day he and his colleagues fought desperately to win the heart of a 40-foot-long, grinning-jawed monster named Sue.

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NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 35

and the

Bean Counter

A STARE-DOWN AT SOTHEBY’S: 7 MILLION BEANS, AND COUNTING Perched above a chattering speakerphone in the office of the Field’s president, Jim Croft and several other museum executives were holding their collective breath. The bidding for “Sue,” the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever unearthed, had started at $500,000 – a piddling sum that was dwarfed in less than three minutes as several high-powered bidders slugged it out during a historic auction at Sotheby’s in New York City. Minutes after the bidding started on that crisp fall day 17 years ago, the international posse of T. rex hunters was already pushing the $3 million mark and Jim Croft was feeling the heat. “I’m a conservative finance guy,” the Field CFO opined the other day during an interview in his office on Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive. “I’m the bean counter, and I’m listening to the auction unfold and I’m thinking: it’s going up by a million on every bid!” Remembering the adrenalin-soaked campaign to acquire the 67-million-year-old superstar dino-fossil, which had been unearthed in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1990 (the relic was named for its discoverer, paleontologist Susan Hendrickson), Croft recalled how Field President John W. McCarter, Jr., and Field Science Director Sir Peter Crane kept up a running commentary from their posts at Sotheby’s in New York. With each new bid from London and Paris and Tokyo, the Chicago-based speakerphone crackled to life and Croft felt his blood pressure soaring toward the museum’s cavernous roof. Again and again, McCarter and Crane raised the ante ... and again and again, the circling sharks from the other bidders topped it. By now Croft was in full panic mode. For the past several months, the museum had been negotiating frantically with a team of top executives at Disney and McDonald’s, all of whom had long ago committed to 36 SPRING 2014

funding the Sue purchase ... provided of course that the cost could be managed without forcing both corporations straight into Chapter 11. As the bidding passed $6 million, Croft knew he was approaching the break point. The Disney-McDonald pockets were deep – but they weren’t bottomless: how much longer before the Field team had to fold its hand and admit defeat? Having prepared a careful analysis of the costbenefit ratio that would flow from acquiring Sue, Croft understood that the Field execs in the Big Apple couldn’t go much higher. Were they destined to lose out on this marvelous opportunity to land a magical attraction for their Chicago museum – an attraction that would almost certainly bring mobs of dinosaur-lovers through their doors for decades to come? Croft was at his wit’s end. The speakerphone was blaring into his tormented ears like the voice of fiscal doom. How much longer could he endure the tension before he wilted in his swivel chair, a paralyzed bean counter whose worst nightmare – We’re out of money! – had finally, horrifyingly come true? He hung on. He listened. He even prayed a little. (As an ordained Salvation Army minister, he understood that praying couldn’t hurt and might actually be helpful.) And then it happened: the moment they’d all been hoping for. About ten minutes into the bidding, and moments after the Field team had tossed a cool $7.2 million on the table, the speakerphone fell blessedly silent. The seconds ticked off one by one, while Croft and his colleagues hung onto nearby surfaces with their eyes shut and their knuckles whiter than Sue’s own endlessly buffed and polished vertebrae. Silence ... more silence ... and then they heard it: Thwock! The gavel had fallen. Followed by the voice of President McCarter, crackling down the airwaves from the Big Apple: “We got it!” “Victory!” barked Jim Croft 17 years later in his Chicago office. “You could hear the excitement in his voice, and it was like winning a Nebraska football game – a real victory moment. That auction was huge for us, because Sue was the most complete T. rex ever found, and the exhibit in the main hall today is more than 90 percent real ... whereas most other specimens in museums around the world are only about 50 percent real. “For a natural history museum, Sue was pure magic – and when that gavel fell, we knew that the treasure was on its way to Chicago.”

and the

Bean Counter

The amazing story of how Jim Croft and his colleagues at Chicago’s Field Museum managed to acquire the world’s most famous dinosaur bones began innocently enough – with a flat tire that disabled a truck during the late summer of 1990. The truck belonged to a team of paleontologists who had been digging for fossils at the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation, located near the wonderfully named town of Faith, S.D. (pop. 421). Conducted under the auspices of the Black Hills Institute, the summer-long dig had produced a number of exciting fossil finds. But as the team prepared to wrap up its operations, they discovered that a tire on their equipment truck had deflated. The team immediately headed into town to fix the puncture, but one of its members – a dedicated paleontologist named Sue Hendrickson – asked if she could remain behind at the dig site in order to eyeball a few rock-cliff sites that hadn’t been examined in detail over the summer. Strolling along at the bottom of a cliff, Hendrickson (now 64) did a sudden double-take ... as she spotted a gleaming fragment of bone half-buried in a pile of rocks. Then she looked up and saw some even bigger bones jutting from the cliff above her head. Excited by the unexpected find, Hendrickson raced back to the Institute, where a series of tests quickly showed that the bones belonged to a 67-millionyear-old T. rex. Hendrickson and a few other diggers then decided not to leave after all and went to work to uncover the world’s most complete dinosaur remains (more than 80 percent of the 40-foot-long giant’s bones were eventually recovered). Named for its discoverer, “Sue” then became the subject of a complicated lawsuit between the Sioux tribe and the Institute. After a long and acrimonious court battle, the tribe prevailed and the bones

Battle to Acquire Famed T. Rex Began in 1990 – with a Flat Tire were returned to them in 1995 ... setting the stage for the dramatic auction that eventually brought Sue to The Field Museum in Chicago. For Field Chief Financial Officer Jim Croft, who helped mastermind the successful auction strategy that brought the famed dino-relic to the Windy City, the Saga of Sue was an unforgettable chapter in his 30-year career as the museum’s chief “bean counter”. “The story of Sue’s discovery and eventual journey to The Field is hard to believe,” he said. “I feel very privileged to have been part of the process of bringing Sue here. It’s an awesome feeling to know that this exhibit will go on amazing and educating our visitors long after I’m gone.”

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 37

and the

Bean Counter FALLING IN LOVE WITH NEBRASKA Jim Croft spent his childhood in a quintessential Midwestern city of the 1950s and 1960s – a Leave-It-To-Beaver settlement named Mattoon, where he played linebacker for the local high school’s Green Wave football team and spent lots of time praying and singing at church every Sunday. The son of a hard-working pipefitter (Lee Croft) in the Illinois farming community of about 18,000 (located about 40 miles south of Champaign), the youthful Croft was also heavily influenced by his paternal grandmother and a religiously minded aunt ... both of whom were dedicated members of the local Salvation Army congregation. So inspired was the kid by their fervent spirituality, in fact, that he decided to attend the Salvation Army Seminary in Chicago – after which he was determined to spend his life in service to the poor and homeless as an Army “officer,” which is the SA equivalent of a Methodist minister. Dispatched to his first post in Bismarck, N.D., in the late 1960s, the idealistic youngster plunged headlong into the daily grind of running a soup kitchen and a shelter for homeless men. But within a year or so, he found himself looking at a new set of orders from the Army brass ... which had decided to give him his own “command” in small-town Alliance, Neb., where he received “the whopping salary of $28 a week.” As always, Croft didn’t hesitate. Imagine his chagrin, however, when he discovered that he would get no SA help in Alliance (“I had a staff of one – me!”), and that the Army didn’t even have the funds to pay him the $28 a week. Croft didn’t care. On fire with the Salvation Army mission of serving the needy, he quickly launched a program designed to provide free school lunches to underprivileged children. “I drove a van to the schools every day and picked up the kids and then drove them back to the center for lunch,” he recalled. Desperate for survival funds – no $28! – he solved the problem by landing a part-time job at a local radio station. Soon he was doing social work, running the free lunch program, serving as a pastor and working his head off at the radio station: “I was young and single and had tons of energy – it was a great time in my life.” Within a few months, he was also “falling in love with Nebraska” ... while discovering what would be a lifelong 38 SPRING 2014

affection for the “down-to-earth, honest integrity” of people who had “learned on the prairie frontier” to care for each other by honoring the key principle that the Salvation Army lived by: “Love thy neighbor.” During the years that followed his Alliance assignment, as Croft bounced from one Midwestern post to the next, his destiny kept bringing him back to the Cornhusker State. After a four-year stint at Grand Island, where he began to learn the ins and outs of institutional finance and business management, he realized that he needed more higher ed ... and soon wound up enrolling at the old Kearney State College (today the University of Nebraska at Kearney). Having studied business administration for four years at Kearney, Croft moved swiftly up the ranks of the Salvation Army’s fiscal administration, eventually becoming the controller for northern Illinois and then the chief business officer for all Army operations in the Chicago region. The stage was now set for what became the major career move of Jim Croft’s life – his shift, in 1984, to the downtown Chicago offices of the fabled Field Museum, one of the Midwest’s great scientific and cultural institutions. Launched via a massive bequest from famed Chicago department store magnate Marshall Field, the huge natural science museum on the shore of Lake Michigan had already earned an international reputation by the time Croft took over as CFO. During the next 30 years, and while earning a doctorate (1998-2004) part-time at UNL’s College of Education and Human Sciences (his dissertation was on “new trends in museum finance”), Croft managed nearly every administrative activity involving development, facilities operation, fundraising, payroll and endowment earnings. Under his fiscal leadership the vast and sprawling Classical Revival-style landmark, which now houses 25 million natural science objects, has built a worldwide reputation as a center of scientific research. From there more than 200 paleontologists, anthropologists and other scientists work on research projects scattered all across the globe – with many of their findings ending up as part of the exhibition program at the central museum. With an endowment of more than $300 million and 500 employees, the Field Museum has long been an emblem of cultural excellence in Chicago and the Midwest. Ask Croft where he learned the skills needed for successfully managing the museum’s giant

and the

Bean Counter portfolio, and he gives a lot of the credit to people such as Associate Professor Barbara A. LaCost in UNL Educational Administration. “She helped me develop new insights and new creativity,” he said, en route to assembling the kind of expertise that has helped him win many battles like the battle he faced in trying to land Sue the dinosaur for the Field.

A FANATICAL FAN OF NEBRASKA FOOTBALL

Drop by Jim Croft’s busy office at the museum on a typical weekday, and the first thing to strike your eye will be the bright red “N” football helmet on the shelf above his desk. “I’ve had so many people in Kearney and Lincoln who helped me along the way,” he said during a recent museum tour that ended near the bony feet of the fiercely glaring Sue. “I’m very grateful to them, and especially to Dr. LaCost

For Jim Croft, the self-described “bean counter” at the $68-million-a-year Field Museum of Natural History, the 2008 recession marked the beginning of a financial crisis that tested him and his colleagues to the absolute max. “It was extremely difficult,” Croft told Nebraska Magazine during a recent interview in Chicago, “because a lot of the [fiscal] problems we confronted were things that we couldn’t control. Museums like The Field depend heavily on admissions, and with the recession, people became less confident that they had disposable income and so they pulled back on things like going to museums.” But the rapid falloff in daily admissions was only one of the problems that Croft was up against. With growing anxiety, he watched the yearly “earnings from the endowment” also plummet – as the museum’s total endowment fund shrank from about $300 million to $210 million after the recession. The decline in earnings took place because the value of many of the stocks, bonds and other investment instruments in the endowment fund quickly decreased in value, he said. Meanwhile, the museum’s third and only remaining source of revenue, from philanthropic donors, was also drying up at a dizzying rate. For the jittery Croft and his lieutenants at The Field, it was “literally the perfect storm” – and the harbinger of what became several years of massive operating deficits. “The financial structure for museums is difficult,” said the former UNL grad student while describing the economic dilemma. “What’s really challenging

– and I’m also grateful for the fact that I got introduced to Cornhusker football early on. “I’m a lifetime member of the Nebraska Alumni Association and I’ve got season tickets to Nebraska football. It’s really a big part of my life. I make almost every home game, too, and I wouldn’t miss those games for anything.” Asked if he minded having to make “the long drive” from Chicago to Lincoln several times each fall, the Field CFO stared at the reporter with disbelief. “Well, it’s only eight hours out and eight hours back,” he said with a cheerful smile. “That’s nothing, really – not when you’re talking about being able to watch the Huskers play football!” v

confronting a perfect fiscal storm In the Wake of the 2008 Recession

is that we have only a few levers to pull in order to increase revenue. “Sure, we can bring in more dollars by charging more at the gate. But on the other hand, we have a mission to educate people [museum visitors] ... and you can’t start shutting people out by charging too much.” It was a brutal struggle for a while, said the frowning number-cruncher – before announcing that his fiscal team finally managed to stop the bleeding a couple of years ago, even as the U.S. economy continued to rebound from its own devastating slump. “These days we’re actually above our prerecession endowment, at about $330 million,” he said. “Our daily admissions are up [now around 1.2 million per year], and our income from philanthropy is also doing much better now. “I do think the worst is probably over – which is great news for all of us who are determined to keep The Field Museum in good financial health.”

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 39

Nostalgia WINNER, FIRST place 2013 Writing contest Inspired by the amazing professors that she had at UNL, including Professors Knoll, Bergstrom, Berger, Mahoney, Maslowski, Brooke, Behrendt and Wolf, Jennifer Sinor completed her Ph.D. in English and is now an associate professor in the English Department at Utah State University. She lives in northern Utah with her husband and two young sons. Her essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Utne, The Norton Reader and elsewhere.

Sea to Shining Sea By Jennifer Sinor, ’91 What I took to college fit in two rippled and shook in the wind like suitcases. While other freshman waves. I almost felt at home amid that shuttled load after load from their green ocean, could hear the shush of cars and trucks – plastic laundry tide in the shiny, green leaves. From baskets and boxes filled with radios, my window in my dorm room in toiletries and comforters – my mom Smith, I could only see the state capitol and I chose to climb the ten flights and the sower who perpetually threw of stairs to the top of Smith Hall. We the seeds of hope. Those early weeks had so little to carry. on campus, I could not imagine that I had traveled 4,000 miles from anything might grow. my home in Hawaii to arrive in But then I went to my first class, an Lincoln on a warm August day. The honors seminar on “What it Means plains were thick and close; sweat to be an American,” taught under the pooled at my collarbone. My mother charged presence of Dr. Robert Knoll. would be returning to Hawaii the When I entered the auditorium where following morning to get my younger a hundred honors students sat waiting brothers ready for school. When for the start of class, the first thing I she left, I would not know a single noticed was the sea of blonde hair. I Sinor wears the ginger lei her dad brought person on a campus of 30,000. had gone to a high school where most when he surprised her at the 1991 UNL Honors Convocation, where she was a speaker. My father was in the Navy, a students were Japanese and I was in the Morris Sinor graduated from UNL in 1961 and member of the JAG corps. While minority. To see that many fair-haired UNL Law in 1964; Jennifer’s mother, Cynde, he had been born and raised in people gathered in one place made me graduated in 1962. Nebraska, I knew very little of the once again realize just how far from state. He kept his status as a resident home I was. while we moved from assignment to assignment, making me a Professor Knoll began to talk, though I could argue that he resident in a state where I could not tell soy from alfalfa. never actually talked but always, instead, performed. Watching I was lonely. Epically lonely. I stopped eating lunch and him was like watching a hurricane approach the islands, a large dinner because I could not face eating alone. When I called swirling mass of energy that moved steadily and forcefully home, my parents’ voices sounded thin and distilled, pressed toward its goal. I thought I knew what it meant to be an from the journey through cables buried under the sea. On the American. After all, my father was serving his country. I grew drive to campus, my mother and I had passed fields of corn that up on and near naval bases where cars pulled over at twilight 40 SPRING 2014

to salute the lowering of the flag. I understood the shape of sacrifice. We did not begin with the flag or George Washington or the Revolutionary War. Instead we began with a French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, who had written a work entitled “Democracy in America” published in 1835. Meant to provide the French an example of a modern democracy as they moved away from their aristocratic past, “Democracy in America” centered on the balance between liberty and equality, the individual and the community. In asking his students to think about what it meant to be an American, Professor Knoll might have reached for the obvious – say Benjamin Franklin or Thoreau or even Malcolm X – but instead he gave us a French politician who had grown up in Europe and spent less than two years in the U.S. “He was an outsider,” he told us. “And that’s why his work is so important.” I remember sitting in class that fall and hearing Professor Knoll speak to the power of being on the outside. I remember him telling us that outsiders can often see what those on the inside can’t. He didn’t say it in so many words, but I thought he was also talking about our own positions as new students in the university. More to the point, I knew he was speaking to me. De Tocqueville wrote an important book on American democracy because of the perspective he occupied. By holding a mirror to a relatively young country, he could name her successes, as well as her potentials for tyranny. The America that Professor Knoll described was not the America my father defended every day at work, or not only that America. It was a land of promise but also a land of responsibility. Professor Knoll urged us to be good citizens and to cultivate the ways in which we might stand outside and observe. Professor Knoll’s lectures that semester changed me. They broadened my understanding of what my father was defending and the responsibilities I held as a citizen. Service came in the form of questioning, of challenging, of pursuing an idea. And those in the best position to ask such questions might just be the

Dr. Robert Knoll in 1984.

ones standing on the outside. By the end of my first year at the University of Nebraska, I felt more at home. Not because I could tell anyone where Valentine was, but because I could navigate the classroom. Professor Knoll gave me the authority to be an outsider and to use my outsiderness as an intellectual starting point. I would not have been able to articulate that gift in 1987, but I have come to understand it now. I am an English professor in another state university, one where most of my students have been born and raised within 300 miles of campus. Even though they may all be from Utah, I never make the assumption that they are home. We are all outsiders in some way; it’s what we learn to do with that vantage point that makes the difference. Twenty years ago, Professor Knoll gave me that gift. In turn, I offer it to my own students as often as I can. v NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 41

Profile WINNER, first place 2013 Writing contest Jonathan Gregory is a 2007 UNL M.A. graduate in textiles, merchandising and fashion design, with an emphasis in quilt studies. He is currently assistant curator of exhibitions at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum (IQSCM) at UNL. Gregory is researching Ernest Haight for his doctoral dissertation and was curator of “The Engineer Who Could: Ernest Haight’s Half Century of Quiltmaking,” at the IQSCM, June 7, 2013 through March 1, 2014.

The Engineer Who Could By Jonathan Gregory, ’07 Here is what I’d say to Ernest Haight: “You have the skill to build anything you want. You have an engineering degree and all that equipment in the machine shop on your farm. For fun you make those complicated interlocking wooden puzzles with the band saw. So, tell me: why do you make quilts?!” And here is what he would say: “What else could I do? After criticizing a quilt my wife, Isabelle, was stitching, she challenged me to prove I could do better or ‘keep still.’ I had to prove I could.” And he certainly proved it. Ernest B. Haight (18991992) earned a B.S. in agricultural engineering in 1924 from University of Nebraska. He also earned Phi Beta Kappa honors with an arts and sciences B.A. in 1923. He had arrived at the university in September 1918, but the semester was truncated in October due to the Spanish flu epidemic. Ernest was in the Student Army Training Corps, living in campus barracks, and training for the Army Signal Corp. He encountered the flu, and on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, he was still recovering. The university began classes again in January 1919 and Ernest enrolled, becoming the first of his family to attend college. After graduation Ernest went back to the land his grandfather, Lewis Bailey Haight, had 42 SPRING 2014

homesteaded in Butler County, in 1871, near what became David City. The Haights were successful farmers, and after graduation Ernest went into partnership with his father, Elmer Haight, and his younger brother, Lewis. Ernest retired from farming about 1972. Ernest made quilts from 1934 until 1987, more than 300 of them, in the dark hours after farming all day. The most remarkable thing is that he made quilts like an engineer and machinist. It was about the process for him. In a letter to one of his quilt fans (yes, by the 1970s he had quilt fans all across the country), he explained, “As an engineering college graduate I think in terms of methods as well as esthetics.” He spoke of maintaining tight tolerances in quilt construction, the importance of “extreme accuracy,” and of using “assembly-line” processes to make quilts. He also looked at every quilt as a puzzle – a problem to solve in the most efficient and accurate way. For example, rather than cut out hundreds of little pieces only to sew them back together into dozens of identical designs as most quiltmakers did, he sewed together larger pieces and then cut them apart into pre-sewn units, reducing both cutting and sewing time and increasing the consistency of the finished units. Using a sewing machine enabled Ernest to achieve consistency and maintain tolerances so his quilts were more precise than the one he

All images courtesy of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.

Left: Isabelle and Ernest Haight with Bachelor’s Puzzle quilt, 1968. Collection of Elmer and Darlene Haight and family. Lower left 1: 6-Point Stars with Triangles quilt. Designed and machined pieced by Ernest B. Haight, 1956, hand quilted by Flora Burr Haight, 1957, 89.75” x 79.5”. Collection of Mary E. Haight. Lower 2: A second Bachelor’s Puzzle quilt. Machine pieced and quilted by Ernest B. Haight, c. 1974, 92 x 80.5”. Collection of Mae Belle Haight. Lower 3. Patio Tile quilt. Designed, machine pieced and quilted by Ernest B. Haight, circa 1970, Size: 93” x 76”. Collection of Mae Belle Haight. Lower 4. Original quilt drawing adapted from a State Fair school exhibit. Ernest B. Haight, 1970. Collection of Elmer and Darlene Haight and family.

had criticized. However, with his first quilt he found that being precise was not as easy as he expected. The first quilt was three inches wider at one end than the other. He later confessed that he “kept still” about this fact for a long time. In 1934 when Elmer Haight heard that his son was piecing a quilt, he announced that if his son could piece a quilt then he could learn to hand quilt it. Elmer and Ernest’s joint efforts resulted in five quilts. After Elmer died in 1944, Ernest’s mother, Flora, hand-quilted for him. By 1960, Ernest’s processes increased his productivity to the point his mother could not keep up. So he devised a technique to sew the layers of his quilts together with the sewing machine in about 8 to 12 hours, as opposed to one or two hundred hours required for hand-quilting. He entered his machine-quilted pieces in the Butler County and Nebraska State Fairs and starting winning ribbons immediately. Did Ernest’s quilts look like they were mass-produced on a machine? No! He created original, bold designs in striking color combinations. He chose complex geometric designs that would daunt many quiltmakers even today. His training in design, mechanical drawing and advanced mathematics made his designs possible to imagine and draft. These skills were secondnature to him and he assumed anyone could do what he did. He told one fan from New York that drafting a complex design in any size she wanted “is easier than you think!” The fan likely didn’t agree.

At first Ernest’s quiltmaking was a family secret. He sent Isabelle to the store to purchase the exact colors of cloth he needed. She later wrote, “I was sworn to secrecy about his sewing until a neighbor came in and caught him at the sewing machine.” Once the secret was out, Ernest’s enthusiasm for quiltmaking increased and he showed his quilts at the county fair. He eventually published a booklet detailing his timesaving and accurate approaches, techniques that have become common to the repertoire of today’s quiltmakers around the world. Ernest’s quilts were also included in a 1974 exhibition at the Sheldon Museum of Art and in solo exhibitions at the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in 1971 and at Nebraska Wesleyan’s Elder Gallery in 1981. With more than 50 years of design, experimentation, process development, innovation and sharing quilts, Ernest’s quiltmaking legacy was recognized through induction into the Nebraska Quilters Hall of Fame in 1986. Isabelle once said, “Piecing quilts is an unusual hobby for any man, especially for a busy farmer.” So, why did he do it? From reading his correspondence, diaries and other papers his children saved, the best answer I have is that quiltmaking offered space for challenging his analytical mind and engaging the skills and knowledge gained at the university, while also opening avenues to connect to and benefit others. Oh. And because his wife dared him. v

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 43

NEWS

Meet our Newest Official Tradition Keepers

You’re Invited to a Spring Game Victory Party Congratulations to Sheena Larsen, Tyler Fernandez, Alexandria Cerveny and Myriah Christian on graduating from UNL in December as Official Tradition Keepers. These four Scarlet Guard students earned their OTK honor by completing at least 50 of the 65 traditions in SG’s Cornhusker CONNECTION BOX Compass, a personalized yearbook that provides the ultimate UNL experience. jgreen@huskeralum.org Interested in learning more about these traditions that make our university great? Would you like to have your own copy of the Cornhusker Compass? Contact us at 402-472-2841 or 888-3531874, or e-mail Jenny Green to purchase one while supplies last. v

Have You Seen the Campus Lately? The University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus is always changing – new academic buildings, new residence halls, new green spaces and even a new Outdoor Adventure facility. Yet much of the campus remains the same – a place where you created memories and can relive them today. The NAA invites you to come “home” and tour the campus with us. Take a walking tour with an NAA host, or, better yet, take a riding tour in our red golf cart. A tour can be tailored to your specific areas of interest or generalized so you can see the bigger picture. If you have an hour, we have a tour. To take a walk or ride down memory lane with us, call 888-353-1874 and ask for Vi. v

CONNECTION BOX

vschroeder@huskeralum.org 44 SPRING 2014

The Nebraska Alumni Association will hold its first-ever Victory Party at the Nebraska Champions Club in conjunction with the 2014 Red-White Spring Football Game. You know the Huskers will win, so we’re also celebrating the successes of the university and the alumni members who make victories possible. Show your NAA membership card at the NCC pedestrian gate after the spring game. (Gate opens at the beginning of the fourth quarter.) Check out both levels of the club and enjoy: • Misty’s grab-and-go meals and full beverage service on the Plaza level. • A full menu catered by Misty’s, cash bar and video wall in the Great Hall. • Plenty of Husker spirit activities. • Children’s activities, including bounce house. • Our guest relations area (southwest corner of the Plaza) where you can learn more about the NAA and NCC. Go Big Red! v

NEWS

Life 101 Prepares Students for Life Beyond College Scarlet Guard, in partnership with the Nebraska Alumni Association and Career Services, hosted their fifth annual Life 101 workshop at the Nebraska Champions Club on Jan. 30. Students – freshmen through seniors – had the opportunity to expand their professional network, have their resumes critiqued, participate in mock interviews, have a professional photo taken, and hear from a “Life Beyond

College” panel. Volunteers were impressed with the caliber of Scarlet Guard and Cather Circle students participating in the event, and students were eager to share their workshop experiences. “The mock interview from Life 101 was perfect in preparing me for an internship interview the following week,” said Tim Blaser, freshman actuarial science major. “Because of

Nebraska alumni and friends cruised the shores of Central and South America, enjoying “Ancient Mysteries of the Americas” aboard the Oceania Regatta Jan. 16 - Feb. 3.

the mock interview, I felt prepared to approach my internship interview confidently.” Alisha Sheets, a freshman member of Scarlet Guard Knights, remarked, “I think it was a great experience being able to get feedback on my interview skills and my resume because everyone is always nervous about not being prepared. Getting a lot of positive feedback gave me more confidence.”v

Students dressed in formal attire for Scarlet Guard’s annual Las Vegas Night at the Nebraska Champions Club in February. Games, mocktails, a deejay, a photo booth and prizes kept them entertained throughout the evening.

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 45

Painting Arizona Red NEWS

Tempe Diablo stadium in Arizona looked and felt like home for the Nebraska baseball team Feb. 15. Nearly 900 alumni and fans attended a tailgate hosted by the Nebraska Alumni Association between games two and three of the Husker Classic, filling the stadium with red.

46 SPRING 2014

Cather Circle Membership Drive Underway Join our nationwide network of female leaders with ties to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and help us promote the growth and education of outstanding UNL female student leaders. Cather Circle is looking for more alumnae to join the program. UNL female students are also encouraged to apply. Our alumna members are highly successful women from a variety of backgrounds and professions. Members have included Pulitzer Prize winners, state senators, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, authors, artists and more. UNL alumnae and friends of the university are welcome to apply for membership by May 17 for the 20142015 term. Applications may be filled out online or downloaded and mailed to 1520 R St., Lincoln, NE 68508. v

CONNECTION BOX huskeralum.org/cather-circle-apply

NEWS

Women’s Gymnastics Alumnae Return to Campus Alumni representing every decade from the 1970s to the 2010s returned to campus for a women’s gymnastics alumni reunion Jan. 31. The alumnae enjoyed tours of the newly remodeled Bob Devaney Sports Center, Memorial Stadium and a banquet celebrating the women’s gymnastics program with the current student athletes. The alumnae also had the opportunity to cheer the current squad to victory against Minnesota the following day. The reunion was so well received, the alums hope to repeat it annually. v

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NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 47

NEBRASKA LEGENDS NEWS

Now in its third year of supporting UNL freshmen with scholarships and guidance, the Nebraska Legends program continues to grow and succeed, with help from the Nebraska Alumni Association, the University of Nebraska Foundation and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Office of Admissions. The program has increased from 80 students in 2011-2012 to 391 this academic year. More importantly, Legends scholars currently have a 97 percent retention rate, a 3.425 GPA and participate in more than 150 student organizations. Alumni are boosting this effort through individual donations and chapterfunded scholarships. Last fall, 24 alumni chapters sponsored a total of 47 Legends Scholarships, and that number is still climbing. Here’s a quick look at one Legends scholar, one Legends donor and one chapter that funds a scholarship. Watch upcoming issues of the magazine for more profiles.

Meet the

Tampa Bay Huskers Help UNL Research Give the gift of your time and experience by participating in a UNL faculty member or student’s research project. Departments often seek alumni volunteers, and participation varies from completing a simple survey to

CONNECTION BOX https://huskeralum.org/help-unl-research being interviewed by phone. Visit our website to read more about current projects and determine whether you qualify to help. Opportunities to participate in UNL research will be posted as needed – check back frequently!v

48 SPRING 2014

The Tampa Bay Huskers funded their first Legends Scholarship in 20122013 through the fund-raising efforts of past president Tony Gevo and scholarship chair Jeff Jackson. “I first heard about the program during one of the NAA Leadership Conferences in Lincoln,” said Gevo. “When I learned the Chancellor would be providing matching funds and that the foundation would administer everything it seemed like the perfect timing to get our Legends Scholarship going. I really wanted to have the Tampa Bay Husker chapter be something more than just a ‘gamewatch’ chapter and this was something everyone believed in. “Once the chapter leadership decided to get behind the program

almost everything we did was focused on funding the scholarship,” he said, from raffles for Husker merchandise and sales of chapter apparel to donations and TBH Season Passes offering watch-site discounts. Led by the group’s secretary/treasurer Jane Gevo, “the entire chapter, along with those visiting the Tampa area and joining us for games, really got behind this initiative.” The chapter has now locked in a Legends Scholarship through 20222023, and UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman is currently matching those scholarship amounts through 2015-2016. “The need to promote the university and the state of Nebraska to the best students around the country is Chancellor Perlman’s highest priority and should be supported by alumni chapters nationally,” Tony Gevo said. “When this goal is coupled with a matching funds program, it just makes good ‘Midwestern sense’ to take advantage of it to the fullest.”

SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM Meet Legends Scholar

Sara Pederson

With a Nebraska Legends Scholarship funded by the Tampa Bay Huskers, Sara Pederson came to UNL both nervous and eager. Nervous because she’s from Tallahassee, Fla., and Nebraska culture was unfamiliar. Eager because she’s pursuing a pre-vet degree that will lead to her dream of becoming a veterinarian. “It wasn’t until I began participating in activities around campus and stepping out of my comfort zone to socialize with people that a sense of peace and happiness was added to my life here,” Pederson said. “This is how the Legends program really helped me.” Pederson has attended Legends workshops on time management, stress management, resume building and employment strategies. She has participated in Legends group meetings where she’s made new

Meet Legends Donor

Angie Klein When Kris and Jon Bergmeyer, Nebraska Legends Scholarship Campaign co-chairs, reached out to 2001 UNL grad Angie Klein to let her know about the plan for the Legends program, she immediately jumped on board. “I’ve lived in Texas, California, Virginia, New Jersey and New York over the past 12 years,” Klein said, “and when talking with families of high school students where I lived, Nebraska may have been on their radar but the likelihood to attend seemed low compared to other large institutions. It was clear to me we needed something to pull up Nebraska in the consideration set of these involved

students who have shown strong potential for leadership. “My years at NU were largely defined by my involvement in campus

NEWS

friends, been given vital information about succeeding in school and learned to take advantage of all UNL has to offer. “Today I could not imagine attending college anywhere else. The Legends Program has encouraged and supported me so I am having fun, enjoying life and experiencing things that I never would have if I had not come to UNL.” Pederson is particular grateful to the Tampa Bay Huskers. “You have definitely made my college experience all the more enjoyable because I doubt that I would have participated in Scarlet Guard or the numerous events that have been held if I would not have received this scholarship,” she said. “I really appreciate your generosity in funding my Nebraska Legends Scholarship.”

organizations, and the experience these prospective students could have at Nebraska is compelling,” she said. “The Legends Scholarship program ensures Nebraska stands out in their college search, and could be just the thing that gives our great institution the edge in their final campus decision. “Giving is very easy. I support a number of programs each year through the NU Foundation, and the website makes it easy to direct my contributions where I would like them to go. The Legends program is always on my list. I know it’s making a difference in a student’s life, and making Nebraska a better campus by ensuring we are recruiting student leaders.” v

CONNECTION BOX nufoundation.org/unl/nebraska-alumniassociation/nebraska-legends NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 49

REQUEST FORM

2014FOOTBALLTICKET

PROCEDURE AND DEADLINES Please complete the form below by May 1, 2014 to be included in the football ticket lottery. Tickets are limited to one game and two tickets per household, with priority going to life members with donations, then life members, then annual members of the Nebraska Alumni Association. Involvement and service moves you to the top of your group. Completion and submission of this form constitutes an application for tickets. Members agree to purchase tickets for a single game for any game ranked below. TICKET REQUESTS Mark your preferences for home and away games on the form below. If your name is drawn to receive tickets, your credit card will be charged and you will receive mail or e-mail confirmation by July 1. The actual per ticket price will match university single-game tickets prices plus a $5 handling fee per ticket. Home tickets will be available for pickup at the Wick Alumni Center, the week of the game, or at the stadium will-call window on game day beginning three hours prior to kickoff. Away game tickets may be picked up at our pre-game event(s), if applicable or via FedEx for a $25 charge, sent 7 to 10 days before each game.

2014 Football ticket request form

Name______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Address_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ City/State/Zip_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Telephone (home)_______________________________________________ (work)_______________________________________________ E-mail Address ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Enroll me in the Husker Hot List (must be a life member)

Please charge my credit card:

AmEx

Discover

MasterCard

VISA (No checks please)

Credit card #_____________________________________________________________________ Exp. date___________________________ Membership/Giving Status: (You must be a member) Life Member + Donor Life Member Paying Life Member

Annual Member

Member ID # (See your magazine mailing label – directly across from your name)___________________________________________________ I’m attending the following (if applicable):

Chapter Migration (chapter name)___________________________________________________

College Reunion (college name)_____________________________________________________

Additional Tax-Deductible Gift to Elevate Priority $__________________________________________________________________________ If I am awarded tickets in the lottery process, I agree to purchase tickets for a single game as ranked below. I understand my card will be charged on or around July 1, and tickets are non-refundable. (Signature)__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2014 NEBRASKA FOOTBALL TICKET REQUEST FORM Indicate quantity (maximum of two tickets) and rank your game preferences with 1 being your top choice: Home games in boldface. Quantity Price Game Date

Rank

_____

1 or

$70

Florida Atlantic

Sat., Aug. 30

_____

1 or

$70

McNeese State

Sat., Sept. 6

@ Fresno State

Sat., Sept. 13

1 or

TBD

1 or

$80 Miami (Life Members Only)

Sat., Sept. 20

_____

1 or

$80 Illinois (Homecoming)

Sat., Sept. 27

_____

1 or

TBD

@ Michigan State

Sat., Oct. 4

1 or

TBD

@ Northwestern

Sat., Oct. 18

1 or

$80

Rutgers

Sat., Oct. 25

1 or

$80

Purdue

Sat., Nov. 1

1 or

TBD

@ Wisconsin

Sat., Nov. 15

_____

1 or

$80

Minnesota

Sat., Nov. 22

_____

1 or

TBD

@ Iowa

Fri., Nov. 28

_____ _____

For2014 Office 50 SPRING

Use Only:

INVOLVEMENT and Service (if any) Postcards of Pride Volunteer Huskers for Higher Education Cather Circle Affiliate/Chapter Member Alumni Awards Committee Alumni Advisory Council Travel Program Participant Husker Discover Card Holder Former Board Member (Chapter, Affiliate or Association) Reunion Attendee Other_________________________________ Other_________________________________ Other_________________________________ Other_________________________________ Send form with credit card info (no checks please) postmarked by May 1, to: Nebraska Alumni Association, Attn: Football Tickets, 1520 R Street, Lincoln, NE 68508-1651

4NAA14•FMO

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 51

ALUMNI

CHAPTERS & AFFILIATES ROTC & Military Spring Salute to Feature McpON Terry Scott Registration is now open for the Nebraska Alumni Association ROTC & Military Affiliate’s Spring Salute, Thursday, April 17, featuring dinner and keynote speaker MCPON Terry Scott. The event is held in conjunction with the ROTC Joint Service Chancellor’s Review. The salute will honor graduating and commissioning cadets and midshipmen and three underclassmen scholarship recipients. For more details and to register visit the ROTC affiliate’s website. All affiliate members, other ROTC alumni, parents of honorees and friends CONNECTION BOX of the ROTC program are huskeralum.org/rotc-reunion welcome and

Quilt Raffle Benefits Las Vegas Nebraskans Services Projects Chances to win a beautiful, handmade “Go Big Red” quilt, created by Las Vegas Nebraskans club members Jacque Marker, Julie Martin and Anita Wilbur, were sold during the month of November at the Nebraska football TV watch parties. The winning ticket holder was Kay Reich of Las Vegas. The proceeds of the raffle benefit the Las Vegas Nebraskans Community Services projects, including the Holiday Food Boxes and the Commuters For Kids programs. v 52 SPRING 2014

encouraged to attend the event. RSVP deadline is April 10. Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, USN (ret) Terry Scott has had a distinguished military career during which he completed 15 Terry Scott deployments and patrols to the Arabian Gulf, western Pacific, North Atlantic and Mediterranean. His personal awards include the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Commendation Medal (five awards), Navy Achievement Medal (four awards) and various service and campaign awards. Scott is a now corporate quality manager for Kiewit Corp. and quality director for the Kiewit Energy Group. v

San Antonio Alumni Chapter Chartered Cheers to the newest NAA chapter! The Huskers of San Antonio are now an official alumni chapter serving Nebraska alumni and fans in the greater San Antonio area. Cheryl Steel (’05, UNMC), Fred Morris (’65, UNL) and Steve Driewer (’85, UNL) will serve as chapter leaders. v

CONNECTION BOX facebook.com/pages/Huskers-of-San-Antonio/ 133327380074994

Pro Golf Management Alumni Form New Affiliate The Nebraska Alumni Association is pleased to welcome the Professional Golf Association Management Alumni Affiliate Group to the family of alumni chapter and groups. Approved by the NAA’s executive board at their Feb. 20 meeting, the PGA Management Alumni Affiliate will work to connect alumni of the program with the university and with one another. Scott Holly, ’08, is the group’s leader. The PGA Management program is housed in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, and was introduced to UNL in 2004. v

CLASSNOTES 1939

n Charles F. Long of Sycamore,

Ill., became a centenarian on Oct. 12, 2013.

1940

n John Spittler of Signal Moun-

tain, Tenn., writes, “I celebrated my 95th birthday Nov. 13, 2013 and was honored with the Tennessee Governor and House of Representatives Public Service Award, the coveted Four Chaplains Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes; the Chattanooga Navy League was named after me and I was made director emeritus of Chattanooga State College.” Spittler served in the U.S. Navy during World War II in the Pacific Theater and was involved in 16 major engagements.

1948

n Shirley Wilkerson Weihing of Gering marked her 90th birthday Nov. 12, 2013.

1949

Russ C. Brauer of Lincoln celebrated his 90th birthday Dec. 16, 2013.

1950

n Richard Hall of Ashland turned 90 on Dec. 9, 2013.

1952

■ Merrill Ream, Palm Springs, Calif., authored “Merrill Ream Speed Reading Course,” which continues to be taught online as a noncredit class to college-level students in the English-speaking world. He is a classic car enthusiast (owning two) and has written numerous articles about the subject.

1957

■ Duane Keilstrup of Arlington, Texas, a retired professor emeritus of German at the University of Texas at Arlington, was the subject of an article in the UTA magazine concerning the recent 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. An assistant professor at the former Arlington State College in 1963, Keilstrup asked his

News/Weddings/Births/Deaths

students to write their thoughts about the tragedy, only days after it had occurred in nearby Dallas. The ungraded essays were read and stashed away in his campus office, untouched for nearly 50 years until housecleaning caused their rediscovery and the subsequent magazine story. Upon reading the article, officials at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas contacted Keilstrup and asked to review the writings, which led to them being digitally scanned and categorized. They are now part of the museum’s archives. ■ Dale Marples, Omaha, has published “Let God Out,” a personal exploration of faith and its application in everyday life.

1958

Bob Maag of Lincoln has been inducted into the Nebraska Music Educators Hall of Fame. Maag was instrumental music director for the Waverly School District #145 from 1958-1991. ■

1959

n Dave Thomssen retired in

November 2013 from Alfred Benesch and Co., after 53 years in the consulting geological engineering business in Lincoln. In October 2013 he was inducted into the Nebraska Racing Hall of Fame after 55 years of drag racing and record setting at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. Thomssen and his wife, Marge, ’83, celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary in September 2013.

1960

Marvin and Diane McKay of Alvo marked 50 years of marriage Jan. 18, 2014.

1962

Larry and Bev TeSelle of Milford celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary Dec. 1, 2013.

1963

■ Ray and Sharon Scholl of Hastings noted 50 years of marriage Dec. 13, 2013.

■ Indicates Alumni Association Life Member

■

Ken and Karen Kenney Stanley of Lincoln celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary Feb. 1.

1964

n Patrick Manrose, Stuart, Fla., marks his 50th year in 2014 as an H&R Block Income Tax franchisee with 30 offices in Kentucky and Florida. n Leroy Svec, Seward, retired

as research scientist from DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred International Seed Co. in March 2013. A more than 50-year member of the American Society of Agronomy, his career involved university research, teaching and extension work followed by research and development of new seed products in an agricultural industry setting.

1967

n Richard Powell, an optometrist and manager of Malbar Vision Center of Lincoln, announced that firm has adopted a new name, Eyes on Lincoln.

1969

Del Smith, a senior vice president – financial adviser in the Lincoln office of international financial consulting and wealth management company RBC Wealth Management, was recently selected to be a member of the firm’s consulting group, an exclusive team recognized for their excellence in building fee-based businesses. Susan Joyce of Northborough, Mass., was appointed a visiting scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management after two years as a research affiliate. Joyce was asked to be a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Career Transitions, affiliated with MIT, which is trying to address the issue of helping the long-term unemployed over 50 find jobs. Forbes magazine selected both of her websites for inclusion in the Top 100 Sites for Your Career.

1970

■ Don Hutchens, Lincoln, will retire as the executive director of the Nebraska Corn Board in July after 27 years of service. Hutchens also served as assistant director and director of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture under Gov. J. Robert Kerrey from 1985-87.

Richard Wegener is an attorney in the Minneapolis office of the international law firm Faegre Baker Daniels, where he concentrates on food regulatory and litigation practice.

1971

John Fink, a Realtor with HOME Real Estate of Lincoln, garnered the Excellence in Outgoing Referrals Award at that firm’s 2013 awards banquet. n William Lee Merritt has been named senior director, corporate banking – business development for First National Bank, a subsidiary of First National of Nebraska.

Joe Valenti, president and CEO of CBSHOME Real Estate in Omaha has been named to the Swanepoel Power 200 Most Powerful People in Residential Real Estate. n Bob Wolf has retired after 46 years with Olsson Associates, a Lincoln-based engineering and design firm.

1972

James Kinder, a professor and former chair of the department of animal sciences at The Ohio State University and currently the interim director for the Agricultural Technical Institute, is among the 2013 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows. Arlie Rauch, Glendive, Mont., has published “Mercy for Me,” a book detailing what he calls, “the strangest period of our lives.” His wife, Ruth, ’71, suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm in December 2011, and how they coped with that challenge is the subject of this publication.

Indicates Alumni Association Annual Member NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 53

CLASSNOTES Dale and Linda Stoehr of Lincoln celebrated 50 years of marriage in November 2013.

2014 board of directors for The American Institute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter.

1973

1977

n Michael D. Hoefs, a Lincoln

dentist, has completed requirements for certification in craniofacial dental sleep medicine by the American Board of Craniofacial Pain. n Deanna Talcott Pyle of Mason,

Mich., sold her first movie script, “Hats Off to Christmas,” to the Hallmark Channel. It premiered as a 2013 Original Hallmark Christmas movie in December.

1974

n Dave Boeckner is a real estate

agent with Wood Bros. Realty of Lincoln.

Terry Zimmerman of Lincoln is the president, construction division, for Hampton Enterprises, a real estate development and general contracting company.

1975

Kurt Grosshans is the vice president commercial lending for Frontier Bank of Lincoln. John Obermiller has been promoted to chief financial officer of Tenaska Marketing Group, an energy company headquartered in Omaha. Bob Rutan has been elected senior vice president by the board of directors for West Gate Bank of Lincoln.

1976

n Mark A. Borer, Westminster, Colo., has been elected to the board of directors for The Laclede Group Inc., a public utility holding company based in St. Louis, that provides natural gas service. n Mark Marsh, Sahuarita, Ariz., retired from the aerospace and defense industry after 34 years as a senior manager, software engineering. ■ Ken West of the DLR Group of Omaha is a member of the 54 SPRING 2014

n Tom Sattler and his legal colleague, Nichole Bogen, celebrated the first anniversary of the opening of their law firm Sattler & Bogen LLP in Lincoln.

1978

■ William and ■ Penny Hamilton of Granby, Colo., recently published “JFK: The Umbrella Conspiracy.” In addition, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in March for her efforts in educating schoolchildren about aviation as “Penny the Pilot,” as a participant in the Colorado Airport History Preservation Project, and in promoting women’s success in general aviation flight training. A pilot, Penny co-holds a world and national speed record with her husband, Bill.

Mike Lindberg has been promoted to chief financial officer for Hampton Enterprises, a real estate development and general contracting company in Lincoln.

1979

Karl Marxhausen, Carrollton, Mo., is a teacher aide with the Behavior Management Program for Chillicothe R-2 School District in Chillicothe, Mo. He was part of the UNL Centennial Education Program from 1974-77. Fred Witt of Paradise Valley, Ariz., joined Advanced Green Innovations LLC of Phoenix as vice president and general counsel. Witt recently published his first novel, a legal thriller titled “Partnership in Crime.” ■

1980

n Edwin Bowden, West Des

Moines, Iowa, has been promoted to chief operating officer of GC3 LLC, the general contracting arm of GuideOne Insurance.

n Jay and n Janice Teeter Curtiss, ’79, of Cary, N.C., have both retired after 30 years of working for IBM Corp. Their careers took them to several cities and finally to the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. They write, “It would not have been possible without a great start provided by UNL!”

Jeffrey Krejci, Hickman, has been selected president of Cornerstone Bank of York and will be a member of its board of directors as well.

Barb Gay of Nebraska Public Power District in Columbus is the treasurer for the 2014 board of directors of the American Institute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter.

1983

Jackie Hansen, Lincoln, has been named learning and development manager for Lincoln Industries, a supplier of products requiring high-performance metal finishing. n Cindy Kadavy has taken the

newly created position of vice president of reimbursement for the Nebraska Health Care Association in Lincoln.

n Pamela Schroeder Kunzman,

Beatrice, is the information technology division commander for the Nebraska State Patrol.

Michael J. Linder of Lincoln has joined the Omaha law firm Koley Jessen as a shareholder. Linder previously served as director of the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality. Christine McCollister is celebrating 30 years of service with CenterPointe, the treatment and rehab facility in Lincoln for persons with substance abuse and mental disorders. She is the director of management information services for the organization.

1984

n Rob Mitchell has been ap-

n Mark Jagels of Davenport was

Jack Nickolite is a physician assistant with Strasburger Orthopaedics in Lincoln.

Joseph R. Lempka, president of the Kiewit Building Group of Omaha, has been elected vice chairman of the board of directors for Goodwill Industries.

pointed managing partner for the Omaha office of Deloitte, the international auditing firm.

n Joe Selig has been appointed

by the University of Nebraska Foundation as vice president of development for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

1981

n Kyla Johnson of Farmington,

N.M., achieved National Board Certification in the area of library media, early childhood through young adulthood.

1982

Janet Dickinson, Englewood, Colo., is now the senior vice president/finance and accounting/controller for Starz, the global integrated media and entertainment company. n Fred Hunzeker has been

promoted to president and CEO of Tenaska, an Omaha-based energy company.

elected chairman of the United States Meat Export Federation.

1985

Todd Hesson of Encompass Architects of Lincoln is the secretary of the 2014 board of directors for The American Institute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter. Terry L. Kurtenbach is vice president of City Bank and Trust of Lincoln. Scott Williamson has been elected senior vice president by the board of directors of West Gate Bank of Lincoln.

1986

n Mike Dunlap has been ap-

pointed executive chairman of the board for Nelnet, the student loan conglomerate in Lincoln.

By Colleen Kenney Fleischer, ’88

Alumni Profile ’60

Hate-Love-Love Relationship Chuck Bukin

One day decades ago, a know-it-all sophomore sent a letter to his UNL dean, telling him exactly what he thought of the university. How much he hated it. How the professors “didn’t know beans.” The dean asked to meet with him. So the young man sat down in front of him and repeated what he’d said in the letter. The dean took notes. That was in 1951, right before the young man dropped out. He joined the Navy. Four years later, after marrying a good gal and starting a family and getting in with a group of guys on a Navy ship – guys who talked about returning to school – the young man started to see things differently. He loved the thought of returning. And learning. He realized he was the one who didn’t know beans. He returned to the dean’s office. “I said, ‘I’d like to go to school here again.’” Chuck Bukin chuckles as he tells this story over the phone from his Texas home. “The dean said, ‘Wait just a minute.’ He pulled out a file and folder on me. He said, ‘You sure?’” One of the best lessons he’s learned in life, Bukin said, is the importance of education. He said he owes so much of his good life to his college degree. After the dean let him back in, he studied much harder than he had before. He studied while working his way through school doing manual labor jobs, like driving trucks and unloading trains. He studied chemistry and geology and brought up his grades and graduated in 1960. He later earned a master of liberal arts degree

from Southern Methodist University. Most of his career after college happened in Texas, where he worked for Texas Instruments as a process engineer. He made transistors and then computer chips. He’s retired now. “I’m a Texan,” he said. “But I’m really a Nebraskan. I really do miss Nebraska.” He says there’s a plaque on the wall of his office at home that makes him think of Nebraska. The plaque says he’s a member of the Chancellor’s Club for giving so much over the years to the university. The plaque shows a photo of Love Library. Most of his giving has been to help Love Library. After he returned to UNL, he said, the library became one of his favorite spots on campus. “There was a group of us that met in the library in Study Hall. We were the Young Democrats. We would sit around and get in discussions about Nebraska being Republican and how they ought to switch to Democrats (I’m a Republican now). “I lived off campus and I worked, and so the library was a place where I could go to study. And it was warm. We had a place at a table where we’d meet, down on the first floor. “Once in a while we’d get carried away and they’d tell us to quiet down.” He started out by giving a little bit of money to help Love Library make the transition to computers. It wasn’t much; just what he could afford at the time.

He kept giving. Over the years, a little became a lot. He was among the first members of the UNL Libraries Dean’s Club. When the library needed money to digitize its books, Bukin gave to that effort. He was among the first to give to the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities Excellence Fund. “The thing about that library is that the books are not just in a vault now,” he said. “They can be digitized and people can read CONNECTION BOX them and nufoundation.org see them anywhere in the world, and that’s what’s neat. “Love Library is on R Street, but now it’s also global.” He’s proud of the plaque, with the photo of Love. He’s proud he’s given back. He’s proud he came back. v If you, like Chuck Bukin, also have great memories of Love or the other UNL libraries, please consider giving online to the UNL Library Fund or to the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities Excellence Fund at nufoundation.org or contact the foundation’s Susan Norby at 800432-3216.

NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 55

CLASSNOTES Jeff Noordhoek has been appointed CEO of the board for Nelnet, the student loan conglomerate in Lincoln. Brian Wolford has been named Lincoln market president in the Lincoln office of Midwest Bank.

1989

Courtney Baillie, a professor of accounting at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, has been named program director for the MBA program in Omaha, which will be launched in fall 2015. n Roger Doehling of LYNC

Architecture in Omaha was elected president of the 2014 board of directors for the American Institute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter.

n Mark Fahleson, an attorney

with Rembolt Ludtke LLP of Lincoln, presented at the DRI Sexual Torts seminar in San Diego in late 2013.

Two-time Olympic medalist and Husker football alum Curt Tomasevicz, ’03, ’06, was introduced to the crowd at the halftime of the NebraskaNorthwestern men’s basketball game March 1. In February Tomasevicz and his American teammates collected a bronze medal in 4-man bobsled at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The team earned a gold medal in the same event at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. Tomasevicz is now considering returning to UNL to get a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.

Amy Sundberg-Mincer has been hired by Continuum Financial, a general agency of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., and will serve as a financial services professional in the Lincoln office. Brian P. Moles, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, was recently named commander of a new remotely piloted aircraft squadron activated during a ceremony at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M.

1987

Tom and Connie Seevers of Lincoln celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary Feb. 9. 56 SPRING 2014

Robert Stoupa, Wahoo, has been promoted to vice president of business development for KZCO of Greenwood. Lisa Swiatek was honored as “Teacher of the Month” by the Lincoln East Rotary chapter. She teaches kindergarten at Kloefkorn Elementary School in Lincoln.

1988

Mike Losee has been elected vice president of the Nebraska Healthcare Marketers board of directors. Losee is director of healthcare marketing at Snitily Carr, a Lincoln-based advertising agency.

Michelle Penn, owner of the Lincoln architecture firm Authenticity, is a member of the 2014 board of directors for The American Institute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter.

1990

Scott Strasburger, an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine, has opened Strasburger Orthopaedics in Lincoln.

1991

■ Timothy Drueke of Rock Hill, S.C., recently represented the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the inauguration of Dr. Jayne Marie Comstock as the 10th president of Winthrop University, Rock Hill.

Jeff Hoffman has joined the Omaha accounting firm Frankel Zacharia LLC. Stacie Neussendorfer is now a wealth adviser and private client advocate in the Omaha office of Westwood Trust, an investment management company based in Dallas.

n John Skretta, superintendent

of Norris Public Schools, received the 2013 Service Award from the Nebraska Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

1992

Ann Schow has been promoted to vice president and controller of Werner Enterprises, the international transportation company headquartered in Omaha. DeeAnn Wenger has been promoted to president of Nelnet Business Solutions of Lincoln, a division of Nelnet that deals in the administration and repayment of student loans.

1993

Mark L. Brasee, a partner in the Omaha law office Fraser Stryker P.C. LLO, has been elected chairman of the board of trustees for Goodwill Industries. ■ Stephen Davis, Milwaukee, Wis., was the investigative producer of the Chicago Emmy Award for the 2013 Outstanding Achievement for News Specialty Report/Series - Business/Consumer: “The Menace Returns.” ■ Jody Lamp of Billings, Mont., and her business partner, Melody Dobson, serve as the national executive co-coordinators for “The Great American Wheat Harvest” documentary film.

David Spinar has been promoted to associate vice presidentfinancial adviser in the Lincoln office of RBC Wealth Management. Jennifer Wooster has been appointed vice president of group actuarial and compensation for the Ameritas Mutual Holding Co., in Lincoln.

1994

Carol Ernst, executive director of Eastmont Towers Community in Lincoln, has been elected co-chair of the 2014 Nebraska Health Care Association Board of Directors.

CLASSNOTES Darin Horst has been promoted to associate with the Lincolnbased architectural engineering firm Davis Design, where he is an architect and project manager.

Lorraine A. Egger, Gretna, has been promoted to tax managing director in the Omaha office of global auditing company KPMG.

1996

Jeff Jewell is now first vice president of trust administration after being promoted at Union Bank & Trust of Lincoln.

n Nicole Franta, Omaha, is

the new assistant director of recruitment for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Engineering’s Omaha programs.

1997

Nancy Pridal, vice president of Lamp, Rynearson and Associates Inc., was named the chair of the board for Habitat for Humanity of Omaha.

1995

Kelly Brunkhorst of Lincoln is the executive director of the Nebraska Corn Board. ■

Kathy Christensen is the quality control manager for Garner Industries in Lincoln, which specializes in plastic injection molding of small to medium run precision machining of metals and tools.

Elizabeth A. Mazzotta, vice president of human resources for Mutual of Omaha, is the chairman emeritus for the board of trustees for Goodwill Industries.

Carrie Weber is vice presidentaudit services for Ameritas, the Lincoln-based insurance company.

Perry Haralson of Cornhusker Bank is second vice president for the 2014 Home Builders Association of Lincoln board of directors. Todd Moeller has been promoted to senior associate with Holland Basham Architects of Omaha.

1998

John Decker has assumed the role of CEO of the Lincoln office of Smith Hayes, a Nebraska-based investment and financial consulting firm. Jay Foreman of Lincoln is the executive vice president for Hot Dot Inc., which produces The Patch, a product that monitors an individual’s body temperature for enhanced athletic training. In 2013 Foreman founded The Foreman Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to improving the lives of diabetics.

Jason Tagge of Miller Electric in Omaha is a member of the 2014 board of directors for the Omaha Builders Exchange.

Melissa Schwab has been promoted to senior accountant for HBE Becker Meyer Love, an accounting and consulting firm in Lincoln.

Jeffrey Makovicka, Gretna, has been admitted to the Omaha office of the national law firm Kutak Rock LLP.

Chris Wess was promoted to PC installer with ALR Systems & Software, an independently owned consulting company in Omaha.

Anthony Young is the chief information officer for Cushman & Wakefield / The Lund Company, a commercial real estate company in Omaha.

n Alisa Rosales is the director of career and professional development at the University of Wyoming College of Law in Laramie.

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2:01 PM NEBRASKA8/24/12 MAGAZINE 57

CLASSNOTES 1999

Brian Austin has been named a mechanical engineer in the Omaha office of The Schemmer Associates, a locally based architectural engineering firm. Ellie Charter, Lincoln, is a senior project manager with advertising agency Bailey Lauerman. Kevin From has been named district manager for the Omaha area offices of US Bank. Jason John of Elkhorn has been appointed audit partner in the Omaha office of international auditing firm KPMG. Todd Kinney of Elkhorn has joined the Omaha office of the national law firm Kutak Rock LLP. Jason McCown has been promoted to vice president, project management at Union Bank & Trust of Lincoln. Travis W. Pritchett is a senior manager at Labenz & Associates LLC, having joined the Lincoln accounting firm in October 2013. Jessica Sandmeier has been added to the practice of Integrated Women’s Health of Lincoln, where she serves as an osteopath, obstetrician/gynecologist and surgeon.

2000

Patrick Finnegan is an associate account supervisor in the Lincoln office of marketing communications agency Swanson Russell. David W. Rasmussen is a partner with the Lincoln law firm of Wolfe, Snowden, Hurd, Luers & Ahl LLP. Seth Root, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., was the recipient of a 2012 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on science and engineering professionals.

58 SPRING 2014

Bryan Trost has received the 2013 Team Member of the Year Award from BancWise Realty, a Lincoln-based real estate company. Amy Truell is a Realtor in the Pioneer Greens office of HOME Real Estate of Lincoln.

2001

Stan Beeder, a partner in the Lincoln law firm Cline Williams Wright Johnson & Oldfather, has been elected vice president of the board of directors for Heartland Big Brothers Big Sisters. Amy Frohloff, Omaha, is an account supervisor with the advertising agency Bailey Lauerman. Kim Gradoville is the new tennis coach for the College of Saint Mary in Omaha. Megan Jarosz has been promoted to senior associate with Holland Basham Architects of Lincoln. Nathan Lamp, a real estate agent with the Lincoln office of BancWise Realty, was part of that firm’s mentoring team. Thomas Seberger, Shawnee Mission, Kan., has been promoted to manager of the Federal Aviation Administration Information Technology, Security and Privacy Services, Security Operations Division, Cyber Security Services Branch.

2002

David Ciavarella has been appointed senior associate in the Lincoln office of the DLR Group, the national architectural design company headquartered in Omaha. Cari Kaup is a vice president, 529 College Saving group, as a result of promotion at Union Bank & Trust in Lincoln. Josh Sand, a real estate agent with the Lincoln office of BancWise Realty, was part of that firm’s mentoring team.

Stephanie R. Thorn of Centennial, Colo., was presented a 2012 Center for Women’s Health Research Junior Faculty Research Development Award in the amount of $25,000 to be used for her research project at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The project investigates the impact of nutrition on fetal metabolism and growth.

2003

n Blake Anderson of Omaha

is an investment officer with Pittenger & Anderson Inc., an investment adviser firm headquartered in Lincoln. Kurt Cisar has been promoted to associate with Holland Basham Architects of Omaha. Stephanie Dinger, customer service manager-vice president at Union Bank of Lincoln, has been elected president of the board of directors for Heartland Big Brothers Big Sisters. Brianna Georgeson of the American Cancer Society office in Lincoln has been elected to the board of directors for Heartland Big Brothers Big Sisters. Ann McGill, has joined the Omaha office of the national law firm Kutak Rock LLP.

Ashley Peterson is a Realtor with Woods Bros. Realty of Lincoln. Ryan Pierce has been honored by Lincoln real estate company Nebraska Home Sales for his excellence in business development for that firm.

2004

Heather Anshutz has been appointed second vice president and associate general counsel of the group division for Ameritas Mutual Holding Co. in Lincoln. Nate Buss is a senior civil engineer in the Lincoln office of The Schemmer Associates, an Omaha-based architectural engineering firm. Kasey Cappellano, Omaha, has been admitted to the national law firm Kutak Rock LLP. Ben Dvorak is an advanced senior accountant in the Omaha office of accounting firm McDermott & Miller P.C. Anthony M. Hohn is now a partner in the Sioux Falls, S.D., law firm Davenport, Evans, Hurwitz & Smith LLP where he is member of the litigation section. Thomas Irvin has rejoined the Lincoln advertising agency Bailey Lauerman as a finish artist. Mark B. Johnson has become a partner in the Omaha real estate company Fullenkamp, Doyle & Jobeun. Brian Meyers, Lincoln, is now an associate after being promoted by the architectural engineering company Davis Design. Sarah Boehle Pool was named a partner in the Lincoln office of BMG Certified Public Accountants LLP.

Shane Potts is part of the railroad structures team at the Omaha office of the national engineering company Alfred Benesch & Co.

Bryan Solko has been promoted to senior associate in the Lincoln office of the architectural design firm BVH Architects.

Andrew Weeks is now an associate attorney in the Lincoln office of the Midwest law firm Sattler & Bogen.

Michelle Cochell has been promoted to associate in the Lincoln office of the architectural engineering firm Davis Design, where she is an interior designer.

Julie Wiekamp has joined the emergency department of Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center of Lincoln as a physician assistant.

2005

Jocelyn Fitzgerald has been named the new marketing director for the Legacy Terrace

By Randy York, ’71

Alumni Profile ’93

Three Careers and Counting Karen Jennings

One of only four student-athletes in Nebraska athletic history to achieve first-team Academic All-America status at least three times, Karen Jennings is well into her life journey. The 1993 Margaret Wade Trophy winner for the Nation’s Outstanding Women’s College Basketball Player, Jennings jettisoned her first career as a physical therapist to become one of Omaha’s top-producing realtors. In 10 years, she plans to launch a third career in motivational speaking. (Because she played one year of professional basketball in France, some might say motivational speaking would be Jennings’ fourth career, but for all intents and purposes, she always has been able to focus strategically on life after basketball.) Jennings has already simulated a launch with a fairly aggressive training program that enables some dabbling in that “future” third career. Last November, for example, Jennings was one of nine outstanding alumni who returned to UNL to share their experiences and knowledge with students as part of Alumni Masters Week. A two-time CoSIDA Academic All-American of the Year for women’s Division I basketball schools, Jennings was hosted by the Athletic Department. She made six speeches in two days, addressing: 1) the Nebraska men’s and women’s golf teams; 2) the Husker softball team that qualified for the 2013 Women’s College World Series; 3) a class of athletic trainers; 4) UNL’s College of Education and Human Sciences, the school in which she earned her degree in exercise

sciences; 5) a group of academic and career advisers from several UNL colleges; and 6) an elite group of 30 UNL student ambassadors who encourage students already on campus and recruit others who are considering Lincoln as a competitive choice. Jennings geared her speeches to reflect Nebraska’s culture and inspire those who embrace that culture. “The fundamentals I learned in college are related to the fundamentals required to succeed in business and in life,” she said. “We were pushed to a higher level at the University of Nebraska. We were pushed on the court, and we were pushed academically to be the best of the best – the crème de la crème – so we learned to expect that as we transitioned into our lives. We carry that burning fire and that burning flame that we got first from the University of Nebraska.” Such passion enables Jennings to stand firm and commit daily to what she has decided it takes to be the best. “Once you’re committed, you start your business plan or set your goals for your sport,” she said. “Whatever it is, it’s the same philosophy of pushing forward. It’s just like it is in basketball. You have to follow through with hard work in everything you do. When I talked to the softball team, I told them that we still spell success the same way we spelled it when I

was here: W-O-R-K! There is no way to succeed at the highest levels without that, and we all know it.” Jennings followed through on her commitments, becoming one of only three Huskers who have been inducted to the CoSIDA Academic All-America Hall of Fame (football players Dave Rimington and Pat Tyrance are the other two). She was a Kodak first-team All-American and earned the 1993 Big Eight Conference Female Athlete of the Year distinction. Jennings, a 6-foot-2 forward from Persia, Iowa, also was named captain of Nebraska’s All-Century Team. Anyone who wants to measure the impact of a Karen Jennings speech should talk to Taylor Edwards, a first-team All-Big Ten catcher on Nebraska’s 2013 College World Series softball team. Edwards had no idea that Jennings had earned so many national honors. But the senior from Murrieta, Calif., describes Jennings as a motivational speaker who’s way ahead of her own timetable. “She had our whole team hanging on every word,” Edwards said. “Basically, she told us that life is full of opportunities, and you have to work hard each and every day to succeed in anything you do. She talked about fundamentals in sports, in the work place, in family, her husband, her

Continued on Page 60 NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 59

CLASSNOTES three careers and counting Continued from Page 59 daughter, everywhere. I think our whole team took a piece of what she was telling us. She also stressed how we need to be students first. When you put school before anything else, everything falls into place.” Nebraska Head Softball Coach Rhonda Revelle preaches the same values. “We really enjoyed Karen and her blue collar approach to success … it is called W-O-R-K,” Revelle said, while agreeing that extraordinary results require extraordinary effort. Jennings believes that if you’re asked to do something two times a week, make it three times. “If you’re supposed to practice the piano 20 minutes, practice 30,” Jennings said, acknowledging how her 8-year-old daughter now sets her own above-and-beyond goals without being asked because extra effort has become second nature. Jennings sees all the improvements in Husker athletic facilities producing that extra effort from UNL student athletes, as well. “This environment exudes excellence,” she said. “It shows we’re committed more to the times, and this is what it takes to compete in the Big Ten, which is probably the best academic conference in the entire country. “We were always at the forefront of the country, and we still are,” Jennings said, “but this … this raises us to a completely different level to help everyone succeed. The environment has changed. Technology has changed. Our facilities are more modern and more upscale, but the most important thing of all has not changed – our attitude. At Nebraska, we’ve always known and will never forget what it takes to succeed.” Ten years from now, when Jennings plans to become a motivational speaker with at least some measure of national prominence, she will talk about the benefits of hard work and explain why that fundamental fact will remain an important part of her overall message.v

of Lincoln, a retirement community. Alexis Kramer has joined the Omaha office of the national law firm Kutak Rock as an associate. Scott Lockard has been promoted to vice president, construction division, for Hampton Enterprises, a real estate development and general contracting company in Lincoln. Christopher McMeekin was promoted to vice president of commercial lending at the 1200 Golden Gate Drive location of Pinnacle Bank in Omaha. ■ Jess Paisley is the audit manager of Seim Johnson LLP, an Omaha-based accounting company.

Brian Prochaska is a credit analyst with Midwest Bank of Lincoln. Christine Higgins-Wilcox was promoted to assistant vice president in-house counsel for Union Bank & Trust of Lincoln. Kyle Wooster has been elected to vice president by the board of directors of West Gate Bank of Lincoln.

2006

Alexis Abel is public relations counsel for the Lincoln-based marketing communications company Swanson Russell. Dan Boler of Omaha has been promoted to assistant vice president, commercial real estate, for American National Bank. Mark Carlson, Omaha, has been sworn into the Nebraska Bar. Stephen Gildersleeve is an optometrist with the recently renamed vision center, Eyes on Lincoln. Leigh M. Koehn, Lincoln, is an associate attorney with the Omaha law firm Koley Jessen.

60 SPRING 2014

Kris Mather, a tax manager in the Lincoln office of auditing firm BKD, has been elected treasurer for the board of directors for Heartland Big Brothers Big Sisters. Philip S. Murante is an associate attorney with the Omaha law firm Koley Jessen. Chris Nielsen, a senior development and sales associate with the Omaha-based real estate development company DP Management LLDC, has achieved Certified Commercial Investment Member status. Kenton Rowe of Helena, Mont., had a series of photographs capturing life in the wild for a mother cougar and her cubs, “Proud Mama,” published in the December 2013 issue of National Geographic. The cover of the Russian version of National Geographic will also feature one of his images.

2007

Nicole Adkins has been promoted to branch manager II at two locations for Cornhusker Bank of Lincoln. Andrew Essay is an assistant vice president/mortgage lender at Cornhusker Bank of Lincoln. Brooke Luther of Elm Creek has joined SCORR Marketing, a marketing and communications company headquartered in Kearney, as a business development representative. ■ Branden Nemecek is now an associate professor of pharmacy practice at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Amanda Smidt is the manager of alumni and career services for City Year Inc., an educationfocused nonprofit organization based in Boston. Matt Swanson has been promoted to mortgage banker at the Nebraska Bank of Commerce in Lincoln. Tyler J. Volkmer is now part of the legal team of Adams & Sul-

CLASSNOTES livan P.C. LLO Attorneys at Law in Omaha. n Austin Weaver received his

doctor of chiropractic degree from Logan University College of Chiropractic, Chesterfield, Mo., in April 2012. Weaver is the owner of Holmes Lake Chiropractic in Lincoln.

Asher Ball has been added to the legal lineup as an associate at the Omaha headquarters of the national law firm Kutak Rock.

2010

Grant Buckley is an accountant with the Lincoln-based accounting firm Buckley & Sitzman.

Nathan T. Burkman is an associate attorney with the Omaha law firm Koley Jessen.

Megan Wiedel has been promoted to trust compliance officer of trust administration at Union Bank & Trust of Lincoln.

Tyler Denker has joined Buckley & Sitzman, a Lincoln-based accounting firm, as an accountant.

Isaiah Wilson has been hired as an associate with the Omaha office of the national law firm Kutak Rock.

Jay Faylor has been promoted to commercial loan operations officer at the 180th and Dodge streets branch of Pinnacle Bank in Omaha.

2008

Jesse S. Krause is an associate with the newly formed Omaha law firm of Slowiaczek, Albers & Astley P.C. LLO. Jeremy Lohrman has been hired as senior account executive for Five Nines Technology Group, a Lincoln-based provider of managed IT services.

James Vaske is a financial services professional for Continuum Financial, a general agency of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., and works out of the Lincoln office.

Joe Broekemeier has joined the Lincoln insurance agency McCashland Kirby & Associates as an agent.

Maggie Cox has been hired by the national law firm Kutak Rock as an associate and will be located in Omaha. Kyle Drummond is a senior associate after being promoted at the Omaha office of McGladrey LLP, an international assurance, tax and consulting firm. Brett E. Ebert has been added to the legal team at Baylor Evnen Curtiss Grimit and Witt LLP of Lincoln.

Michael Harpster of Sinclair Hille Architects of Lincoln is a member of the 2014 board of directors for The American Institute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter. Christopher A. Labenz has joined Labenz & Associates LLC, an accounting company located in Lincoln.

2011

Jenna Alber has joined the Lincoln office of the marketing communications firm Swanson Russell as an assistant traffic manager. Seth Davison has been promoted to agricultural loans officer at Union Bank & Trust of Lincoln. Whitney Hoesing is an account manager in the Omaha office of Five Nines Technology Group, a

Sarah Mullins, owner of Hallow Candle Co. of Lincoln, has launched a new line of candles, Feya Candles, which will provide a full meal for someone in need every time a candle is sold. Mullins will travel to Montrouis, Haiti, in June to deliver all the food raised by those candle sales. ■ Sean Parks, an engineer with the geotechnical team of Olsson Associates, has passed his professional engineering exam and has been promoted to associate engineer.

n Elyse Weaver received her

master’s in education from Ashford University, Clinton, Iowa, in September 2011. She is employed as the ministries coordinator for Southwood Lutheran Church in Lincoln.

2009

Brian Akert has been promoted to associate with Holland Basham Architects of Omaha.

Aric Damm, ’11, (center) is the vocalist and guitarist of The Brevet, a band formed a little over ago. In the past year the band’s music has been heard on “The CW’s 90210,” “American Idol,” NBC’s “Growing Up Fisher,” and The MLB Network, and made it into Music Connection Magazine as “Top 25 New Artist Critiques of 2013.” The band is planning to release a second album in July. Aric recently wrote: “I wanted to reach out and tell you how much my time at UNL has impacted my life and my music. I decided to attend UNL due to my family ties to the university (my grandfather, Alexander Damm, and older brother, Alex Damm, are grads) and it was one of the best decisions I made. I could tell you how I learned to become a well-rounded student or actor, and that may be true, but what I really learned about was the people of Nebraska. The support, compassion and humility the people of UNL/Nebraska have is very special. That may sound bizarre coming from someone who grew up in Orange County their entire life, but it’s true. I absolutely loved growing up where I did, but UNL gave me something special. It taught me how to be a humble and honest person, which is something I cherish. It is something that finds its way into our music and what I chose to write about in our lyrics.” NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 61

CLASSNOTES provider of managed services, IT services and consulting. Jonathan Gardner has joined the Omaha office of the national law firm Kutak Rock as an associate. Heath Roehr has joined Powderhook, a hunting and fishing startup based in Lincoln, as vice president of product development. Tristan Vetter, Lincoln, is an intern architect in the Omaha office of BVH Architects.

2012

Noah Bieber is a staff accountant with the Omaha auditing/ accounting firm Frankel Zacharia LLC. Catherine A. Cano is an associate in the Omaha office of the national law firm Jackson Lewis P.C.

Nolan Gauthier of Lincoln has been added to the marketing team of advertising agency Bailey Lauerman as a project coordinator. Katherine Martz has joined the Lincoln office of the regional law firm Sattler & Bogen as an associate attorney. Ashley Moore has been promoted to manager of HBE Becker Meyer Love, an accounting and consulting firm in Lincoln. Keith Peterson, an investment adviser representative with Smith Hayes Advisers Inc. of Lincoln, has been elected to the board of directors for Heartland Big Brothers Big Sisters. ■

Adam Post of The Clark Enerson Partners in Lincoln is a member of the 2014 board of directors for The American In-

stitute of Architects, Nebraska Chapter. ■ Chelsey Wahlstrom has been added to the Lincoln office of marketing communications firm Swanson Russell as account coordinator.

2013

Christopher C. Cassiday is an associate in the Lincoln office of the law firm Rembolt Ludtke LLP. ■ Tyler Kanne is a financial services professional with the Omaha office of Continuum Financial, a general agency of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.

Noah J. Heflin is a member of the litigation and commercial practice groups at the Lincoln law firm Baylor Evnen Curtiss Grimit and Witt LLP. Justin Henke has joined Continuum Financial, a general agency of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., and serves as a financial services professional in the Lincoln office. Joe Kozal has joined the Lincoln office of marketing communications firm Swanson Russell as an account coordinator. Bryce Morgan has been promoted to commercial banker with Nebraska Bank of Commerce in Lincoln. n Daniel Murow is an associate with the Omaha office of the national law firm Kutak Rock.

Brad Raders has been welcomed to Wright’s Jewelers of Lincoln, where he will be involved in all aspects of the jewelry business. Andrew Schmaderer has joined Continuum Financial, a general agency of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., as a financial services professional in the Lincoln office. Cameron Sheehy, ’13, posted this on Facebook: “I’m not sure if you look for updates from alumni representing NU around the world, but I am doing just that in Germany and other locations in Europe, daily. Here’s my Husker Pride atop Stubai Glacier in Austria.” 62 SPRING 2014

Jeffrey W. Sheets is a new associate at the Lincoln accounting firm Labenz & Associates LLC.

Max Wheeler has been promoted to development engineer at Lincoln Industries, where he will be responsible for developing new products for Lincoln Chrome and After Effect.

WEDDINGS

Dennis Waggoner and n Julie O’Brien, ’94, Aug. 3, 2013. The lives in Omaha. Andy Shives and Amy Morgan, ’02, Sept. 21, 2013. The couple lives in Farmington Hills, Mich. Matthew Glawatz, ’03, and Maggie Marquart, July 19, 2013. The couple lives in Lincoln. Andy Brown and Becki Rech, ’05, Nov. 28, 2013. Joshua Meyer, ’05, and Andrea Tagart, ’08, Oct. 25, 2013. The couple lives in Lincoln. Jeovany Eduardo Zelaya and Anna Grace Pelton, ’06, Oct. 19, 2013. The couple lives in Omaha. Erik Lenz and Megan Buda, ’07, Sept. 6, 2013. The couple lives in Berwick, Maine. Don Stetson Hayes and Frances Schoonveld, ’07, Oct. 11, 2013. The couple lives in Lincoln. Darren Krafka, ’08, and Chelsea Maitland, ’09, Sept. 28, 2013. The couple lives in Lincoln. Cole Meyer, ’08, and Jackie Kreifels, ’13, June 29, 2013. The couple lives in Lincoln. Bradford Potthoff, ’11, and Kathryn Bartek, April 27, 2013. The couple lives in Highlands Ranch, Colo. Jess Seeley, ’11, and Anna Plambeck, ’11, June 29, 2013. The couple lives in Aurora. James Sukup, ’12, and Sarah King, ’11, Oct. 26, 2013. The couple lives in Lincoln. Jared Galusha, ’13, and Hannah Christensen, ’12, Nov. 9, 2013. The couple lives in Lincoln.

By Anthony Flott

Alumni Profiles ’81

Sold on Print

Todd Lemke It’s been said that print is dead. Newspapers across the country have been closing shop for years now. Magazine subscriptions and sales are down. The Internet is kicking butt and taking names. Not Todd Lemke’s, though. His name these days is synonymous with publication prowess, and after 30 years in the business he’s become the king of magazines in Omaha. That was driven home last September when the Omaha Press Club honored the 1981 University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate as its 138th “Face on the Barroom Floor.” Lemke built, maintained and expanded a publishing empire unrivaled in Omaha. Owner and president of Omaha Publications, he oversees Omaha Magazine and 11 other titles. Yeah, print is alive and well in Omaha. “I believe the more local you are, the stronger you are,” Lemke said. “You have to embrace the online and you have to integrate the online with social media. You can’t ignore it. But print, especially what I call niche publications, allows you to select your market and talk directly to them.” Lemke is as much salesman as he is publisher. At his press club roast a photo was shown of him as a child manning a Kool-Aid stand. Later, his father, a real estate agent, had Todd and his brothers sell light bulbs to earn their spending money. They’d buy them in bulk at Skagg’s, then hawk them door-to-door throughout Papillion. “I developed regular customers,” Lemke said. “Sales were always

preached in our household. Nothing moves forward without a sale. That was drummed into our heads.” He earned his real estate license soon after graduating from PapillionLaVista High School. In college, he sold cookware and stemware door-todoor in a seven-state area. The entire package ran $2,500. Lemke did well enough to buy a Mazda RX-7 outright. He kept selling when back on UNL’s campus. He and a fellow student ordered pepper spray cans on key chains, set up meetings in sorority houses, then made their pitch. “It was fantastic in a couple of ways,” he said. “One, we earned some money. Second, we both earned several dates.” Lemke actually began his UNL days intending to graduate with a business degree. That didn’t go as planned. “Truth is, I was having trouble with economics classes,” he said. He switched to journalism with an emphasis on advertising. He joined Lambda Chi Alpha and the Ad Club. He sold ads for the Daily Nebraskan and one summer sold UNL to prospective students and their parents as a student orientation host. “I loved it,” Lemke said. “Lincoln was a great choice for me.” After graduating in 1981, Lemke returned to Omaha to sell real estate. He did well, selling 30 homes his

first year, 50 the next, then 70. He advertised in City Slicker magazine. That involvement fostered “a little itch” to put his journalism degree to use. He scratched it, buying City Slicker in 1983. He changed its name to Omaha Magazine and got to publishing. “I would have been a wealthier man had I stayed in real estate,” Lemke said, “But that’s not to say I regret it, because I still enjoy doing what I do. One of the reasons I got out of real estate is I was young and wanted to start a family. It was difficult to do that because real estate required a lot of night and weekend activity. I was looking for an occupation I could work during the day during business hours.” In 31 years the magazine has grown to 36,000 copies per issue. It also is provided in hotel rooms and boasts a potential reach of a half-million visitors each month. It’s best known for its “Best of Omaha” issue when readers pick the best restaurants, grocery stores, banks, etc. Best of Omaha and Omaha Magazine have become household names. Nothing came easy, though. “The first 10 years, especially,” said Lemke, 55. “I was coached to cut my losses and move on.”

Continued on Page 64 NEBRASKA MAGAZINE 63

CLASSNOTES sold on print Continued from Page 63 Though he did plenty of business with banks while in real estate, Lemke discovered banks wouldn’t lend to publications given their risky nature. Lemke sold three rental properties he owned to self-finance his new venture. He stayed with it, surviving a doubling of paper prices in the early 1990s and an advertising dip in 2009 with the economic downturn. His brother, Tyler, vice president of operations for Omaha Publications, said he’s seen Todd survive situations that “would have been the end of business for another entrepreneur.” “Todd is always looking for the solution. Todd keeps moving forward,” Tyler said. “Omaha Magazine is running on all 12 cylinders now; it is a fine-tuned machine. But I remember the early years, Todd sacrificing for his employees and company. I remember times in the past where Todd would take no salary and scrape by so his employees would get a paycheck. “Those days are gone now, but I have seen Todd sacrifice for his people, his magazine, his business.” Now Omaha Publications includes five other titles, including the business-oriented B2B Magazine and The Encounter, focused on the Old Market. His group also custom publishes six other titles for various owners. He lists 18 staff members, including Tyler and their mother, Gwen, senior sales executive. Todd’s wife, Sandy, also has worked for the group (the couple has two children, 23-year-old daughter Casey and 14-year-old son Chad). Lemke has done well enough that he built a new home for his company, in Papillion near the Interstate. Now banks chase him for his business. What’s his secret? “I don’t know if stubbornness is the word,” Lemke said. “You have to stick to it. It’s not a quick return on any kind of time investment or money investment. You really should be in it for the love of it and for the long haul. It can be profitable if you can see to it.” And print is here for the long haul, too. “There’s always going to be marketing and always a place for print. I believe who’s going to control the future of marketing is going to be twofold: those who have lists of names, primarily e-mails, and those who create content. And content is what’s going to drive this.”v

BIRTHS

n Jason, ’98, and n Carolyn O’Brien Ott, ’98, their second child, second daughter, Aislin Raye, Aug. 28, 2013. The family lives in Rockville, Md. n Matt, ’00, and Elaine Klaege

Cranford, ’03, their third child, third son, Asher Ambrose, Dec. 22, 2013. He joins brothers Quincy Edward, 3, and Chance Matthew, 2, adopted Sept. 17, 2013. The family lives in Lincoln.

n Austin, ’07, and n Elyse

Weaver, ’08, their second child, first son, William Robert, July 5, 2013. The family lives in Lincoln. Cori and ■ Kelly Shockey Wemhoff, ’08, their first children, twin girls Makenzie and Makayla, Oct. 12, 2013. The family lives in Lincoln.

Donna Willmann Willard, ’41, Fort Collins, Colo., Nov. 17, 2013. William E. Magnusson, ’42, Central City, Dec. 29, 2013. Phyllis Hoffman Engdahl, ’43, Springdale, Ark., June 27, 2013. Mary Rettenmayer Thompson, ’43, Burleson, Texas, Nov. 18, 2013. Mary Jones Nelson, ’44, Fort Collins, Colo., Nov. 8, 2013. Catherine Wells Newman, ’44, Aurora, April 26, 2013. Harry E. McGee, ’45, Omaha, Dec. 29, 2013. John W. Stewart, ’46, Lincoln, Jan. 15. Rollo V. Clark, ’47, Maryville, Mo., Dec. 10, 2013.

Brian Blackford and ■ Angela Jensen-Blackford, ’09, their first child, a daughter, Aurora Lois, Jan. 2. The family lives in Omaha.

Harry F. Knight, ’47, Lincoln, Jan. 31.

DEATHS

Mary E. Cottingham,’48, Elkhorn, Aug. 27, 2013.

Mary Hendricks Feusner, ’36, Walla Walla, Wash., Dec. 10, 2013. Elizabeth Temple Howell, ’36, Santa Barbara, Calif., Nov. 17, 2013. Sara Hutchings Maust, ’36, Santa Barbara, Calif., March 10, 2013. Ona Ready Werner, ’37, Chandler Heights, Ariz., June 20, 2012.

Mary Dunkin Andersen, ’48, Portland, Ore., Nov. 12, 2013. Eugene D. Bargman, ’48, Beatrice, Feb. 13.

Robert L. Schick, ’48, Gering, Jan. 7. Patricia Thomas Strickler, ’48, Nampa, Idaho, Nov. 29, 2013. D. L. Gilpin, ’49, Cheyenne, Wyo., Dec. 4, 2013. Robert L. Keller, ’49, La Canada, Calif., Jan. 19. Neal D. Kennedy, ’49, Lincoln, Nov. 26, 2013.

Betty Rogers Craig, ’38, Minden, Jan. 23.

Earl E. Lindberg, ’49, Overland Park, Kan., Nov. 5, 2013.

Maxine Merkel Landis, ’38, Reno, Nev., Jan. 17.

William F. Moorhouse, ’49, Fort Worth, Texas, Feb. 3, 2013.

Lee H. Cornelius, ’39, Butte, Mont., Jan. 7, 2013.

Barbara Turk Porter, ’49, Duluth, Minn., Jan. 3.

Lois M. Tibbetts, ’40, Palmer, Dec. 20, 2013.

George K. Spradling, ’49, Walnut Creek, Calif., May 1, 2012.

Delbert L. Christensen, ’41, Green Lake, Wis., Nov. 10, 2013.

Howard S. Teague, ’49, Beulah, Wyo., Nov. 16, 2013.

Betty Dolphin Graham, ’41, Wichita, Kan., Feb. 2. 64 SPRING 2014

Hazel Sautter Tuma, ’41, Crete, Dec. 9, 2013.

Eugene F. Wopata, ’49, Independence, Mo., Feb. 25, 2013.