THE SURPRISING FAVORITE

KURT A. KEELER

OLD-WORLD INFLUENCES

Waldruh, in 1982, when the Keelers were its owners. Warren Keeler was an architect who had an interest in the restoration of historic buildings. He most likely was drawn to Waldruh’s unique design and history.

The surprising favorite

MARK MASER HAD heard that we were planning to interview his good friend and former neighbor Diane Hayes, who has a sunroom for all seasons, filled with

Because it is so much fun.” “They have become wildly popular,” Marjie Ducey had she says, counting prop masters for already connected with “Star Trek: Discovery,” the TNT Diane … and relayed the series “Snowpiercer,” and a leading same after her interview. Broadway production among her Next, it was my turn customers. to be enthralled as we “I’m busy all the time,” the orchids. CHRIS CHRISTEN photographed her eclectic assemblage artist says of her celestial

“So… orchids,” Mark EDITOR-IN-CHIEF spaces and oddities. orbs, which fetch $400 to $500 each. wrote. “Sure … but that Diane’s orrery Diane is a former Realtor and has would only scratch the obsession started decades been in hundreds of local homes. She surface. Diane is fun and quirky … she ago when she came across a 1930s was curious: “Which one is your allcreates orreries.” (Creates …what?) orbiter model at a flea market and time favorite?”

“While not exactly steampunk,” the marveled at its design. Years later, Impossible to answer. After a decade owner of the Brandeis-Millard House she bought a mechanized child’s toy, of editing this magazine, I’m taking continued, “Diane’s space is most took it apart and adapted the gears The Fifth. unique. Oddities … found and created, for her own reproduction of the early When Diane shared her favorite, black walls, but not dark. Eerie, but not astronomy instrument. Her mini solar I gasped. scary. Mad scientist, but only half mad. system with its moving parts and Waldruh. In Bellevue. Creative. Funny. Saucy.” lights fascinated friends. “Everyone My husband’s late parents, Warren

Mark went on to write, “I don’t know wanted one,” Diane says. About a year and Peggy Keeler, once owned it! if you’re the one who will be talking to ago, she established an Etsy shop and Waldruh, which is loosely translated her … but if not, you will want to be… Omaha Orrery was born. from German as “quiet forest,” was

BOSTWICK/SUNEG COLLECTION, ST. MARGARET MARY PARISH BOSTWICK/SUNEG COLLECTION, ST. MARGARET MARY PARISH

KURT A. KEELER JUDY MEDAKOVICH

WALDRUH, THEN AND NOW

Clockwise from top: The Rev. Joseph Suneg’s log home in 1932; the original stone hearth; the property’s sundial; and the house in 2005, after the property’s conversion to a subdivision.

built in 1931 by the Rev. Joseph Suneg on land along Bellevue Boulevard not far from the Missouri River in Sarpy County. The original log cabin had an Old World design, with an imposing stone fireplace and rocks on a slightly pitched roof to hold slate shingles in place and to keep snow from piling too deep.

Just two years earlier, the priest had organized a land transaction that secured the site of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church in Omaha. Suneg sold Waldruh in 1935 to Mr. and Mrs. Harold Day and on the same day, according to a published history of St. Margaret Mary’s, bought seven acres of land on a bluff further north on the Boulevard and dubbed it Lorelei.

Waldruh was unique with a twostory horse stable and shop, a detached two-car garage at the end of a long driveway, and a stand-alone party house. There was enough land for Kurt’s sister, Lisa, to have a horse. There also was a wooden shrine to Jesus, complete with kneeler, and a sundial positioned on a large stone pedestal. Both likely placed by Suneg. Renovation work revealed the Catholic priest’s black socks used as chinking to close cracks between the logs.

When Warren and Peggy bought the heavily wooded property from the Roark family in 1964, two of the Keeler kids were still at home and Kurt was away at college. The running joke was that the family had moved and didn’t tell Kurt where they went. The party house was the site of a few notorious events, held while Warren and Peggy were out of town. An unsolved mystery is how a black chrome kitchen chair could have disappeared. “It was a source of agony for Mom until her dying day,” Kurt says.

When the Keelers sold the property in 1985 and moved to Colorado Springs, an antique ship’s bell went with them. The elk antlers, mounted on the side of the house by Suneg, stayed. A friendly but ever-present ghost is presumed to still occupy the house.

Waldruh won my heart the day Kurt introduced me to it. I’d love to see the inside. Its construction reminds me of the stone-and-wood houses of Switzerland, where my parents were born.

Kurt and I still drive past the house every now and then. The surrounding acres have been replatted and filled in with houses. But that doesn’t diminish the special place Waldruh holds in our family’s heart.

Here’s to such places in yours,