60 Plus Omaha - January/February 2021

60 OMAHA s u l p

Jan./Feb. 2021

Ken Hites

60+ ACTIVE LIVING

- STORY BY JOEL STEVENS PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN - DESIGN BY DEREK JOY

Climb to Made KEN HITES CHALLENGES BODY AND MIND

THE COURSE CATALOG CALLED IT

“PEA 112F Rock Climbing.”

The description read, “This class focuses on the basic knowledge and skills necessary for the sport of rock climbing.”

Ken Hites signed up anyway.

Four years later, that introductory course at the University of Nebraska at Omaha has ignited a passion for climbing in Hites.

Hites was an unconventional student, and he was far from the typical rockclimbing hobbyist.

After decades working in the credit card industry, Hites retired in 2016 and, at age 64, enrolled at UNO, where he’d earned a bachelor’s degree in the late 1970s. He didn’t so much have a plan as a lifelong interest in self-improvement— both mental and physical.

“I figured I’d fool around and take some classes,” he said.

Rock climbing was one of the courses Hites signed up for among a full schedule that included English Composition II, intermediate algebra, critical reasoning, and French II. He wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the sport. He’d taken

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his sons to a local climbing wall but he’d never climbed himself, lamenting “I’m too old for that.” He’s still not sure what compelled him to sign up for rock-climbing, which he quickly realized required muscles he hadn’t used in years and was populated by students more than 40 years his junior. The class met at UNO’s Outdoor Venture Center and its towering 30-foot tall, 2,500 square foot climbing wall.

“I guess I took right to it to the degree I could,” Hites said, adding he earned an A in the course. “I probably didn’t take to it the way the 21-year-olds in my class did. I wasn’t one of the best climbers.

We were all new to climbing, but I was 64, and these guys were in their 20s.

They took to it a lot quicker. I had to work hard. It was hard work.”

Hites was in “relatively” good shape, as he routinely walked and biked. He was decidedly not in rock climbing shape.

“The upper body strength required for climbing is a whole different thing.”

He admits he got a few funny looks in the climbing class but then again as a 60-something grad student, he got a few funny looks in all his classes.

He wasn’t deterred. ►

// 60+ ACTIVE LIVING //

"You have to, especially when you're outside, figure out how you're going to climb these things. So you're solving a puzzle and climbing with pretty much all the muscles in your body. It's not like going to the gym and working out." -Ken Hit es When you climb you can see people are made to climb, it’s why kids have jungle gyms,” he said. “We’re natural climbers.

You might stop for five or six decades, but when you go back to climbing again it feels good. It’s a wonderful feeling.”

It’s a feeling that grew once Hites began climbing outdoors. The class had offered climbing “field trips,” but Hites didn’t take the instructor up on the offer. In fact, for the first year after taking that class, he didn’t have much of an interest in climbing outside.

“I told my friends that did climb outside they were crazy,” said Hites, who preferred the safe confines of UNO’s indoor climbing space.

Eventually, some of those same friends talked Hites into joining them for an outside climb.

“It was like a whole other world opened up,” he said. “It was unbelievable.”

His first outdoor climb was at Blue Mounds State Park in Minnesota. It was, Hites guessed, a 35-foot climb via a “top rope” technique that had him attached to a rope that passed up through an anchor at the top and down to a belayer at the foot of the climb taking up the slack as he climbed the sheer wall of jutted rocks and crevices.

“It was a lot different than climbing on the plastic at the gym,” Hites said.

“Way different.”

He loved every minute of it. That trip was the tipping point. He was hooked.

“I was totally wound up when I was done with that day,” he said. “I thought, ‘OK, I want to do this as many times as I can.’”

Hites climbs in Blue Mounds four or five times a year now. He also likes climbing in the Black Hills and Palisades State Park in South Dakota. Earlier this year he ventured to Montana, climbing near Bozeman and Whitefish, not far from Glacier National Park. // 72 //

60 PLUS • JANUARY/FEBUARY 2021

His passion has evolved into a winter sport. In the last year he’s taken up ice climbing, traveling to Hyalite Canyon in Montana and Winona, Minnesota.

The differences between ice climbing and rock climbing are vast. Rock walls, whether plastic or granite, are fixed. And ice, well, isn’t.

“It is what it is and you have to figure out how you’re going to grab it and propel yourself up the face of the wall,” Hites said of rock climbing.

Although “up” remains the goal in ice climbing, the biggest difference, Hites said, is “there are no holds.”

Ice climbers use crampons (spiked traction boots) and a pair of ice axes to scale walls of ice and snow. The conditions, the wind, and cold, always factor.

“It’s a whole different situation,” Hites said. “There’s a lot of subtlety to it, but you’re not constrained by a specific set of holds, you have a little more leeway. But in a way it’s more physically exhausting that rock climbing.”

Climbing, all of it, is more than simply staying fit and active for Hites. He loves the challenge it affords his efforts, in both body and mind.

“The physical fitness part is nice because it requires you to use every limb in your body, it uses your core a whole lot,” he said. “But it also requires you to use your brain. You have to, especially when you’re outside, figure out how you’re going to climb these things. So you’re solving a puzzle and climbing with pretty much all the muscles in your body. It’s not like going to the gym and working out.”

When not hitting some of the region’s more popular and picturesque climbing destinations, Hites can be found climbing five days a week at Approach Gym in Omaha.

Approach operations manager Mark Powell said climbers Hites’ age aren’t uncommon but few he’s seen can match the 68-year-old’s dedication and endurance.

Everyone climbs for different reasons, Powell acknowledges, and in Hites he sees a climber who has grown by leaps since that first day his chalky hands attempted a crimp or open-hand grip.

“There’s a lot of progression involved with climbing,” Powell said. “The loop of doing new things and overcoming challenges that were previously impossible are addictive.”

Hites likes Approach Gym’s “come as you are” mantra and the fact it caters to all shapes and sizes—and ages—of climber, from kids and first-timers to more experienced and accomplished climbers.

“And then there’s guys who plug away at it like me and show up on their lunch hour who aren’t special, really, at being great climbers, but enjoy the activity so much they do it,” he said.

Hites recognizes most of the climbers he sees are younger than him.

And he’s still okay with that.

“I don’t get as many funny looks like I did in my first class,” he said. Climbers tend to accept other climbers as one of their own.

“When you’re out in the Black Hills or somewhere climbing outside, you’ll make an acquaintance with someone where you have no idea who they are but you strike up a conversation, you share each other’s rope, and they might be young or they might be old and it just doesn’t matter because you’re both out there climbing.

It kind of draws people together.”

Hites hopes to continue to climb as long as his body—and mind—will allow.

“I still enjoy it,” he said. “I especially enjoy being able to go outside and do it.

And you can’t go outside and do it unless you practice inside.

“If something happened to me and I couldn’t do it anymore I’d obviously quit,” Hites continued. “But that hasn’t happened to me. So I’ll keep trying.”

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“My clinical work is all devoted to working with veterans. I love working with them. Their physical and emotional wounds are the true cost of war.

My biggest regret is not serving in the military.“ -Ronn Johnson

Ronn

Johnson FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT FOR MENTAL HEALTH, DIVERSITY & INJUSTICE

60+ PROFILE // STORY BY LEO ADAM BIGA // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY

“Folks are feeling isolated, disconnected. A lot stay home with their kids. It’s really a problem.

They’re struggling with all this stuff. One thing I push them on is, what are you doing to take care of yourself?“ -Ronn Johnson

R

ONN JOHNSON, a biracial clinical psychologist during COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement, is squarely in the middle of societal unrest.

He is a Creighton University associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and associate dean of diversity and inclusion in the School of Medicine. In response to the George Floyd killing, he wrote an open letter to the C.U. medical community pointing out systemic racism is pervasive in America. The message he wanted to convey is that “this doesn’t occur in a vacuum, this has been occurring for a long time—the big difference being this was a public execution essentially.”

He believes historical or generational trauma is a real phenomenon among people of color who’ve endured untold trauma and indignity. No matter a person of color’s achievements, race remains an issue.

“If I somehow forget I’m Black and Native American (he’s part Choctaw and Cherokee), some experience will quickly remind me of that. I can’t just be a professor and associate dean, I’m a Black professor or associate. That’s the way it works in this country. I don’t know if we’ll ever become a post-racial country. Right now we’re in turmoil. But I believe there are enough good-minded, well-intentioned people, just as there are good cops, that we can eventually take back our country—because I think we’ve lost it.”

In addition to his C.U. duties, he treats veterans at the Omaha VA Medical Center. The noncombat problems patients present there speak to this unstable moment in time.

“Folks are feeling isolated, disconnected.

A lot stay home with their kids. It’s really a problem. They’re struggling with all this stuff,” Johnson said. “One thing I push them on is, what are you doing to take care of yourself? I try to get them to

be very intentional about taking time to do self-care and things that give a sense of enjoyment, pleasure. It may be little, simple things to recharge your battery or fill up your tank again because all this drains people.”

His psychological profile of America is alarming. “The diagnosis is not a positive one,” he said. “There are just too many negative markers (for anxiety, fear, depression).” Moving forward, he says, “we’re going to have to recover from the economic consequences of COVID. That’s going to be huge.”

Johnson, 69, has filled academic and clinical posts in the western United States and Midwest. He came to Creighton from the University of San Diego, where he was an associate professor in the School of Leadership and Educational Sciences. He actually lived in Nebraska before. He was at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln before resuming his career on the West Coast. He and his wife moved back to Nebraska in 2016 when a VA slot opened. He later joined the C.U. faculty. He earned the diversity and inclusion post there as the result of a national search the school conducted.

He is most proud of his clinical work, in which he serves veterans.

“My clinical work is all devoted to working with veterans,” he said. “I love working with them. Their physical and emotional wounds are the true cost of war. My biggest regret is not serving in the military. My stepdad and uncles did.

I had an opportunity to, but was too much of a knucklehead to take advantage of it. This work is my way of giving back. My nickname in the VA is ‘Dirty Harry’ because I take the cases no one else wants.”

Toni Vondra, VA mental health social work supervisor, said Johnson is “wellrespected by colleagues, interns, residents, and patients because he works hard to connect with others.” She added, “His responsive insights are critical to getting

veterans the required mental health services. He supervises residents’ psychotherapy and developed the transdiagnostic group. He welcomes thorny cases that are challenging to some providers.”

Trauma is among the areas Johnson researches and publishes about. He’s well-acquainted with trauma himself.

At age 10, his father, an engineer, died of cancer.

“That was a major marker in my life. I still have reactions to that loss,” Johnson said. “He was my protector, my mentor, my dad, so there’s all these emotional connections. I could never make sense of why that happened.”

Johnson grew up one of 10 siblings on the west side of Chicago during the civil rights era.

“Typical inner-city life—gang violence, other kinds of violence, poverty, poor performing schools. I witnessed the riots in Chicago. I saw people murdered, killed. It was pretty rough-going.”

His way out was academics and basketball, through a scholarship to Biola University, a small private Christian school in Southern California.

Johnson gained an interest in psychology, and, a few graduate degrees later, he found himself making a career of it.

The former adjunct professor in the Homeland Security Department at San Diego State researches anti-terrorism and forensic psychology. He tries getting into the minds of terrorists and criminals for insights into what make them harm others.

In service of public health, he’s opened clinics in underserved communities where he’s worked. He intends doing that here. He’s also planning a Trail of Tears Medical Conference. It will commemorate the infamous forced removal of Native Americans from their heritage lands in the 19th century and explore issues today’s Native people confront accessing quality health care.

This clinician and academic enjoys his work. He’s only a year into trying to make C.U.’s School of Medicine a more diverse, inclusive place. He aims to build a campus culture receptive to supporting students, faculty, and staff of color. He feels the administration is committed to that change, though he concedes, “It will take time.”

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60+ FEATURE // STORY BY SARA LOCKE // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY

Nurses Honor Guard Celebrating and Commemorating Their Fallen Colleagues

S

ince the days of Florence Nightingale, nurses have been the right hand of doctors and patients worldwide. Now, more than ever, they are serving on the front lines of medicine. In the last year, a virus hit that prevented loved ones from being there to hold the hands of their ill or elderly relatives. Nurses have stepped in and made sure that nobody slips away without the compassion of human touch.

During a year of especially high sacrifice, these heroes have changed from scrubs in their garages to protect their families, worn two-week-old PPE on their 12-to-24-hour shifts, and skipped meal after meal so their patients never have to fight alone. While this feels like an above-and-beyond service to the families relying on nurses as their final connection to their loved ones, for those brave enough to accept the position, it’s all part of the calling.

Sometimes, that calling is so loud that no amount of hesitation can quiet it.

Debra Zobel, local founder and Nebraska Community Leader of the Nurses Honor Guard, believes service stops being a choice once nurses have chosen their path. It’s simply a way of life.

A Leap of Faith Zobel was able to ignore the nagging feeling that she was being pulled into further service, until it made itself known to her loud and clear.

Zobel first heard of the Nurses Honor Guard two years ago. It’s an association of current and former nurses who assemble to officially end a nurse’s duties after they have passed. They don full traditional regalia and carry a lit Nightingale lamp in procession, then present their colleague’s casket or urn with a white rose. The congregation then honors them by reciting the Nightingale Tribute. At that time, they perform a roll call, speaking the nurse’s name and sounding a triangle three times.

After the third chime, they announce that the nurse is officially released from their duties, and the lamp is extinguished.

“It was such a beautiful service to provide, and when I thought of all the nurses I’d worked with and befriended in my career, I felt that each one deserved this recognition. I took it as a passing thought // 76 //

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and tried to move forward. I told myself that I was too busy, that I didn’t have the money to launch something like this, that I didn’t have any idea how to run a nonprofit. There were more than enough reasons not to do it and I told myself to let it go, but something in me just wouldn’t. I did a lot of soul-searching, procrastinating, and praying.”

As Zobel reflected on what her friendships with nurses had always meant to her, the call grew louder.

“Everyone has a nurse friend. One friend who happened to choose nursing as a profession,” Zobel said. “You never let that one friend go, because they’re so sincere, so loving, and thoughtful. Everyone is thankful for their nurse friends. As a nurse myself, I happened to have been lucky enough to know and work with so many of these genuinely caring people, and when I thought of them, I decided to jump.”

Zobel believed that if she was doing the right thing, all of the pieces would fall into place. If she were doing the wrong thing, she had surrounded herself with people who loved her enough to help put those pieces back together.

“You think that moment of stepping off a cliff into something you don’t know is the hard part,” Zobel said. “They don’t tell you that once you’ve jumped there will be another cliff, and another. You have to keep making hard decisions and taking risks, but every time I started to feel discouraged, something else would happen unexpectedly that opened the next part of the path. It was hard, but it was the right thing to do.”

Call of Duty Zobel reached out to her network of nurses, creatives, techs, and legal minds and managed to put together a six-member board and set to work.

“We’ve partnered with clergy, morticians, hospitals, and community members to help connect us with those who may need our services,” she said. “We got our 501c3 organized and brought on legal counsel to be sure we were doing everything right.

We had a lot of remarkable people just show up along the way who really paved

this road for us. It was just a reminder that this was exactly where we were needed. I’d answered a call like this before, and when you hear it and you listen, there is just a peace in doing what you know you are here to do.”

That call saw the newly formed Nebraska Nurses Honor Guard proceed into their first service in November 2019.

“There were four of us at that first ceremony.

It was an absolutely beautiful service. In our hearts, we were there for our colleague.

In this case, a former coworker of one of our board members. But once the service began, we realized how much this was for the family. That family had been without a wife and mother from the dinner table for years while she cared for others. Being able to show them that her services meant something to us, too…that was the extra good we didn’t even realize we were doing.”

Onboarding NNHG soon brought on an additional 20 members, and then added seven in Lincoln.

To date, the growing roster has attended more than 50 services in little more than one year.

Vice president Sheralyn Jarvis sees that this passion has served as a peaceful transition from the chaos of a nursing career she has loved since her graduation in 1978, to her impending retirement.

“I think the same is true of any service position,” Jarvis explained. “You start down this kind of a path because you want to help people. You prepare for this lifetime of taking care of everyone. But if you love it and if it’s really what you’re supposed to be doing, you’ll very quickly find that this kind of service really fills you up...Giving these families that time and space to grieve was far more impactful for us than I had believed it could be.”

Jarvis knows that no matter what is born to create better health care for families, nothing will ever take the place of nurses.

Visit nebraskanursehonorguard.org or @ NebraskaNurseHonorGuard on Facebook to learn more.

“Everyone has a nurse friend.

One friend who happened to choose nursing as a profession.

You never let that one friend go, because they’re so sincere, so loving, and thoughtful.�

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“People seem to like looking at all of it when they come, and I really love collecting all of it and showing it to people who are interested.�

-Keith Hentzen

60+ NOSTALGIA // STORY BY JEFF LACEY // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY

A Tonic for Fun Medicine Bottle Collection Fascinates and Educates

T

hose walking through the Springfield Pharmacy will notice the bottles: hundreds of them, in various colors, shapes, and sizes, sitting along shelves in a quiet line stretching from the pharmacy counter in the back of the shop all the way down the left side wall.

A closer look reveals antique medicine bottles. Pill bottles, tincture bottles, and apothecary jars; some blue, some brown, some clear, and some yellow; an entire gallery of them, punctuated in places by clusters of mortars and pestles of various materials and sizes. Some bottles bear recognizable names like “eucalyptus extract” and “peppermint soluble.” Other names resemble what a person might find in the potions store in Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. The label of one small, delicate, graying cardboard box sitting quietly in the corner of an old cabinet reads “Horehound.” A clear glass jar sitting on the pharmacy counter is simply labeled “Gambog.” There is a mindboggling amount of fonts and shapes. It appears that these antiques watch over the modern medicines on the store’s floor shelves like so many pondering ghosts, but to head pharmacist/owner Keith Hentzen, they are more than just ghosts.

These artifacts are all part of Hentzen’s pharmacy bottle collection, which he estimates to contain thousands of pieces.

Hentzen has been the owner and head pharmacist of Springfield Pharmacy for 43 years. He began the collection around 1976, shortly after he opened the pharmacy, and owns pieces that date back to the 1880s. Many of the pieces predate the 1908 Food and Drug Act, the first major push to regulate the sales of drugs for medical purposes.

The collection is also representative of a slice of Nebraska history, as a majority of the pieces come from Nebraska pharmacies. When a pharmacist retires, they often ‘sell their basement,’ which includes treasures like the ones Hentzen has collected. This is one of the primary ways he has gathered his collection.

Hentzen attributes this decades-long love of these medical artifacts to a couple of factors. “Dad was a really big fan of history,” Hentzen explained. “He would take us to lots of museums when we were growing up, and then, when I became a pharmacist, I saw how rich in history the profession was, and a lot of places I would work at would have old drug bottles, so I’ve started collecting them.

The ones I seem to like the most are the gold-label apothecary jars.”

Hentzen revels in his old medicine bottles. His eyes illuminate when he explains the histories of some of the pieces, and he enjoys the comedy some of them suggest. “Here are some cigarettes to smoke to cure your asthma,” he said with a smile, pointing to an aged box of Requa’s Cubeb Cigarettes. “And here’s pills for pale people, in case that is your problem,” he explained, referring to a lifesavers-shaped package labeled “Pills for Pale People/Tonic for the Blood and Nerves.”

The medicine bottle collection is also good for business. One of the draws to the pharmacy is the vintage soda counter, around which Hentzen has curated a sizable collection of antique soda counter paraphernalia. Hentzen sees these two collections as a way to entertain customers running errands to the drug store, or enjoying fare like old-fashioned phosphate drinks. “People seem to like looking at all of it when they come, and I really love collecting all of it and showing it to people who are interested.”

Hentzen and his pharmacy are a valued staple in the community of Springfield.

Kathleen Gotsch, Springfield’s city administrator, said that Springfield Drug has been a pillar of the community for many years. “The old-fashioned soda fountain is a hit with locals and visitors alike,” she explained, “and Keith is a strong supporter and promoter of the Springfield community. He is very active with many organizations, including the school foundation and Springfield Days Committee. His leadership and character are truly one-of-a-kind. Springfield is lucky to have him.”

A few standout pieces are the brown bottle of arsenic meant to treat syphilis, the bottle of strychnine with a small burgundy skull pinned to its cork, and the blue container that once held paregoric (a tincture of opium, like oxycontin for the 1900s crowd)—but they, like the rest of the collection, are not for sale. However, a friendly hello to the head pharmacist is always free and welcome. As the collection glows and looks on, so does Hentzen, demonstrating a spirit that is just as much a treasure as his collection.

“I just really like people,” Hentzen says.

“There’s something about everybody I can take joy in, or appreciate, or like.

Besides knowing families for generations with the pharmacy, I enjoy people who come in and who I get to meet for the first time.”

Search @Spring fieldOldFashionedSoda on Facebook for more information.

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60+ e Prim e T im WILLIAM PENRY // 74 JEANNE STAAB PENRY // 73 STORY BY NICHOLAS MOORE PHOTO BY BILL SITZMANN

When William Penry met Jeanne Staab in 1966, he had no idea that they would be together 50 years later.

After working in military intelligence at the Pentagon, William decided to move their young family back to Omaha to pursue a career in business. Jeanne brought along her innate sense of style and, created her interior design business, Jeanne’s Design.

“Style is something you can have very young in young life and make anything become lovely with little or nothing,”Jeanne said.

Whether wearing chic Parisian silhouettes and a signature headband, or designing a home or business with an elegant balance of vintage and modern, Jeanne firmly believes that personal style takes time.

“You don’t make a home look beautiful within a year, it should take time and travel to make it look extra special. And like you.”

William also thinks that while fashion may happen instantly, the good stuff takes a while. “Style is part of your inherent personal quality and part of your character. It’s what you have evolved into.” And although she’s the designer in the family, William is never without a pressed button-down shirt, wellworn desert boots, or one his playfully intellectual round-frame glasses that he wears with preppy sensibility. // 80 //

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