60PLUS opener
E
veryone has their favorite memories of past holidays. Maybe your holiday plans are a continuation of some long-standing family traditions, or maybe you are planning to start a new family tradition this season.
Gwen Lemke Contributing Editor, 60PLUS In Omaha
Either way, there’s no denying it: the holidays are almost here! I am looking forward to making new memories with my grandchildren. I recently received word that they will all be home for Christmas. Five of them live in Omaha or Lincoln, and the others are coming from Florida and Texas. My sons and their spouses will all be here. It’s been awhile since we were all together. There will only be one empty chair—this will be the fifth Christmas since my husband passed away, and we will be thinking of him and all the good times. There’s some great reading in this issue, stories of seniors who are active and living their lives to the fullest. For the past five months, I’ve been working on a huge photo project for the January/ February issue. The project is very special to me—but it is top secret. Watch for it in the next issue. In the meantime, enjoy your families during this important time of year. Happy holidays!
Gwen
CURIOSITY Omaha’s Fire-Eating Santa, Tom Plith NOVEMBER // DECEMBER • 2017 / 139 / BESTOFOMAHA.COM
60PLUS | ACTIVE LIVING
Swimming, Cycling,and Dancing Dr. Bruce Johansen
Keeps Moving
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60PLUS | ACTIVE LIVING STORY BY TARA SPENCER // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
D
EEP IN THE labyrinthian Arts and Sciences Hall at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, Dr. Bruce Johansen sits at his desk wearing a rather de rigueur outfit for him—a maroon T-shirt with red and blue basketball shorts. His ever-present jewelry is more subdued than usual. He has several rings on his hands and a simple, steampunk-esque earring in his right ear.
Johansen’s signature style is well-known around UNO. He tells his students the reason he started wearing so much jewelry was to distract from his pronounced stutter, which was also the impetus for his writing career.
“He’s very mentally active…he manages to write two books a year. Who does that?” - Hugh Reilly
The 69-year-old professor of communications and Native American studies is also familiar for another reason. Tales of seeing him riding his bike down Dodge Street on his way to campus at 5 in the morning are often repeated among his students in an almost folklorelike manner. While they might think Johansen rides his bike to work every morning because he’s just that into it, that’s not exactly the case. In fact, he says it’s more out of necessity than a simple love of cycling. In October 2001, he had an epileptic seizure while driving in Indiana and went off the road. Since then, his wife, Pat, has made it clear she’d rather he not drive. And so, he bikes. Or walks. Or sometimes in extreme weather, she’ll give him a ride in their Ford Explorer. While biking to work started out of necessity—he says the parking situation on campus was another big incentive—he still enjoys biking for fun. From time to time, he’ll ride downtown or out to Westroads Mall. He says his longest Omaha ride was about 30 miles round trip. But he’s definitely biked farther. “One day in Seattle,” he says, while hauling out a map of the city he keeps in his office, “I did a circuit of Lake Washington, which is about 60 miles.” He draws his finger around the map, outlining the route he took. His desire to always be moving might stem from the fact that he grew up in a Coast Guard family. “You’d be surprised where the United States has Coast Guard bases—Philippine islands, Newfoundland in Canada, Puerto Rico…I grew up all over the world.” Surprisingly, he says his favorite form of exercise isn’t cycling but swimming. He says not only is it good exercise, but also quite relaxing. According to an article in the summer
issue of UNO Magazine, he was even a high school state swimming medalist in his adopted home state of Washington. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see him swimming laps—while wearing his signature jewelry—on campus at the HPER Building pool. “They added it up,” he says, “and all of the time I spent in the HPER pool came up to a year…from an hour at a time or so. I had swum half the world’s diameter overall. It adds up over 30 years.” Professor Hugh Reilly, director of the school of communication, has known Johansen for at least 25 years. In fact, Reilly considers him a mentor. The two share a common interest in Native American studies, and Johansen was instrumental in helping Reilly develop his thesis, which evolved into Reilly’s first book on the subject. He thinks it’s a bit unusual for someone to be interested in Johansen’s physicality. He says the professor is chiefly known among his colleagues for his mental capacity and prodigious writing. “He’s very mentally active…he manages to write two books a year. Who does that?” he asks. Reilly says he’s sure he couldn’t outswim Johansen. “But I can take him in basketball,” he says. Which makes sense. The 6-foot-2-inch Reilly is half a foot taller. It turns out, Johansen may have found a new hobby. On a recent trip to India, he and other guests were invited on stage to dance with the Kala Darshini dance troupe. When he tried to decline the invitation, saying he hadn’t ever really danced, he was told, “This is India. We dance here.” As they were dancing, he was engaged by one of their principal dancers. “I really got into it and completely forgot there was a huge audience there.” He says his partner seemed pretty surprised by his energy and endurance, and at the end of the dance, he was hoisted into the air, spun around, and kissed on the cheek while everybody cheered. He said he felt like a rock star. So maybe dancing will be his new outlet for all that energy? “I liked it,” he says. “But see, here I have a very well-cultivated image as a stale old fart.”
Visit unomaha.edu for more information.
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60PLUS | CURIOSITY STORY BY LINDSAY WILSON // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
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Omaha’s
Fire-Eating
Santa,
Tom Plith NOVEMBER // DECEMBER • 2017 / 143 / BESTOFOMAHA.COM
60PLUS | CURIOSITY
T
OM PLITH —the jolly old man
with the snowy white beard—can often be seen breathing fire for a mesmerized audience outside the Imaginarium downtown. During the holiday season, he can be found laughing with a herd of small children and their parents in his elaborately decorated and bubble-filled Santa’s Workshop.
Plith’s unorthodox retirement has been nothing short of magical. Along with his firebreathing Santa skills, he also works as head clown at one of Omaha’s most successful clown companies. (Yes, Omaha has multiple clown companies—at least four.) Born in Amarillo, Texas, the story of Plith’s career begins in Saigon, South Vietnam. Though he can’t say much about his military service, Plith will admit that he only carried a weapon twice: “Both times they told me if I had any trouble, they’d bring me some bullets.” After Saigon, he moved to Fort Ritchie, Maryland, where he held a Cosmic security clearance level with the Army Signal Corps. He insists that all he heard were voice levels during the Paris Peace Accords (they were too busy monitoring signal quality and volume to make sense of actual discussions). After four years in military telecommunications, Plith got his master’s degree in social work from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and opened Blue Valley, a private treatment center for troubled youth in Valley, Nebraska. He and his wife, Rose, ran the facility for 12 years before moving to Omaha after their two daughters graduated high school. With his naturally white beard, Plith was enjoying dinner at a local restaurant when someone approached him to ask if he was Mr. Claus himself. Twenty years later, Plith and his family have made Santa’s Workshop in Countryside Village one of Omaha’s most popular Santa experiences. This Santa’s background in psychiatric social work sets him apart—Plith is an expert in soothing children and working with families to create not just a photo, but a joyous holiday memory for parents and children alike. Plith works with more than 300 families each season, including several days committed for work with The Autism Society and for military families.
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Plith’s social work experience also helps him to continue staying active in the clown business. Educated at Omaha’s Wild Clowndom, he adopted the clown name RoliPoli. As RoliPoli, he organizes about 15 face painters, stilt walkers, and balloon twisters to run A Company of Fantastic Clowns. The company works with many local charity organizations and youth events to provide safe and hilarious entertainment at Werner Park, Boys Town, and elsewhere throughout the metro. Omahans not familiar with Plith as Santa, or RoliPoli, may know him as the fire eater in the Old Market. A typical show consists of jokes and magic tricks he performs alongside “Phillip the Tip Bucket” in between mouthfuls of flames.
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The show ends with the old man taking a swig out of a soda bottle and using a burning wand to exhale a dazzling cloud of fire into the night sky. The actual contents of the bottle are a mystery, though many suspect it is not actually full of Mountain Dew.
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Depending on the weather, Plith often finds himself entertaining a crowd of 20 or more people, but he is happy to perform for any passersby. Plith has been performing fireeating shows, sometimes alongside one of his four grandchildren, for two years. One might think he learned the skill from a professional.
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“Oh, [it was] just a fella in the neighborhood,” Plith says. He had been interested in fire eating for years, but “didn’t have the nerve” until he was in his 60s. When asked the burning question of whether he eats fire in his Santa suit, Plith chuckles and shakes his head. “I have to stop eating fire in early November, because when you eat fire you do singe your mustache. I have to have my full mustache for the Santa season.”
Santa’s Workshop opens in November and is available by appointment, which can be made by phone at 402-201-5804. A Company of Fantastic Clowns can be reached at 402-216-6568.
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60PLUS | RURAL ROOTS STORY BY TARA SPENCER // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
“I never thought about traffic lights as a big deal, until you try to go to Africa and turn left,” he says, noting that the trip made him appreciate the services provided by the U.S. government.
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Planting Seeds of Community: Edgar Hicks Shares His Passion for Agriculture, Stamps up in Louisiana A during the time of segregation, Edgar Hicks says he was more fortunate than most LTHOUGH HE GREW
of his African-American peers. His parents were professionals—his mother was a teacher and his father a physician. This enabled them to better support their children financially, including helping out with college. “I had a good father, good mother—they took care of me,” Hicks says, adding that in spite of racial segregation, he remembers a stronger sense of community than what he sees available for young people in Omaha. “It caused you to know your neighbor.” He now works to encourage community bonds among Omaha youths by teaching agricultural skills to the next generation. Hicks graduated from Pace University in New York City, where he studied finance. His first job out of college was as a floor clerk at the Chicago Board of Trade in 1971. He subsequently worked with various aspects of agricultural commodities. In 1985 he moved to the middle of Nebraska for a grain merchant job at a Merrick County cooperative (in Clarks, Nebraska), where he was eventually promoted to general manager. Risk management consulting work for a Fortune 500 company (INTL FCStone) brought him to Omaha in 1989. The 69-year-old Hicks can’t seem to stop working. The part-time director at CFO Systems LLC says his mission now is to pass on his love for, and knowledge of, all things agriculture to those he believes it can benefit—especially young people. Hicks says he believes that if the city’s young people better understood where their food comes from—and how everything is connected, from water to land—the world overall would be a better place. He says some of the horrible things that are happening in the world are happening because people don’t feel a part of it, and as a mentor, he hopes to help change that.
In order to help youth gain a connection “The only thing they have in Senegal that to their food, he became a charter member we don’t—they eat well,” he says. “They eat of Carver Grange of Omaha in 2011. The fresh food. They eat much better than we do.” organization’s focus is to expand hands-on However, Hicks also discovered that much education in science, technology, engineering, of the West African country lacks essential and mathematics; promoting public services—running leadership skills; and strivwater, dependable elecing to cultivate an interest tricity, post offices, and In the future, Hicks in food (and careers in agritraffic lights. culture). And if this does not suspects Africa keep Hicks busy enough, never thought about will be the answer “I he also serves on the board traffic lights as a big deal, of directors for Friends of to the world’s until you try to go to Extension & 4-H Douglasand turn left,” he rising demand for Africa Sarpy County Foundation says, noting that the trip and 100 Black Men of food. “If there’s made him appreciate the Omaha. He was a founding provided by the ever going to be services member of 100 Black Men of U.S. government. Omaha, and he is currently a need 100 years mentoring three high school the future, he suspects from now for land, In students through them. Africa will be the answer to I’m sure we’ll be the world’s rising demand Hicks is also an avid stamp food. “If there’s ever using Africa as a for collector and active member going to be a need 100 of the Omaha Philatelic food base.” years from now for land, Society. Vernon Waldren, I’m sure we’ll be using the executive director of Africa as a food base,” Friends of Extension & 4-H, he says. says he has known Hicks for more than 20 years. The During his interview at two bonded over their love of agriculture Omaha Magazine’s West Omaha office space, and stamps. Even Hicks’ he gestures out a window to the surrounding stamp collection focuses on buildings and says, “As we put more concrete agriculture. up and run out of [land], how are we gonna feed ourselves in the future?” “He has a passion for getting people to understand where This question seems to be a part of what their food comes from and drives Hicks’s mission to educate youths about how all of it ties together,” agriculture and animal husbandry. He adds Waldren says. “You know, there’s a lot he has wanted to work on but it’s kind of a joke, but it’s hasn’t gotten done. not a joke: Everybody eats, so everybody has an interest “That’s why I gotta go back to work!” he says. in agriculture.” Not that he ever stopped. Through the federal USAID Farmerto-Farmer program, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Hicks was asked to travel to Africa to help farmers start a co-op in Toubacouta, Senegal. That summer 2016 trip made him think about food, and America.
Visit 4h.unl.edu to learn more about 4-H in Nebraska. The Douglas-Sarpy County 4-H is a community partner for Omaha Magazine’s 2018 Best of Omaha Festival (which takes place at Baxter Arena on Nov. 5, 2017).
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60PLUS | FAMILY STORY BY KIM REINER // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
The Pamphleteer Colleen Ramsey on Adoption and Grief COLLEEN RAMSEY HAS always written what
she knows: love, adoption, grief, and—more recently—aging.
“I have to feel something,” Ramsey says. “I have to have some emotion connected with it.” At 85, Ramsey has self-published more than two dozen books. While most are shared with her friends and family, some are recommended reading for adoptive families at Catholic Charities and for grieving adults at Heafey Hoffmann Dworak Cutler Mortuaries.
Ramsey became a writer out of necessity. She battled depression in her early days of motherhood. Her psychologist prescribed writing. He told her to get up an hour early and write, write anything, even if it was just her name for an hour.
Eventually, she decided her stories needed to be told. She and her husband had five teenagers, all adopted, under their roof, and her first book, We Touch Each Other’s Lives, deals with issues of adoption and family.
Though she was not a natural-born writer, she wrote. On her second day, she started jotting down things that were bugging her—and the words overflowed.
Her kids did not know where they came from because in those days adoption was kept secret.
In her Ralston home, over hot tea, Ramsey recalls what writer Anna Quindlen wrote in a 2007 essay: “Writing is not just a legacy, but therapy. In the end, writers will write mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”
“I wanted to give them their story,” she says, even when some of those stories involved seeking out birth parents.
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It was an account of adoption from an angle that doesn’t often get told: the adoptive parent’s perspective. Catholic Charities has, with permission, reprinted and distributed We Touch Each Other’s Lives to families for 19 years.
“Colleen is a wonder,” says Sue Malloy, family services program director at Catholic Charities of Omaha. “She gives a voice to so many things that are a part of the adoption journey for people. She has a perspective unlike many other people. She just has this incredible intuition about the adoption journey.”
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When her husband, Bob, passed away in 2005, Ramsey turned to writing again. This time to process her grief. Those were the hardest books to write, but also the most helpful for her.
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Sharon Zehnder, director of aftercare at Heafey Hoffmann Dworak Cutler Mortuaries, keeps Ramsey’s writing on grief in the mortuary’s support group library and shares passages on the mortuary’s website. Zehnder says Ramsey’s words are extremely relatable to people. “They can identify with so much that she has written,” Zehnder says. Her writing has helped others, and for that, she’s grateful. “I like to share what’s helped me,” Ramsey says.
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Since writing We Touch Each Other’s Lives, Ramsey has penned her memories of growing up in the 1930s and through World War II, discussed prayer in her writing, and written books for each of her grandchildren. She types all her books, searches through family photos for illustrations, and then begins the time-consuming process of printing her books at home, placing photos on pages gently with tape, and then binding them herself. There may be easier ways to do it, but this is the “write” way for Ramsey.
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60PLUS | HEALTH STORY BY GREG JERRETT // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
From left: Marge and Jenny Koley
“I want them to save Medicaid and to get a full understanding of the consequences of their actions. Budgets should not be balanced on the backs of people with disabilities who are least able to defend themselves.”
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Medicaid and Medicare Reform: Caregiver’s Golden Years, Between a Rock and a Hard Place
W
HEN FRANKLIN DELANO Roosevelt
presented America with the Second New Deal, he created a national social safety net to prevent vulnerable senior citizens from dying in poverty. Social Security came into being with the Social Security Act of 1935. Thirty years later, the federal safety net further expanded with the creation of Medicare and Medicaid during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. The system evolved to assist not only the elderly (with Medicare focusing on citizens aged 65 and older), but also the disabled and impoverished of all ages (with Medicaid), to become as self-sustaining and independent as possible. Fast forward to the 21st century. Ever since 2010, President Barak Obama’s Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) dramatically widened the nation’s social safety net. In the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, Republican efforts to undo and repeal the Affordable Care Act sparked concerns that 22 million Americans (according to the Congressional Budget Office) would lose their access to affordable health insurance. With Republican control of the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate, the federal safety net seemed all but certain to shrink.
She and her husband rely on the earned benefits of Social Security and Medicare, benefits that have made it possible for them to enjoy their golden years without working. Watching the media spectacle unfold, Koley was most afraid for their 37-year-old daughter, Jenny, who has Down syndrome. Jenny qualifies for Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare and Medicaid for health insurance, and receives support services to live and work independently through Medicaid and Nebraska Health and Human Services.
“What will happen to Jenny after I am not here to care for her? That is my greatest fear.” “Jenny has always had the dream of having her own apartment and living as independently as possible,” Koley says, speaking with Omaha Magazine in July on the eve of the so-called “skinny repeal,” the last ditch effort to repeal Obamacare by the Senate.
The Congressional Budget Office—tasked with determining how much any given piece of legislation will cost (or save) to implement, including reductions in tax revenue—concluded in a March 13 report that the American Health Care Act of 2017, popularly known as “Trumpcare,” would: “reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the 2017-2026 period” with the largest savings coming “from reductions in outlays for Medicaid” and from elimination of Affordable Care Act “subsidies for non-group health insurance.”
“What will happen to Jenny after I am not here to care for her?” she says. “That is my greatest fear. She has one sibling in Indiana. If the proposed caps and cuts in Medicaid are enacted, she could lose the services she needs to live and be part of the community. Also lost are the years of progress allowing people with disabilities to decide for themselves where they want to live and with whom. We may have for-profit insurance companies running programs and deciding the fate of our children. Will institutional living return? Will the waitlists continue to grow and grow?”
While much of the 2017 health care debates have focused on repealing Obamacare, 74-year-old Marge Koley (of Bellevue) exists at the crux of Medicaid and Medicare. Koley is one of the many senior caregivers who attend to younger, disabled relatives.
Jenny moved into her own place in September 2016; meanwhile, Koley still provides most of her transportation needs. Medicaid service providers take care of residential support and job coaching.
“Jenny currently works nine hours a week at the Ollie Webb Center,” Koley says, obviously proud of what her daughter has been able to accomplish with some compassionate assistance. “Jenny loves being responsible for herself, and now cleans her apartment and does her wash on her own without prompting, and has been able to decrease her outside support. Now, she has someone one day a week to help work on cooking, going out into the community.” The current political environment is a source of anxiety for Koley, who says she has never before seen the American public so polarized. “This is the most divisive political climate I have ever experienced. Neither side will listen to the other’s views,” Koley says, adding that if she had a chance to talk to lawmakers, her message for them is to save Medicaid. “I want them to save Medicaid and to get a full understanding of the consequences of their actions. Budgets should not be balanced on the backs of people with disabilities who are least able to defend themselves.” Efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act—for the time being—came to a screeching halt with the pivotal thumbs-down vote from Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who flew to Washington D.C. for the vote shortly after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. Months after the failure of the “skinny repeal,” in the week following the failure of another repeal attempt (the Graham-Cassidy Bill), Koley experienced a sense of temporary relief. “I’m very happy that it did fail, knowing how it would affect Jenny,” she says. “But I know politicians will be revisiting this, and we’ll need to gear up again to defend Medicaid benefits at a later time.”
Visit olliewebbinc.org to learn more about the Medicaid service provider that plays a crucial role in the lives of Marge and Jenny Koley.
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