When New Horizons Dawned for African Americans in Omaha

 

 

The following story was supposed to have appeared in The Reader (www.thereader) but human error resulted in a much shorter version being published.  Fortunately I can publish it here and on the paper’s website and link it to Facebook and Twitter and all the rest of the social media universe. The piece explores one of the first intentional interracial housing developments in Omaha and perhaps anywhere in the Midwest or the nation as a whole.  The suburban New Horizons addition was created in the 1960s as a sanctuary free of the red lining practices and restrictive housing covenants that relegated blacks to specific, designated, and confining areas to live.  Blacks found no barriers to build or rent or move into New Horizons, where their neighbors might be black or white. This social action or experiment largely worked, too, though decades later the neighborhood has lost the diversity it once had and is now mostly white.  The cruelest cut with what happened to the article not being published as it should have been in the paper is that this story is very personal to me. You see, my late life partner, Joslen Johnson Shaw, grew up in New Horizons.  She was African American,  Her parents, George and Juanita Johnson, built there in 1969 and were among the first residents in the neighborhood, black or white. The Johnsons were barrier breakers in more ways than this.  They didn’t let racism or discrimination stand in the way of their aspirations.  Before moving to New Horizons Joslen accoompanied her folks to open houses and saw with her own eyes as realtors and homeowners shunned and ignored them.  As Joslen’s mother, Juanita, put it, “It was if we were invisible.”  My primary source for the story is Juanita, who still lives in New Horizons.  Joslen and I bought a home of our own in New Horizons six years ago.  It’s just around the corner from Juanita’s place.  I’m sitting in my office in that home as I type and post this.  The other main source is Joslen’s brother, Marty.  I wrote the story for them and in memory of Joslen and her late father, George.  I wanted to make sure I got it right and that’s why it upset me when the story I cared so much about didn’t wind up in the paper as it should have.  Well, here it is the way it was supposed to be there.  This one’s for you, honey.

 

 

• 

 

 

When New Horizons Dawned for African Americans in Omaha

For The Reader

©by Leo Adam Biga

 

It took the civil rights movement to bring segregation in the United States into sharp relief. The South was the epicenter of the racial equality battle but American-style apartheid as well as attempts to dismantle it were everywhere, including Nebraska.

Omaha prides itself on hospitality yet African Americans here could not always live or or work or play or attend school where they wanted through the 1960s. In response to housing and work discrimination, for example, protest marches, sit-ins and other advocacy efforts organized.

With homeowners, realtors and banks discouraging blacks from white neighborhoods, it took extraordinary measures for blacks to integrate some sections of the city. One remedy was the creation of a new subdivision, appropriately named New Horizons, located on the then-western outskirts of the city, just off 108th Street between Dodge and Blondo and just north of Old Mill. The backs of the western-most homes abut 108th Street and the easternmost residences face 105th Street. Homes also extend from Nicholas Street on the north to Burt Street on the south. The interracial developers designed the new addition as an integrated neighborhood open to all. By all accounts their vision was fulfilled.

Situated in what was then-countryside New Horizons was established in 1965 and the first houses were built soon after on the tiered land. Corn fields stretched south, west and east of this built-from-the-ground-up neighborhood only a stone’s throw away from small working farms and stables. The two major east-west thoroughfares in the area, Dodge and Blondo, were two lanes each then.

 

 

New Horizons neighborhood

 

 

This story chronicles the experiences of some past and present residents of this mixed race community, including what precipitated their moving there. They don’t necessarily view New Horizons as having been a social action or social experiment but that’s exactly what it was. It was revolutionary for the time, especially by Omaha standards, where even hometown icon and Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Gibson was frustrated in his attempts to move into the neighborhood of his choice. If he couldn’t find satisfaction, then every day people like George and Juanita Johnson stood little chance.

In the mid-1960s the Johnsons were a college-educated, two-income married couple on an upwardly mobile track, but neither their names nor their positions gave them any influence to change that era’s prevailing discrimination. He was a Benson High art teacher. She was a North High math instructor and guidance counselor. They’d recently started a family and next sought buying a new, larger home near a park and good schools.

The North Omaha residents had built a house at 38th and Bedford but having outgrown it they set their sights on moving to wherever they could find their dream home. As African Americans, however, their aspirational pursuits, like those of countless other persons of color, were blocked.

It was a time when blacks were routinely subjected to unfair housing practices, some subtle, others blatant, that effectively confined them to living in a small geographic area. Regardless of means, if you were black in Omaha then you had little choice but to live, as the Johnsons did, in the area bounded by Cuming Street on the south, Ames Avenue on the north, 40th Street on the west and 16th Street on the east. The northeast inner city became the black “ghetto.” Getting out of it required a migration not alike that of blacks migrating from the Deep South.

In many ways Omaha’s de facto segregation was as pernicious and long lasting as any on the books in the South, resulting in a divided city that clearly demarcated the Near Northside as Black Omaha. Red lining real estate tactics, discriminatory banking practices, restrictive housing covenants and unfair hiring standards made it difficult if not impossible for blacks to live and work in many parts of their own city, denied and discouraged simply due to the color of their skin.

Though blacks live everywhere in the metro today, Omaha’s geographic segregation persists – with most blacks in Omaha still residing in North Omaha – in part due to the lasting imprint of the housing discrimination that once ruled the day.

Better opportunities in education, employment and housing slowly emerged in response to equal rights pleas, marches, mandates, laws and court rulings.

“Things were just beginning to open up with schools and jobs and activities in Omaha but you had to look for them. You know, you would see pictures in the paper of things happening, of activities that should have been open to everyone, but because of restrictive housing they really weren’t,” says Juanita Johnson.

She says an entire apparatus or conspiracy of bigoted hearts kept white areas off limits to blacks. Realtors and others acted as overseers in steering blacks to all black enclaves or to undesirable neighborhoods deemed ready for integration.

“We contacted some realtors and they showed us some places north. They told us we could be blockbusters and open up some new neighborhoods,” Johnson recalls. “The realtors decided which areas were going to integrate and which areas weren’t. They would watch the housing trends and determine, ‘We’ll let this block go now.” But the neighborhoods they were offering to us didn’t show much potential, they didn’t look like they were going to stay good working neighborhoods, they didn’t look like they were stable. There were several for rent signs on properties.”

 

 

Juanita Johnson today

 

 

She’s sure some realtors she and her late husband George dealt with were merely “going through the motions” to placate them.  “They just showed us places that we would not have been interested in anyway – houses that were too small for what we wanted. We didn’t want a place that would have other houses six feet on either side. We wanted to find a house or build a house on a good-sized lot that had room for yard and play space for kids.”

Even though the Johnsons were eager and prepared to buy, it was as if their money was no good and their wishes didn’t matter. The more they looked for a home and were turned away the more incredulous they grew.

“We went to several open houses and at some of them it was as if we were invisible,” Johnson says. “I mean, they would greet people in front of us, they would greet people that were coming in behind us and it was just as if we weren’t there. I really can’t say there was anything (racial) said, it was more or less as if we were invisible walking through the places. We just thought they were stupid to behave in this way and we laughed at them.”

The Johnsons experienced the same frustration in their desire for a better life that the fictional Younger family encountered in Lorraine Hansberry‘s A Raisin in the Sun. Though the Youngers meet much resistance in the story, they eventually fulfill their goal of moving out of the inner city tenement they rent into a suburban home of their own. That play’s powerful dramatization, later adapted to the screen, made quite an impact on blacks facing the same issues in real life.

“I think that helped to motivate a lot of us in that it appeared to be possible and that this could happen to us as individuals,” says Johnson.

But there were societal-cultural roadblocks to achieving that dream. Being shunned, ignored and disrespected the way the Johnsons and so many of their black peers were elicited hard feelings in some, discouraged others and in the case of the Johnsons, motivated them even more.

The fact that we had been looking for a place and were just tired of running into barriers,” Johnson says, is what made the prospect of building a home in New Horizons “so attractive.” She says New Horizons represented a balancing-the-scales effort at “an integrated community of middle to upscale housing that was out far enough from the main part of the city that people wouldn’t say we were living in the ghetto – that we were in a suburban house just like anyone else.”

Moving to a racially blended suburb also promised a diversity fast disappearing in northeast Omaha, where white flight left the area predominantly African American. The suburbs also meant access to better performing schools.

“We wanted to be in a situation where we could have the best for our children, the best opportunities, and we wanted them to be exposed to the cultural advantages I knew other children were being exposed to,” she says. “We wanted our kids to have the opportunities to participate in whatever they were really interested in doing and not be kept out or let in because they were black. We knew we wanted an opportunity for the kids to have a really integrated education.”

Juanita, Joslen and George Johnson a few years before moving to New Horizons

 

 

Enter New Horizons. Its late developers were prominent Omaha veterinarian, Dr. A.B. Pittman, architect Golden Zenon and architect-civil engineer J.Z. Jizba. Pittman and Zenon were African American and Jizba was white.

For Pittman, New Horizons was an expression of a commitment to helping his own people realize their dreams and to bridging the divide between people of different races and creeds. He was president of the Omaha branches of the National Urban League and the National Council of Christians and Jews.

“My father was always concerned about getting people better housing,” says his daughter Antoinette “Toni” Pittman. “He was on the board of the Urban League Housing Foundation (now Family Housing Advisory Services), the Omaha Planning Board and the Omaha Housing Authority. Even before New Horizons he was involved in a housing development around 27th and Hamilton that the North Freeway took out. He was just concerned with people bettering themselves. He just did it, he didn’t talk about it.”

Pittman struck a personal blow for equal housing by buying a home at 97th and Dodge. In order to avoid potential obstacles or opposition he had a proxy buy it for him and then hand over the deed, explains his daughter, who grew up there. She says hers was the only black family there and fortunately they met no resistance.

Dr. A.B. Pittman

 

 

The Johnsons were friends with the Pittmans through the northeast Omaha Episcopal church they both attended, St. Philip’s.

“Probably George and A.B. and Zinnon had been talking about this and it just seemed it was available at the right time and we were in the right position to make that decision and build there. We were looking at getting settled before any more time went by,” says Johnson.

The Johnsons moved into their newly built split-level home in the spring of 1969. Their late daughter, Joslen Johnson Shaw, was 9 at the time and their son Marty 4.

She says finally getting into the house they’d so long sought brought a mix of feelings, including relief.

“We were just real anxious to get settled in what we knew was going to be our permanent home.”

Another black family there with the same surname, though no relation, felt the same sense of accomplishment.

“I remember the day we moved in there my father standing in front of the house and being so proud,” says Glenda Johnson Moore, whose parents Walter and Bernice Johnson had weathered the same frustrations George and Juanita did in seeking a new home. “Who would have ever thought my father would have moved in that neighborhood? That was unheard of. It was great. I mean, it was a big thing.”

It was enough of a newsworthy event that the Omaha World-Herald did a story.

For the most part, New Horizons lived up to its promise, with a nearly 50-50 split of blacks and whites at the start. A Hispanic family also became early residents there.

“It worked out fine,” says Juanita Johnson, who adds that the neighborhood association and occasional neighborhood picnics enjoyed nearly even black and white participation. Her best friends there were black and white. She suspects most if not all the whites who moved into New Horizons were not looking to make any kind of social statement about diversity.

“I think they were people that really didn’t care, they were just looking for housing.”

That was true of Corinne Murphy and her late husband William, who built their home in 1970 directly north of George and Juanita’s. Though the Murphys knew about the open integration policy it didn’t factor one way or the other in their decision. “We were just looking for a place where they were building houses and this happened to be one of the places they were building them,” says Corrine. “I just liked the neighborhood. It had a nice park. There weren’t too many people yet.”

She says the idea of living in a racially mixed neighborhood “didn’t bother us” and that, if anything, she admired her new black neighbors, most of whom were professionals. “They were a lot smarter and better off than I was. They all had good paying jobs and were well educated. I got along with them all.”

She says her five kids became fast friends with the black kids in the neighborhood.

“Marty Johnson and my son Rory were very good friends. There was a time when they were walking home from school and kids were picking on Marty and my Rory just got right in the middle of that argument with those kids and made sure he got home OK. Yeah, they were best friends, they really liked each other. They still do.”

Marty says neither the white kids he befriended there nor their parents ever betrayed any hint of racism.

“I was always up at their houses playing and their parents were always very friendly and welcoming to me, and they’d always come down and play at our house.”

Whatever sport was in season, he says, neighborhood kids would join in playing it, older kids, young kids, black kids, white kids.

“Looking back on it now somebody driving by having no idea what this neighborhood was about would probably be really surprised to see all these kids of different colors playing together. It was probably very unique. I look back at it and I think, ‘Oh wow,’ it was probably pretty groundbreaking.”

Marty Johnson, wife Laura and their children (circa 2005)

 

 

Lee Valley, an adjacent neighborhood built around the same time as New Horizons, stood in sharp contrast because it lacked any diversity. The Horizons kids would occasionally challenge the Valley kids to a game of football or baseball and the marked difference in their makeup was hard to ignore.

“We were this totally mixed group of kids playing these white kids,” Marty says.

The area school Marty and Joslen attended, Edison, was all white until the Johnson siblings and some of their fellow black Horizons neighbors attended there. Marty says he never ran into racism in the neighborhood but did at school.

Glenda Johnson Moore also had a hard time adjusting to otherwise all white schools but her Horizons experience wasn’t all peaches and cream.

“The people that lived across the street from us were extremely racist,” she says. “We were called names. It got better eventually but you felt it, you absolutely you felt it. It was uncomfortable for a long time.”

Overall, she’s grateful to have grown up there.

“I’m glad I had the diversity. It’s made me a stronger person, it’s made me who I am today. I can communicate to anybody. It was a good place, it was a good thing.”

Juanita Johnson says she wanted her kids to have the enrichment that comes from diverse experiences because her “progressive” parents wanted the same for her. Her father Saybert Hanger was one of the area’s first black attorneys and a federal meat inspector. Her mother Ione Hanger was an elementary school teacher in the Omaha Public Schools and later taught at Creighton University. Johnson says her parents wanted full opportunities for all kids “and I was fortunate enough that they pushed and encouraged me to break barriers.”

At Omaha Central High, circa 1945, Juanita was the only black student on the year book and school newspaper staffs. She received her master’s from Creighton University at a time when few blacks attended there. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s  International House she resided with students from around the world and she attended interracial camps that attracted students from the four corners.

Similarly, her husband cultivated black and white friends growing up in Marshalltown, Iowa and he integrated Wayne State (Neb.) College.

It’s not coincidental both Marty and Joslen involved themselves in activities, including her showing horses, that meant interacting mainly with whites. Joslen integrated Brownell-Talbot School. Many of their friends were white. Each ended up with a white life partner.

Marty says, “I think my well-rounded life is because my parents were always exposing me to different things. They really were pioneers in a lot of different things. This was the pattern of their life –  breaking barriers. If there was a barrier they certainly eliminated it. They were groundbreaking and cool and somewhat courageous, too.”

His mother says all of it was meant to foster a time when “I didn’t want my children to have to look at the things they were doing as being barrier breakers. If they wanted to try out for something they could just go ahead and try and either be good enough to be accepted that every other child was accepted or refused because they weren’t good enough, but not because of their color.”

Juanita and George were also intentional about keeping their family’s ties to Omaha’s traditional African American community alive. For example, they continued attending their home parish, St. Philips, whose congregation was entirely black. Marty took music lessons from an instructor in northeast Omaha. Joslen was active in Jack and Jill, a social club designed to reconnect young blacks dispersed when their families moved from the Near Northside.

Marty says he appreciates “all that my parents exposed us to and always giving us opportunities. I feel very fortunate they made the choices they made. It’s pretty amazing to me how forward thinking they were.”

Juanita Johnson still lives in New Horizons and her next door neighbor is still Corinne Murphy. The neighborhood is not nearly as diverse as it once was and the homes show their age, but it’s held its own. Many old-line black residents have moved or died off and few new blacks have moved in. Johnson attributes the paucity of blacks there to the fact they have so many more options today. That was the whole point of New Horizons anyway – freedom to live where you want.

Now the metro’s replete with diverse neighborhoods just like New Horizons used to be and may be again.

Related articles

• Carver Building Rebirthed as Arts-culture Haven; Theaster Gates, Rebuild and Bemis Reimagine North Omaha (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Parenting the Second Time Around Holds Challenges and Delights for Senior Kinship Caregiver Theresa Glass Union, Who Always Puts Family First (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Free Radical Ernie Chambers the Subject of New Biography by Author Tekla Agbala Ali Johnson (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• American adoptee’s discovery of his birth parents reveals a story of interrupted romance and regal ancestry (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)

American adoptee’s discovery of his birth parents reveals a story of interrupted romance and African regal ancestry

Marty Johnson is the adopted brother of my late life partner Joslen (Johnson) Shaw.  About 1o years ago his search for his identity led him to the discovery of his birth parents and the story of their interrupted romance and his regal ancestry.  Marty was the product of a brief union between an American caucasian woman and a Nigerian foreign exchange student.  He grew up in an African American family in Omaha, Neb.  When I wrote this story Marty was just about to embark on a journey to meet his biological father, a tribal chief in Nigeria.  Marty comes from a long lineage of chiefs and by birthright he is a prince himself.  His journey became the focus of some national media coverage, including a GQ Magazine spread and an appearance by Marty and his wife Laura on “Good Morning America.”  For various reasons my story was never published, until now.

 

 

 Marty visiting family in Nigeria

 Marty and Laura on “Good Morning America”

 

 

American adoptee’s discovery of his birth parents reveals a story of interrupted romance and regal ancestry 

©by Leo Adam Biga

Marty, Laura and their kids pictured in GQ Magazine spread

 

 

The crowded, cantankerous West African nation of Nigeria, where ju ju charms still hold sway and civil unrest brews, is where former Omahan Marty Johnson travels in December for his initiation into a royal lineage he uncovered this year.

The 38-year-old mortgage broker, a resident of Eagan, Minn. with his wife Laura and their children, Alyssa and Jacob, is the rare adoptee to find exotic origins. The product of an illicit interracial union, he was adopted at age 3 by Omahans George and Juanita Johnson, then Omaha Public Schools educators and the parents of a daughter, Joslen. The black couple raised Marty as their own. They and their extended family were the only relatives he knew until a few years ago. All he knew of his biological parents is that they were college students.

His search for answers began in earnest two years ago when his birth mother, the former Kathleen O’Connor, contacted him and he tracked down his natural father, John Ogike. Marty was conceived during a 1964 summer fling in Cedar Falls, Iowa. She was a pretty, red-headed Irish-Catholic University of New Mexico student visiting family in the college town, where her father headed the United Way, and he was a dashing Nigerian-Catholic exchange student studying for his master’s in education at the local University of Northern Iowa.

The unplanned pregnancy was scandalous and the idea of marriage, which Ogike proposed, impractical. She went off to a home for unwed mothers in Minnesota while he completed his degree and returned to Nigeria. Soon after his birth, Marty was put up for adoption.

For Johnson, who showed scant interest in his roots growing up, pursuing his Nigerian background has acquainted him with a large, wealthy, well-educated African family with a major presence in America and a prestigious position in Nigeria. What began as an odyssey to fill-in the missing pieces of his unfinished life has become something larger since the discovery early this year that as the first-born son of John Ogike, the latest in a long line of tribal chiefs among the Igbo (ee-boo) people in the southern state of Imo, Johnson is regarded as a prince and, by tradition, chief-in-waiting. The revelation he is the eldest son of the Ude-Ekeh, or chief came as news to the clan, none of whom knew of his existence, as his birth was kept secret by Ogike until inquiries by Johnson reached him two years ago.

As Johnson finds out new things about his rich family legacy, the emerging story is more than he ever bargained for, such as his late grandfather described as “a powerful man that ruled with an iron fist and served as one of the first senators in the Nigerian parliament after the country declared independence from Great Britain. Really, truly something new gets added to it each time I talk with my Nigerian family. It was all overwhelming from the beginning,” he said, “and so this royal thing is like, Oh, well, here’s another cool thing to add to my story. Now, what’s next?”

Next will be the pilgrimage he, his wife and children make to Nigeria during its December high season. The trip to the Ogike hometown of Old Orlu, a city of 1.5 million and the Imo seat of power, will mark his first face-to-face encounter with his father.

The journey, which NBC News is to chronicle, will coincide with a celebration commemorating the feats of Johnson’s grandfather. If the experience of a Nigerian-American cousin who visited her ancestral homeland for the first time is any indication, then Johnson will be feted like a prince during a spate of parties introducing him to relatives, including seven siblings he’s never met. He’s been told his father is likely to lavish him with gifts, but he doesn’t want special treatment. “For me, it’s just a part of my heritage. I’m excited to see what it’s like over there and to see how my family lives and to be able to honor them.”

 

 

Marty’s late sister, Joslen

 

 

Prior to learning his African ancestry’s high pedigree, Johnson ignored clues the family provided about the esteem in which his father is held and the respect he, as the eldest son, commands. First, there was a letter from an uncle Bonifice welcoming him “to the Ogike dynasty.” A second letter, from an aunt Theresa (his father’s oldest sibling) said he would need “to prove his claim” with photos of himself from early childhood on. “When they were saying these things I thought it was just some kind of African cultural terminology to call your family a dynasty and I didn’t think anything more of it,” he said.

He next got a sense for his lofty status visiting his aunt Uloma’s and her husband Hilary’s house in California. Now, he said, it’s clear the meeting was meant for John Ogike’s oldest, most trusted relatives to “check me out to see if I really was” his son. “My aunt Uloma opened the door, her eyes got big and almost the first words out of her mouth were, ‘Well, there is no doubt — you’re my brother’s son,’ because I do look very much like my father.”

An example of how avidly he’s been accepted by the Ogikes is the scene that played out when he and his family arrived at the home of a cousin in California. “We knocked at the door and one of my cousins opened it and he just stopped and stared at me and announced, ‘He’s here.’ Suddenly, people are pulling me inside and there’s like 20 of them talking and tugging at me,” he said. They sat us down and served us food. Everyone was talking. There was just this great outpouring of joy for me as their long lost cousin. It was just crazy…totally overwhelming.”

As he’s learned, “family is extremely important” to the Ogikes. “They’re very honorable, hospitable people,” he said. “They treat me as a lost family member they’re happy to see and want to make feel welcome. Now, it’s nice to be able to have these other people in my life who are family… because I know what family is.”

Still, it wasn’t until January when he first met one of his new siblings, a sister named Obianuju, that his elevated place was revealed. “That’s when she started asking, ‘What have you learned about our family?’ We told her we kind of knew this and that and who was who. And she said, ‘Well, you understand that because of who my father is you’re considered a prince in the Igbo culture?’ And I just kind of looked at her and went, ‘Huh? What do you mean?’ And she explained the Ude-Ekeh or tribal chiefs were, before there was central government, the main ruling people over large areas with the power to declare war and their children were all considered royalty in a sense. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s new.’”

Soon, talk turned to the inevitability of Johnson traveling to Nigeria to assume his rightful, privileged place among the elite clan. He said, “It was never IF you come to Nigeria, but always ‘WHEN you come to Nigeria…there will be a tremendously big celebration. My father will probably give you a house.’” His father’s slowly filling him in on more family lore and on what it means being a chief.

The next order of business was sorting out any problems among kin who may have viewed Johnson as an interloper infringing on their own favored status.

“It’s a big deal that I am the first born son. More so than I would have ever guessed,” he said. “Added to that is the fact I have three brothers, one of whom for 37 years knew himself to be the oldest son of John Ogike. So, one of the biggest concerns I had and that my cousins had was that my presence would be upsetting to him. But I have since actually talked to this brother and he’s been very welcoming, too.” Johnson, has no intention of usurping anyone’s position despite what he’s been told is due him. “It’s nothing that I want,” he said. “The royalty thing is so far off the map of what I care about. It’s just an interesting side note to what I’m about.”

However he feels about it, an American finding a princely African lineage extending back generations makes good copy and it made news in January when a Minnesota reporter filed a story. Picked up by the Associated Press, the item was widely published. He’s taken some ribbing along the way. “Oh, God, yes. People bowing to me, saying, ‘Oh, the prince is here.’ A local morning radio DJ gave me a hard time with cracks like, ‘If I were you, I’d be asking where’s the money.’ The implacable Johnson took it all in stride. The teasing took a harsher tone at Alyssa’s school.

 

 

 

 

Adding to the story’s appeal is the courtly, magisterial way Johnson, a large man with a dignified demeanor, carries himself. More than once, he’s been told that he looks the part of a prince. “He’s always been a gentleman,” his sister Joslen said. His regalness is most evident when wearing one of the majestic, flowing kafkans given him by his Nigerian aunts. His wife Laura hardly needed confirmation, saying, “I’ve always seen Marty as a prince. Everyone says this couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Marty’s so humble. At first he had me tell his story, and it’s fun to finally see him tell it as he identifies more with his African heritage.”

Johnson only researched his biological roots after prodding from Laura. Until then, he said, “I never felt compelled to find out. I mean, I had some curiosity, but no burning interest to actually take some action. I was so fortunate I grew up in a really good family and thankfully my life turned out very good.” After graduating from Omaha Central High School in 1982 and from Drake University in 1988, Johnson worked in the food industry in Des Moines, Iowa and St. Paul, Minn. before transitioning into the mortgage brokerage business in 1996. He married Laura in 1993 and it was she who got him to think about his origins. “Laura was always asking, ‘Aren’t you just dying to know?’” What turned the tide, he said, was the birth of their kids. “I thought I should probably find out something to, one, know about my parents’ medical histories and, two, if they’re still alive, get to know them.”

He’d just begun making inquiries with online adoption registries when an envelope arrived at his adoptive parents’ home from Catholic Charities addressed to John Martin Johnson.

“My mom, Juanita, called and said, ‘I think this is a letter you probably want to see,’ and sent it. It was a form letter saying, ‘Someone from your family would like to contact you…’ So, I filled in all the information and about three weeks later I got an e-mail from Kathleen Wang (O’Connor) saying she was my birth mother. She just happened to start looking around the same time I did. She said she was nervous and didn’t know what to say and basically I e-mailed back saying, ‘Hey, don’t be nervous, I was looking for you, too. Let’s talk.’ She called me about 10 minutes later. I told her about my two kids and my wife and I asked her if she has any other kids and she told me I have two sisters. We just talked about family and…really get into the details of the story. I didn’t want to put her on the spot the first time we talked because it had to be tough enough for her already.”

Between that conversation, some e-mails and visits they made to each other’s homes, mother and son “got to know each other.” He said when the time was right, “I asked the one question I’m sure every adopted child asks — why did you give me up? I was prepared for the worst. But for me it wasn’t so much knowing why as what was going on in her life that she had to make this kind of sacrifice. It had to be hard.”

 

 

Marty with his two moms, Juanita and Kathleeen

 

 

He found the adoption was the best option for a biracial child born to single parents who’d only known each other a few months and who lived on different continents. “My father returned to his life in Nigeria, where he and his brother ran a school their father founded. He later married and fathered eight children,” Johnson said. “My mother didn’t want to go to Africa. She just didn’t feel like it was going to work. Besides, she had this boy friend back in New Mexico.” She resumed her college studies, married and bore two daughters. She and her family have resided in California since the late 1960s. Ironically, all these years she’s lived 20 minutes away from John Ogike’s sister — and Marty’s aunt — Uloma, but didn’t know it until being reunited with her son.

As for his first three years of life, Johnson lived with two foster families before being adopted. He has memories of the farm he lived on, near Dubuque, Iowa, that his second foster family worked. He recalls the farm’s friendly dog, its fearsome, fenced-in bull, the litter of kittens he sheltered in a bed of hay inside the barn and the mewing dairy cows. He vaguely remembers the day he met the Johnsons, who drove up to Dubuque. Juanita Johnson said they took Marty out to eat and that he and Joslen interacted so well at a playground that “he seemed ready to join the family.”

 

 

The Johnsons, 1967: Juanita, Joslen, George

 

 

He remembers flying, escorted by a nun, on the propellor-powered plane that took him to Omaha to start his new life with the Johnsons, who promptly brought him to a picnic that found Joslen proudly showing off her gregarious little brother. “He talked so much,” Juanita said. “He didn’t seem to have any hangups. The most important thing was how well he and Joslen got along. She took his suitcase, showed him where they would be sleeping and got him unpacked.”

His adoptive mother is “glad” her son has found his blood roots. “I think it makes any individual more complete to know their background,” she said. She’s intrigued, too, by his impending African trip because her late mother traveled extensively there as a missionary teacher. For his part, he said, “I would love to be able to take my parents, Joslen, Kathleen and my other two sisters there some day.” Meanwhile, Marty and Laura are soliciting sponsors to help defray the cost of their Nigerian sojourn. They plan essaying their trip via video, still photography, audio and print in the hope of producing a documentary and/or multi-media presentation they can share with school and community audiences.

So, has he ever wondered what life would be like had he grown up in Nigeria? “Uh, for about half a second.” Despite the hoopla over his new found roots, he said, “I don’t place any more importance on that than the relatives I knew before. My family’s still the Johnson family. I just have more family. That’s the best thing about it. A question I get a lot is, How has this changed you? And it really hasn’t changed anything. I’m still just Marty. I just get to learn some things about me I didn’t know before. For me, this just kind of completes the puzzle of what I am.”

As Laura put it, “When all this broke, I was creating a family tree and now I just have to add more branches.”

With his African adventure still ahead, his story is “to be continued,” he said. Then there are the sagas of his birth mother’s family emigrating from Ireland and of his adoptive father’s grandfather escaping slavery, “but that’s a whole other story.”

 

 

Marty’s African halfl; Photo courtesy of Mark Seliger

 

 

 

Related articles

• The Life of an Adoptee (diamondmikewatson.wordpress.com)
• What about the Rights of Adoptees? (dontwelookalike.com)
• Thoughts on Finding Birth Parents (shesadopted.com)
• Sequel: AN OPEN LETTER TO MY PEOPLE NDI IGBO (iamummsulaim.wordpress.com)

Show a Little Tenderness; For Her 40th Birthday Kirsten Case Asked Friends to Perform Acts of Kindness

Here’s a feel good story for you.  Kirsten Case, or as some of you may know her, Kirsten Romero Case, is a serial do-gooder in Omaha with a lifetime of community outreach work behind her.  She recently decided she would celebrate her 40th birthday by asking people in her life to perform acts of kindness.  They did and the story of why she put out this sweet intention and the ensuing good works that followed is detailed in this piece I wrote for Metro Magazine.  She heads the Literacy Center in Omaha and before that she worked for the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce and for various nonprofit human services organizations.  It’s quite clear that whaterver she does from this point forward will involve doing for others.

 

 

 

 

Show a Little Tenderness; For Her 40th Birthday Kirsten Case Asked Friends to Perform Acts of Kindness

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in Metro Magazine

 

As her 40th birthday approached last fall Kirsten Case decided to celebrate the milestone in a most unusual way. The Literacy Center executive director used her personal blog to encourage friends and strangers alike to perform 40 Acts of Kindness in 40 days and to share these “simple, thoughtful” acts online.

Just like Kirsten

Case, a longtime Omaha transplant from Denver, has devoted her life to nonprofit human services work that delivers tender mercies to people in need. Wendy Hamilton and Angie Schendt are among those who granted Case’s birthday wish. They say the project fit her to a tee.

“It felt so natural that this idea came from her, and I was excited to participate,” says Hamilton, whose act of kindness involved reaching out to a young woman she didn’t know but who looked like she could use some friendly advice.

“Kirsten does have a big heart and it wasn’t surprising to me at all that she came up with this idea,” says Schendt, who honored Case’s request by organizing workmates to present a $500 check to a retiree who’d lost everything in a fire.

Shannon Smith, another friend who joined this mini-movement, says, “I’ve come to admire Kirsten both personally and professionally. She is one of the kindest people you will ever meet, always putting the needs of others before herself. When I first read her blog, I thought ‘of course.’  Of course Kirsten would come up with something compelling to motivate others to give back. Of course she would be selfless on her big day. Of course she would think big. The birthday request is everything that Kirsten is about.”

One way Smith fulfilled Case’s request was by befriending a female co-worker who rubbed her the wrong way.

“I could tell she needed a pick-me-up so I took her to lunch. We had a great chat, and I’m glad we did because I now have a greater understanding of where she’s coming from.”

Other acts people checked in ranged from reporting graffiti to giving someone a ride to donating unused clothes to a career closet to giving up a seat on a plane (twice) to making dinner for a sick friend to helping a dog owner find her lost pet in a park. Comforting words. Helpful advice. Lending a hand. Opening one’s heart.

Then there was the Saturday when Case and her daughter were in the family car in a ATM drive-thru when a man approached, speaking in broken Spanish. The bilingual Case made out he needed to deposit money and she assisted him. She says she drove off before realizing he could benefit from the Literacy Center, “and so I drove back and talked to him about it. It would have been easy to ignore him and been scared of him and to assume certain things but he was just a hard working guy that needed help.

A helping hand

Case says doing unto others is “the easiest and most inexpensive way we can improve the condition of somebody else’s life and our own. I mean, being kind or helpful to others isn’t just about them, it impacts our own life in a positive way, so it’s sort of a win-win.”

“The reality is any of us could be in a situation that could cause us to have to lean on a support network,” she says. “We’re all a heartbeat away from being in somebody else’s shoes. Besides, we’re always leaning on each other and so that’s why it really shouldn’t be a foreign concept to reach out and do something.”

She simply decided to be a conduit to help it happen.

“I just put stuff out there and hoped that maybe somebody noticed it. I really wanted to do something fun and special for my birthday. I have friends who’ve had big blow out parties and that didn’t feel comfortable. I spend a lot of my life trying to get other people to get involved in the community and do nice things for people and so it made perfect sense that way.”

She didn’t know who might respond and what they might do but as her birthday drew near she stumbled upon a Facebook event a friend created and to her delight she discovered plenty of folks heeded her request.

“It was the best birthday I’ve ever had. I was so excited to hear about things people were doing. It just brought me a lot of joy, it made me really happy to know they’d done things. I didn’t really know if people would do anything at all. I mean, how do you really ask people to do stuff? And I’m surrounded by people that are very giving and very involved, so how do you ask those people to do more?”

But more they did.

She says even though she and her friends already give-back to the community “a lot of us are working on a level where we’re not connected one-on-one, so it’s easy to get disconnected from the human side of the work that we’re doing.”

Paying it forward

She’s surprised her project’s elicited so much interest, saying, “A lot of people have talked to me about it,” and though the project  ended Oct. 17, she adds, “Even now people still email me wanting to go to lunch because they want to talk about this. That part’s been fun – that people are still talking about it and telling me about things and wanting to do it themselves.”

Case says she doesn’t know how many acts of kindness overall resulted from her appeal because she hasn’t counted but she likes to think its ripple effect is ongoing. “My hope is that there’s a lot more that happened or that might happen that I don’t know about, although I do like hearing about it because it makes me happy.”

Encouraging kindness may just become her new birthday tradition.

“I do think I’ll have to do this every year now. Honestly, it really was my favorite        birthday, hands-down. I feel like the people that did it did it because they do care about me and in fulfilling this request they cared about doing something. It was just so meaningful to me that somebody would honor a request like that.”

Related articles

• A different kind of birthday wish (whas11.com)
• 22 Random acts of kindness (blogs.windsorstar.com)

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting Turns Omaha into Buffettville Destination

If you’re a practicing journalist for very long in Omaha there are some local stories that will inevitably cross your professional path at one juncture or another.  For years I had known about and experienced some of the fallout from the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting that literally brings thousands of folks from around the world to town for face or proximity time with the Oracle of Omaha, billionaire investor and Berkshire chairman Warren Buffett.  Until an Omaha Magazine assignment a few years ago I had never written about the event and while the gig didn’t call for me to actually cover the proceedings but instead to preview them I can at least say I’ve crossed off yet another Omaha tradition from my story bucket list.

 

 

 

©siliconprairienews.com

 

 

 

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Tuns Omaha into Buffettville Destination

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally appeared in Omaha Magazine

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s once modest annual shareholders meeting has morphed into what one pundit called “Woodstock for Capitalists.”

Thanks to chairman Warren Buffett’s “Oracle” status, the weekend event’s now a branded experience. Sure, Buffett and partner Charlie Munger’s witty Q & A is popular, but there’s also exhibits by subsidiaries, entertainment, parties, concerts, tours and immersion in-all-things-Omaha. People drop big bucks on buying-junkets at Berkshire-held Borsheims and Nebraska Furniture Mart, which reportedly did $30 million in sales for last year’s spree. Gorat’s and Dairy Queen do well.

Economic crisis or not, thousands will once again venture here from across the nation and globe for the May 1-3 bash. The Saturday May 2 meeting is when Qwest Center Omaha overbrims with activity. Annual meeting director Kelly Muchemore-Broz said she’s seen the event take on “a life of its own.” “The first meeting I attended there were 200 shareholders. When I started helping with the meeting, there were a couple thousand. Back then we were able to pass microphones to the shareholders to ask their questions. Last year we had 32,000.”

The scale, said Qwest Center director of event operations Stan Benis, “is probably the largest we handle from start to finish. People come early and stay late. The event is certainly in a class of its own. The closest would probably be the American Idol tryouts, but even that didn’t take the entire convention center floor space.”

So, what goes into making it all happen?

Months in advance Muchemore-Broz begins working with a core team to plan every element of the all-day event. The devil’s in the details. That includes a theme. This year’s is cowboys. “I try to select themes that are whimsical, colorful and offer a large canvas of creative possibilities,” she said. Designers lead crews that dress the facility — this time in a Western motif. Only the arena’s left untouched. “It’s all business in there,” she said, referring to the venue where the company movie, Q & A and business meeting unfold. Everything else is fair game.

A live reenactment of a stagecoach hold-up will break out right in front of the Qwest on 10th Street. A Wild West show, minus shootouts, is on display inside.

“Every year it’s amazing to see an empty exhibit hall become completely transformed,” said team leader D’Ann Lonowski of Mint Design. “It is an elaborate setup that usually contains a large, central focal point in the exhibit hall. From there we branch out with scenery and signage.”

Muchemore-Broz said the most time-intensive work is “finalizing meeting details —  designing, writing, printing, organizing, communicating and delivering meeting materials to both shareholders and attending exhibitors.” The most labor-intensive? “Stuffing envelopes,” she said.

All of it, the landscaping, centerpieces, booth displays and graphics, right down to passes and visitor guides, Lonowski said, must work together to “create a cohesive environment” and to “bring the theme to life.”

Then there’s the buzz. Think of Buffett as the iconic front man for a hot band whose star power gets shareholders to queue up hours before the meeting starts. “I believe the record was one o’clock the morning of the meeting. However, last year there was a gentlemen who arrived at 11 the night before,” said Muchemore-Broz. In terms of preparations, Benis said, “we treat it just like a rock show. The crowds are lined up outside and pass through a security checkpoint.” Once inside, he said, it’s a race of people “in suits-and-ties trying to get a front row seat.”

With attendance now at sold-out, stadium-concert proportions, demand on area service sectors, such as lodging, is great.

“The downtown hotels do sell out the summer before,” said Muchemore-Broz, “but room availability changes constantly –- right up to the weekend of the meeting. So it doesn’t mean you can’t get a room in Omaha.” However, she added, “If you wait until spring to get a room, it’s possible you could be as far away as Lincoln.”

Omaha Convention & Visitors Bureau executive director Dana Markel said its Visitor Center at 1001 Farnam Center sees double its highest traffic that weekend. “It’s just a spectacular event for Omaha and really nothing compares,” she said. “People come in from all over the world.”

The day of the meeting, Benis said, “parking is always a challenge but people seem to find spaces. A lot of attendees take the hotel shuttles or walk over.” As the arena can’t hold everyone, teleconferencing beams the meeting into the exhibit hall, the ballrooms and the concourses, where the overflow crowd mingles.

 

 

 

 

 

Accommodating all those visitors requires much coordination. Muchemore-Broz said countless people support the meeting and satellite events/activities. “My team members have their own staffs. Everyone at Berkshire works the meeting — including employees at a couple of our local insurance companies. There’s Qwest personnel, Omaha Police Department, Nebraska and Iowa State Patrol, Douglas and Sarpy County deputies. Many local residents volunteer to help. And, of course, the local restaurants, hotels, taxi companies, the airport –- the list goes on and on.”

At the Qwest, Benis said, “our event staff, including cleaners, is around 300 on the day of the meeting. Levy, our concessionaire, will have around 250 on site. Keeping the arena and convention center clean is always a challenge, but this event again is so different because of the length of time visitors are in the building.”

Muchemore-Broz said putting on the event is “a very exhilarating and fun grind. I’m thrilled when it’s over and everyone has had a terrific weekend but it’s sad too.  It’s a big emotional let down when the lights go out. Every year is a lesson in growth and fine tuning.”

Related articles

• Berkshire Hathaway’s Operating Profit Grows 37%, Net Income Beats Street Expectations (seekingalpha.com)
• Warren Buffett says Berkshire Hathaway may buy more newspapers (nextlevelofnews.com)

Artist Vera Mercer’s Coming Out Party

 

The Mercer name is exalted in Omaha for the family’s embedded presence as downtown commercial-residential property owners and managers, historic preservationists, aesthetic arbiters, and the primary visionaries, developers, and protectors of what’s known as the Old Market.  The Old Market is a small enclave of late 19th and early 20th century brick warehouse buildings that comprised the city’s wholesale produce center.  Under the Mercer’s leadership these stuctures took on new life in the 1970s to house an eclectic collection of restaurants, artist studios, art galleries, trendy shops, and loft condos.  For a few decades now the National Register of Historic Places district has been one of the state’s top tourist attractions.  The subject of this story, artist Vera Mercer, is a native German who married into the family just as the Mercers were transforming the area into a cultural hub.  She played a vital role, along with husband Mark Mercer and father-in-law Samuel Mercer in establishing some of the anchor sites there, including the French Cafe.  Her photography is prominently displayed in the restaurant.  The Mercers own a few eateries in the district and Vera plays a hand in them all behind the scenes.  Additionally, her large-scale, Baroque-style food still lifes can be seen in one of these spaces – The Boiler Room.  The Mercer’s La Buvette is a bistro style eaterie with an impressive wine selection and it’s often where Vera and Mark can be spotted.  She also runs her own gallery, The Moving Gallery, that features work by European artists.  Though she’s long been a key player in the Old Market, Vera has been a low-key, little-know presence outside that gilded arena.  That is until recently, when a book of her paintings and exhibitions of her work have received much notice here and in Europe.  I had never met Vera until doing this short 2011 piece about her for Encounter Magazine.  What I found is a charming woman who is an artist through and through.  Her photography and painting, equally compelling.

 

©Vera Mercer

 

 

 

Artist Vera Mercer’s Coming Out Party

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in Encounter Magazine

 

Vera Mertz Mercer occupies a paradoxical place in Omaha. She’s a world-renowned photojournalist and art photographer, yet her work is little known here. She’s a vital part of the Mercer family’s Old Market dynasty, yet few recognize her influence.

Forty years after coming here, this German native is finally getting the attention that’s eluded her thanks to several projects featuring her work, which ranges from evocative street-market-figurative portraits to richly textured still lifes of food-animal-plant motifs.

A new book, Vera Mercer, Photographs and Still Lifes (Kehrer, 2010), includes a selection of her photo reportage and still lifes. Following well-received exhibits in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany, plus a show in Lincoln, Neb., she has a single work on display in the 12th Annual Art Auction and Exhibition at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, October 8-November 6. Her biggest exposure though will be her first Omaha solo exhibit, Vera Mercer: Still Lifes, opening in January at the Bemis.

“Given the Mercers central role in the development and sustainability of the Old Market, and their longstanding role in Omaha’s art community, it was surprising to me she had never had a one-woman exhibition” here, said Bemis curator Hesse McGraw.

He said the show will reveal “an under-recognized jewel and legacy of the contemporary art community. I’m interested in the deep intensity of Vera’s photographs. They have a timeless quality that is both classical and highly contemporary. The works are unsettlingly rich in tone, composition and content. It’s surprising these decadent, grotesque, deep-hued works also have a sense of levity. They possess a rigor that is very rare.”

 

 

 

Vera Mercer at an opening

 

 

More 2011 exhibitions of Mercer’s work are slated for Mexico City, Japan and Italy. Her emergence on the art scene follows a stellar career in Europe photographing famous artists and their work (Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol), authors (Norman Mailer), playwrights (Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco), performers (Jacques Brel), street scenes and markets. Her first husband, artist Daniel Spoerrii, was active in theater. Her father, Franz Mertz, was a noted set designer. Both men introduced her to the avant garde and she flourished in the heady company of artists and intellectuals.

Mercer trained as a modern dancer, teaching for a time, before Spoerri gave her her first camera. Photography’s expressive possibilities fascinated her. Self-taught, she develops and prints her own work. She prefers shooting with high speed film. She likes grainy, dimly lit images. Her lush still lifes are made with a 4-by-5 camera.

In Europe she met sculptor Eva Aeppli, the wife of Samuel Mercer, an attorney who divides his time between his native Omaha and France. Aeppli’s astrological sculptures adorn the Garden of the Zodiac in the Old Market Passageway. The Mercer family has owned property there for generations. The couple befriended Vera, who later married Samuel’s son, Mark. As an artist and gourmand she fit right in with these cosmopolitans and their affinity for artistic and epicurean delights. Her discerning eye and palette helped shape the Old Market into a cultural oasis.

 

©Vera Mercer

 

 

 

Mark manages the family’s many properties. He and Samuel, a 2010 Omaha Business Hall of Fame inductee, have been the primary agents for preserving this former wholesale produce center and repurposing its warehouses as shops, galleries, restaurants, apartments, condos.

The ambience-rich Market, a National Register of Historic Places district, has become Omaha’s most distinctive urban environs and leading tourist destination.

Overshadowed in this transformation from eyesore to hotbed is Vera Mercer. She’s applied her aesthetic sensibilities to some iconic spots, such as, V. Mertz, which bears her name. She and Mark own La Buvette, an authentic spin on the French cafes they know from their Parisian haunts. More recently they opened the Boiler Room, a fine dining establishment with Vera’s large format, color still lifes integrated into the decor.

Her black and white photo murals of Parisian cafes are among the distinctive interior design elements at the French Cafe, which Samuel Mercer developed with Cedric Hartman. Her photo project for the cafe first brought her to America.

 

 

 

 

While a familiar figure to Market denizens for her culinary endeavors, her photography is decidedly less known, though in plain view. She’s exhibited her work in galleries around the world but seldom locally. This despite the fact she oversees the Moving Gallery. Mercer said, “I could easily show there but I think that’s not for me to do that.”

There are practical reasons why so much of her work is showing now after years of scant exhibition activity. First of all, she doesn’t believe in over-exposing herself. “I think one should not be overseen,” she said.

Then she’s been busy. “I had lots to do,” she said, referring to her many Mercer Old Market duties, including launching restaurants. She keeps the books for the two the Mercers still own. Several “intense” photo installation projects she did in Asia with designer John Morford kept her occupied.

So, all along she’s been practicing her craft, just not exhibiting. But she’s built a tremendous body of work.

“I work every day a lot on photography,” she said.

Exhibiting isn’t everything. The culinary arts are creative, too. “Making a restaurant is something so beautiful. It’s something for the people. It’s just like a painting,” she said, before adding,“It’s just like theater, too.”

She’s a bit taken aback by all the attention directed her way these days, but she’s “not surprised.” Always open to change, she’s now experimenting with some new portraiture techniques, ready to reinvent herself again.

 

 

Related articles

• Nick and Brook Hudson, Their YP Match Made in Heaven Yields a Bevy of Creative-Cultural-Style Results – from Omaha Fashion Week to La Fleur Academy to Masstige Beauty and Beyond (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Omaha Fashion Past (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• To Doha and Back with Love, Local Journalists Reflect on Their Fear and Loathing Adventure in the Gulf (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Memories of the Jewish Midwest: Mom and Pop Grocery Stores, Omaha, Lincoln, Greater Nebraska and Southwest Iowa (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)

Registration Now Open for Your Journey in Freelance Writing Seminars with Leo Adam Biga: Oct. 30, Nov. 13 & Dec. 11

Registration Now Open for

Your Journey in Freelance Writing Seminars

with Leo Adam Biga

Oct. 30, Nov. 13 & Dec. 11

Follow your passion and write stories about people, their passions, and their magnificent obsessions

When:

Sunday, October 30

Sunday, November 13

Sunday, December 11

6-8 pm

Each seminar is unique, though some core material is covered during every workshop

 

Where: 

Brandeis building downtown, 210 South 16th Street in the warm, luxurious setting of the Community Room

Use 16th Street Concierge entrance between Douglas and Farnam (Concierge will direct you to the elevator to access the 2nd flr Community Room)

NOTE: Ample street parking available or for $5 use the Brandeis parking garage (Douglas between 16th and 17th (car pool and share the cost)

 

Host Christine Lind will provide free beverages and goodies during the seminar

Join us for this informative, relaxed evening

 

The seminar is by-registration only:

If you register for one seminar, the cost is: $40

If you register for two seminars together, the cost is: $70

If you register for three seminars together, the cost is $100

NOTE: The registration fee is payable by check only (make it out to Leo Adam Biga)

Mail your check to:  Leo A. Biga, 10629 Cuming St., Omaha, NE 68114

Your check must be received before the seminar for you to attend and be sure to indicate which seminar(s) you’re registering/paying for

NEW:

Register at leoadmbiga.eventbrite.com/

 

If you know of or are affiliated with a school, church, library or other nonprofit that would like to host a future seminar, please note that special group rates are available. It’s a perfect fit for any group that enjoys reading, writing, books. Call 402-445-4666 or email leo32158@cox.net for details.

 

What is A Journey in Freelance Writing?

An informal two-hour seminar that discusses:

• How to prepare yourself to be a writer

• What’s involved in finding your writer’s voice

• Where do story ideas come from?

• How to pitch and market your work

• What are editors looking for?

• How to develop and maintain a client base

• Yes, you can supplement your income and even make a living as a freelancer

As an award-winning journalist I will offer my decades-long experience as a guide for establishing a writing career or taking your career to the next level. The conversational, interactive seminar offers plenty of Q & A time.

Ideal for aspiring or emerging writers of:  articles • press releases • newsletters • blogs • web content • scripts • books

Book the seminar for your club, organization, school, library or church. Schedule it for your next writing/literary group meeting, festival or conference.  

Group rates available.

 

Thanks for your interest and I hope to see you there,

Leo Adam Biga

 

Related articles

• Financing Freelance Writing – It Can Be Costlier Than You Think (freelanceswitch.com)
• How to Get Freelance Writing Clients without Selling (savvywritingcareers.wordpress.com)
• ‘Getting Started as a Freelance Writer’ by Robert W Bly (pacejmiller.com)

A Decent House for Everyone, Jesuit Brother Mike Wilmot Builds Affordable Homes for the Working Poor Through Gesu Housing

 

 

Brother Mike Wilmot‘s reputation as a tough guy precedes him, but like most tough guys he’s a pretty soft touch underneath the gruff exterior.

A Decent House for Everyone, Jesuit Brother Mike Wilmot Builds Affordable Homes for the Working Poor Through Gesu Housing

©by Leo Adam Biga

Soon to be published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

Early in his life as a brother in the Society of Jesus, his superiors asked Mike Willmot what kind of work he wanted to do. The former Marquette (Milwaukee, Wis.) University High School three-sport athlete said he wanted to coach. Perhaps as a lesson in obedience or humility, the Jesuits instead had him learn cabinet making and welding.

It was hard to see the practicality of it. But the rough-hewn Wilmot eventually became a teacher, coaching basketball and football and serving as dean of students at Omaha Creighton Prep. “Looking back on it I’m glad that happened because I’ve used in my coaching and in my teaching those construction skills for many projects, and I’m still using them,” he says. “I’m still building and welding.”

Among other things, he integrates railroad spikes and other found metal in creating welded sculptures. A large cross he made adorns the grounds at St. James Catholic Church. His home-building mission came into focus when, during a mid-1990s sabbatical serving Sudanese refugees in Northern Uganda, he helped construct a school and thus fulfilled a basic tenet of his Jesuit calling.

“In anything that any of us do we want to make the world a better place to live in by spreading the kingdom of God and bringing that to all people, and housing-shelter is one of the ways you can do that,” he says.

His small Gesu Housing Inc. nonprofit is the latest manifestation of putting his building know-how to work in service of his faith. Acting as a developer, Gesu (Italian for Jesus) builds affordable, energy efficient homes for the working poor in north Omaha. Now in his 70s, Wilmot walks with a hitch in his step after decades of jogging wore out his hips and necessitated replacement surgeries.

“The mission of Gesu housing is to put people into houses and to make the neighborhoods better neighborhoods,” says Wilmot.

 

A completed Gesu home

 

 

 

Ten completed Gesu homes, all but one occupied, stand out from older homes on a two-block stretch of Burdette Street from 43rd to 42nd. He expects to start four new houses this fall. He says the well-built homes, which feature extra thick walls and insulation, get lots of play from interested buyers. Gesu has until now built concrete homes, but is embarking on wood frame construction to see which offers the most cost and energy efficiency.

Unlike many who serve social justice needs in north Omaha but live elsewhere, Wilmot lives in the Clifton Hills neighborhood where he works. He and four Jesuits reside at Mulumba House, a Creighton University satellite Jesuit community with a dedicated inner city presence.

“We felt this was the place we wanted to live,” says Wilmot. “We thought it would be a good idea to live with the people that we’re working for.”

Gesu partially funds its projects through the federal Housing and Urban Development monies through the Omaha City Planning Department. The three-bedroom homes cost $180,000 to construct and sell at well-below market rates to qualified first-time home buyers through Omaha100, a consortium of public-private partnerships dedicated to making home ownership possible for families with low to moderate income.

When Eva Powell and her three foster children took possession of their Gesu home August 20 it marked the gratifying end to a two-year process of searching and applying for a home.

“Oh, it was awesome. It was emotional,” says Powell, who works at International Gamco Inc. “It’s my own. It’s my house.”

She enjoys the two-car attached garage and a wrap-around porch and plentiful closet space among other features. She plans turning the unfinished basement into a rec room. Powell praises the way she was treated in the home qualification process, says of Omaha100 loan processor Carlene Lewis: “When I was getting frustrated she was always there to lift my spirits up and keep me going. She just really reassured me I would have a house. Without her I don’t know if I’d have hung in there this long.” The support Gesu provided also impressed her. “Once Brother Wilmot knew I was serious about wanting the corner lot, he told me, ‘Well, that’s your lot –  just hang in there.’ He was great, too.”

Buyers like Powell receive a $60,000 subsidy loan that comes off the cost of the home, keeping fixed monthly payments at about $600.

Money from HUD and buyers doesn’t cover everything. For each home Gesu builds, Wilmot must raise $40,000 to cover the difference. Asking for money isn’t his favorite chore, but it is vital it Gesu is to continue its work.

“We couldn’t survive without it. It’s hard work but it’s very interesting and you meet a lot of really good people,” he says. “Many things in this country are completed because of fund raising — like education. There’s a gap between what it costs and what people pay for it, so you’ve got to raise the gap, and the same here ….”

 

Brother Wilmot outside a Gesu home under construction

 

 

 

He recently secured $250,000 in matching grant money to allow Gesu to finish its most recent crop of homes.

To find those stop-gap dollars and keep construction costs low, Wilmot enlists support from of his extended Prep family. For example, Dan Hall of Hallmarq Homes, the general contractor for Gesu projects, played ball for Wilmot at Prep. After one meeting with his old coach, Hall says, “I bought in. It’s a great thing we’re doing down here  — we’re changing the neighborhood one house at a time. I love doing it.”

Replacing vacant lots with new homes encourages existing homeowners to spruce up their own places. “There are other houses on this block since we started doing this that have been rehabbed, which is a good idea. Other people are fixing up their houses,” Wilmot says.

Hall says residents get involved in the revitalization, even going out of their way to protect new construction sites. “Everybody seems to know me and my truck now because I’ve been down here hundreds of times,” he says. “And there are some folks that watch houses for me. It goes a long way, you know, in establishing a relationship. You get some security out of it when you get people involved. If somebody isn’t supposed to be here they’ll run them off or they’ll call me.”

Whether it’s their place or someone else’s, he says, people “just want a nice house.” And a nice neighborhood.

Wilmot formed Gesu nearly a decade ago after working on  a series of construction projects. They included additions to the then-Jesuit Middle School, now Jesuit Academy, at 2311 North 22nd Street, and to the Mulumba House at 4308 Grant. He was the school’s first assistant principal. But when he got involved building things using a fast, cost effective poured concrete process, he found inspiration for his new path.

“I worked closely with a friend of mine who’s another Prep alum, Phil McKeone of  Daedalus Construction, and I said, ‘Phil, we’ve got to do something with this technology to build some houses, and he was dumb enough to go for it.”

Sister Marilyn Ross, director of Holy Name Housing Corp., urged him to start the home construction nonprofit. He did, and focused on the neighborhood where he lives. Gesu relies on donated and discounted labor and in-kind services.

 

 

Brother Wilmot in Uganda

 

 

Much of north central and northeast Omaha have a glut of vacant lots, condemned homes and unkempt rental properties that deflate property values of the area’s nice homes and solid neighborhoods. He says he once counted at least 25 vacant lots in the Clifton Hills section. With for-profit developers ignoring the district, nonprofits like Gesu and Holy Name fill the void for new home construction.

“I do know there’s not necessarily a lot of people breaking their necks to build houses down here,” says Wilmot. “I’m sure economics comes into it. All over this country I think we have to rebuild our cities from the inside out. We can’t just keep going out to 200th and plowing ground. There’s gotta be renewal and rebuilding.”

The inner city provides an attractive landscape for first-time home buyers with its affordable housing and proximity to Omaha’s cultural hub, parks and commercial corridors. He views the racially-ethnically diverse Clifton Hills community as a kind of test case for what urban living should be.

“There’s a lot of people that don’t want to move out to west Omaha,” he says. “They want to live close to downtown. There’s a lot of good neighborhoods here. We’re not just helping people get into houses but improving neighborhoods. It’s about people living together. The best neighborhoods are diverse — economically, culturally, ethnically. It’s whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians living together.”

Gesu uses lots where homes previously stood, filling vacant properties with single-family homes.

“We work with the city very closely,” says Wilmot. “They identify lots and they do some of the site work and stuff like that and then they give it to us.”

The land Gesu uses isn’t always ideal. Some lots are rough and hilly; others choked by overgrowth and refuse. He points to a lot just west of a newly completed Gesu house and says, “There was a house here that was torn down and instead of throwing the debris away they threw it in a hole and covered it up. Now we have to get rid of that junk and take down a lot of this overgrowth.”

“We have to deal with the land the way we get it, and it costs money to do all the cleanup and hauling.” And headaches come with construction. “It rains when you don’t want it to rain, it doesn’t rain when you want it to rain, all that stuff,” he says. “You’re at the mercy of the weather.”

Eventually, the hassles are worth it.

“When you get done closing that house and you tell someone like Eva (Powell), ‘Congratulations, you’re a homeowner,’ that’s a real key time, and a joyous time.”

With more resources, Gesu could expand its reach. “Right now this is the area we’re working in but we’re not locked in here,” he says. “But we are locked into north Omaha.”

 

 

Brother Mike Wilmot

 

 

Wilmot is by all accounts a mellower man than the owly disciplinarian who patrolled the sidelines and hallways at Prep, and who continues coaching part-time at Omaha Roncalli.

“Coaching is teaching,” he says.

He doesn’t do as much hands-on construction work as he did at the start, but he’s still every bit as committed to Gesu’ social justice mission.

“Everybody should have a decent place to live, but it’s not the case, at least for a lot of people it isn’t. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Visit http://www.gesuhousing.com or call 402-991-0138

Related articles

• Nancy Oberst, the Pied Piper of Liberty Elementary School (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Jesuit Photojournalist Don Doll of Creighton University Documents the Global Human Condition One Person, One Image at a Time (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Overarching Plan for North Omaha Development Now in Place, Disinvested Community Hopeful Long Promised Change Follows (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Native Omaha Days: A Black is Beautiful Celebration, Now, and All the Days Gone By (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Native Omahans Take Stock of the African-American Experience in Their Hometown (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Walking Behind to Freedom, A Musical Theater Examination of Race (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• North Omaha Champion Frank Brown Fights the Good Fight (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)

A Not-so-average Joe Tells His Holocaust Story of Survival

Another of my Holocaust stories is featured here. Joe Boin tells his story of defiance and survival.

A Not-so-average Joe Tells His Holocaust Story of Survival

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in the Jewish Press

 

 

RBJH activities director Maggie Conti spots Joe Boin tooling around the Home in his wheelchair decorated with the Husker flag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not as if Joe Boin hadn’t spoken about his Holocaust survivor tale before. He shared his story for the Shoah Visual History Project. He’s told it to school groups. He helped form Nebraska Survivors of the Holocaust to raise awareness and to commission public memorials as reminders of what happened.

But until now the Berlin, Germany native never laid out his story for publication. The time seemed right. The 87-year-old widower resides at the Rose Blumkin Home, where he scoots around in his motorized wheelchair with aplomb, American and Go Big Red flags affixed to the back. The amiable man makes friends easily and lives a credo of looking ahead, not back, but the searing memories never dim. Alone with his thoughts, his odyssey is always near.

His wife Lilly, a fellow survivor he met and married after the war, passed away 14 years ago. A Vienna, Austria native, she told her survivor tale in her 1989 book, My Story. Everyone close to her died in the Shoah.

Remarkably, Joe’s entire immediate family made it out alive. His parents are long gone and his only two siblings live in Israel. Palestine is where Joe, Lilly, his sisters and eventually his folks migrated after the war. Joe and Lilly’s two children, Heni Alice and Gustav Daniel, were born and raised in Israel. Joe suffered wounds in the fight for Israel’s independence. The couple’s children preceded them to America and Joe and Lilly followed in 1966.

After hopskotching the country to be near their children, Joe and Lilly made it to Nebraska in the late-1970s, residing first in Lincoln before settling in Omaha.

Today, Joe lives for his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He sees them when he can but they all live out of state. He’s spending Hanukkah and New Year in Phoenix with his daughter and her family.

Joe insists his story is nothing special. “I’m not too interesting,” he says through his thick accent. “I’m not important.” But Joe knows better. He knows that while every survivor story shares certain commonalities, each is its own wonder, even miracle, of fortitude and fate. He knows, too, it’s his obligation to bear witness.

Born Joachim Boin, he was the only son of Arthur and Bianca Boin, an educated Orthodox Jewish couple whose roots were in Germany and Poland, respectively. Joe’s father was a World War I veteran who fought in the German Army. He had his own accounting firm. Joe’s younger sisters, Ruth and Gisela, soon followed.

The family lived in a mixed district of Berlin where Jews and Christians lived and did business together. Next door was a Christian family, the Kruegers, who were old friends. They took an active hand in helping the Boins once the Nazi’s anti-Jewish laws took effect. They even ended up hiding Gisela during the war.

Before the rein of terror, Joe’s early childhood was idyllic. “It didn’t last long but it gave me a taste of what life could be or can be,” he said. “I had dreams but it became impossible for me to even follow them after Hitler came — that all went.”

Growing up in Berlin, Joe witnessed the fascist fervor in its huge rallies and parades that kindled the worst kind of nationalism. The mass public displays included virulent anti-Semetic screeds, all meant to sway the Aryan citizenry, to inflame hatred, to intimidate Jews and other supposed enemies of the state. The Nazi regime tapped the fears of a shaken people by offering security and scapegoats.

“Like everywhere in the world Germany was in a very deep depression, people were out of work and they had big families,” noted Joe, “and so Hitler came and said, ‘Well, if you elect me as your leader I will put bread on your table and I will make sure you have enough money to pay your bills and rent.’ Of course, everybody went for it.”

Back row: Joe, right, his nephew Yehuda Salomon, left, niece Rachel Kominsky, and sister, Ruth; front row: Arthur and Bianca Boin and a nephew between them, Jerusalem, 1953.

To the Christian majority Hitler appealed to widespread prejudice in blaming the Jews for Germany’s decline since World War I. For most Jews, the rhetoric and restrictions aimed at them seemed nothing they hadn’t seen or heard before.

“In the very beginning when he was elected he organized the political police and then when people found out what really was going to happen it was too late, they couldn’t do much about it,” said Joe.

A strapping, athletic young man, Joe competed as an elite Maccabi club tennis player, boxer and gymnast, yet Jews like him were ostracized from German national teams and games by the Nazi regime’s racial policies. This exclusion was a bitter pill to swallow for Jewish athletes when Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics.

“It was pretty painful, I’ll tell you that.”

Amid unprecedented propaganda and pageantry the Nazis attempted to gloss over their campaign of hate against Jews and while some observers saw through the facade most of the world did not. As far back as the Berlin Olympics, Joe’s family was warned of the impending danger facing them.

“In 1936 my mother’s brother, who lived in Berlin, too, came to my dad and said, ‘Arthur, now is the time to leave this country.’ My dad looked at him and said, ‘I was in World War I, I pay my taxes, I have a legitimate business, why should I leave?’ If anybody had any idea what was going to happen, they would have left,” said Joe, but the Boins like most people could not conceive that what seemed another pogrom would become the systematic genocide known as The Final Solution.

Until the fall of 1938 things were tolerable. Jews couldn’t go where and when they pleased as easily as they once could, owing to growing restrictions on their movements and activities, but they didn’t fear for their safety. Clearly, though, life was far from normal and things were getting more tense. Roving gangs of Nazi Brown Shirts were becoming a menace and the mere fact of being a Jew, identified by a Yellow Star, made you a target of these thugs.

The Kruegers, the Christian family who lived next door to the Boins, became a lifeline. “Our neighbors were very nice people and they supplied us with some food and so on, sometimes without taking payment, so that we could live a little,” said Joe.

When he was 15 he and his family moved to a town, Cottbus, where Joe’s father felt they would be more insulated from the Nazi grip. They did find there some kind Christians who lent aid just as the Kruegers had.

“Like everywhere else there were wonderful people that were kind to Jews, that tried to help,” said Joe.

But there ultimately was no escaping the threat. Things took a turn for the worse on Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938. Nazi goons came to the Boin home to take Joe and his father away to the town square where other Jewish residents had been rounded up and their homes and businesses vandalized.

“They took us to a marketplace where they had us surrounded by Nazis and by private citizens and they put dogs on one side and they gave us a spoon and we had to pick up the crap. We got beaten pretty bad. A lot of people got killed there, too. They put bodies in the synagogue and afterwards they burned it.”

 

 

Lilly and Joe Boin and their children, Gustav Daniel and Heni and a neighborhood child in Tiberias, 1953

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Joe, the nightmarish incident marked the end of his boyhood innocence and the start of a cruel new reality based on instinct, chance and survival.

“My life as a child (ended). I had two years of high school before Hitler kicked us out.” From then on out, life was a harrowing affair. “We were treated like animals, not as human beings, we had to walk on the street, we couldn’t walk on the sidewalks, we couldn’t go into certain stores.”

More and more, Jews found themselves targeted, isolated, marginalized. Then, in 1939, the year Germany invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia and instigated World War II, the family was forcibly split up. A band of Nazis came to the Boin home, this time demanding only Joe come with them. He described what happened:

“At midnight they knocked on our door, shouting, ‘We want your boy Joachim.’ I came to the door and asked, ‘What do you want?’ ‘We have come for you,’ they said, and they grabbed me and hit me and put me on a truck. ‘Where are we going; do I have to take something?’ ‘No, where we’re going you don’t need nothing.’”

The ominous reply presaged the unfolding horror of the next six years, a black time when he and his family were separated from everything they knew, including each other, as each endured his or her own survival odyssey. Joe, his father, his mother and his sister Ruth all ended up in either labor or death camps.

Only his baby sister Gisela was spared. She was hidden by the Kruegers in the Christian family’s Berlin home, where for three-and-a-half years she passed a secreted-away life that if discovered would have meant certain death for her and her benefactors.

“My dad always said to them (the Kruegers), ‘You know, if the authorities find out they’re going to kill you too,’ and they said, ‘We are responsible to God, not to him (Hitler), and we feel if there’s any way to help somebody and to do something that prevents anybody from getting killed, we do it.’”

This courageous attitude struck a chord in Joe, who has tried living up to the kindnesses people bestowed on him and his family.

“It’s amazing in a situation like this that you find people that have a different way of thinking and they feel it’s immoral for others to be killed or whatever just because they’re Jewish. People helped even though they knew if they got caught they would get shot. Despite the risk, they said, ‘No, we have a responsibility to God, but not to Mr. Hitler, and whatever happens, happens,’ and that’s why quite a few Jewish people had a chance to live.”

From the time Joe was taken away in the middle of the night to the war’s end, six years passed before he was reunited with his family. He would survive six camps in four countries, counting the displaced persons and refugee camps he ended up in after the war, before the ordeal was over.

“The first camp I was in was Sachsenhausen — it was a concentration camp close to Berlin where all kinds of political prisoners, religious people were together, gypsies too. Just a very, very interesting group of people, and then from there they distributed them to the other camps.”

He didn’t know anyone at Sachsenhausen.

“I didn’t want to know anybody because in a situation like this it’s very difficult to trust people you don’t know. Sometimes you had to, but unfortunately you had a lot of Jewish people who tried to inform the Nazis of what was going on, hoping they might have a better life, which didn’t happen.”

Upon his arrival, Joe was consumed with anger over the injustice of it all.

“I was 17-years-old and the only crime I’d committed was I was born to a Jewish mother. That’s why I could never understand why I had to go through all this. I wasn’t thinking about anything else but why I’m here. I didn’t steal anything, I didn’t murder anyone — why am I here, what’s the reason? Why couldn’t I get my education so I could become somebody and get further on in life later? Why? — because I was Jewish. I could not get over that.”

Then some things happened those first 24 hours in camp to change his outlook.

“I was so mad that when we came in the barracks in the evening I said, ‘I think if I ever by any chance come out of this place I will kill every German that comes in my way.’ Somebody tapped me on my shoulder and said, ‘No my son, if you do this you’re not any better than the Nazis.’” It started him thinking.

“The next morning we had to stand in a roll call and an elderly man fell down and, of course, I bent down trying to help him and one soldier came and shoved this rifle in my back and so I fell down, too. We were carried into the barracks and the older prisoners told me, ‘If you want to stay alive you don’t see anything around you.’ Well I was a person that wanted to see what life was all about and I was trying to live a little longer if I could, and so I followed this advice.”

Joe and Heni ride a donkey in Ein Kerem, 1953.

Joe was also befriended by an elderly Catholic priest whose selfless example made a big impact on him. When the meager bread ration was given out, Joe said, the old priest gave away his portion to Joe and other young people. “He told us, ‘You need it more than I do, I have nothing to look forward to, it’s God’s will.’ It taught me there are people who really care for other people.”

After two years at Sachsenhausen Joe was transported to Buchenwald in 1941.

“Buchenwald was horrible for me because I was delegated to be on the railroad platform as trains came in from Holland and Belgium. I would pick up the suitcases and possessions people carried. The hardest thing for me was seeing women come with little children in their arms and the children, some not even a year old, were taken away and thrown on the platform. Some guards did much more worse — they used them as target practice. I still have nightmares about this.”

It took all of Joe’s self-discipline to not respond, not intervene, not retaliate.

“I was strong enough I could probably have killed some guards but that wouldn’t do me any good because two minutes later people would be shot on the spot. It doesn’t help me or nobody else either. It was a hard decision to make but unfortunately that’s the way it worked.”

Living conditions were abysmal in every concentration camp, but he said the treatment by the Buchenwald guards was particularly harsh.

“The guys that watched us were much more brutal in Buchenwald than they were in Sachsenhausen. They got a bottle of whiskey in the morning to drink to get them in the mood of tormenting us. They were specially trained, they had only one thing in mind, make sure the people don’t get out of here alive.”

As part of the Nazi program of humiliating prisoners, he said, inmates were given absurd tasks meant to break their mind and spirit.

“We had to do idiotic things, like they had a room that needed to be cleaned and they give us a toothbrush to clean the walls. It made you feel degraded. This is the evil of the world — to not treat us like human beings. They didn’t want you to feel as a human being anymore — well, they didn’t have any luck with me.”

Death, hunger, toil and beatings became every day occurrences.

“In our barracks we had bunk beds, with maybe four or five people laying there in a clump, and very often when you woke up in the morning somebody was dead. It took me a long time to get over those deaths,” he said.

Hardening himself to his reality became a necessary thing.

“I always thought a little bit different — that I’m in a situation where I have to do certain things and I’m looking for a loophole maybe somewhere to improve my situation. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. I was able to be pretty open with the people that were surrounding me in trying to explain how important it was for our little group here to hold together and not go to the Nazis, that we had to stick together and try to improve our lives — that was the only way to make it happen. Some of them did and some of them didn’t.

“Some didn’t have the will (to live) anymore. One guy told me, ‘What difference does it make?’ Some people had a little bit of sense left. I had the will to live. I prayed to God, ‘I know if you want you will give me the strength to fight back in a way to keep my mouth shut when I should,’ instead of saying something that would give them the opportunity to beat me or to restrict food from me.”

 

 

Joe visits his sisters, Gisella, left, and Ruth in Netanya, Israel, in 1984.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That resolve and restraint, he said, “was not very easy because when you work hard 10-12 hours a day with nothing to eat your mind is mush. I tried to get rest as much as I could because I knew that’s what I needed. Somehow I still kept on going.”

He kept alert for work details that might provide a scrap more food or be out of harm’s way. “If somebody was really weak I jumped in and told them, ‘I’ll do it.’” That may have saved his life when he got to Auschwitz-Birkenau in late ’44.

“I ended up in Auschwitz,” whose dark reputation, he said, preceded it — “somehow it went from camp to camp what happened there. I knew if I would stay there that would be it. My strength was down, we were beaten every day, we had no good food, we had to work. I wasn’t Superman, I just was a simple human being who can take only so much. I was lucky to get out of there.”

It just so happened a work detail was formed and Joe was in the right place at the right time to be assigned it. “I was there three weeks and then some officer came and he saw me and put me to work in the stone quarries on the Polish-German border, near Hindenburg. There was a big forest around us. We slept in tents.”

In early 1945 the quarry camp came under bombardment from advancing Russian forces and Joe and some fellow prisoners used the cover of chaos to flee.

“There were about 10 of us and we said, ‘Let’s go, no matter what.’ We escaped in the big forest there. Some of us were pretty weak. We were afraid the guards might set their dogs on us, so we tried to put as much distance between us and them, but most of the guards had fled    — they didn’t want to get in the Russians’ hands.”

Ruth tends the gravesites of their parents, Arthur and Bianca Boin, Netanya, 1978.

After foraging on the road for six or seven days Joe and his mates were liberated by Russian Army troops. “We were lucky,” he said, “there was a Jewish major in their ranks who spoke Yiddish and he warned us not to eat the uncooked bacon the Russians spread out to feed us. He said after what we’d been through it would kill us.”

The major didn’t warn about the bottled drinks the Russians offered.

“It looked like water to me, I was so thirsty, so I drank and I almost died — it was 100 percent vodka,” said Joe, who can smile about it now.

Joe weighed 82 pounds when rescued. He spent two months in a Russian military hospital. Once he regained his strength, he made his way to Holland, mostly by hitching rides with G.I. transports. His family had agreed to meet there if they were ever separated during the war. His mother’s brother had fled there. He hoped his family had survived but he had no real expectation of seeing them again.

Amazingly, he said, “we all came out of it. We were lucky. Slowly but surely everybody made their way to Holland.” His mother had survived as a laundress for the German military, his father escaped a camp before being pressed into duty making military roads, Ruth worked in a labor munitions camp and Gisela remained hidden.

The Boins spent the next year in a D.P. camp, where Joe met the woman who became his wife, the former Lilly Engelmann Margulies. She was a survivor of Theresienstadt (Terezin). Having lost her husband, parents and siblings, Lilly was all alone and the Boins became her protectors and friends. There was a considerable age difference between Joe and Lilly but the attraction was mutual.

“We liked each other. Then, of course, I asked her one day ‘will you marry me?’ and she looked at me and said, ‘no,’ and I didn’t take no for an answer, I wanted an explanation. So she told me, ‘Well, I’m 14 years older than you,’ and I said, ‘So what?’ So we got married in Amsterdam and we were married 50 years.”

With no prospects or permits for starting a new life in war-ravaged Europe, the couple, along with Ruth and Gisela, embarked on an epic journey to reach the promised land of Palestine. Traveling with no visas, they made their way to France and Belgium.

Out on the Mediterranean Sea they risked being turned back by authorities or being turned in by mercenaries, but enough angels helped their cause. Making the trip more hazardous was Lilly’s pregnancy. They arrived in Haifa on a Turkish coal boat in 1946. Among the early Holocaust survivors in Palestine, their testimony of the genocide they witnessed fell on deaf ears at first.

“When we first went to Israel, our own people didn’t believe us. They said, ‘Oh you just want sympathy,’ until some of their relatives came and told them. It’s something people couldn’t imagine, that human beings can do this to other human beings, and to children.”

Like many survivors Joe was angry the world largely turned a blind eye to the plight of millions. He said while some lost their faith, he did not.

“Many people said, ‘Where was God? I don’t believe in God anymore.’ That’s your privilege, but let me tell you something, it had nothing to do with God — people are the ones who did it, you can’t blame everything on God. What happened, happened, I cannot repair it, I have to go with what I have now. You have to live with it and you have to make the best you can to keep on living.”

He joined the Israeli Army and was shot in the stomach during a rescue mission. A doctor told Lilly he wouldn’t make it.

“Here I am,” said Joe, the perpetual survivor. He worked odd jobs overseas. In the U.S. he was a botanical gardens curator before going into business as a locksmith. His picks can open anything but safes.

His wife Lilly died in 1995 after a long illness that saw him care for her at home. “I thought my life came to an end,” he said, “but there’s a reason for everything. I never want anybody to feel sorry for me. I’m grateful for what I have.”

He’s dismayed atrocities still go on around the world. “People killing in the name of I don’t know what. How is that possible? Why didn’t people learn and see what comes out of this? You have to sit down with people and talk to them — there always is a way if you have the will to do it.”

 

 

Joe’s sister Ruth, right, visits Joe and Lilly Boin in Omaha in 1991; they’re pictured in front of the newly opened Beth El Synagogue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A supporter of Omaha’s TriFaith Initiative, Joe counts Christians and Muslims among his friends and he believes the more interfaith, multicultural dialogue there is, the less likely it is genocide will occur. He does not allow his survivor past to define him but instead uses the experience to practice and preach tolerance.

“You know, the memories are fading away, but this is something that’s inside you. I will never forget what happened, but I am a person that looks forward, I don’t want to look back. I learned not to hate anymore. It gives me more of a reason to try to see that other people are treated like human beings,” he said.

“Try to help whoever you can because you never know – someday you might need help and they will help you. I love life, I love people. I believe in live-and-let-live. Enjoy life as much as you can and do good as much as you can. If you’re a good person and trying to live in the world you have to respect other people’s beliefs, and I try to do that.”

The Kripke Library’s copy of Lilly’s book contains an inscription Joe could have written hmself: “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.”

He’s written his own Holocaust reflections, including a prayer:

“I am thankful that I could see life from every angle. I learned how to be rich and how to be poor, how to give orders and how to take orders, how to live in a big family with a lot of friends and how it is to be completely alone. I learned to appreciate health, so I could endure pain. I met the ugly, so I was able to enjoy the beauty. I know how to live in a mansion, but be content to live in a bathroom … to own a Mercedes and to walk barefoot the dusty, stony road. When I was in prison I realized the value of freedom …

“I have met people who found consolation. In helping those who could not help themselves they had put their own life in danger…I saw goodness at its best and bestiality at its worst … I got the taste of almost unbearable disaster and I was blessed to have again a wonderful family, who brought so much happiness into my life … Thank you God … for all the experiences I had in two ways of life.”

Related articles

• Holocaust exhibit opens in Kiev (sfgate.com)
• In Ukraine the Holocaust is still being denied | Tom Gross (guardian.co.uk)
• Israeli Holocaust survivor leader Noach Flug dies (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• What groups did the Nazi target during the holocaust (wiki.answers.com)
• Today In History, the Nazi’s Invaded Poland: Naomi Wolf ” they did this in Germany…” (pornalysis.wordpress.com)

Nancy Oberst, the Pied Piper of Liberty Elementary School

Nancy Oberst is one of those high energy, positive vibe individuals you can’t help but feel better for meeting or knowing, and that’s why it was a distinct pleasure working on two stories about her and her then work as principal at Liberty Elementary School in Omaha. This article for Medium Magazine appeared only months after the school was launched downtown in a former bus barn and still months away from moving into its then under construction dedicated school building down the street. The other piece about Nancy and Liberty appeared shortly after the new school building was complete and Nancy, her staff, and students finally took possession of a building they could call their own. The same enthusiasm and dedication I found the first time was evident when I caught up with her that second time. Nancy’s no longer at Liberty but the school she helped form and lead is still going strong. She and her husband Matt are living in the Washington D.C. area now, but their connection to this place remains strong, just as it does for their famous son, indie rock and Saddle Creek Records star Conor Oberst.

 

 

Nancy Oberst

 

 

Nancy Oberst, the Pied Piper of Liberty Elementary School

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in Medium Magazine

 

Inner city public schools face a litany of challenges that cry out for dynamic, caring leaders willing to defy the low expectations set for their at-risk students. While Liberty Elementary School in downtown Omaha is better off than many of its counterparts, principal Nancy Oberst finds many issues to tackle there in her ebullient, high-energy, never-say-die style.

“Always looking for an angle” to give her fledgling, first-year school’s 400 largely disadvantaged students “a leg up,” she variously charms, prods, lobbies and cajoles “to level the playing field for our kids.”

“She is an advocate for her children like no one I’ve ever seen. I mean, if she wants something she thinks is best for the kids, she will get it. She is a woman of vision. She just really knows what she wants and she goes after it,” says Linda Daly, a Liberty reading-ESL specialist who followed Oberst from nearby Jackson Academy.

The 49-year-old Oberst is intent on making Liberty and the adjacent Drake Court, an historic apartment complex newly restored and occupied, the linchpin of an emerging 20th Street corridor some are dubbing Children’s Row. Liberty, the Omaha Children’s Museum, the YMCA and the Omaha Theater Company for Young People occupy a four-block strip from Leavenworth to Farnam. “We’re not only part of a new school,” Oberst says, “we’re part of a new community. That’s a big draw for us and a positive spin for the neighborhood. There’s a ripple effect going on with Liberty and Drake Court in terms of adding some stability to the area.”

For Oberst and staff, Liberty is not an assignment, but a mission. Temporarily housed in a renovated former bus barn while awaiting completion of a new three-story building down the street, Liberty serves a racially diverse, working-class student body drawn from downtown’s south side, an area once home to Italian immigrants and now a haven for Latino emigres.

An honor roll listing on a school bulletin board reveals Liberty’s ethnic flavor. Aside from Anglo names like Ruth, Sarah, Adam, Christa, Jenny and Tyler, most names, like Cesar, Wambli, Parisian, Andres, Misael, Juan, Indira, Jesus, Ebony, Shaquia, Dancingmoon, Hynalem and Hoa, reflect the large Latino presence and smaller black, Native American, African, Asian contingents. Oberst, the embodiment of Lady Liberty that stirs this melting pot, says, “There’s a beauty and a richness about a very urban group of kids.”

Alley-Poyner Architects-designed the open floor adaptation for the school’s warehouse setting, whose massive skylight and tall banks of windows bathe the place in golden light and whose cavernous spaces resonate with the sound of youthful voices. As many newly arrived students do not speak English, Liberty makes language arts and literacy its overriding emphasis, piloting the federally-funded Guided Reading program and employing ESL specialists in every classroom. Most staffers and paraprofessionals, like Legna Colon, are bilingual. Liberty also holds adult English classes. Children and families requiring extra support find in Oberst and Liberty a champion and resource center, respectively, attuned to their needs.

 

 

The old bus barn that served as Liberty’s first home

 

 

“Despite all the charges we have the one thing we are focusing on here is reading,” Oberst says, “because we believe reading is the key. If you can learn to read, math and science isn’t going to be that tough for you. We’re allowed to take the monies we get and buy supplemental books and resources that we feel as a school are going to make the difference with our kids, all the while knowing the goal is to catch up and be where everyone else is. I guess we feel a sense of urgency about what we’re doing. The needs are great.”

She knows the territory well from canvassing the neighborhood last summer, visiting many families’ homes, and from growing up in a working-class Omaha family herself. “We need to help children where the gap is wide and is getting wider. That’s why families come here (from Mexico, El Salvador) — to have a piece of the pie — and to invest in something for the future. That really is what America has been about. We want kids to feel their life is like everyone else’s and that there’s nothing that should get in the way. That’s really what public education promises.” Like the school’s namesake.

Getting past the barriers that cultural-language differences can pose is a matter of building trust. That’s why Oberst routinely has teams of educators make home visits and ensures that all school correspondence is printed in English and Spanish. She also sets a welcoming tone by insisting staff greet parents, holding informal coffees with moms and dads, inviting families to come to events at school — from community forums to special celebrations, like Cinco De Mayo — and encouraging staff to attend kids’ outside activities and even having kids over to their homes.

“It boils down to — How do you make people comfortable? Language is the key,” she says. “To engage people on their own terms and their own turf shows goodwill, respect and a real personalness. It heightens parents’ knowledge that we care and we want them to participate. We want parents to know they are valuable in this.”

Oberst, who takes predawn power walks to stay fit, is seemingly always on the move at Liberty. She hustles greeting the early-bird arrivals at first light and seeing-off the last stragglers at night. She’s outside, even in bad weather, supervising dismissal. She pops inside classrooms to casually survey things or to do formal observations. She’s a whirling-dervish presence at breakfast and lunchtime, seating kids, intervening in conflicts, confiscating contraband and picking up spills.

Displaying a warm paternal demeanor with kids, she makes a point of talking to them about their schoolwork and family. A daily ritual finds kids gathered around a mounted aerial photo of the Liberty hood, which Oberst turns into a lesson by having students identify their homes and area landmarks. Wherever she goes, whether eating with the kitchen staff or chatting-up teachers in the faculty lounge or sitting-in on meetings with the construction gang, she works her mojo as a cool schoolmarm for the new millennium who is down with today’s Generation Z hip-hopese. After all, one of her and husband Matt’s three sons is indie-rock musician Conor Oberst (known as Bright Eyes), who admires his mom’s compassion.

“She loves those kids so much. She wants to take care of them. She spent a good portion of her childhood not having very much, so she understands what it means to not have everything you need,” Conor explains. “Over the years there’s been kids she’s had special relationships with that she’s taken under her wing and had hang out with our family. She obviously has a great heart. She inspires me.”

Complicating the task of connecting with kids is the high mobility of families in the Liberty district — a mixed use ward of commercial-residential rental properties — that results in high student turnover. “Because we realize we’re not going to have them very long, we have to figure out ways to make kids feel welcome, comfortable and engaged,” she says. “We have to stay focused and be able, for however many days we have them, to make an impact.”

Oberst, who taught special ed before joining the administration ranks, makes clear just how much of a gap her students must overcome. “We don’t think many of our children have Internet access or even a computer or books in their home. For a lot of our kids we are their medical provider because families can’t afford a physician or lack health coverage. We’ve paid rent and utility bills and we’ve bought food for families in real desperate need.” Like at Jackson, Oberst has formed an emergency supplies cache to provide indigent families with everything from food and clothes to personal hygiene items. Liberty also acts as a referral center by directing families to social relief agencies.

Whatever obstacles kids face, Oberst refuses to lower student achievement goals because she feels that would send the wrong message.

“We can’t make excuses. We can’t say, Oh, this must be the reason why they can’t achieve. All that does is put people down and not encourage them to be what they can be. All of us have to believe in high expectations for kids” she says. “We need to always stay focused on what our real mission is and that is to make our kids competitive — to win as many awards as other kids. Recently, we took six children to the city-wide spelling bee and our children did very well. Two of them made it to the state competition. It’s all about where we think we can be. That we can have kids as competitive and that read as well as other kids. Our counselors tell them, ‘So what if English is not your first language? Don’t say you can’t, honey, look at what you can do — you’re speaking two languages. That’s even better…you’re even brighter.’”

 

 

The new Liberty

 

 

Attitude is everything with Oberst, who according to staffer Linda Daly infuses a “we-will-get-it-done” mantra at the school.

“She has such a positive outlook,” Daly says. “If you doubt you can do something she asks you to do, she’ll say, ‘Of course you can do that.’ Like anything else, there’s been growing pains, but Nancy will make it happen here, plain and simple.”

Oberst’s infectious enthusiasm, combined with her talent for networking, promoting and relationship-building, has brought in many benefactors, partners and extras for the school in terms of dollars, programs, in-kind services, supplies and opportunities. Her track record for eliciting support and for launching new schools in inner city environs, as she did at Jackson, is what led Omaha Public Schools Superintendent John Mackiel to tab her for Liberty.

“Her expertise in working with children and families of diverse backgrounds and educational needs, her experience in starting up new schools and her passion and love for creating school-community partnerships is what made her an excellent candidate,” Mackiel says. Then there is the long-stated desire of Oberst, who enjoys the process of “creating a school culture” from the ground up, “to be in an urban setting. That’s where I want to be. I’m a sort of in-the-trenches person.”

Typical of her pro activeness, she turned what could have been a negative at Liberty, namely the lack of a gym and stage, into a positive by forging ties with the YMCA and the Omaha Theater Company for Young People that allows students to access those facilities for recreation and drama.

With Liberty located amid a rough business district trafficked by street denizens and in what has become a major construction zone between the ongoing Drake Court renovation and work on the new school, safety issues have surfaced. She has largely quelled those concerns by working with the southeast Omaha police precinct and neighborhood associations to increase cop and adult safety patrols. As the new school begins taking shape, she intends on making the construction site an educational experience by leading groups of kids, in hard hats, to view the progress of Liberty’s future home.

Demographically-speaking, the future is now at Liberty, where diversity is not a buzz word but a simple reality. A tour is a multicultural immersion into an American microcosm — with brown, black, yellow and white faces commingling, colorful folk art hanging and Spanish and English phrases given life through singing, speaking and printing. Oberst embraces the heady brew of this ethnic stew. “I think it makes us all more worldly, more global, more able to really perceive the world as it is,” she says, “and to me that adds such richness and weaves such broader thought. We become bigger people. And I think that’s why diversity is a great experience for children to have. They learn to appreciate the differences in people.”

The next big thing for Liberty is the March 2004 opening of its new 600-plus student capacity building. In the neat symmetry of an old neighborhood reinventing itself, the warehouse Liberty occupies could see reuse as an arts-media center, the Drake Court may spur area renewal and the school should be an anchor of hope and a catalyst for change.

Oberst envisions attracting more students of middle-class parents, including those working downtown, thus bringing more economic diversity to the mix. “There’s a lot of excitement about the new building,” she says. “It will be more convenient than what we have here, but I think convenience is overrated, personally. It’s sort of fun to problem-solve.”

Always one to jones for challenges, she expects more as more students-in-need enroll. Despite “the great needs,” she says, “there’s also great joy” at Liberty. “Everyone just kind of gets pulled in.” Like the staffer who paid for a Statue of Liberty replica mounted on a pedestal outside the main offices. A fitting symbol for a school providing opportunity and for a headmistress embodying Lady Liberty herself.

Related articles

• Coming to America: The Immigrant-Refugee Mosaic Unfolds in New Ways and in Old Ways In Omaha (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Impressions of Education (writeami.wordpress.com)

After Night of Violence, Downtown Coffee Shop Owner Ponders Venue’s Future

David Hall is a born entrepreneur, and if savvy instincts and good intentions mean anything then his newT-shirt design and screen printing  business SweeTees should flourish. But the cold reality of business doesn’t much care about whether one’s heart is in the right place or not. The following short piece I did about Hall for The Reader (www.thereader.com) appeared not long after a senseless act of gun play disrupted his previous venture, Terri Lynn’s Coffee Shop, injuring several and scaring many more, and not long before business fell off so badly that he was forced to close. Terri Lynn was his late sister, who herself fell victim to gun violence. The T in his new SweeTees is for her. In addition to his sisters, Hall’s lost others close to him as well to reckless gun violence. He’s trying to do what he can to succeed while paying homage to Terry and giving young black men in the community a positive role model to follow. I am not alone in wishing him well.

 

 

David Hall

 

After Night of Violence, Downtown Coffee Shop Owner Ponders Venue’s Future

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

Terri Lynn’s Coffee Shop attracted a corps of regulars to its inviting 1618 Harney Street digs before an act of violence changed things. Now, business has slowed to a crawl and owner David Hall is left wondering if the venue, named for his late sister and meant as a safe haven for inner city teens and young adults, can last.

It all went down the evening of Friday, May 13, when a private graduation party turned real life fright night. About 60 people were there when a fight erupted inside. Hall, security staff and chaperones removed the troublemakers and the party resumed. Later, gun shots fired from outside riddled the place. In the ensuing chaos, eight people were injured. One was shot. Some $2,000 in damage was done to the shop, whose register was looted. A week later, an arrest was made and the incident became another statistic in Omaha’s black-on-black crime wave.

Despite taking precautions, Hall feels he was “naive” not requiring a “mandatory guest list. The kids that caused the trouble just slid in,” he said.

The events shook Hall to his core. He couldn’t sleep that night. He couldn’t bring himself to visit the shop that weekend. He contemplated closing for good.

“I felt like a ton of rocks got dropped on me, man. I was so discouraged,” he said. “Then I prayed on it and went to church and it felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. Everybody came up and they hugged me. I thought they were going to blame me more than anything. But my pastor and my community told me, ‘Don’t quit.’ That’s what made me not give up. They wouldn’t let me quit if I wanted to.”

Besides, he said, “Something is telling me, Why penalize all the good kids that come in here for the acts of a few?” Terri Lynn’s had become a live music and dancing hot spot. Hall said there’d been no serious problems until the shooting. He sees what happened as part of a larger, city-wide problem with youth violence.

He has reacted strongly to the shooting because it struck so close to home. His only sibling, Terri Lynn Hall, was fatally shot with her boyfriend in 1994. That same year alone, Hall said, he lost five friends to gun violence. This most recent event was a slap in the face to a man trying to “be part of my community.” The negative pub hurts a fragile business that’s been at its present location just since last fall. He said he faces enough hurdles already as a black small business owner in a white district. Add the fact he’s one part of an interracial couple — his wife Carol is white — and he feels things are stacked against him in a town obsessed with race.

Although an aberration at what’s been a calm spot, he’s afraid the incident brands his place a hazard in the public’s mind.

“I’m a young black dude, man, and it’s hard to beat some of the stereotypes thrown my way. I’m already one of the few minority owners downtown. I didn’t know if people were going to see through all of that — a black on black crime — and be open-minded to what I’m trying to do here,” said Hall, an Omaha native and nephew of Charles Hall, proprietor of North O’s now defunct Fair Deal Cafe.

In an effort to make sense of the violence and to dispel perceptions about Terri Lynn’s as a dangerous place, Hall held “an old fashioned town meeting” there on May 28. The event offered an open forum to discuss the violence and sought donations to help Hall recoup his losses and to pay medical bills of those injured in the melee. Less than two dozen people attended — most of them family and friends. He was discouraged, but he’s not ready to give up on his dream yet.

“I talked to the police and city, and they don’t want me to quit. They want a place for young people to go. They don’t want them to run the streets. That’s what I wish I would of had. That’s what I wish my sister would of had,” said Hall, who plans hiring uniformed officers at parties and installing more surveillance cameras.

“Since Terri passed, I’ve always tried to have a way for her to live on through my life. This is my passion. This is what I want. But as much as I want to be here and to make this work, it’s about dollars and cents now. We were already just getting along, but since reopening May 18 it’s been slow. I’ve refunded six parties we booked. If we don’t have the public coming here supporting the cause, we can’t make it. We’ll remain open as long as we can afford to. I’ve got my rent paid for June, so we’re good for 30 more days. Check back with me then.”

Related articles

• Native Omaha Days: A Black is Beautiful Celebration, Now, and All the Days Gone By (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Native Omahans Take Stock of the African-American Experience in Their Hometown (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Miss Leola Says Goodbye (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Chef Mike Does a Rebirth at the Community Cafe (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Big Bad Buddy Miles (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Luigi’s Legacy, The Late Omaha Jazz Artist Luigi Waites Fondly Remembered (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Arno Lucas, Serious Sidekick (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)