community Archives

Becky Boesen

By Asha Timperley

Becky Boesen was teased as a kid.

It wasn’t because she had braces or glasses – she was teased because of her vocabulary.

At the age of 7, Becky described jelly sandals as “superficial” and used all sorts of big words that her peers either didn’t understand or had never heard.

When Becky thinks back to this fact, it makes her laugh, even though at the time all she wanted to do was fit in. But that’s the beauty of her story, she said, and in many ways she’s still that goofy 7-year-old with a big vocabulary and even bigger dreams.

Becky grew up in a western Nebraska home where they watched the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet on family movie night and argued about politics for the fun of it. Her parents were big on letting Becky draw her own conclusions and defend her opinions. This kind of environment made Becky’s creatively-geared mind explode with possibilities, but it also set her apart from the other kids.

When she wasn’t in school, she was either writing or working at the restaurant that her mom managed. As a 9-year-old, Becky said she learned a lot about human nature while she dipped onion rings and cleared tables.

She’d listen to couples fight, friends catch up and families wrangle their kids.

“That part of the country isn’t necessarily diverse, but the stories are,” she said. “It was like I was watching a movie or a play, and soon I started to think about the people I encountered as characters.”

In junior high and high school, Becky’s family moved from Nebraska to the Ozarks and then back to Nebraska. As her parents dug into their respective jobs, Becky was left with a lot of alone time. She found that writing became the way she tried to understand her new home, school and life.

She would write anything from poems and lyrics to fictional stories to help express herself. It was a way she could get out her teenage angst without having to edit or explain herself to others.

It was during high school that Becky realized her love of language, writing and stories were pointing her toward theatre. She had a teacher who noticed her talents and encouraged her to pursue acting in college, but the thought of making a hobby into a career seemed silly and a little scary.

Becky always figured she’d be a lawyer or politician, so the thought of something so different was overwhelming. Plus, she wasn’t sure how her parents would take the news. While they had never discouraged her creativity, majoring in theatre didn’t fit their idea of a viable career path.

As graduation got closer, the conversations about college grew more intense and involved a lot of door slamming and tears on Becky’s part. The conversation finally ended with her parents giving their blessing for her to pursue theatre and she decided to attend UNL.

During her first semester, Becky quickly found her “tribe.” She loved the fact that there were other word nerds and theatre geeks out there, and she suddenly didn’t feel so alone. The next four years of her life were full of learning and exploration. She got hooked on play writing and always seemed to be working on a new project or trying to figure out how to get her latest work produced.

But no sooner had she jumped in to her degree that her time at UNL came to an end. Becky quickly realized that post-college life didn’t feel as safe as she expected, and she began questioning her work. The pressure of making the ‘right’ decisions led her back to a small town in Nebraska where she stopped writing and eventually settled down and started a family.

She had a good life and was thankful for her family, but things felt off. Becky struggled with depression and after a few years she realized she needed to move back to Lincoln and pursue her passions.

Since returning to Lincoln, Becky’s story has been a roller coaster of jobs, emotions, relationships and goals. She’s experienced loss up close, she’s come to understand the value of family and to appreciate her community.

At the age of 35, Becky said she finally understood how to connect her purpose and passion in a way that was meaningful. She began to write and produce plays with themes related to poverty, family and loss. She began to see her writing as more than just her way to breathe, but as a way to say something, give back and create dialogue in the community.

These days, Becky vacillates between writing, producing and working out the logistics for her business, being the executive director for the Flatwater Shakespeare Company and cultivating relationships with other creatives. She works a lot of long hours and usually doesn’t sleep more than 5 hours a night – mostly because her brain is buzzing with new ideas.

And yet, this chaotic schedule doesn’t seem to bother Becky. It’s what makes her feel alive, what gives life to the rest of her world and what really saved her life. Theatre was her cure for loneliness, and it’s become a way that she can reach back into her community and understand her own story.

The theatre is her safe place. Not because it’s where she feels comfortable, but because it’s where she feels most vulnerable. It’s where she can express her truest self, the part of her self she had a hard time tapping into, but the person she knows she is made to be and the story she is meant to live out.

July 11, 2017

Love7

Blaine Brown

By Asha Timperley

Blaine Brown grew up in a small town.

A town so small that his high school doesn’t even exist anymore, and Blaine said he has a few memories he wish didn’t exist either.

Blaine’s story is a mashup of challenging circumstances, tough choices and the redemptive power of hard work. It’s a story that Blaine said he wants to tell, because he said no one should ever let their past define their future.

As a kid, Blaine grew up living between homes. His parents divorced when he was in 4th grade and he and his siblings alternated between his mom, dad and various family members. His dad and brother were in and out of jail with drug and alcohol addictions and Blaine’s only constants in life were school and work.

At school, he was often made fun of for his hand-me-down clothes and messy family life. But work was where he could put his head down and get tasks done. In 6th grade he started working for his uncle’s cable company. He gave all of his earnings back to his mom to help with bills and groceries.

As Blaine got older he realized that there was one thing about school that really excited him – sports. He wasn’t always the most skilled and he rarely had all of the right gear, but he always outworked everyone on the team. Blaine excelled at basketball and football and was quickly noticed and encouraged by his coaches, teachers and the community.

During his freshman year in high school he made the varsity basketball team. It was a huge honor and Blaine could finally stick out for reasons beyond his socioeconomic status. But as he was gearing up for his first game, he realized that he wouldn’t be able to afford the pair of shoes that the rest of the team was wearing.

He was embarrassed, but tried to pretend like it wasn’t a big deal. The next day he opened his locker and found a pair of the team shoes in his locker.

Blaine said he still doesn’t know who put those shoes there. He has a few guesses, but no one ever admitted to the generous act of kindness.

Even though he doesn’t know the name of the person who gave him the shoes, Blaine said that’s a person he thinks about nearly every day. To most people it was just a pair of shoes, but to Blaine it was affirmation that someone cared about and believed in him.

After high school, Blaine attended Peru State College where he played football and studied physical education and sports management.

In high school, he hadn’t been a very good student – he did just enough to play football on Friday night – but in college that changed. He zoned in on both sports and school, making the most of his four years in college.

Blaine said he worked extra hard in college because he was paying his own way, and he knew he needed to get a good job after he graduated. He also said that being away from the constant chaos of his home life was a relief and he realized he didn’t want to move forward with the same kind of lifestyle that he grew up witnessing.

After graduation, Blaine stayed on at Peru as a football coach and fell in love with the idea of making coaching his career. He was offered a coaching position at a Division 1 university. It was his dream job, the perfect career move… but he turned it down.

While the job would have been great for Blaine, it wasn’t a good fit for him and his daughter. It would have put thousands of miles between them and a strain on their relationship. As someone who grew up without a dad, Blaine knew this wouldn’t work.

He finished up his coaching stint at Peru and then decided to start a roofing company. Growing up in a farm town, there was always roof work to be done and Blaine had started his own company back in high school. He decided to pick up where he left off, confident in the fact that he could provide a good service to the community.

Over the past few years, Blaine has seen his business grow alongside his daughter. He said he wouldn’t trade watching her grow up for anything. He’s built a thriving business that he hopes to expand to a handful of midwest states, and he isn’t shy about his ambitions and expectations for himself and his business.

Blaine is a highly confident and driven person. He’s a fanatic about doing good work and helping others. That’s not how he was raised, but it’s how he wants to raise his daughter.

When Blaine thinks back on his story he’s not as ashamed as he used to be about the way he grew up. He knows that his experiences shaped who is, but he’s more than just a product of his circumstances.

Blaine made his own choices in life. He chose to step up, to get out and to lean in when he was needed. He made mistakes, but he learned to take responsibility for his actions.

His story is about more than just his past, it’s about his future, a future he’s writing and one he’s proud to call his own.

June 21, 2017

Love6

Roxane McCoskey

By Asha Timperley

Roxane McCoskey has worn a lot of hats in her life. She’s been a stay at home mom, a work-from homer, an athletic director’s assistant, a farmers market vendor and now she’s a coffee shop owner.

Did we mention that Roxane didn’t even like coffee when she opened her coffee shop?

But Roxane didn’t get into the coffee business for the coffee, for her it was all about loveknots.

Loveknots are sweet knots of dough with a thick swipe of frosting on top. Every Christmas, Roxane’s mother-in-law made loveknots using a secret family recipe and the entire family devoured every last one. They often talked about how they should start a business selling them, because who could not love a loveknot?!

As years passed, Roxane tried her hand at making loveknots, but it wasn’t so easy. She had lots of failed attempts – years of failed attempts – until she finally got the recipe down and she became the official holiday loveknot maker.

But the question still remained, could they sell loveknots? Roxane and her family decided to test out their theory at the farmers market. They set up a table, laid out the loveknots and waited. Nothing happened.

“We didn’t realize that people didn’t know what loveknots were,” Roxane said. “But once we started putting out samples people would try it and immediately buy one.”

They sold 700-800 loveknots every weekend, oftentimes selling out an hour before the market ended. Then came the questions from their eager customers, ‘Where’s your shop?’ and ‘How can I buy more of these?’

So, Roxane and her husband started looking for retail space. However, they quickly realized that opening a shop that only sold loveknots might be difficult, so they decided to look for a coffee shop.

After scoping out their options around town they settled on a shop in the Piedmont Shopping Center and quickly went to work to make it their own. She and her husband originally named it Loveknot Coffee Shop as a way to stay connected with their farmers market customers, but they recently renamed it The Harbor.

Opening a coffee shop was a whole new kind of adventure for Roxane. Sure, she had mastered the loveknots, but running a business with employees and customers was an entirely new endeavor. Plus, she didn’t just want to be the owner of yet another coffee shop in town, she said, Lincoln has plenty of coffee shops but she wanted hers to be different.

And it was. After a few months of being in business, Roxane noticed their her clientele was different than most shops around town. She had regulars, lots of regulars who came with a few friends to drink coffee and chat for a few hours. And Roxane noticed that the majority of her customers were older.

At first, she wasn’t so sure about this. Was this the kind of vibe she wanted for her shop? But now, she said she wouldn’t change it.

Having a large population of older people who frequent her shop has made it a place where people talk with each other instead of avoid eye contact. It’s become a place that’s an extension of people’s homes and a part of their routine.

Her staff is the other thing that’s really shaped the culture at The Harbor. Roxane is very intentional when she hires employees, she looks for dedicated workers with strong people skills.

“I tell them, ‘I don’t want you just to work, I want you to like what you’re doing and build relationships,’ ” she said.

Roxane said it’s been fun to watch her employees build relationships with customers in their own ways. Some of them sit down and do a crossword puzzle with patrons, others offer a kind smile and friendly service, but they all have their own way of making people feel at home.

Walking into The Harbor feels like stopping by a small town coffee shop. There are old guys cracking jokes about birdwatching, the sweet smell of loveknots and coffee and families with their kids. It’s the kind of place that isn’t too concerned about having trendy drinks and decor, but is more focused on the quality and care they pour into each day they’re open.

A lot of the culture at The Harbor has developed on its own, but it’s also been heavily influenced by Roxane, and rightly so.

She’s the owner who started out not liking coffee, but now drinks a few cups a day. The baker who comes in late at night to make loveknots. And the boss who runs the show, but leaves the credit to her staff.

It’s Roxane’s small town upbringing and deep devotion to people that make The Harbor feel as safe and comfortable as the name suggests. Without her, The Harbor wouldn’t be the same.

That’s the thing, Roxane has poured a lot of her life into owning and running a coffee shop. But it seems like that’s what she does with just about anything she’s a part of – her faith, family, friendships, work, marriage. Her life has been about digging in and digging deep.

She’s been asked a few times recently about whether she’ll open another coffee shop and right now the answer is ‘No.’ It’s a nice idea, she said, and maybe even a good business move, but she wonders if it would dilute her passion for the work she does now.

Running a business is a lot of work, and she loves it, but it’s not her entire life and she doesn’t want it to be. She wants to invest well in her staff and customers, prioritize her faith and her marriage and enjoy being a grandmother. These are the things she wants her story to be about, these things, and loveknots.

March 15, 2017

Love8

Beth Brady

By storyhook

We all play different roles in the stories of the people we come into contact with. We might be a minor, supporting character or fill a major role that changes the whole scene. In every story we are involved in, it’s clear that the interactions between us and the information we add to another’s perspective are powerful and can even change the course of a life.

When Beth Brady began filling out college applications, she knew she wanted to pursue some sort of career in therapy, but wasn’t sure of her particular area of study.

Before she was born, Beth’s mother had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and was bedridden by the time Beth was ten. Throughout her childhood, she helped play a role in taking care of her mom and so had a firsthand experience with different kinds of therapy.

Starting at Nebraska Wesleyan, Beth pointed her studies in the direction of physical therapy, but was rerouted by a simple piece of paper she received in an elective education class. She knew she didn’t want to become a teacher, but wanted to work with kids. So when a flier was passed out in class one day listing the top ten careers in education, the top-listed “Speech Language Pathology” career grabbed her interest.

That one small thing was all it took. By her junior year, Beth had transferred to the University of Nebraska and enrolled in the Communication Disorders program. She immediately loved the scope of her classes and the curriculum’s science foundation.

When she encountered Dr. Mary Pat Moeller, director of the Boys Town Center for Childhood Deafness and Professor of Aural Rehabilitation (therapy to develop speaking and listening skills), her calling was solidified. She became Beth’s first career mentor, and provided a passionate and contagious case for Speech Language Pathology (SLP).

With the completion of her undergrad work, Beth wanted to expand her experience but needed a larger population to work from since deafness is a low-incidence disability.

She enrolled in the master’s program for Speech Language Pathology at the University of Minnesota where she could do research in a large city where there would be a lot of kids, with a lot of different case situations.

With her studies narrowed to aural rehabilitation, she focused her research on deafness. Her clinical supervisor provided invaluable information on how to interact with children who are deaf and their parents, and helped her to understand the parents’ point-of-view.

At that time, technology was less developed and children were arriving in their offices with unidentified deafness at the ages of two and three. The diagnosis at this late stage made it particularly important to consider the responses and worries of the parents.

The rest of her time in Minnesota was filled with learning sign language and cued speech (a method of communication with coordinated mouth and hand movements). She also played an active role on a cochlear implant team at the research hospital, where she helped make decisions on the benefits and risks of surgery and determined if the projected outcome was in the best interests of the patient.

When Beth and her husband Eric completed their respective degrees, they decided to return to Lincoln to be near parents and siblings and to establish roots for their own family. They bought a house in the near-south area of Lincoln and Beth found employment through Lincoln Public Schools.

“At first, I was disappointed with the job because I was working with a large variety of cases and I had thought I wanted to remain focused on my work with clients who are deaf. I quickly found out that the multi-disciplined nature of the work was a gift.”

At LPS, Beth worked with a team of professionals – physical therapists, speech-language therapists and occupational therapists. The team-approach proved to be invigorating and helpful. Together, they made home visits and worked in school settings, expanding their collective experience and knowledge.

“In Minnesota, our clients typically were those who had more resources and sometimes more extensive support systems. At LPS, we worked with all types of kids – those who had many resources and those who had very little.”

Although she found her work with LPS rewarding, Beth began to see the need for a better work/life balance. She had three children, and the limited resources and extensive needs at her job made it difficult to work part-time hours and arrive home with energy left over for her family.

Then she came across Heartland Speech and Occupational Therapy Services. The business had been started by two sisters who wanted to provide excellent care for children while simultaneously creating a work-environment that was family-friendly.

Beth eased into the job, gradually transitioning from LPS to working exclusively for Heartland, where she continues to work today.

In private practice, Beth still engages with a variety of clients and coordinates with a team of occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists who bring unique and beneficial perspectives to the table.

“I’m so glad this is a place where we share knowledge and are actively problem-solving. I believe that if a person ever gets complacent in their job, they are missing out. It’s important to keep learning, to be in a place where you are forced to dig for answers – it makes the work exciting and keeps you engaged and doing your best.”

Beth’s days are filled with collaboration and play. For young children, words create a framework for understanding what to do and how to interact with toys, games and books. Play-based therapy provides an environment where children can learn to match words and sounds to their play.

“The reason I was so attracted to speech therapy was that I love to see progression and I wanted to be a part of each kid’s story. I wanted to be able to be involved from the start to the finish as a child begins to learn to communicate.”

This year, that desire will be met when her first client with a cochlear implant walks across the stage to accept her high school diploma and heads off to college. The moment is significant because Beth had been the one to teach the patient her first word.

Life can change with the smallest of details and also through the large, unexpected ones. Beth Brady is simply grateful to get to play a role – of any shape or size – in the lives of each one of her patients.

February 22, 2017

Love1

Dr. Colleen Jones

By storyhook

At the beginning of her career, people were surprised when they learned that Dr. Colleen Jones’s field of study was centered in the business world.

They wondered how an African American woman who was so socially conscious and active could “work for the man”, and would even choose to do so.

She didn’t see the problem.

“I just had the idea that I would study and work hard and go home to help my mom open a business. I didn’t realize that becoming an entrepreneur was the last thing my studies were preparing me for.”

Dr. Jones, now a retired Professor of Management from the College of Business at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and President of the Melvin Jones Foundation, looks back and points to one of the biggest things her education did teach her: that the big shifts, the earthquakes of change, begin with a small underground action.

Even if that action starts with getting a business degree.

When Colleen first arrived at the University of Iowa in 1968, she discovered a hotbed of activism on the midwestern campus. The dorms had recently been desegregated and antiwar demonstrations had shut down the campus during the spring before her arrival. Through circumstances, she found herself caught up in the times and responding to what was in front of her.

“I was a true baby boomer, growing up between the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War and the Women’s Movement – I was swept up in the wave.”

She felt something in the air that said, “You need to understand what’s going on. You need to be a citizen of the world. You need to take care of home, but also community.”

While at Iowa, Colleen gained a strong foundation for her approach to the world and her career. She worked hard at her studies, but also invested time in the community around her, knowing that by taking part in things like creating a Culture Center and chairing Black History Week, she was making the way better for those who would follow her.

She observed the leadership on campus – particularly the president of the University, the head of her scholarship program and a VP of Student Affairs – all who created an atmosphere where positive activism was encouraged. She began to take notice of how to run and make change within a big structure.

In the middle of her studies and campus engagement, Colleen also met the man who would eventually become her husband – Melvin Jones. Their shared interests in business and social issues not only created a relationship that provided sharpening and encouragement, but also established a deep love and mutual respect.

When the time finally came to graduate from Iowa, Colleen began applying for jobs in her areas of study, which were accounting and qualitative methods. Job after job presented her with noisy, cold rooms and responsibilities limited to data processing.

She knew she couldn’t last long in any of these environments and so she began considering her alternatives – eventually landing in a master’s program at the University of Southern California – where she discovered a new passion for public administration.

At the completion of her degree, Colleen was once again faced with the decision of how she could use her experience to effect change. With little desire to pursue the political route many public administrators chose, she discovered a fellowship at the historically black college Tennessee State, where she was hired along with a team of engineers and administrators to help implement the use of early computers and reorganize the college registration system.

Toward the end of her time in Tennessee, she and Melvin tied the knot and following a series of moves and job offers, landed in Washington D.C.

While Melvin got to work for the Senate, Colleen found a job at the Department of Education, but quickly learned that D.C. jobs could be uncertain due to political funding.

Returning back to the job market, Colleen discovered that many of the applicants she was competing with held doctorates. Through the encouragement of her husband and with opportunity nearby, she enrolled in a doctoral program at George Washington University.

Her entry into higher education once again put her around educators who valued her work and dedication and eventually asked if she would consider teaching two times a week. She agreed and five weeks into the job, realized that she had found her calling.

“I knew I didn’t want to do anything else but this.”

She discovered she loved the process of people becoming interested in something. Here was a way of providing an environment where people couldn’t help but learn.

With few black women in higher ed, she enjoyed the opportunity to provide people with a chance to see through her own lens and personal experience while also providing them with head knowledge.

It was a perspective she eventually brought with her to Lincoln, Nebraska, when she and her husband Melvin were offered jobs at the University of Nebraska.

When the University first courted the couple, they both wondered if Lincoln would be a place where they could live and thrive.

They knew they would find their answers by engaging with the community. As they began to interact with more people during their interviews and ask the right questions, they discovered a positivity and excitement that welcomed them in. They decided to take the plunge and moved to Lincoln.

Today, Dr. Jones is retired from teaching, but remains deeply invested in the community and is active on multiple boards and social projects. She sees Lincoln as a place for positive well-being, with good pockets for change and growth.

The cause most dear to her heart is the Melvin Jones Foundation – an organization formed following the untimely death of her husband and partner. In order to promote his vision for constructive change and mentorship, she and Melvin’s family formed a learning community committed to helping first-generation and minority students find connection and direction and inevitably graduation on the campus of UNL.

Dr. Jones has found a way back to where she started, only this time, instead of entering an arena where action and change are taking place, she is the the one tilling the soil and pushing others up to take the small actions that will start the momentum for change. She encourages students to pay attention, just as she was told, to move forward and believe that change can happen in all sorts of ways and through all kinds of people.

February 8, 2017

Love4

Dr. Marty Killeen

By storyhook

Don’t let his calm demeanor and easy smile fool you.

He’s the type of guy who wakes up every Sunday morning to go for a five-hour bike ride for fun.

In dental college, he was one of the few students with only two years of undergrad experience due to all the college coursework he had completed during high school.

No, Dr. Marty Killeen is no slacker, and it’s this fearless determination that has led to an interesting and varied dental career.

At the end of a fellowship in pediatric dentistry, Dr. Marty (as his patients call him) decided to start his practice in Lincoln to be near family. With the economy doing well and a limited number of pediatric dentists practicing in the area, he and a fellow new grad decided to go big and start their own practice, complete with a newly constructed building just south of Southwest High School.

Despite the bold move, like most new graduates, Marty supplemented his growing practice with an assortment of part-time positions.

He picked up jobs at the People’s Health Center and Health Department, and found himself face-to-face with children who had never been to the dentist and who often had a very limited understanding of English. He enjoyed the interactions with the kids and learned new ways to keep uncertain patients and their parents calm.

Two years following graduation, Marty’s dad inadvertently provided him with another unique opportunity when he began asking questions about how to outfit a dental team for a medical mission to Haiti.

“After getting question after question, I finally asked my dad if he wanted me to take over the trip. Nine years later, we’re about to take our ninth consecutive medical mission down to Haiti.”

The first trip to Haiti occurred two years before the devastating earthquake that hit the country in 2010. Over the last eight years, Marty has seen incremental change, but he understands that even the most minor shift can make a great difference in the life of one individual.

“We set up our clinic in the middle of Haiti, in a place called the Kobonal Mission – basically in the middle of nowhere. A lot of people farm and you see them walking around with their machetes and no shoes. When we first went, the place barely had electricity. We had to fly to the location in small Cessna airplanes, circling the landing spot twice in order to scare away the livestock that graze there.”

One of the biggest improvements he’s seen since the earthquake are the roads, which are now semi-paved and allow the team to get there by bus.

Dr. Marty jokingly refers to the trip as the Haitian Vacation, and talks fondly of the results he’s been able to witness from eight years of treating patients with little to no other health care services.

“Mainly, we are doing extractions and fillings, sometimes even dentures. An oral surgeon accompanies us for the more difficult cases. Because they speak Creole, the patient simply points to the areas that are hurting, we take a look, agree on a number and then get to work.”

He goes on, “One of the most rewarding things are the relationships we’re beginning to form. We are starting to recognize families and see that our education efforts are making a difference. During our first year in Haiti, we were able to see 400 patients as a team. This year, with 18 people going down, we anticipate serving 2,000.”

The team has also seen a reduction in tooth extraction and infection.

“There are unique challenges for us in Haiti. We line the kids up and use an interpreter to show the kids one-by-one how to use a toothbrush and talk about reducing their sugar intake. The problem is – these kids usually don’t have enough to eat, so they offset their hunger by chewing the sugar cane that is on the roadside and in the fields.”

Despite the difficulties, they are excited when they see their efforts paying off.

“We were driving along a dirt road when we looked up to see a kid standing in the middle of the Haitian countryside, brushing his teeth with his new toothbrush.”

Though the stories he tells seem like a distant reality from the common American experience, Dr. Marty easily finds connections. He switches between descriptions of his patients in Haiti, those he continues to treat at the Health Department, and the growing practice at his own clinic.

Dr. Marty finds that people in every place have the same basic needs and desires.

He takes pleasure helping the six-year-old in his clinic overcome his fear of a regular check-up. Likewise, he is grateful for the trust he receives from parents commuting from all over Nebraska and even out-of-state when their general dentist is unable to treat a child’s more complicated dental needs. Or the child in Haiti who looks up at him and lays still while the strange dentist from a different country offers comfort and pain-relief during an extraction.

“It’s never just about filling cavities, it’s about the people.”

The combination and the diversity of needs and outlooks Marty is daily presented with create a multi-faceted job that requires patience, persistence, and a great deal of care for the patient. He is grateful he has found a career that allows him to care for people in a way that shows them how much they matter.

February 1, 2017

Love4

Jeremy Tredway

By storyhook

When you live in the midwest, and your job is on the west coast, it seems some reevaluating needs to take place.

Fortunately for Jeremy Tredway, his commute requires climbing a flight of stairs rather than a cross-country flight.

A web developer living in Lincoln, NE, Jeremy has enjoyed the benefits of remaining in a family-friendly and affordable city while working for a company based in San Francisco.

Jeremy is full of confidence and loves creative problem solving. Two characteristics that have been a blessing throughout his life.

Most of Jeremy’s days growing up were spent in some mode of exploration. His band of neighborhood friends sought adventure outdoors or played role-playing games in someone’s basement. When he was alone at home, he lost himself in imaginary worlds found in books.

As he entered high school, the theme of exploration continued. Jeremy’s interest in architecture and engineering evolved into a thought that aerospace engineering would be a good career.

Between his junior and senior year, Jeremy decided to attend a summer seminar at the Air Force Academy to test his theory. The military lifestyle presented there quickly turned him off and he decided he would need to pursue a different career course.

That year Jeremy found himself in an unusual place. He followed a friend to a Young Life meeting where people his age were listening to a message he had never heard. He left shaken and full of questions about Christianity and meaning, the direction of his life and relationships.

The questions continued to nag at him. So much so that in the middle of his senior year, he switched enrollment in a chemistry class to a philosophy class.

Even as Jeremy entered college, architecture and engineering were pushed aside and he triple majored in Philosophy, Psychology, and Independent Studies in Church History.

Despite all of his reflection and philosophical pursuit, Jeremy remained unconvinced. He wasn’t ready to commit to any belief that required a significant life change.

Throughout college, Jeremy and his group of childhood friends stayed close and during the summer following their freshman year, began making some poor decisions.

One summer night, the guys set out to make explosives and while Jeremy was holding a piece of pipe, the explosive went off.

What happened next was unimaginable. In the explosion, Jeremy had lost both hands and shrapnel had broken his knee. He was bleeding profusely from shrapnel wounds to his chest, abdomen, arm and upper right leg.

A critical care nurse nearby heard the sound and rushed to the scene. Her presence that day helped save Jeremy’s life.

The next few months wove together as his body stabilized and he adjusted to his new normal. Weeks of therapy at Madonna Rehabilitation taught him how to use his new prosthetics and despite all he had lost, the word to describe how he felt at that time was ‘Optimistic’.

“It’s hyperbole to say I never journaled, but… I never journaled,” he grabbed a book from his bookshelf. Turning the pages, he explained, “I was in a hard place and wrote this eight days before the accident. ‘Dear Christ, I’m still here…trying to hold on to faith…I want to know where I am going.’ After the accident, I wrote again, but it’s a lot harder to read because I didn’t have hands anymore.”

He smiled and read on, “I wonder if this is God’s answer to my question. It has to be more than coincidence.”

As his journal entry implied, he was ready for change and felt he needed to go a new direction. “A new hope blossomed and motivated me. Something that wasn’t there before, was now present.”

Eventually, Jeremy went back to school and finished his undergrad over a span of six years. Throughout this time, he continued to face questions about his identity and new relationship with God.

Toward the end of his program, Jeremy spent a year at Oxford. He ended his time in Europe with a bike trip, following an ancient path through France and Spain.

The El Camino de Santiago was a pilgrimage also known as St. James’s Way. The route had historical origins, but Jeremy was more concerned with the current challenges the path presented a man with no hands.

“During the pilgrimage, I couldn’t repair a tire, I didn’t know if I could afford the trip, I didn’t know the path, and I didn’t know the language. But I felt like God took care of me.”

Jeremy relays each detail with little surprise in his face or voice.

“I finished the pilgrimage, returned home to complete the last few classes I needed to graduate, met the girl I was to marry and then decided to go to seminary.”

Heeding the repeated advice of friends, Jeremy began pursuing his Masters of Divinity and Counseling and the following year, he was married.

“The interesting thing about seminary is that they don’t push you to do one thing. They want you to consider your gifts and personality and use them.”

By now, Jeremy had spent almost a decade pursuing degrees that pointed toward ministry and counseling, but as he began to spend time taking personality tests and thinking more deeply about his calling in life, he felt pulled back to his original interests in applied sciences.

“I knew some careers were no longer an option without hands.”

So he began thinking about computers. And systems and programming and solving problems.

Jeremy was always curious about those things, and that gave him a head start. Throughout seminary, he had earned the nickname “Tinker” because he was always messing around with his computer. “I learned how to network and reconfigure stuff just by messing around.”

It wasn’t until he was asked to set up a computer network at a friend’s law firm that he began to seriously consider a career change. “I began to talk with friends and professors and pray about everything.”

With only two classes remaining to finish his degree, Jeremy completed his Masters in Theology, switched gears and enrolled in an HTML class at the local community college.

And the rest… is history.

“I love the job. Love solving the problems. Love the detail of putting things together. I find so much pleasure in the creative process.”

Although Jeremy’s life has been filled with shifts, twists, turns and the unexpected, so much of his story is about being passively prepared. His natural curiosity and confidence keeps him one step ahead and he’s not afraid to try new things, explore and solve problems.

As for life’s next curve? That’s still unknown, but Jeremy and his wife are always ready for the next curve because they know that somehow, they’ll be ready. And for them, that’s what really matters.

January 18, 2017

Love5

Christina Hoyt

By storyhook

Hospitable, a strong introvert, art lover, horticulture fan and environmentalist?

Probably not a typical combination of attributes found on a job description.

Fortunately for the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum (NSA), Christina Hoyt happens to have it all.

As Executive Director of the NSA, Christina has to have her facts straight about plants. But it was the intersection of her personality and passions that made the job the right place to be.

At first glance, she is a shy, blonde woman, decked out in whatever gear is appropriate for the weather and task at hand. Today, it’s a pair of Sorel boots she recently purchased.

“I got a great deal on them when I was home for Christmas!”

Home was originally Minnesota, a place Christina remembers as one filled with all kinds of wildness. “I lived on the edge of everything. There were wetlands, prairie, lakes, forests. And my family always loved to be out in it. We went camping all the time.”

It was this engagement with the diversity and beauty in the outdoors that launched Christina onto a winding path eventually leading to Nebraska’s doorstep.

“When I started college in Iowa (at Cornell College), I was an Environmental Studies major. I loved art too, but my mom told me I needed to make money,” she said with a smile.

While the “science geek” in her loved her classes at Cornell, she felt something missing. The art element.

In the middle of her junior year, Christina decided to make a change and moved to Nebraska to join a group of friends she had met during a summer job in Colorado. She enrolled at UNL, changing her major to Horticulture and Landscape Design.

It wasn’t until an internship with the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum that she truly began to see her passions meld together.

What she discovered was an organization that was involved in education and in beautifying communities across the state through planning and planting green spaces.

“I wanted to address environmental challenges in my work and make a mark for myself, but found my thought-process shifting.”

The changes the NSA was effecting were real. And it wasn’t on the shoulders of one individual–it was hundreds of different people with different backgrounds, working together for the sake of beautifying the communities they lived in. In the process of this beautification, they were also doing great things: finding balance for the local ecosystem, learning how to sustain clean water, addressing pollinator decline–to name a few of the myriad of positive impacts.

Christina’s love for the environment and art were coming together and were blending with the realization of her passion for people.

While her perspective expanded, her skills and knowledge developed and Christina took on many jobs throughout the organization. Beginning as an intern, she filled a variety of roles before being hired as the Executive Director.

The unique thing about Christina is that she never talks about herself as it relates to the NSA. Instead, she always directs whoever is listening to the many people she teams up with.

“They wouldn’t tell you themselves, because they are too humble, but everyone I work with does great things,” she says. “One of the first elements I loved about this organization was the high level of grassroots support.”

She points out the reach of the organization, “We have 104 affiliate sites and 1100 members throughout the state. We have worked on green spaces in the middle of Omaha and spaces in the smallest community in the sandhills of northwest Nebraska. Our horticulturist grows native Nebraska plants in our greenhouses in Mead for communities and the public. And we have our Spring Affair plant sale coming up!”

When asked about a picture of her hanging high from ropes in Fontenelle Forest, she laughs, “And I’m scared of heights!” She describes the picture, noting an event the NSA participated in during an Earth Day celebration in Omaha just before the organization’s annual plant sale.

“Yeah, I normally like to go home after work and cook or read a good book. I’ve usually used up most of my energy at work.”

Yet Christina goes on to describe a meal she has shared with a neighbor or a good yoga class she has recently taken.

“I love plants,” she comments about her job, “but I love making our communities better even more.”

This is evident in every aspect of her life.

It is the rare individual that understands the connection between the land and the people living and caring for that space. Christina seems to have an innate grasp on the importance of this relationship because it is one she highly values for her own life and the lives of those she is closest to.

“I love that Nebraska isn’t just one place. It’s many places woven together. The challenge of this prairie state is that it’s generally difficult to grow things here, but that fact does not stop people from persisting.”

Christina Hoyt is doing her part to help weave beauty into these spaces.

Sometimes the things that make us who we are, lead us to the place we are supposed to be. For Christina, so many of the things that matter to her are right here, at the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum.

January 11, 2017

Love2

Natalie Elsberry

By Asha Timperley

Natalie Elsberry always knew she’d work in the wedding industry.

She loved the pretty flowers, the unbridled spirit of joy and just knowing that it was someone’s special, longed-for day.

“I was a weird kid,” she said with a laugh. “I liked all that cliche stuff.”

At first she thought she’d be a wedding planner. She’d be the woman with the ideas, the keeper of the wedding secrets and surprises and she’d do it all with ease and a little wedding-day magic. But that was far from the reality of being an actual wedding planner.

Natalie helped a few of her cousins plan their weddings, and while improvising is her strong suit, the sheer number of details zapped any wedding-day bliss that she hoped to experience.

For a while she thought about opening a wedding reception hall. She had the plans ready to go and had even scoped out a spot for her idea to take shape, but the more she thought about the logistics the less she was convinced her idea would work.

So, she circled back to what she really loved about weddings – flowers.

Now, eight years later, I Bloom. is her wedding industry job. She’s not the wedding planner or the reception hall host, she’s the flower lady and it’s the perfect job for Natalie.

Her days involve getting shipments of flowers delivered to her house, helping clients envision flowers for their weddings, designing bouquets and talking with various local and wholesale flower vendors.

Last year she and her husband moved their family to a bigger house to accommodate her growing business. They needed a bigger basement for production and a 3-car garage to house her industrial-sized flower refrigerator.

This year alone, Natalie and her assistants worked 79 weddings, and next year she expects to do more. It’s crazy, and good and so much more than she expected when she started out.

Flowers have always been part of her life, mostly because they were a major part of her mother’s life. Natalie grew up in a little house with a huge yard where her mother expanded her flower collection a little each year. The running joke is that after all of Natalie’s siblings get married in her parents’ backyard, her mom will convert any leftover green space to flower beds.

Gardening was her mother’s therapy of sorts, it was where she felt most at home and could relax from the pressures of being a mom with seven kids. Natalie said she and her siblings were often out gardening alongside her mother, pulling weeds or just running around outside.

As she got older, Natalie realized school wasn’t her thing. She went to college on and off for a few years at UNL and SCC, taking any flower and business courses that were available to her.

In 2006 she got married in her parents’ flower-filled backyard. She designed the flowers for her own wedding, using a monochromatic palette and filling every inch with romantic bouquets and centerpieces.

For the next few years, Natalie worked various full time jobs while she booked wedding gigs on the side. Her work started to get noticed by more than just friends and family and in 2008 she officially launched I Bloom.

The first year in business, Natalie booked three weddings, the next year she did twelve and the number has only grown from there.

This year was a little rough, she said with a laugh. It wasn’t uncommon to have four weddings scheduled for a single weekend this past June.

But busy isn’t a bad thing, she said. It’s growth and it’s what she always hoped for when she started I Bloom., even if it’s not all what she expected.

She didn’t plan on growing her business to the point where her family needed to move. Or that she’d be on a first-name basis with the delivery men who show up on a weekly basis with shipments of flowers. She also didn’t anticipate the kind of growth that would necessitate juggling being a full-time mom and a business owner.

Her days are full of flowers and excited brides-to-be, but they’re also full of cleaning up kid-inspired messes, keeping her family fed and playing her fair share of dolls with her three girls. Natalie’s office is on the first floor or her house, where her kids can go back and forth between their mom and their toys, but she can still stay on top of emails, meetings and Pinterest inspiration boards.

This is her life, and even in the chaos of growing her business and her family, Natalie said these last few years have felt like her sweet spot.

It feels like she’s right where she’s supposed to be, like her story is finally starting to make sense, it’s more than she bargained for at times, but it’s also a whole lot more than just flowers and weddings.

December 28, 2016

Love4

Jill Morstad

By Asha Timperley

Walking into her house, you wouldn’t know that Jill Morstad is the owner of two large Belgian Shepherds.

There was no barking, no jumping, no licking and the dogs were nowhere to be seen. It’s not that Jill doesn’t love her dogs or is compelled to keep her house in a perpetually manicured state, actually it’s the opposite – her dogs have boundaries, because she loves them.

This is a distinction that she’s careful to make, and it comes from her more than 30 years of teaching people to train their dogs. Offering classes at dog clubs, in private homes, animal shelters and vet clinics, Jill has a broad understanding of the communication between dogs and owners. But really, she said, her job is about listening to stories.

“Everybody’s pet is a story,” she said.

And while it might sound a little strange to talk about dog training in terms of stories, Jill said people have so many preconceptions about training and even owning a dog based on their personal experiences. Things like their childhood pet, a recently deceased animal or even a neighbor’s dog can color a story very quickly, she said, and that’s natural.

But her job is to hear those stories, understand their origin and articulate their impact. She does this with her clients, and she’s done this since she was an 8-year-old who owned her first dog.

Like a lot of kids, Jill started asking for a dog as soon as she could find the words. She was fascinated by the dog books at the school library, checking them out one by one and reading them cover to cover. These books brought the dog-owning experience to life for her until her family was given a dog by a family member who couldn’t care for it any more.

Little 8-year-old Jill and her dad took the dog to a local training class where the instructor was an AKC judge. It didn’t take long before Jill was immersed in the dog training world – connecting with local trainers, reading any training book she could get her hands on and researching local dog shows to attend. It suddenly became her whole world.

As she got older, Jill said she realized why she loved training so much. It was more than just shaping an animal or making it do what she wanted, it was about communication, about understanding the void between humans and dogs and figuring out how to bridge that gap. There was something highly natural, yet philosophical about the process and Jill loved that.

When she went off to college, she studied journalism because of her fascination with communication and went on to work at a small publishing company shortly after graduation. Within a year of graduating, Jill owned a dog and started training it for competitions. In her free time she traveled around the Midwest taking her dog to obedience competitions and connecting with other area trainers.

Eventually Jill moved to Missouri to pursue her graduate degree in folklore and language and then came to Lincoln in the early 90s to work on her PhD. She taught at UNL and is now an English and writing professor at Union College.

She often asks her students, “What would you read about or think about if it was left entirely up to you?”

For Jill, the answer to that question is dog training. It’s where her passion and purpose collide and it’s a way that she feels like she can train people in Lincoln to care well for their dogs to better individual homes, neighborhoods and the community as a whole.

Jill’s days are spent vacillating between teaching English, training dog owners, hosting a weekly radio show about dog ownership, preparing for dog shows and keeping up with her own dogs during her morning run.

Communication has been a consistent part of her story.

Her two jobs are centered on using communication to relay a message and create order. For dogs, this happens through verbal commands and non-verbal signals, and with her students, she’s realized that even with the perfectly chosen words, not even the English language can be articulated 100 percent accurately.

Whether it’s the way she’s introducing a concept to her college students or how she’s working with a dog and its owner, there’s a high level of intentionality in all of Jill’s work.

Her entire story has been one of learning and sharing. It’s been about more than just a love of animals or a love of words, but a union between these two seemingly separate disciplines.

December 21, 2016

Love4

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