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Beth Brady

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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.

Dr. Marty Killeen

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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.

Leigh Esau

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Leigh Esau is a little shy when it comes to sharing her story. She’s not actually a shy person, but telling her own story just isn’t her thing.

Leigh is the founder of the Foster Care Closet in Lincoln. It’s a place where foster kids can get brand new clothes during and before they go to a foster home. She has served thousands of kids in the foster care system with clothing. The Foster Care Closet has been open in Lincoln for 10 years and now has a location in Omaha and is opening two more in Scottsbluff and Kearney.

Leigh’s goal is to take her model and make it a national standard for foster kids across the country, because these kids are often the ones left behind, she said.

Before she was 1, Leigh was placed in a foster home. Her home-life was chaotic and unstable and she went back and forth between her foster home and biological home for the first three years of her life. She was found abandoned at age 3 and was in foster care for another few years before being adopted by a family in a rural town in Colorado at the age of 7.

At the age of 14, Leigh said she boldly talked about growing up and being a foster parent in the way that most kids talk about wanting to be a teacher or firefighter. It was on her radar and heart.

When Leigh met her husband, Pat, at the age of 15 she said she knew they would get married. She called him up, asked him out and three years later they got married.

The young couple moved to California and then settled in Lincoln where they raised their children. Leigh said it’s when they became foster parents that they quickly noticed how few belongings children had when they showed up at their house.

When she and her husband took in a foster child, they’d rush out to the store to grab diapers, clothing, formula, shoes, car seats and whatever they needed. It was expensive and also sad that they couldn’t spend that time investing in the child who had just walked through their door.

Leigh began talking with friends about how to fix this problem. She started taking second-hand items from people to use herself or pass along to other foster parents who could use them. This was the start of the Foster Care Closet, and a year after Leigh started collecting clothes they moved operations to a storage facility and then an official space. By 2008, the Foster Care Closet was in its current 3,200-square-foot location.

But the Foster Care Closet has far extended Leigh’s original idea of gathering clothes, toys and diapers.

“This is my favorite part of the whole place,” said Leigh as she flicked on the lights.

It was like an apartment. There was a big living room, an office area, bean bag chairs, toys – it felt like a home, which is exactly the point.

In 2012, Leigh added an intake center to the Foster Care Closet. This space above the shop is where kids and caseworkers can hang out after the child is removed from their home and before they go to their foster home.

It’s a step toward making this traumatic process smoother and more comfortable for kids while they’re waiting to move to a foster home, Leigh said. The kids can eat, pick out five new outfits to take with them, watch TV, play or just sit down and take a breath.

These seemingly small details matter to Leigh, because they matter to kids. She’s witnessed tired and confused teens light up when they go to pick out new clothes, because they know they won’t have to go to school the next day wearing the same outfit. She’s seen other kids start to trust adults just because she brought them a snack.

“I can’t change the system, but I can change how kids are introduced to foster care,” Leigh said.

One of the reasons Leigh said she doesn’t like to share her story is because people often assume she works with foster kids because she is a former foster kid, but that’s not true. Leigh said it’s less about her own experience than it is about the kids she’s seen walk through foster care.

She is convinced the process can be better, that kids can have dignity and a voice despite their circumstances.

That’s why she does her work. Why she’s checking prices, folding clothes and looking for sales at Old Navy and Sketchers. It’s why she’s buying a new round of jeans in the off season and stocking up on bulk bundles of socks and undies. It’s for the kids whose stories have rubbed off on her, who have made her own story richer and somehow stronger because of their courage and resilience.

Because for Leigh, her story matters most when it’s about making their stories heard.

Nate Woods

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Nate Woods points to a grouping of framed photos on the wall.

“He’s going to graduate from high school this year, and she will too…” he said, moving his pointer finger from one photo to the next.

Nate is standing in a quiet hallway inside The Malone Center. In a few hours these halls will be filled with the sound of pattering feet and excited voices of the kids enrolled in the after school program. It’s this boisterous, controlled-chaos that is, by far, Nate’s favorite part of the day.

But other than the people who use the community center, Nate said, few people know much about the story behind the building and its programs. It’s a story that’s close to Nate’s heart, because his story is connected to the Center.

The Malone Center was started in 1955 as a way to strengthen the African American community and serve as a hub for educational, cultural and social programs for all people.

But its roots go deeper than its founding in 1955, and Nate Woods knows this because his grandfather, Millard Woods, was the original founder.

In the early ‘30s, Millard wanted a place for people of all races to gather. Nate described how back then there was still a high level of segregation that left colored people out of other social gathering spots. So, Millard started what he called the Urban League out of a yellow, two-story house.

The precursor to The Malone Center became the place to find information about jobs and schooling, but also a social hall with sewing clubs, dances and basketball games that filled the house with nearly constant energy.

Nate was only six years old when his grandfather passed away and is honest about the fact that he doesn’t remember much about him. He wasn’t around to experience the early years of The Malone Center, but Nate understands an important part of his grandfather’s story because of The Malone Center.

Nate has worked as the assistant director at The Malone Center for the last 13 years. He’s helped start numerous programs and watched as kids transition from preschool to high school. He’s like a dad to most of the kids there, he knows their names, interests, strengths and weaknesses. He’s the person parents call if they’re concerned about their kid.

Nate just gets kids and he know that matters, because not so many years ago he was one of those kids running around and shooting hoops in the gym.

While Nate lived on the west side of Lincoln, he remembers finally getting to the age when his mom would let him bike across town to The Malone Center. He’d shoot hoops with friends until it got dark and then he’d bike home.

It was his routine, his place, and that’s what Nate loves being able to give to the people who utilize The Malone Center today. 

Nate loves his job. He said he wakes up every day, excited about the new challenges and surprises that await him. He knows that not everyone feels that way about their work, and he thinks it has something to do with living under his grandfather’s legacy. 

Here’s the thing, Nate may not have known his grandfather very well, but the way he describes him – caring, kind, energetic – is the way so many people describe Nate. He walks around the Center joking with the maintenance guy and giving one of the preschool teachers a hard time, he’s fun to be around and that seems pretty special.

Nate points to one last picture on the wall.

“That’s my grandfather,” he said, looking intently at the painted picture.

“I think he’d be proud of this place.”

And for Nate Woods, that’s what matters.

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