Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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Garrett Dwyer runs about 500 head of Hereford and Angus cattle on his Bartlett ranch on the east edge of the Sandhills. The land he's on today has been in his family since 1894, when his great-great grandfather homesteaded it. Dwyer, who grew up there, is now the fifth generation in his family to ranch this land. But Dwyer didn't take over the family ranch until he did something far from home. For five years, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, including two combat tours in Iraq. Now he's...
As Justin Taubenheim combined soybeans in a Buffalo County field on an October afternoon, he thought about why he does it. "I'm not farming to get rich,” he said. “I'm farming to maintain a legacy, a way of life. Faith, family and farming, in that order. The farm is kinda like the icing on the cake." Taubenheim, 31, sports fewer gray hairs than your normal Nebraska farmer. The average age of a principal Nebraska farm or ranch operator: 56.4 years old, according to census figures. The rising worry: There won’t be a next generation to carry...
With her laptop open and credit card out, Allyson Mendoza watched the clock flip from 7:59 to 8:00 a.m. “Register now” popped up on her screen. The mother of three had set timers and reminders for this moment weeks in advance of the March deadline. By 8:02 a.m., she had scored spots for her two oldest children at Hummel Day Camp, the wildly popular city-run day camp held for the last 70 summers in Omaha’s Hummel Park. She had done so with mere minutes to spare. “It’s the most stressful 10 minutes of my life, and I’m a lawyer,” Mendoza said....
Under the warm lights of the Casa Bovina dining room, a round of Certified Piedmontese rib cap glows red, like a rare jewel. A selection of house-cured charcuterie made from Nebraska-raised Mangalitsa pork is served artfully arranged on a slab of reclaimed wood. Beef Wellington - a dish chef Zach Midgett, who came to Lincoln from Napa Valley's famed French Laundry, says he's still perfecting - arrives beautifully plated, with a piece of fork-tender Piedmontese meat at its center, surrounded by...
Pretend for a moment that Nebraska somehow halted all use of nitrogen fertilizer – not a single speck more on our lawns, golf courses and corn fields. What would happen? Nothing fast. That's because, experts say, generations of corn growing, feedlot runoff and oft-unwitting nitrogen overuse has left a legacy of nitrate, creeping slowly downward toward our water supply. "It's there, it's moving towards the groundwater, and there's not a thing we can do about it," said Don Batie, a farmer near L...
Third-party ads that targeted state Sen. Tony Vargas during his recent run for U.S. Congress featured incredulous voices, baffled over a seemingly selfish move: He wanted to "double his own salary" with taxpayer money. What the ads didn't say: Nebraska's 49 lawmakers have been paid $12,000 a year since George H. W. Bush was first elected president, leg warmers were en vogue and Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" blasted unironically from boomboxes. If their pay had kept pace with inflation...
McCOOK – In a 100-year-old building in downtown McCook, push the round number six and an elevator ride takes you up, up, up to the highest floor in this railroad town’s tallest building. The elevator lurches stopped. The doors slide open. And here it is – an open concrete floor covered in hundreds of glittering metal sculptures, carved wooden figures, “outsider art” paintings by artists who have shown work in New York, Washington D.C., London. The space is an explosion of color and texture. It’s a global contemporary art tour. It’s a four...
Student pride – and the graduation rate – are on the upswing at the public school on the Santee Native Reservation. School leaders trace that success to a new effort to teach students the tribe’s culture. For the first time, students are learning Santee Dakota history, language and customs – subjects long ago banned. The new cultural program has boosted attendance and helped the iSanti Community School in Niobrara hit a 100% graduation rate two years running, school leaders say. It hasn’t...
CORTLAND – It's five days before the big day. The Model A dashes down West Fourth Street. Its driver pulls up to a brick storefront and strolls inside, jaunty, dressed in his Sunday best. The black-and-white scene turns technicolor, like a Gage County "Pleasantville," as a brunette with cherry red lips leans in with a coffee pot and winks. Welcome to Paper Moon Pastries, the 1930s-style small-town bakery inspired by a classic movie – its public introduction captured by drone and iPhone. Tha...
The farmer was growing impatient. He and dozens of other central Nebraska farmers had gathered for mandatory training in Columbus a few weeks before last Christmas. In response to high nitrate levels, the Lower Loup Natural Resources District had designated a "Phase 3 area." That led to new requirements – like this training to help farmers manage their nitrogen fertilizer use. The farmer didn't like this. He told NRD leaders he had been drinking water containing nitrate at 40 parts per m...
In the summer of 1978, Allen Wilke slammed the brakes. He did this often. A true plantsman, he observed everything but the road itself. He would spy a flowering prickly pear in the ditch, a wild grapevine. He would double back without warning, often sending his son and daughter – half asleep in his gutted cargo van's backseat – tumbling forward with their luggage. This time, the plantsman was alone. He was puttering through the Sandhills on Highway 91, a mile west of Taylor, when a tall, ski...
Nick Herringer claps along with a metronome. He draws lines on a big screen, repeating patterns drawn by the computer. He identifies icons of cars when they flash before his eyes. This is the 22-year-old's speech and cognitive therapy, which he has been doing at least twice a week. Every week. For three years. Nick's thick brown hair hides a massive, ear-to-ear scar from his four brain surgeries for glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer he has battled since he was a teenager. His mom, Tammy Herringer, drives Nick to therapy and back. She...
Interesting question our office has received on more than one occasion: Why does SAM sometimes run articles from other areas of Nebraska? The answer is relatively simple. We are Nebraska. I like to think our readers want to learn more about this place we call home. When we share articles from Flatwater Free Press or Nebraska Examiner or Nebraska News Service, our goal is to offer coverage that is not only interesting, but may have an impact on our lives. For example, on Page 3 in this week’s edi...
ZACH WENDLING Nebraska News Service Ed. note: This piece is included in UNL's Democracy Day project, a national intiative where more than 300 news outlets published stories about democracy in the United States. In just a little over a year, Nebraska's media landscape has expanded to uncover and shed light on more undercovered stories with the addition of two new publications. The Flatwater Free Press, which published its first stories on Sept. 3, 2021, preceded the launch of the Nebraska...
Kylie Adolf knows what it takes to run a successful second-grade classroom. She needs jump ropes. Tissues. Colorful paper. Puzzles. A princess puzzle is always a good idea. But the Omaha second-grade teacher can't request those supplies from her school and expect to find them in her supply closet the next week. There are no funds in the budget for that. Instead, she spends her own money out of her teacher's paycheck. Instead, she posts to Facebook and asks friends and strangers for help. "My...
Jasmine Gutschow felt nauseous when she woke up a few days before Thanksgiving last year. She brushed it off as typical pregnancy symptoms. She told her fiance he should head into work – the baby, not due for six more weeks, wouldn't be coming anytime soon. Three hours later, after her contractions started, after they sped for the hospital, after their 2003 Chevy Tahoe broke down, after her contractions quickened to every two minutes and Gutschow's fiance frantically dialed 911, it had become c...
Growing up on a hill overlooking North Omaha during World War II, Mary Carpenter remembers the numerous vegetable plots, called victory gardens, that dotted her Florence neighborhood. “Everybody had one,” said Carpenter, the reporter’s mother-in-law. “We grew everything - asparagus, potatoes, tomatoes, black raspberries, pears, even grapes. That’s what fed us and supplemented our food.” Over the ensuing decades, many of those gardens disappeared as grocery stores started carrying seasonal produce year round. Yet 80 years later, everything...
ADDIE COSTELLO Flatwater Free Press Mary Terry, the longtime village clerk in Cedar Creek, shook her head no whenever Steve Sharp told her she deserved a raise. "Her answer was always the same. It was always, 'You can't afford to give me a raise,'" said Sharp, elected chairperson of the village board in 2010. What Sharp didn't know: Terry, the clerk and treasurer, was giving herself unauthorized raises. She padded her paycheck with more than $75,000 in stolen village funds over six years while...
WARSAW, Poland – The 3-year-old was too sick to leave his hotel room. He has had congenital heart disease since he was born. A second surgery was already planned for when he turned three. Then the war started. Now, as the young Ukrainian lay in his hotel bed 500 miles from home, his oxygen levels dipped dangerously low. His pulse raced. He'd spent the night feverish and throwing up. His lips and fingertips had turned purple. Downstairs, a volunteer doctor hustled from patient to patient in the h...
LEO ADAM BIGA Flatwater Free Press University of Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook entered the 2009 season having won 281 of his first 300 games – a ridiculous .937 winning percentage. At age 52, he had already won two national titles. But, inside, Cook didn't feel like how you are supposed to feel when you reach the summit. Instead, even as his squad went 31-3 and reached the Final Four that year, Cook felt empty. Lost. He felt like a failure. "I thought I had it figured out and then it a...
Six-year-old Elijah Wastell started feeling anxious last fall. It came hard for the Omaha kindergartener at bedtime. His parents tried breathing exercises. They attempted to build his confidence. The anxiety got worse. It got to the point where "he wanted to be in bed with a blanket over his head before the sun went down, which can be tricky in September," said mother Anna Wastell. Elijah himself didn't tie his newfound anxiety to the pandemic that has altered the lives of everyone – i... Full story
In 2011, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services wrote a bill that would allow well-behaved prisoners the chance to shorten their time behind bars. Eleven years later, that same department is applying the resulting law in a way neither the state senator who sponsored the bill nor the then-director of Nebraska’s prisons intended. Prison officials now shorten a prisoner’s final release date, but never change the day that prisoner becomes eligible for parole. The result: Thousands of prisoners sentenced under the law have potentially sta...
It’s 7:30 p.m. on a wintry Friday night and the parking lot outside Johnny’s Cafe, a South Omaha landmark, is jammed. The scent of seared steak wafts out the heavy, faux-bronze doors as they swing outward, and diners walk into a glowing, ruby-hued time capsule of Nebraska food history. To the left is the massive dining room, still crowded on weekends with silver-haired men in sportcoats and women in their best blouses being served by staff who have worked here for decades. To the right is the da...
LEO ADAM BIGA FLATWATER FREE PRESS As fighters went through their paces one recent night at B&B Sports Academy, its co-owner, world welterweight boxing champion Terence "Bud" Crawford, got right in the mix, interacting with pros and amateurs alike. He coached boxers at the North Omaha gym, teased them, cajoled them, encouraged them. He occasionally glanced over at 11-year-old Reno Busby, a nationally ranked USA Boxing bantamweight. Busby's coaches – and Crawford himself – believe the Davis Mid...
Forgive George Barnes if he looks a little grim. That day in 1887, ol’ George had ample reason to mean-mug photographer Solomon Butcher, and homesteader life in general. The night before the family photo, it had rained. Hard. The rain had soaked the roof of their soddie. The decaying pole holding the roof had snapped. The whole thing had come down on itself, like a bad metaphor, ruining everything the family owned. The year before, George Barnes’ wife had died of an unknown illness. Barnes was raising three children by himself while he tri...
