Family summer tradition

NELIGH, Neb. — Sheri Neesen is terrified of horror flicks.

She never watches them when she can help it. But in her line of work, they can be hard to avoid.

In the summer months, Neesen manages the Starlite Drive-In, one of two drive-in theaters left in Nebraska. With its 40-by-60-foot screen and sound piped through concession-stand speakers and car radios, Neesen usually takes refuge in the ticket booth or the back office.

“I make myself busy,” she said. “I don’t even turn on the radio.”

Growing up at movie theaters and drive-ins managed by her parents, Franklin and Connie Johnson, Neesen was petrified by films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Exorcist.” Pranks by her siblings didn’t help.

After those experiences, she never thought she would end up in the theater business.

But now there’s nothing she’d rather be doing. Continue reading →

‘Lest we forget’ our history

WillBrown For the better part of a century, the man at the center of a 1919 riot in Omaha has lain in an unmarked grave.

William Brown was a 40-year-old black meatpacker. On Sept. 26, 1919, he was arrested on charges of raping a white woman. Two days later, he was beaten, hanged, shot and burned by a lynch mob angered over a crime for which he was never convicted.

He lay in an unmarked grave in Potter’s Field, the Douglas County cemetery for the poor and unknown, for nearly 90 years — until an unlikely donor stepped in. Continue reading →

A new language on the school block

O’Neill — which calls itself Nebraska’s Irish capital — might be the last place you’d expect to find students learning Mandarin.

But early one morning last month, the superintendent interviewed a teaching candidate half a world away via computer.

If all goes according to plan, the candidate will teach Chinese in the O’Neill, Chambers and West Holt school districts this coming school year.

“We all really said Chinese was the way to go as far as language,” said O’Neill Superintendent Amy Shane.

The number of youngsters learning Chinese is small but growing.

The Omaha and Lincoln school districts, which offer the language at the high school level, are looking to expand to lower grades. Several school districts across Nebraska have expressed interest in starting programs.

The interest stems partly from the nation’s growing economic and political interaction with China, where Mandarin is the official and most commonly spoken native language. Omaha employers who do business in China say speaking the language can be valuable for job applicants.

“More and more companies are looking at China every day,” said Marisa Ring, the international business development manager for the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce.

In the world of language education, though, Mandarin is still on the B list. Continue reading →

Home with historic past threatened with demolition

In her time, Annie Fisher was a household name among the Columbia elite.

Fisher, a black woman who left school in the third grade to work in the fields, was born in 1867, shortly after slavery ended in the United States. She went on to build a catering and dining empire in Columbia, and her beaten biscuits were known across the county. But her memory is now fading.

In March, the City Council voted to rezone the property where she ran her restaurant, giving initial approval to a plan that would demolish it.

Kevin Murphy of the civil engineering firm, A Civil Group, spoke at the Feb. 7 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on behalf of the owner of a self-storage facility next to the house. According to meeting minutes, Murphy told the commission that the owner of Old Highway 63 Mini Storage, Merle Smarr, planned to tear down the existing structures to expand his business. At the time, no one raised any concerns, and the property was rezoned.

Now, Annie Fisher aficionados in Columbia say that losing the house would be a tragedy. Continue reading →