After fever-pitch rate of building leading up to the housing crash, they left behind hundreds of lots waiting for houses, many taken back by lenders looking to unloand them — quick.

That left one builder unusually suited to take advantage of the situation: Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit that builds low-cost homes for low-income families.

So the organization’s Portland branch launched a fundraising campaign and started snatching up land.

In the last several months, the group has built up a five-year supply of land, enough for as many as 150 houses. It’s aiming to pump up its production by 50 percent.

“There’s a real window of opportunity here,” said Steve Messinetti , the executive director of Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East. “We’re getting deals we’re not going to see again.”

Read the rest on OregonLive.com.

The on-again, off-again downtown Vancouver movie theater, shuttered since June, shows its age in its cracked leather seats, a few broken window panes and a thick coat of dust.

But the owner of the theater is getting ready to cue the lights again. Bill Leigh and a team of volunteers have launched a $300,000 project with the goal of restoring the Kiggins and reopening early next year.

The Kiggins closed June 1 because of low attendance for its second-run double features. When the theater reopens — likely early next year, said Seanette Corkill, a partner in the project –it will have a new focus on independent film, with an eye toward providing a venue for musical performances. An upstairs bar will provide a gathering spot.

“That was a business model that doesn’t work anymore,” Corkill said of the previous approach. “Commercial films in 3D you go see in a commercial theater. If you want to experience independent cinema, you come to see it in an independent theater.”

Read the rest on OregonLive.com.

His winery was one of just a few at the time. But as the budding industry grew, county officials started to grow wary of letting wineries — with their proclivity for large events and tastings — open under the loose regulations governing agricultural land.

By earlier this year when Michele Bloomquist was preparing to open her winery, Heisen House Vineyards, the county had changed its tune.

“I was told, well, you can have a winery and you can have a vineyard, but you can’t have people go there,” she said. “Of course, that’s not how the wine business works.”

The county, now home to about a dozen wineries and expecting more, is considering new regulations aimed at easing concerns about safety and the impact of winery visitors on rural infrastructure while still fostering the growing industry. The county asked vintners to weigh in to ensure the policies are winery-friendly.

Read the rest at OregonLive.com.

“We should be generating some critical mass here (that) I think was needed,” said John Ott, who owns not only the Berry Building but several others in the North Village and downtown.

The Berry Building started out as a wholesale grocery store and warehouse built by its namesake, L.W. Berry, in 1925. When Berry died shortly thereafter, the building was sold and has since operated primarily as a storage facility, with occasional retail uses.

“It’s been kind of an eyesore for many years,” Ott said.

Now, the building has been cleaned up inside and out. Renovations are finishing up this month. The first tenant, Wilson’s Fitness, is scheduled to open a gym in the building’s basement in early December. Ott is looking for tenants to occupy the Berry Building’s retail storefronts on Walnut Street, restaurant space on the building’s north side and loft apartments on the top floor.

The building’s warehouse look has been preserved. Ott said he has taken advantage of some of the warehouse aesthetics, using its many windows for natural light and retaining the original post-and-beam supports.

The building’s new purposes are starting to take shape, too. Storefronts now line Walnut Street, and the restaurant’s patio overlooks Orr Street. The top floor has been partitioned into 12 lofts: nine one-bedroom and three two-bedroom apartments designed for young professionals and empty nesters.

The North Village was once a busy district for Columbia artists, but shops closed and traffic slowed as shoppers went elsewhere, such as the Columbia Mall. But as people and businesses have returned to the downtown district, some say the North Village is on track to make a comeback, too.

“The more going on in our part of town, the more it benefits everyone,” said Tracy Lane, director of Orr Street Studios. “I think there’s a very good thing happening.”

Orr Street Studios opened across from the Berry Building in 2007. Lane said nearby developments will help bring the studios within reach of downtown traffic.

“It’s just an extension of downtown now,” she said. “When the studios first opened, they were sort of out there by themselves. Now … there’s more traffic and more people, so there’s more awareness for everybody.”

When the Berry Building is complete, Ott hopes it will complement the developing art district’s feel. He said he plans to install outdoor art projects near the building, and he’s looking for creative retail or service tenants that match the neighborhood.

“There are just some businesses that aren’t a good fit,” Ott said. “You want stores that are true to our district.”

Ott owns and recently developed several other nearby properties. Cafe Berlin moved this month from its location on Providence Road to a former service station nearby, at Tenth Street and Park Avenue. The Artlandish Gallery opened next to the Berry Building earlier this year, and an office building across Walnut is nearing completion. Ott also renovated the building at 1013 Walnut St. that now is home to Rock Bottom Comics and Mizzou Records.

And there’s room for more. The Downtown Leadership Council, created by the Columbia City Council to find opportunities for downtown renewal, identified the area as a priority in a May report.

“People have deemed that area for years to be the North Village,” Downtown Leadership Council chairman Randy Gray said. ”I think it has such identity, and even the possibility for a stronger identity.”

Next, the council plans to conduct a “design charrette,” a planning process that brings together stakeholders — including business owners, property owners and residents — to discuss their vision of future development in the area.

“The idea is to get input from everyone involved to determine what the future of downtown is to be,” Gray said. “How should it function? How should it feel? How should it look?”

The council will hire planners to take public input and turn it into drawings, renderings and possible guidelines for fut

ure development. The North Village, in particular, has a lot of potential for community involvement.

“Who’s to say you couldn’t have more artists involved in the creation of funky designs to distinguish the streetscape in that area?” Gray said.

COLUMBIA, Mo. — In his five campaigns for mayor, Darwin Hindman was untouchable. After winning a six-way race for the office by more than 4,000 votes in 1995, Hindman has twice run unopposed, and he won by enormous margins in the two elections in which he was challenged.

But after Hindman’s Thursday announcement that he would not seek election to a sixth term, the mayoral race is wide open. The announcement touched off a flurry of speculation about possible successors.

Hindman has previously waited until early January to announce his election intentions but said Thursday that he hopes an early announcement this time will give possible candidates a chance to consider their decision.

“I hope there will be a vigorous campaign,” he said.

With no incumbent, there’s a good chance the field will look similar to that of 1995.

Hindman said he hadn’t spoken to anyone interested in mounting a campaign for  mayor. But his decision not to run was kept under a tight lid, he said. Other than family, he hadn’t told anyone before Thursday.

Community members said Hindman has set a high standard for successors.

“Whoever is elected mayor following Mayor Hindman will be judged against him, and that will be a very high bar to get over,” said Jim Loveless, who has served as councilman for both the Second and Fourth wards.

Don Stamper, executive director of the Central Missouri Leadership Council, said that group will be active in the search for new candidates for mayor.

“The tone of the community is set by leadership, and that is a tone we are very interested in,” Stamper said. “We’ll be working with other groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and (The Columbia) Board of Realtors.”

Former Columbia Mayor Mary Anne McCollum said that as the city grows, so does the mayor’s responsibilities.

“The next mayor will have to obviously be someone who can be as dedicated to the job as was Mayor Hindman,” she said. “It does require increasingly more time.”

McCollum said that one of the biggest changes since she was mayor in the late 1980s and early 1990s is the level of communication constituents expect.

“Many of the citizens who contacted me did so by calling me and leaving a message on my recorder at home, and I also responded to a lot of letters,” she said. “Over the past 20 years the role of both the mayor and City Council has increased. With the newest technology, constituents expect more immediate response from their elected officials.”

City Manager Bill Watkins said the next mayor should be someone familiar with the city and how to work within the government.

“We need someone who has knowledge of the workings of the community and willingness to lead and work with the staff, City Council, interest groups and community groups,” Watkins said.

Sixth Ward Councilwoman Barbara Hoppe said the next mayor should be someone who understands the community and its history.

“Someone who has the foresight for the community of the future, which includes growing in sustainable ways that are in sync with environmental realities,” Hoppe said. “Also a person who is a good spokesperson, open-minded and good at allowing people to express ideas and conversation.”

Jeff Barrow, chairman of the Columbia Planning and Zoning Commission, said the next mayor also must brace for the problems that come with Columbia’s growth. Some big-city background would help, he said.

Barrow noted that the city is in a position to take the next step in growth, with downtown on the cusp of redevelopment and MU developing a research park that it hopes will be strong in the life sciences.

“The new mayor needs to be poised to take advantage of those opportunities that need to be merged,” Barrow said. The mayor should be “progress oriented, future oriented. Darwin Hindman was a wonderful native son – a great mayor – but I think the new mayor is going to have to face (new kinds) of challenges.”

Several potential candidates for mayor have refrained from committing to the race. Fourth Ward Councilman Jerry Wade confirmed Wednesday that he has been considering a mayoral run for months but that he wouldn’t speed up his decision because of Hindman’s announcement.

Retired bank executive Bob Roper, who has been widely discussed as a possible contender, told the Missourian on Wednesday that he would be “highly unlikely” to enter the race.

John Clark, who has run twice against Hindman, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Arnie Fagan, a real estate agent and owner of Cool Stuff, said he is considering running for mayor.

“I think it’s an extremely important job, and we certainly need someone that’s got a lot of experience in the right skills and certainly somebody who’s very civic-minded,” he said.

Fagan said he has received personal e-mails encouraging him to run.

“Certainly, looking at who would throw their hat in the ring would affect any decision I would make,” Fagan said. “If there was somebody who was a good candidate, I’d be less likely to join the race. But it would be more likely if there are only lousy candidates throwing their hat in the ring.”

Loveless said that he has not given the idea of running for mayor “due consideration” but that anyone who is running will have a tough role to fill.

People commenting on the Columbia Daily Tribune’s Web site offered plenty of informal nominations, including local blogger Mike Martin, who owns and rents properties in the central city; Fred Parry, publisher of Inside Columbia Magazine; and Jeff Harris, the former 23rd District state representative who lost a bid for attorney general.

Parry said he was flattered by some of the attention, but a run for mayor would not be a “good fit for me right now.”

“At this point, I am not interested personally in running, but I am very interested in who might consider running,” he said.

Parry said the City Council has missed opportunities to curb violent crime and made it difficult for businesses to move to or operate in Columbia. That has, in turn, hurt Columbia’s schools, he said.

“People don’t want to move to a town where there is a perceived increase in violent crime,” he said.

In addition to the mayor’s seat, the Third and Fourth Ward council seats held by Karl Skala and Wade, respectively, will be up for election on April 6.

The filing period for council candidates will begin Oct. 23 and end in late January. The city charter dictates that those interested in running for mayor must collect at least 100 and not more than 150 signatures from registered voters in the city.

Missourian reporters James Patrick Schmidt and Greg Mitchell contributed to this report.

At least Dawn Buell says so. She’s the owner of Not Afraid to Sweat Inc., a corn detasseling company, and she employs a group of detasselers that calls itself The Force.

“They’re very good at what they do,” Buell said. “Not a lot slips through their fingers.”

Every year, small armies of mostly teenagers descend on fields for the brief detasseling season. The task is essential to creating hybrid corn seed, and the labor-intensive work only lasts a few weeks.

These days, most of the work is done by machine. A grower will lop off the tops of some plants to allow another breed planted nearby to cross-pollinate them, creating a hybrid.

But the machine can’t get all the tassels, and growers say leaving behind more than one-quarter of a percent will contaminate the field. The detasseling teams walk through the fields and manually pull any remaining tassels. Usually, it takes more than one sweep.

That’s where The Force comes in.

They do the second pass through the field, and usually they avoid third, fourth and fifth sweeps often needed to meet the growers’ standards.

Buell said the 45 members of The Force are the best of the best, the most experienced of more than 400 detasselers she employs. Most have been around for several seasons, and each has been picked as one of the top five workers on a previous season’s crew.

“Many of them have grown up with me, so to speak,” Buell said.

While most teams need lots of supervision and double-checking, The Force has its system down cold. The detasselers put their water jugs at the end of the row, walk to the other end of the field detasseling two rows, then walk back to detassel the next row. Then they move on to the next set.

The job is tough. The day starts about 5:30 a.m., when buses pick up the detasselers from two Lincoln church parking lots. The buses — decked out with Christmas lights and emblazoned with “The Force” in duct tape — take the detasselers out to the day’s first field.

Walking row-by-row, they snatch at the tassels as if by reflex. The tassels aren’t easy to spot. During detasseling season, the normally gold tassels are still enveloped in leaves.

Taller stalks, still wet with the morning dew, are the worst. These experienced detasselers know to wear rain gear or trash bags to stay dry, and they wear long sleeves to prevent scratches from the leaves.

And they know what to look for. Less experienced workers might miss “suckers,” the low-lying tassels that you’d miss if you were looking up, or “hangers,” tassels that have been removed but are still hanging where they might pollinate the plants.

“My very first day, I remember going from corn plant to corn plant just looking in them,” said 16-year-old Drew Hoefler, a fourth-year detasseler from Firth, Neb., now pulling tassel after tassel without a second glance. “I guess it just comes with experience.”

On The Force, most detasselers will earn more than $2,000 over the three-week season.

Even though the season is short, the crew has grown close.

“When you’re in the field with people, you just talk about everything,” said 16-year-old Sarah Koehler of Lincoln. “Anything and everything.”

The team has developed its own traditions. Every day on the way home, they listen to the song “Sneaky Snake,” a children’s song about a root-beer-swilling snake.

On occasion, their work earns them a treat from their supervisors — a stop at McDonald’s for ice cream or a cookout at the field, courtesy of Buell or their team supervisor.

The days can be long, but the season is over before they know it.

“It goes really fast,” Koehler said. “You basically sleep, eat and detassel during the detasseling season.”

They might look more Eddie Bauer than Brooks Brothers, but they’re taking care of business using the Camp Cedars’ free wireless Internet connection.

There was a time when a week at summer camp meant staying off the map and unplugged. But in a world of cell phones, smart phones and Internet access anywhere, it’s getting harder to get away, even at Boy Scout camp.

And leaders say that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Camp Cedars installed wireless Internet access three years ago as a way for parents to fulfill professional obligations while with their sons at camp. Camp Eagle, a nearby camp for younger Cub Scouts, also offers Internet access.

The Mid-America Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which runs the camps and three others, decided last week to expand the service to the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in Little Sioux, Iowa.

Scoutmaster Ray Netherton, who leads Troop 141 of Ida Grove, Iowa, typed on his laptop at Camp Cedars while Scouts attended merit badge classes.

He said the Internet access can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, he can’t use time at camp to truly get away from the daily grind for a week.

“There is some peace in not having to respond to things,” he said.

On the other hand, he can save himself two days of catching up on e-mail and project updates when he gets back to work. Netherton, a manufacturing engineering manager at the Gomaco Corp. construction firm, said he receives about 60 e-mails every day.

“The work doesn’t pile up as much as it would have otherwise,” he said.

When food service manager Sandra Roth — known at camp as “Mom” — started working there in 1990, there was only one phone line, and she had to go to the camp administration office to order supplies. Sometimes, if the line was tied up, she would go home to make the calls.

Today she has her own phone line, and she does some of her business online.

“It simplifies a few things,” she said. “Communication is key to a lot of things, and the faster and the easier you can communicate, the better.”

The camp asks troop leaders to tell Scouts not to bring electronics, although Williamson said about a third carry cell phones.

For staff who live at the camp for six weeks, it’s easier to keep in touch with friends and family. David Sweeney, the director of shooting sports, lives in Spring Hill, Fla., and has worked at Camp Cedars for four summers. His son, a first lieutenant in the Army, is stationed in Iraq, and the two talk frequently via instant messages.

“Times have changed radically from when I was a Boy Scout, and I say for the better,” he said.

Netherton said his company would probably give him time off for summer camp even if he couldn’t stay in touch.

For others, going off the grid for a week isn’t an option, said Camp Director Don Williamson. Providing wireless Internet allows them to go to camp and still check in with work.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for them to come out here and be with their boys and still be in contact,” Williamson said. “In this age of Internet, it’s critical for them to be able to keep in touch.”

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.

The theaters have always been a family business. Neesen’s uncle would buy a theater, then her mother and father would manage it for a few years to get the business going. The first was in Schuyler, Neb., when Neesen was a toddler. When she was around 7 years old, the family moved to a theater in West Point, Neb.

Neesen and her siblings were troublemakers, she said. Occasionally, they would pepper moviegoers with candy from the balcony. For such misdeeds, her father would make the kids clean between theater seats with a toothbrush.

“We were naughty, naughty kids,” she said.

As a teenager, she worked in the theater’s concession stands and ticket booth. She remembers her dad’s cat-and-mouse pursuit of teenagers trying to sneak in. Occasionally, kids would hide in car trunks or sneak in through the fields behind the theater.

“It was always a big competition to see how many could get away with it and outsmart him,” she said.

In 1976, Neesen went to Northeast Community College then stayed in Norfolk to start a family and work as an accountant. Her parents left the theater business for a while, but after her father retired, they bought the Starlite and the New Moon Theatre in Neligh with her brother.

In 2005, after her father developed Alzheimer’s disease, Neesen’s brother needed someone to run the theaters. Neesen’s kids had grown up and she wanted to help take care of her father, so she and her husband tried managing the theater on weekends and commuting from their home in Norfolk — a 35-mile drive that almost left them in a ditch a few times.

That didn’t detract from the rewards of the job.

“My husband really, really liked it,” she said. “He just fell in love with it.”

They moved to Neligh and took over as managers full time. In the winter, Neesen runs the New Moon Theatre and in the summer she runs the drive-in. They also run a video rental store year-round. She usually tries to take a couple of nights off every week, but she’s on call 24/7.

Taking over at the theater meant giving up her accounting job. That meant a pay cut, and her husband, Ralph, still commutes about 35 miles to Norfolk for work because they couldn’t afford to give up his job.

But the lack of stress at the theaters is worth the lower salary.

“This is more fun,” she said. “ It’s more fulfilling. It’s just a happy place to be.”

She never understood growing up why her parents were so passionate about the drive-in, but she says she gets it now. Her interest goes beyond just running the business. She’s started looking into the history of the theaters, collecting old newspaper clippings and printouts from the Internet. She hopes to put together a display for the New Moon Theatre.

Managing the drive-in came as second nature given her family history, and very little comes as a surprise. She’s learned to deal with customers who don’t want to follow the rules, often including the ban on grilling at the theater. Last week when a customer’s car battery died, she had jumper cables ready to go.

“That happens a lot,” she said.

But in many ways, she’s found the drive-in business has changed.

Growing up, she often saw friends from school there while she was working.

“That was all they had for entertainment,” she said.

Today, the Starlite doesn’t see much local business. Neligh, a town of just over 1,600, couldn’t support the theater on its own, but people come from all over Nebraska. Some even plan their summer travel around the movie schedule, Neesen said. In fact, business at the Starlite far exceeds that of the indoor theater.

On an average weekday, about 75 people come through the gate. Some bring lawn chairs and sit outside, while others stay in their cars. Kids often come in their pajamas, because the double features run into the early morning. Many returning customers come prepared with blankets for cool nights and citronella candles to keep the bugs away.

The theater plays new films, but nostalgia fuels a lot of the business. The theater plays up its 1950s roots with nods like an intermission reel from an original drive-in. It offers helpful hints for moviegoers, including what to do if you accidently disconnect your speaker from the post. Here, the speakers are just for show. Their old intermission reel, the one where the hot dog jumps into a bun, wore out after years of use.

Neesen usually works in the box office selling tickets during the first film, so she often sees the same film over and over during its run, which can range from one week to four or five. She doesn’t mind some films — she’s still laughing at “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” even two weeks in — because she usually watches in bits and pieces. She thought “Over the Hedge,” an animated family film from 2006, was hilarious. Others, notably the “Shrek” films, got repetitive after 18 showings.

After the second film starts, she’ll head back to her office in the projector building to take care of business and help with concession sales. The stand sells theater food like popcorn and candy, but also fare that is distinctly drive-in, like hamburgers, chili cheese fries and chicken tenders.

“It’s just good old drive-in food, like it used to be,” she said.

Parents bring their kids to show them what a drive-in is like.

“There’s a whole generation who doesn’t know what they missed out on,” she said.

And after they show up once, they often become regulars.

Last week, Russ and Stacie Wilken of Norfolk brought their son, Aaron, to see “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” and “The Proposal.” They first came about 10 years ago, and have tried to come back at least once every year.

“It’s something different to do, especially for kids,” Russ said.

Others come to relive the days when drive-ins were more common.

Steve and Jane Johnson of Neligh went last week in their black 1947 Chevy. When they first went to the Starlite in the ’60s, they went in Steve’s 1946 Chevy.

“When we were in high school, we were here every weekend practically,” Jane said.

While the drive-in might be a novelty today, Neesen said she won’t give it up until people stop coming. She doesn’t expect that for a long time.

“They’re too fun,” she said. “I was always surprised there weren’t more.”

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.

Last month, workers laid a headstone donated by Chris Hebert of Riverside, Calif.

Hebert, an engineer for an electronics company, has no Omaha ties and has never visited the city. He had never heard of Brown or the Omaha riot.

“I just happen to watch a lot of TV,” he said.

He was watching a special on actor Henry Fonda, a Nebraska native. The show mentioned a riot in Omaha while Fonda was growing up.

Hebert searched online for more information. What he found was appalling.

“Just looking at the pictures of people grinning and smiling with their feet on his corpse, I can’t tell you what that did to me, as a person of color and just as a person,” he said.

He spent hours online reading about the riots and came upon a story about Brown’s unmarked grave. He started making calls to city officials and eventually spoke to Greg Easley at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Easley helped make arrangements with the city, and shortly thereafter, Hebert paid about $450 for the grave marker, which Forest Lawn installed at Potter’s Field.

“You think of all the people in Omaha who could have gotten this done, and it took a guy out of California who happened to come across a footnote from Henry Fonda’s life,” Easley said. “The whole story is amazing.”

The headstone bears the inscription “Lest we forget,” chosen by Hebert.

“I think there is a definite lesson to be learned here,” Hebert said.

That lesson, he said, is to let the law run its course and to trust in the legal system. He said that the country has come a long way since 1919 and that progress is reflected in the election of a black president.

“We’re definitely moving in the right direction,” he said. “The way to keep moving is to let people know how we got here today.”

Evidence suggests that Brown might have been innocent — some accounts say he suffered from joint pain that limited his mobility — but he never got a chance to make his case.

As he sat in jail two days after his arrest, a huge mob gathered outside the courthouse demanding that he be turned over. They set fire to the courthouse and just before 11 p.m., rioters stormed the building and seized their target.

The mob beat him and hanged him from a lamp pole, then riddled his body with bullets. They dragged him through the streets and, at the corner of 17th and Dodge, set his body on fire.

The mayhem continued for hours after Brown died. The city called in federal troops to restore calm, and the riot was widely reported and widely condemned. In a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial, World-Herald editor Harvey E. Newbranch called for respect for the rule of law.

Brown was buried on what was then the far reaches of town in Potter’s Field, which is just west of Florence. Like most buried there, his grave was left unmarked.

James Calloway Sr, acting director of the Great Plains Black History Museum, said Brown’s story fell to the wayside during the 1940s and 1950s. It was revived in the 1960s, during the civil rights movement, but the cemetery had closed and fallen into disrepair.

“For years and years, no one even knew where the grave site was, or if there even was one,” he said.

Granite markers, installed as part of a 1986 renovation, listed all the buried as originally recorded, but individual graves remained unmarked.

Meanwhile, Brown’s story has lived on in historical accounts, including a 1998 play and vigils at the courthouse.

In 2005, Janice Maloney came across Brown’s story while researching family history. Her great-aunt, Agnes LoeBack, was the woman he had been accused of raping.

She learned that his grave was unmarked and asked Douglas County officials to locate it. After a story about her appeared in The World-Herald in June 2005, several local businesses and organizations expressed interest in buying a marker.

“I didn’t go out looking to get him a gravestone,” she said. “Things just kind of snowballed. People got involved and it just started happening.”

But the efforts never took off, and no stone was placed.

Hebert said he doesn’t fault the people of Omaha for leaving the grave unmarked. He said marking the site was easy when he wasn’t depending on others’ donations.

“The Lord’s been good to me,” he said. “I was able to do it, I had the money, and believe me, it made me feel good.”

Hebert hasn’t seen the marker — in fact, he didn’t learn it had been placed for several weeks — but he said he plans to travel to Omaha to see it.

The marking didn’t go unnoticed. Kokayi Ufanifu of Omaha, watched as surveyors located Brown’s grave and placed the marker.

Ufanifu led a candlelight vigil in September to mark the 89th anniversary of Brown’s death. He held a drumming ceremony at Brown’s grave shortly after the marker was placed.

He said seeing the grave finally marked was too moving to put into words.

“Tears came to my eyes,” he said. “It’s something that needed to be done that was long overdue.”

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.

In Nebraska, far more students study Spanish, French or German. More students, in fact, study Latin — a dead language.

Only the Omaha and Lincoln school districts offer Chinese classes, with a total of 185 students from those two districts studying it last year.

In Iowa’s graduating class of 2007, only 43 students studied Chinese. More than 24,000 learned Spanish.

But Vickie Scow, Nebraska’s world language education director, said she expects more districts to start offering Chinese.

Both the Chinese and U.S. governments are pushing to increase the number of U.S. students learning the language, said Nancy Rhodes, director of foreign language education for the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington.

The U.S. Department of Education is more willing to fund programs in Mandarin and Arabic than the languages traditionally taught in schools. Rhodes said the federal government thinks such programs will help improve national security, commerce and international relations.

Among U.S. elementary schools that offer foreign language, the percentage that teach Chinese increased tenfold from 1997 to 2008, according to a survey conducted by the center. However, the share of such schools teaching Chinese is only 3 percent.

China sends instructors to the United States through the Office of Chinese Language Council International, a nonprofit organization known as Hanban. The Hanban-funded Confucius Institute at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, established in 2007, is working with the Omaha and Lincoln school districts to expand their programs by helping to develop curriculum and find instructors.

The Confucius Institute also takes public school officials on two-week tours of China. The program’s ultimate goal is to encourage the districts to teach Chinese. This year, five administrators from Omaha and three from Kearney toured the country.

For Kearney, money is the biggest obstacle to offering the language.

Carol Renner, the district’s associate superintendent, said she had long hoped to start a Chinese language program but hasn’t found funding to pay for textbooks or an instructor. But she said the district has a responsibility to prepare its students to work side by side with native Chinese speakers.

“We need to help our students be more culturally interested and globally minded,” she said.

In O’Neill, the program will be subsidized by a guest teacher program offered by the College Board, the nonprofit organization that oversees the SAT. The teacher will work three days a week in O’Neill and one day a week each in Chambers and West Holt.

The classes will be available to students in other neighboring districts via the Internet. The instructor will stay for at least one year and as long as three.

O’Neill will offer two years of Chinese at the high school level, a culture class in middle school and an introductory language class at the elementary level.

The Omaha district has applied for a $600,000 federal grant to expand its Chinese language program to the elementary level and provide more instructor training. That would allow students to take four years of Mandarin. Chinese classes are already available at Beveridge Middle School and South, Burke and Central High Schools.

John Herse, who graduated from Burke in May, took two years of Chinese. He had studied Spanish for several years and wanted to try something different.

The Chinese character system of writing fascinated Herse. In Mandarin, each character has its own meaning, while English and most European languages combine letters to form meaning.

“It’s just totally different from all the other languages I’ve ever looked at,” Herse said.

After two years of instruction, Herse knows enough to introduce himself and hold a basic conversation in Mandarin. He can order a meal or talk about the weather.

He plans to study the language when he attends the University of Pittsburgh in the fall, as well as study abroad in China. He eventually would like to work for the United Nations or a philanthropic organization as a liaison between China and the United States.

A number of Omaha businesses have ties to China ranging from importing goods from the country to locating offices there. The chamber’s Ring, who sits on the board of directors of the Midwest International Trade Association, said the latter group is offering a 10-week conversational Chinese course for its members.

“It helps to have a basic understanding of languages and culture,” she said. “It can make your business trips a lot more successful.”

The vast majority of Americans speak only one language. According to a 2005 U.S. Senate resolution declaring 2005 the “Year of Foreign Language Study,” only 9 percent of U.S. citizens speak their native language and a second language fluently, while about half of Europeans are multilingual.

The ability to speak Mandarin or another language can give job seekers an edge.

Craig Stoffel, executive vice president of global logistics at Omaha-based Werner Enterprises, said about half of the trucking and transportation company’s international business is done with China. For its international division, speaking another language is a must.

Werner established operations in China in 2006, launching a push to hire new employees who could speak Chinese. Today, nine of the company’s employees in Omaha speak Chinese.

Out of 2,575 nondriver employees in North America, he said, 135 speak more than one language, and more multilingual employees work in the company’s offices overseas.

“We don’t really ask if you speak another language anymore,” Stoffel said. “We ask how many.”