History (1919 - 1969)

Bob Kerrey: War Hero, Businessman, Senator, Academic Leader

JUNE 1, 1966

J. Robert “Bob” Kerrey is a business owner who was elected governor of Nebraska, a United States Senator, president of a university and a former U.S. Navy SEAL. He ran for U.S. president in 1992. He earned his pharmacy degree from Nebraska in 1966. While at Nebraska, he served on the Student Council (forerunner to the current student government, ASUN) and was elections commissioner for the campus wide vote that created ASUN. He was a member of Innocents.

High-Rise Residence Halls Cather-Pound Commissioned

SEPTEMBER 1, 1963

University commissions two high-rise tower residence halls, subsequently named for Louise Pound and Willa Cather as Baby Boomers begin to overwhelm campus facilities. The halls were opened in September 1963, just in time for rush week. 

Abel and Sandoz residence halls soon followed and in 1966, the Harper-Schramm-Smith complex was approved.

Bob Devaney Hired

JANUARY 9, 1962

When Chancellor Clifford Hardin went looking for a new football coach after a seventh consecutive losing season in 1961, he called old friends at Michigan State. He was after Duffy Daugherty, but by then Daugherty was already firmly established in East Lansing. Daugherty pointed west, where his former assistant Bob Devaney was wrapping up his fifth season at Wyoming.

Devaney was no one's idea of a commanding figure to look at; but he possessed an Irishman's wit and a winning way. Hardin grasped right away that Devaney was a good fit for Nebraska. He would not be released from his Wyoming contract until February, but he first met with his new team on Jan. 9. Nebraska, the university and the state, would never be the same.

Devaney's Cornhuskers went 9-2 that first year (tripling the prior season's win total), and won their bowl game against the Miami Hurricanes. 40 consecutive winning seasons would follow. Devaney was affiliated with Nebraska for 35 years: head football coach from 1962-1972, Athletics Director from 1967-1993, and director emeritus from 1993-1996. He died in 1997 at 82. His football teams won back-to-back national championships in 1970 and 1971; football’s success drove revenues that the department to grow into one of the few self-sustaining athletic departments in the NCAA.

As football coach, Devaney’s 101-20-2 record at Nebraska includes eight Big Eight titles, two national championships, nine bowl appearances, two Outland Trophy winners, a Lombardi Award winner and a Heisman Trophy winner.

Nobel Prize to Alumnus George Beadle

DECEMBER 10, 1958

George Beadle (1903-1989) shared the 1958 prize in medicine/physiology for his discovery, with co-recipient Edward Tatum, that genes govern the formation of enzymes, that each enzyme corresponds to specific genes thus genes act by regulating chemical events.

He earned a B.S. in agriculture from Nebraska in 1926 and a master’s in 1927. He earned his doctorate in 1931 from Cornell. The work that secured the Nobel was conducted in 1941 at Stanford. Beadle became chancellor and then president of University of Chicago in 1961, serving until 1968. The Beadle Center is named for him.

Future War Correspondent Earns Degree

JUNE 7, 1957

The first woman war correspondent during the Vietnam War, Beverly Deepe Keever arrived in Vietnam in 1962 before the war had fully engaged the attention of the American press. She worked as a freelancer and stayed in Vietnam seven years, developing a list of sources and institutional knowledge that was the envy of others.

Her reporting was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. Her book, "Death Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting" is a memoir of her experiences. Keever's personal archives reside with the University of Nebraska. 

She graduated from Nebraska in 1957, a Phi Beta Kappa and Mortar Board, with dual majors in journalism and political science. She taught journalism at the University of Hawaii, from which she earned both master’s and doctoral degrees, for 29 years. She is a member of the Nebraska Women Journalists Hall of Fame.

Clayton Yeutter, Washington Insider

JUNE 2, 1952

Clayton Yeutter (1930-2017) earned bachelor’s (1952), law (1963) and doctorate (1966) from Nebraska. Yeutter served four U.S. presidents in a career spanning several decades. He was U.S. trade representative for President Ronald Reagan, and U.S. secretary of agriculture for President George H.W. Bush from 1989-1991.

In 2015, a gift from Yeutter to the University of Nebraska Foundation established the Clayton K. Yeutter Institute of International Trade and Finance at Nebraska.

Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha

JANUARY 15, 1951

Investor, businessman, philanthropist, Warren Buffett — the world's most famous investor, known as the "Oracle of Omaha" — is a 1951 graduate of Nebraska with a degree in business. Even then, he had begun amassing his fortune, today estimated as the third-largest in the world. For instance, while a student at Nebraska, he ran a side hustle selling golf balls at discount. He would, after grad school with Benjamin Graham at Columbia, found the Buffett Partnership, eventually evolving it into Berkshire Hathaway, an insurance, investment and manufacturing conglomerate, all while living and working in Omaha. Buffett's witticisms and engaging commentary are most cogently revealed in his Berkshire annual reports, which are classics of business education on the day they are released.

Buffett's association with the University of Nebraska began after he'd decided that Pennsylvania's Wharton School wasn't for him; he repaired to more familiar environs on the campus where his own parents had met as staffers of the Daily Nebraskan (perhaps as tribute, Buffett made a generous donation to the DN Editorial Support Fund in 2018). Of his time at Nebraska, Buffett would later say "The teachers at the University turned me on. There wasn’t a class that disappointed me."

Buffett, along with Bill Gates, is co-founder of the Giving Pledge, in which the world's wealthiest persons are asked to commit to giving at least half of their fortunes to philanthropy; Buffett himself has committed to giving 99 percent of his fortune to worthy causes. Buffett’s late wife Susan Thompson Buffett created a foundation that has established numerous scholarships at Nebraska. Buffett’s daughter Susie, through her Sherwood Foundation, supports initiatives that further early childhood education, including the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, a systemwide initiative supporting research and programs at all four University of Nebraska institutions. And the accounting doesn't end there; many who invested early with Warren Buffett today are patrons of sizable assets; Buffett's first employee, Bill Scott '53, and his wife Ruth '52, both Ashland natives, have been extraordinarily generous to the university, endowing facilities, programs and scholarships at all four institutions.

website: The Giving Pledge
website: Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letters

Theodore Sorensen, Speechwriter and Counselor to JFK

JUNE 6, 1949

Ted Sorensen (1928-2010) graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1949 from the University of Nebraska with a bachelor's degree in law, and in 1951, he earned his juris doctor from the NU College of Law.

A Democrat in politics, Sorensen was advised by an NU professor to apply for a job as a legal aide in then-Senator Kennedy's Washington office. The New Englander and the Nebraskan hit it off immediately, and it wasn't long before they were inseparable. Sorensen would help Kennedy in writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Profiles in Courage," and later the speeches of the thousand-day JFK presidency, including the immortal  "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country" Inaugural Address. At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was Sorensen who was assigned to write the Administration's response to Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev; a diplomatic triumph, Sorensen's words distilled the Administration's position, defusing the globe's most existential crisis in modern time.

Such was his centrality in the mythmaking and politics of John F. Kennedy that Kennedy himself would refer to Sorensen as his "intellectual blood bank." Sorensen, in his autobiography, reflected on the role: "The right speech on the right topic delivered by the right speaker in the right way at the right moment … can ignite a fire, change men's minds, open their eyes, alter their votes, bring hope to their lives, and, in all these ways, change the world. I know. I saw it happen."

After JFK’s death, Sorensen joined a New York law firm, where as an international lawyer, he advised governments, multinational organizations and major corporations around the world. Sorensen endowed several scholarships and professorships at Nebraska, including the Theodore C. Sorensen Public Service Scholarship.

Johnny Carson Commences to Become National Treasure

JUNE 6, 1949

Johnny Carson (1925-2005), a 1949 graduate with a degree in theater and drama, earned enduring fame as the host of NBC’s "The Tonight Show," which he hosted from 1962 to 1992. As American late-night television for most of that period was limited to the three broadcast networks, Carson, and his topical monologues, became the last thing many Americans experienced before sleeping, and the first thing they talked about the next day. In Ted Koppel's words, "for 30 years, he tucked us in, and we lay in the dark and laughed."

Carson would win six Emmy Awards over his career, a Peabody, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center, at which he was introduced by Walter Cronkite as a "cool kid from Nebraska with a cockeyed smile." Little did Carson know at the time that the highlight of that evening would be the Cornhusker Marching Band bursting through the auditorium's doors with a rendition of "There is No Place Like Nebraska." Once a Husker, always a Husker.

Carson was a generous benefactor, both during his life and after his death. At his university, gifts totaling nearly $35 million benefitted the Lied Center for Performing Arts, expanded the Temple Building, and continue to endow scholarships and programs in theater, film and broadcasting. And in 2015, a $20 million gift from the Carson Foundation created the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, which opens to students in the fall of 2019, ensuring Johnny Carson's legacy for years to come.

video: Kennedy Center Honors Johnny Carson
website: Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts

Nebraska Welcomes Japanese-American Students, the 'Nisei.'

SEPTEMBER 1, 1942

The first Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) begin to enroll at Nebraska from war relocation internment camps in western states in the fall of 1942. While many other institutions across the country would not admit them, Nebraska eventually enrolled more than 100 Nisei students. The university hosted the third-largest cohort of Japanese-American students during the war years. The students were helped to acclimate to life in Lincoln with the help of UNL faculty members, particularly Dr. G.W. Rosenlof, as well as Reverend Robert Drew.

Many Nebraska Nisei attended a reunion on campus in 1994, and chose to donate funds for a memorial. Nisei Plaza today occupies a triangular space north of Kimball Hall.

Cornerstone Laid for Love Library

DECEMBER 12, 1941

After Lincoln mayor and banker Don Love left his estate to establish Love Library, the cornerstone of the building was laid on a stormy day in December 1941; it was five days after Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II. Chancellor C.S. Boucher read from a letter that would be placed inside the cornerstone.

One section read, "The library of a university is the very heart of an institution, because the life blood of the scholarship of both students and faculty courses through it." Love had previously given money to establish women’s residence halls in honor of his late wife, Julia.

Before opening as a library, the building would serve as a temporary barracks for troops training at the university for the war effort.

Love Library is today the largest facility among University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries, which holds over three million volumes in its research collections, including a 1542 edition of Chaucer's works, a 1623 Shakespeare First Folio, and an 1855 first edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."

University of Nebraska Press Established

JANUARY 1, 1941

Founded in 1941, the University of Nebraska Press publishes academic and general interest books and journals under its imprint as well as under the Bison Books and Potomac Books imprints, and by special arrangement, The Jewish Publication Society. In addition to the 30 journals published by the journals division, the Press also publishes Nebraska Extension publications.

UNP has more than 6,000 titles in print and adds about 150 new titles annually. Its mission: "The University of Nebraska Press extends the University’s mission of teaching, research, and service by promoting, publishing, and disseminating works of intellectual and cultural significance and enduring value."

Not solely a publisher of titles with regional interest, the Press’s topics include Native studies, history, anthropology, American studies, sports, cultural criticism, fiction, fiction in translation, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Jewish and Biblical studies, national, world affairs, and military history are also represented.

In background: Richard Eckersley's design for the 11-volume Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary Moulton, Thomas C. Sorensen Professor of American History at Nebraska. The Journals' design is considered a high-water mark in academic publishing; Moulton would receive the J. Franklin Jameson Award of the American Historical Association for his work.

"Hail Varsity" Debuts

NOVEMBER 21, 1936

“Hail Varsity” débuts, written by music professor Wilbur Chenoweth with words by alumnus Warren Joyce Ayres, both former Alpha Tau Omega brothers, at the Kosmet Klub annual revue at the Stuart Theater (today known as the Rococo). The event was held before that day's game against Kansas State University. Perhaps energized by the song, Dana Bible's Huskers would win, 40-0.

The song created enough buzz that The Daily Nebraskan soon began to lobby for it as an official school song, which it became in 1937. Charles Ledwith, drum major, said this about the song in an edition of the Rag: "This march is written in the typical Chenoweth style, with many harmonic effects and stately rhythm. After practicing the march Tuesday night, it was decided to use 'Hail Varsity' as the processional march at the Military Ball. It is definitely suited for such an occasion."

Nebraska Union: A Student-Led Initiative

NOVEMBER 1, 1935

Frank Jackson “Jack” Fisher, editor of the Daily Nebraskan and later student president, leads efforts to petition the Regents to request Public Works Administration funds for the construction of a new student union. It takes months but eventually the board — with its PWA-opposing president, Earl Cline, absent — votes to accept PWA funds for the construction of student union. On Oct. 22, 1936, President Roosevelt approved a grant in the amount of $180,000 for construction; $200,000 in bonds were funded by a $3 student fee (these bonds were retired in 1952).

On May 4, 1938, with construction completed, the Nebraska Union opens. The opening coincided with Ivy Day, and was broadcast on KFAB.  The new building included “The Crib,” a popular spot for students to meet. The Union has been enlarged and renovated numerous times since, although its south façade facing R Street retains its same 1930s character.

Loren Eiseley, Naturalist and Author

JUNE 7, 1933

Loren Eiseley (1907-1977), was a philosopher, scientist, naturalist, author, educator, observer, commenter on humanity. His first association with the university was through visits to Morrill Hall and its great natural history collections, which sparked a lifelong interest in anthropology and paleontology in the boy Loren, who lived just outside of Lincoln. During the Great Depression, he drifted about, eventually returning to Nebraska, where as a student he edited the literary magazine Prairie Schooner under the tutelage of the legendary Professor Lowry C. Wimberly. He earned a B.A. in English and a B.S. in geology and anthropology in 1933. He participated in field archeology and paleontology expeditions with scientists from the University of Nebraska State Museum. After earning a doctorate in 1937 from the University of Pennsylvania, he taught at the University of Kansas, then at Oberlin before returning to Penn in 1947, where he chaired the Department of Anthropology. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science there.

Eiseley is perhaps today best remembered by the books he left us, in the canon of great naturalist authors such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Rachel Carson and Edward Abbey. His The Immense Journey takes the reader on a trek through the vast expanse of time as written in nature; one of its finest essays, "The Flow of the River," is set on Nebraska's Platte, and begins with Eiseley's best-known quotation:

"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water."

Loren Eiseley is buried alongside his wife Mabel (Langden) in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Their shared gravestone reads "we loved the earth but could not stay."

Raymond Hall Opens; First Women's Residence Hall

SEPTEMBER 1, 1932

Carrie Bell Raymond Hall, the first residence hall, is dedicated in fall 1932 and houses 170 women. In a 1929 Daily Nebraskan article at the time of the construction start, the building was seen as a welcome addition to the campus as "it will mean the opening of social and recreational opportunities for a large percent of students who have felt its lack in the past."

Morrill Hall Opens; State Museum

FEBRUARY 1, 1927

Morrill Hall, which houses the University of Nebraska State Museum, opens under the direction of Erwin H. Barbour, its long-serving director, who had joined Nebraska in 1891. A paleontologist, his original appointment at Nebraska was as a professor of geology and zoology. He also was named Nebraska State Geologist.

Barbour immediately began to gather collections of minerals and fossils, many of which became the basis for the State Museum’s collection. He self-financed many of his excavations. When Charles Morrill, a wealthy farmer and landowner, and former president of the Board of Regents, learned of Barbour’s finds, he began to finance the field expeditions, as he had an interest in fossils; this cash infusion greatly enhanced the scope of the work. Thus was launched a long-term partnership that culminated in the building of Morrill Hall, which opened in 1927, just before Morrill’s 1928 death. 

Many of Morrill Hall’s most iconic fossils were unearthed by Barbour. These include most of the mammoths and mastodons in the building's centerpiece, Elephant Hall.

Prairie Schooner publishes first edition

JANUARY 12, 1927

Nebraska’s award-winning literary magazine The Prairie Schooner was first published on January 12, 1927. Over the years, Prairie Schooner has published works by literary giants – Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel laureates, National Endowment for the Arts recipients, U.S. Poet Laureates, and MacArthur and Guggenheim fellows. These include authors Charles Bukowski, Robert Olen Butler, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver, Rita Dove, Ted Kooser, Lee Martin, Joyce Carol Oates, Alicia Ostriker, Mari Sandoz, Tim Schaffert, Jim Thompson, Chris Ware, Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams.

The quarterly magazine is a collaboration of the university’s Department of English and the University of Nebraska Press. Despite its name, which suggests a regional or Great Plains focus, the magazine publishes both American and international authors and distributes worldwide.

Since 2011, Prairie Schooner has been edited by Kwame Dawes, a distinguished poet.

In that first edition, the publication's editors were cautious about its prospects: "if there is sufficient interest in the publication, the publishers will continue the issuance." Over 90 years later, Prairie Schooner continues as one of the leading periodicals of its kind.

Harold "Doc" Edgerton and the Strobe

JUNE 6, 1925

Harold “Doc” Edgerton (1903-1990) turned a lab tool, the stroboscope (also known as the strobe, very short-duration flash), into a commonly-available device. As with many luminary Nebraskans, what powers he had in his left brain he complimented with imagination and creativity from his right, combining his technical innovations with groundbreaking artistry in stop-motion photography.

Edgerton earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Nebraska in 1925, whereupon he accepted a one-year research position with General Electric in Schenectady, NY, where he saw a stroboscope — a cumbersome lab instrument — for the first time. He had been schooled in photography by his uncle Ralph, a studio photographer, back in Nebraska, and immediately grasped the possibilities in marrying the two technologies.

He started graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1926; he would receive his Master's degree in 1927 and his Ph.D. in 1931 from that institution; he would serve on MIT's faculty for the rest of his life. His early work there was focused on improving and miniaturizing the strobe, improving its stop-motion flash effect. In 1937, he teamed with photographer Gjon Mili, using multiple flash units and the stroboscope to create art. The strobe flashed up to 120 times per second, making the camera appeared to freeze movement. Along with Edgerton's improvements in motion picture cameras, which took speeds from a maximum of 250 frames per second to six thousand, Edgerton revolutionized high speed photography, both still and in motion. The strikingly beautiful still images — of things like a bullet passing through an apple, or a milk drop splashing in a plate — hang in museums worldwide; the latter was included in the Museum of Modern Art's first photography exhibition, presented in 1937. The image in the background of this page, "Girl Running," is held in the collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art. A short film he made, titled "Quicker'n a Wink," won an Oscar in 1940. He would later team with the Department of Defense for nighttime aerial reconnaissance photography in World War II, and with Jacques Cousteau on undersea adventures.

"Doc" Edgerton died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Jan. 4, 1990, of a heart attack while having lunch at the MIT Faculty Club. All through his life, he was a son of Nebraska and its university, and of his hometown, Aurora, to which he returned often. The Edgerton Explorit Center was dedicated in his memory there in 1995; MIT operates a similar hands-on science center, the MIT Edgerton Center.

video: "Quicker'n A Wink"
at Nebraska: Harold and Esther Edgerton Junior Faculty Award

Aaron Douglas: Father of African American Art

JUNE 5, 1922

The most prominent visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1922 with a degree in fine arts, the first African American to do so. 

Intending to move to France to pursue art, he traveled through New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, and stayed. There, he worked with other artists in the 'New Negro' movement, which included Douglas and W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, among others. As a graphic artist, he created designs and illustrations for magazines published by the NAACP and Urban League. He also received commissions for murals depicting the lives and history of African Americans. His style pioneered the use of traditional African motifs within modern cubist and Art Deco forms to explore themes of racism, segregation and modern society. Douglas's art captured the zeitgeist of his era, and was a major part of establishing a new black aesthetic. His work remains enduring and important; in 2018 he was posthumously awarded the AIGA Medal, the most prestigious honor in American graphic arts.

Douglas eventually moved to Nashville, where he founded the art department at Fisk University. He was affiliated with Fisk from 1937-1966. As testament to his impact, Aaron Douglas is today known as "the Father of African American Art." His works are held by leading museums, including the Sheldon Museum of Art. 

Nebraska recognizes Douglas by awarding a professorship that supports full professors who, like Douglas, demonstrate extraordinary teaching excellence and national visibility for instructional activities and practice.

University Medical College enrollment grows

SEPTEMBER 24, 1919

A page-one item in the Daily Nebraskan notes the growth of the Medical College, "one of the large and important departments of the university," which "ranks with the leading medical institutions." The article further notes that "its location at Omaha brings the university into closer touch with the metropolis of the state and lays the foundation for the claim that Omaha as well as Lincoln is, in a sense, the home of the University." The Medical College had become part of the university in 1902, and had thrived; by 1919 a campus, with three large and imposing buildings, had begun forming at 42nd Street and Dewey Avenue. The university's semi-centennial anniversary booklet lists three campuses: City Campus, Farm Campus, and Omaha Campus. In fact, the multi-city nature of the university was so ingrained that it prompted the withdrawal of the university from the Missouri Valley Conference in September 1919, after the conference had refused Nebraska's request to schedule one football game annually in Omaha for the benefit of its students and fans there.

Pictured in the article is the central building, the 130-bed University Hospital. In 1969, on the broad and deep lawn of this building, the much larger Wittson Hall opened, but the original University Hospital façade with its imposing three-story Ionic columns lurks just behind that building. The two flanking buildings, Poynter Hall and Bennett Hall, representing the 1919 Medical College, also remain at the core of the campus.

Tractor Testing Laboratory starts its engines

JULY 15, 1919

When tractors and mechanized agriculture equipment began to be in wide use in the early 1900s, farmers and others were concerned that the equipment delivered what the manufacturers promised. The Nebraska Legislature enacted a law — one of the earliest pieces of consumer-protection legislation in the United States — that required all tractors sold in the state to be certified by the university. The Tractor Test Laboratory opened on East Campus in 1919. Over the years, thousands of tractors have been tested in the lab and the adjacent test track. In 1980, the building was designated by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers as a historic site, and named for Lester F. Larsen, the man who directed the lab for 39 years.

The Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory is the official U.S. tractor testing station for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); nearly all tractors manufactured in the United States are tested at the Nebraska facility.