I umpired baseball and softball part time for two summers in college. It was … pretty awful. Crap pay, angry managers, angry parents. I once kicked a coach out of a game after he flipped out following a home plate collision caused by a scrappy Red Cloud baseball player who also happened to be my little brother — a fact that most people in the stands knew.
Rough. And one reason I was very excited to read Rebecca Svec’s story today about the state’s longest tenured umpire, who is ALSO from Red Cloud.
Roger Hammond has umped since he was 12. He has battled all manners of weather, consulted every paragraph in the rule book and faced too many angry managers and parents to count. (And that’s getting worse, by the way.)
This summer, after 60 years on the job, he’s hanging up his mask. Rebecca Svec, a talented freelance writer whom I met long ago at the Hastings Tribune the first summer I umped — I was the summer intern, she was the star reporter — did a really nice job with this profile of Nebraska’s most grizzled ump.
Disappearing docs: Health clinics in Sidney and Chappell will shut their doors next month, a frustrating reality for patients, some who say they will now have to drive an hour or more to see a doctor covered by their insurance.
And these closures reflect a wider reality that health care in Nebraska’s smaller towns is teetering. Without change, more clinics and even hospitals may soon disappear in the months and years to come, experts say.
Story by Evelyn Mejia, our UNL Rural Fellow and a promising young reporter.
Fighting fire with fire, robot-style: Fighting a wildfire is dangerous business. Two UNL professors decided they could do it better.
Now their technology — including drones — is battling blazes across the globe. It’s also keeping firefighters safer.
Story by Owen Reimer first published by our sister publication Silicon Prairie News. This story also includes one of the coolest photos we have published at FFP.
Nitty gritty time:
I have lost track of how many tickets we have left to the Flatwater Free Press Festival — code name, FlatFest — but I can assure it’s not many.
We’re gonna sell out. We’re gonna eat, drink, and talk about the present and the future of journalism with Nebraska natives who now work at CNN, the New York Times and the Online News Association. You’ll get a chance to ask them questions, and meet the staff of FFP.
Learn more and grab your tickets before they go…poof.
Questions wanted: Some of our best story ideas come from readers, and they typically start with a burning question that just cries out for an answer. Have a question that our reporters need to look into? Complete this form or reach our newsroom at [email protected].
See you next Friday,
—Matthew Hansen, Executive Editor
Here’s what we’re into this week: News from around Nebraska
Every week we like to share great Nebraska journalism, no matter who made it. Here’s what caught our eye this week:
- Unless you are currently vacationing on Neptune, you have heard that former President Donald Trump got booked at an Atlanta-area jail on Thursday. But you may not know that a Omaha native and Central grad also did.
The World-Herald’s Henry Cordes with the wild story of Trevian Kutti, who was once in the Omaha Central choir, supported Hillary Clinton, became the publicist for Kanye West, now known as Ye, turned into a full-throated Trump supporter and then flew to Atlanta, either to threaten or try to help a volunteer poll worker named Ruby Freeman, depending on whom you believe. - Some in an East Lincoln neighborhood are majorly peeved after the state announced plans to build a new prison here. Story by 10/11 News Now. The city of Lincoln also isn’t thrilled…they told the state they didn’t want the prison built on that site, the Journal Star’s Margaret Reist reports.
- Nebraska’s attorney general hired a friend and former state senator to a policy job in his office. A government watchdog isn’t impressed with the move, the Associated Press’ Margery Beck reports.
- Gov. Jim Pillen went to the border this week and blasted the Biden administration for not doing more to stem the influx of those crossing illegally. Story by the Journal Star’s Andrew Wegley.
- The State of Nebraska may spend as much as $2.6 million there after Pillen decided to deploy Nebraska National Guard troops to the border earlier this year. The OWH’s Martha Stoddard with the numbers, and the Pillen administration’s response.
- Google is investing a cool $1.2 billion in Nebraska, company execs and local politicians announced this week. Story by the Nebraska Examiner’s Cindy Gonzalez.
- An eyebrow raiser from central Nebraska, and Steve White at NTV. Many of the board members of a local public power district allegedly didn’t know the name of their new CEO until the meeting in which they officially hired him.
- A rough week for the Lincoln airport. A key airport board member resigned after the board declined to raise property taxes to attract more flights. And then Lincoln’s brand-new airline, Red Way, shut down after only a few months, flushing $3 million in taxpayer money down the proverbial drain.
Story on Red Way’s demise by 10/11 News Now. - “If he had just lasted 10 more minutes, he would have lived to a ripe old age.” The Nebraskan who was quite possibly the last U.S. combat death in Europe during World War II is being honored this weekend. Story by OWH military reporter Steve Liewer.
