Now a political liability, Tim Walz’s trip to China left a lasting impression on his fellow Nebraskans

She kept one eye on the blue baseball hat. Where is he? 

Kathy Lybarger squeezed through the crowds of the Hong Kong train station, trying to track all of her people. Her 12-year-old son in the Chicago Cubs cap. Her 16-year-old daughter. The dozen teenage dancers without parents. It was all too much too fast. And yet the crowd was barely moving. 

Lybarger, who started 7th Street Dance Studio in Alliance, had rarely ventured outside the Nebraska Panhandle. She’d certainly never been overseas. But she’d put her trust in a magnetic geography teacher at Alliance High School and now — June 11, 1994 — she found herself halfway around the world, toting suitcases full of leotards and tap shoes, hoping all 49 Americans would get on board the next train to Guangzhou, China. Deep breath.

Where is Robbie’s blue Chicago Cubs hat? There. OK.

After three hours and countless curious looks — Chinese strangers were fascinated by the Americans’ blond hair — the tourists finally reached the front of the line. That’s when the real chaos began. A train arrived. Doors flung open. Strangers rushed to board.

“These kids don’t understand the sense of urgency,” said Randy Hiemstra, a former Alliance teacher and coach. “The train starts moving and we have dance girls with huge bags.”

Keep in mind, this is before cell phones, before the internet. If you get lost, you are lost.

“Robbie just about didn’t make it on the train,” Lybarger said. “When I saw his little blue Cubs hat surface, it was a big relief.”

The very last Nebraskan on board was the man in charge, Tim Walz.

In June 1994, he’d just completed his fourth year at Alliance. He was 30 years old and newly married. A little leaner than you know him now … with a little more hair. But the same broad smile. And the same personality that attracted Minnesota voters and, ultimately, Kamala Harris.

Walz’s personal tale has prompted a national media surge of visits and calls to rural Nebraska. But the close inspections of Walz’s biography generally overlook a more local narrative: the ordinary Nebraskans influenced by his ambition.

Alliance is about as geographically distant from the bright lights as any town in America. The nearest town of 25,000 people is 150 miles away. Residents tend to look at isolation as a virtue, not a weakness. But as Walz found community in the Panhandle, he kept one eye on the horizon, inspiring his friends and students with a sense of curiosity.

The best example is the eclectic 1994 group that followed Walz on a wildly audacious — borderline crazy — educational excursion to communist China. There were dancers and ranchers, professors and basketball players, even a radio reporter.

“It was just absolutely an incredible experience,” said Mike Glesinger, who worked at KCOW.

“In two weeks, we experienced more than we’d ever experienced in our entire lifetime until then,” said Sara (Lybarger) Lohmeyer, the dance instructor’s daughter. “It was pretty overwhelming.”

They remember late-night runs to McDonald’s for Big Macs. They remember bats swooping in the hotel indoor pool. “Pterodactyls,” they joke.

They remember teaching Chinese teenagers “American Pie.” They remember soldiers toting rifles. They remember smelly basketball jerseys hanging over hotel balconies, outdoor meat markets and lush green countryside, bamboo roller coasters and little kids sweeping highways by hand.

And, of course, they remember the man orchestrating amid the chaos. How’s this for symmetry: Tim Walz took a group of kids from Alliance, Nebraska, halfway around the world. A generation passes and one day those same people — now all grown up — see their old teacher on national TV trying to help lead the world.

“Who would’ve thought that Tim Walz would go this far?” said Lohmeyer, now 46. “That you’d be able to say, ‘hey, that was my high school teacher!’”

Walz’s sudden emergence on the national stage has invited intense scrutiny. Republicans have targeted his student trips. In August, U.S. Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said Walz’s “longstanding and cozy relationship with China” should be a concern for Americans.

At Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Walz fumbled a question addressing his previous false claims that he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Walz’s answer, Democratic strategist David Axelrod said on CNN, “would have been best delivered in Chinese for as understandable as it wasn’t.”

The attention will only intensify as Election Day approaches. But for those who followed Walz halfway across the world in 1994, their adventure is more than a political issue. This summer, they dusted off the scrapbooks and rekindled their amazement.

“When you look back at it,” Hiemstra said, “how did we get them all there and get ‘em all home?” 

****

Toward the back of Alliance High School, up the stairs, past the multi-purpose room, down a dark hallway, Mr. Walz’s geography classroom felt like the edge of the world. Until students opened the door. Then the room buzzed with energy. Especially on Fridays when, in order to review the week’s material, freshmen competed in Jeopardy.

Just one problem: Gwen Whipple’s upperclassmen, preparing for the ACT, shared the same room. The only thing separating the classes was a thin partition, not exactly sound-proof.

“Man, she was pissed,” Sara Lohmeyer said. “We were so loud.”

Miss Whipple always forgave him. She adored Mr. Walz. So did much of Alliance.

They knew him as the teacher who loaned his Mazda to a senior for homecoming. As the assistant coach entrusted with sideline pep talks after a player made a mistake. As the Husker football fanatic whose coaching buddies celebrated blowout wins.

“After a Husker game, we’d be so damn excited,” coaching colleague Rocky Almond said, “we’d clear everything out and put a couch across and use it as the end zone.”

They took turns running and jumping over the top as buddies waited like linebackers to knock them backward. “We all thought we were Cory Schlesinger.”

On Thanksgiving Saturday 1993, Walz appeared on the front of Nebraska newspapers hanging from a goal post after the Huskers throttled Oklahoma, 21-7.

“We gave him so much crap,” Almond said.

That’s about the time Walz and Whipple started planning their frenetic summer of ’94.

June 4: Get married in Minnesota.

June 7: Embark on a romantic honeymoon trip to China, accompanied by 47 people from Alliance.

“That’ll make or break a marriage,” Kathy Lybarger said. “Take a bunch of teenagers across the world.”

Walz had experience. Upon graduating from Chadron State College in 1989, he entered a Harvard-affiliated program called WorldTeach, one of America’s first government-sanctioned teacher groups in China. His assignment: teach four classes of English and American history to high school students in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

He spent almost a year in the city of Foshan, thriving as the center of attention on the locally prestigious campus. The school treated him “like royalty,” Walz said in 1990, treating him to an air-conditioner, a color TV and — at Christmas time — a decorated pine tree. He immersed himself in Chinese culture while sharing as much of America as he could — he led the faculty basketball team.

Walz returned home that fall and, during an interview with a local newspaper, praised the Chinese.

“If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish,” he said at the time. “They are such kind, generous, capable people.”

At Alliance High, Walz accepted a more conventional teaching job, but he continued sharing his experience with students like Sara Lohmeyer.

Lohmeyer’s dad worked for the railroad. Her mom owned the dance studio. As a little girl, Sara wondered what lay beyond the long views in the Panhandle. Walz, whose National Guard service enabled him to earn a college degree, motivated her.

“I remember having such in-depth conversations about things in his classroom,” she said. “He just gave us this perspective that there’s a big world out there.”

“Geography and history are not just about wars, dead people and old buildings,” Walz told The Alliance Times-Herald in 1991. “The best way to study about people is to hear them tell what it is like where they live.”

In ’93, Walz and Whipple – a year before their marriage – led their first group to China.

The following summer, they doubled the size, anchoring their travel roster to two activities: Lybarger’s teenage dance team; and a team of local basketball players, mostly in their late-teens and early-20s. Rocky Almond coached it. They ordered blue jerseys, a little darker than the Alliance Bulldogs.

The cost per traveler was $1,875. The biggest fundraiser came in the spring of ’94, when the Husker basketball team — fresh off a Big Eight tournament title — came to town for an exhibition.

“We played them in a packed house at Alliance High School,” Hiemstra said.

The crowds were going to get bigger.

****

They hopped from Denver to Los Angeles to Seoul, South Korea, to Hong Kong. More than 24 hours of travel. That’s a lot of time for Mike Glesinger to worry about his visa.

The play-by-play voice of Alliance’s “KCOW,” who’d committed to phoning radio dispatches back to Nebraska, had successfully received his passport. But his initial visa application was rejected, likely because of his media affiliation. “They figured I was CBS,” Glesinger said. Walz urged him to make the trip. We’ll find a solution in Hong Kong, he said.

But, Glesinger responded, what if they search my bags? He had a tape recorder. A dozen 90-minute tapes. A 16-pack of batteries. Notebooks and pens. 

In Hong Kong, at Walz’s recommendation, the radio man told a little white lie.

“On my visa application to get into China,” Glesinger said, “I was an assistant coach at Alliance High School.”

Walz was usually thinking ahead. In Hong Kong, a city of 6 million, he handed each Nebraskan a hotel business card. If you get lost, he said, give this to your taxi driver and he’ll bring you back.

His plans were tested the first night when a few Americans got lost on the streets of Hong Kong. A few others, college-age basketball players, stayed out till dawn and frittered away their spending money, prompting a stern talk from Walz.

We aren’t in Nebraska anymore, guys.

After the group conquered the bustling train station and reached Guangzhou, the stress subsided a bit. But the next 10 days offered little rest.

The basketball team engaged in a series of exhibition games against increasingly challenging competition. The first happened at a building that resembled an old airport hangar. Chinese kids, desperate to catch a glimpse, climbed inside through broken windows.

“They were hanging from the rafters,” Almond said.

“They thought we were NBA players,” Hiemstra said.

The pride of Oshkosh, Nebraska – Jeff Tophoj – added to the mystique when he dunked the ball and ripped down the rim and backboard.

“The whole thing came down,” Almond said. “Oh, they just went bonkers. We ended up playing half court.”

****

Basketball kept the boys busy. The girls focused on dance.

Lybarger’s 7th Street studio team performed dozens of times, often exchanging lessons with Chinese dancers.

“It was a game of charades basically. Because we couldn’t speak the language,” Lybarger said.

The Alliance dancers practiced in city parks and playgrounds. People hung out the windows to catch a glimpse. Little kids gathered to mimic their moves. “Every time we’d go to a hotel, they’d say the hotel staff would like a show,” she said.

So Lybarger’s girls gathered up Walkmans and cassette tapes and danced to Ace of Base’s “(I Saw) The Sign.” Then they got the Chinese audience to participate in “Love Shack.”

It wasn’t all work. Walz scheduled a few sightseeing days, including a trip to an amusement park. Almond remembers riding next to Walz on a bamboo roller coaster. “Rickety. Scary. But fun,” Almond said. “You only live once.”

One week after arriving in China, they traveled 30 miles to Foshan where Walz once taught. A big welcome sign greeted the Nebraska bus.

“Everybody remembered Tim,” Lybarger said. “They were so happy to see him.”

On the bus rides, Nebraskans taught the Chinese teenagers how to sing “American Pie.” In exchange, Chinese students taught the Nebraskans how to write their names in Chinese. Walz himself demonstrated how to eat with chopsticks.

The Nebraskans grew fond of the place.

“The people were wonderful and they embraced us,” said Randy Hiemstra, one of the basketball players. “As for the soldiers carrying M16s? They tolerated us.”

The basketball culminated with one final game at a university arena. Two players from China’s junior national team showed up, Almond said. The Americans won by a couple points and finished the trip undefeated.

On the final day in mainland China, the Nebraskans went shopping, trading dance shoes and Alliance T-shirts for souvenirs. Then they boarded a boat back to Hong Kong. Finally, a Tim Walz plan failed.

The Nebraskans were supposed to have rooms to sleep. Instead, they ended up beneath the deck in an open room of bunk beds. Not exactly a Norwegian Cruise, Almond said. Most opted to stay up all night, enjoying the boat ride.

“It was so beautiful,” Lybarger said. “I was thinking, I can’t believe I’m here.”

****

When the Nebraskans reached the airport in Los Angeles, they practically ran to the nearest fast food counter.

Seventeen days after departure, they made it back to Alliance, exhausted but enlightened.

“I came home with a great appreciation for the country we live in,” Lybarger said. “It was a beautiful place and a wonderful experience, but we are very, very fortunate people.”

“It made a huge impact on the rest of my life,” her daughter, Sara, said. “Trying to be open and respectful of other cultures and wanting to travel the world and see other things.”

Lohmeyer credits the trip for her eventual career. She grew up with severe asthma. After one dance performance in China, Lohmeyer suffered an attack that required an urgent return to the hotel. Walz asked: Have you ever considered acupuncture? “Absolutely not,” Lohmeyer told him. “Nobody is poking holes in me in this third-world country. I need to get back and get my nebulizer.”

The episode sparked her curiosity, though. Thirty years later, she owns an acupuncture practice in Denver.

Lohmeyer gained something even more significant on the China trip: a launching point with her future husband. Sara and Nate Lohmeyer still recall the last day — atop marvelous Victoria Peak that overlooks Hong Kong — when two men dressed like monks stopped them and started reading their palms.

You’ll have two sons, the palm reader told them. You’ll get married in 2004.

Both predictions came true. 

The 1994 trip to Guangzhou represented Walz’s greatest adventure in Alliance.

The next summer, Mr. and Mrs. Walz led a smaller group to China. In September 1995, Walz was arrested for drunken driving following a late night in Chadron with old friends. The next summer, Tim and Gwen moved back to her home state, Minnesota. The DUI had no impact on that decision, Almond said.

Almond, whose youngest daughter was the flower girl at Walz’s wedding, stayed in contact with his friend for about 10 years, most notably after Mankato West High School won a state football championship in Minnesota.

Nate and Sara Lohmeyer were living in New York City when Walz got elected to Congress in 2006. Sara remembers telling her husband, “I think Tim Walz is going to be president someday.” Nate rolled his eyes. Yeah, right.

But then Walz got elected and reelected governor. Then Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. Suddenly all those old friends in Alliance perked up. Could Walz really be the VP?

When Harris cut her list of VP contenders to six, Almond made a prediction: “I told all my siblings, this is a done deal. If Tim gets to go in and have a one-on-one interview with Harris, he’ll be the candidate. I just knew he would.”

****

Now the sight of Walz makes them all chuckle. It’s like watching your favorite high school garage band play the Super Bowl halftime show.

During Tuesday’s debate, Walz actually referenced basketball players and dancers going to China. Sara Lohmeyer received a text: He’s talking about you! 

Of course, the question prompting Walz’s comments focused on false statements he previously made about being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square Massacre in June 1989. Walz arrived afterward. 

The moment illustrated the intensity of presidential politics. It also prompted a sense of nostalgia from his old friends and students. They gained a little limelight in the past two months. But in 30 years, they’ve lost something, too. 

In ’90s small-town Nebraska, they say, you could befriend a person in the community — even revere them — without letting politics interfere. You knew a person before discovering their views. Now, largely because of social media, it happens the other way around. 

“A text is a great way to share information,” Hiemstra said. “It’s a horrible way to have a discussion.”

In 1994, nobody knew Tim Walz’s political views. Nobody cared. They followed him to China because they trusted his character.

“Some of the people I see commenting, it’s really disheartening,” Almond said. “If you don’t like his politics, you’ve got something to take care of that. It’s called a vote. But I’ve seen people say s*** about him and I’m like, wait a minute, you were all over his bandwagon when he was coaching and teaching.”

Almond doesn’t agree with Walz on every hot-button issue, but “I still value my friendship a helluva lot more than politics.”

In Box Butte County, home to Alliance High, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris received 20.2% of the vote in 2020 — one out of five. Walz this summer became a fascinating American test case: What happens when you pluck a guy from deep red America and give him a blue jersey on the national stage? Does he unite people? Or simply raise the volume on the anger?

No politician can mend America’s broken fences, Sara Lohmeyer said. “I don’t think it’s possible.”

“The majority of my cousins don’t talk to me anymore because of our politics. It makes me really sad.”

Almond has a conservative son and liberal daughter. If you connected the political spectrum like a belt, he said, their “asses would touch.” Do they maintain a civil sibling relationship?

“Hell no! They can’t be within 100 miles of each other. … At one point, we couldn’t even have a family Christmas with all of us. It was terrible.

“When you want to be in the middle, when all you want is to agree or disagree but work for the common good, we just can’t seem to do that anymore.”

We can’t go back to Alliance, when high school kids cruised the butte on Friday nights. Or to Guangzhou, where teenagers pressed shoulder to shoulder on a bus and shared melodies.

Bye bye, Miss American Pie …

A presidential election is coming and the consequences are vast and unpredictable. But, they say, nothing can tarnish an experience from 30 years ago.

“Whatever happens,” Hiemstra said, “I do know one thing for sure: 49 of us went to China, led by Tim Walz. And that was the adventure of a lifetime.”