Mary Sager observes 105th Birthday!

By Con Marshall 

The apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6 that if children obey their parents—"honor your mother and father, the first commandment with promise”-- you may live long on the earth. 

Mary K. Sager apparently followed that directive. She will have her 105th birthday Friday, November 25. She’s certainly lived a long and productive life.  While family members say she now sleeps more and reads less than she once did, she’s still alert, looks nice, enjoys life and recognizes many family members. 

It would be a stretch to say that she recognizes all of the latter. She has more than 140 descendants, including three great-great-great grandchildren.  Among her many blessings is that all seven of her children, who range in age from 71 to 85, are alive and well. She also has a younger sister—Mildred Dawkins—who is a mere 92.  But she has outlived five other siblings. 

 

Mary was born to Joseph and Josie Masek, the third of their children, in a dugout on Craven Creek a few miles south of White Clay on November 25, 1917. She lived in that same vicinity for nearly 99 years, or until about 5 ½ years ago, when she moved to Chadron to live with her daughter, Mary Ellen New. 

She’s not known many luxuries, but has always made the best of things. She’s described by her family members as being a hard worker, taught her children to work and was a disciplinarian who kept a razor strap handy, but didn’t use it often. She could improvise, was mostly even-tempered, nearly always happy and was a strong Christian believer. 

She always went with her kids to the nearby Extension Sunday-School, read the Bible faithfully and even now, makes sure it is close by.  Like most Americans from her era, Mary was tough and persistent.  She rode a horse all eight years to the District 79 school that was about three miles from the Masek home.  At times she rode in a horse-drawn cart with some of her siblings. 

Alice Denton, one of the daughters, says that after graduating from the eighth grade Mary wanted to go to high school, but her father thought she should find a job. So, at age 14, she packed her suitcase, her dad took her to Pine Ridge and she found a job in a restaurant and a place to live with an elderly lady.  The roof leaked, but a bucket was kept handy in case it rained. 

Before long, Mary found a better job. She joined the kitchen staff at the Lone Man Day School about 15 miles northwest of Pine Ridge. Her main job was baking bread. She and a few others who were on the staff lived near the school in a small blue house that is still standing. 

When Mary had time off, she started walking toward home and nearly always had soon hitched a ride with an Indian family in a horse-drawn wagon. 

On October 25, 1935, she married Harry E. Sager, whose family lived about two miles north of the Maseks. He had graduated from Gordon High School in 1933. The new couple lived with his parents briefly, then built a two-room structure on the same farmstead. In 1945, after the first five daughters were born, the Sagers bought the nearby Stewart place, which, thankfully, had a larger house, and moved there. That became the “home place.” 

 

The girls—most of them born about two years apart—are Joyce Wellnitz, Margaret Marshall, Alice Denton, Elaine Graeff, Mary Ellen New and Margie Wrede. Elaine lives in Iowa and Margie in Rapid City. The others live in Sheridan and Dawes counties. 

While Harry loved his daughters and treated them well, the story is told that he saw a picture of a handsome boy in the Saturday Evening Post magazine, cut it out and hung it on his wife’s side of the bed. Within a year, Harry Joe came along.  

Harry Joe and his wife, Robin, have operated the home place ever since Harry II (His dad also was named Harry) died on January 3, 1995 at age 80.   

Alice remembers that her mom raised a huge garden.  Harry plowed it each spring, but Mom did most of the rest.  Sometimes she was tending to it by 4 a.m.  Mary then canned “hundreds” of jars of vegetables in a pressure cooker heated by a stove that burned wood. Dad saw to it that the kids kept the box filled with wood so Mary didn’t have to fetch it.  

Mary made good use of the cucumbers, turning them into dill pickles that she kept in a 10-gallon crock. Cousins and neighbor kids usually helped themselves to at least one when they visited. 

The wood stove also was used to heat the water for the wringer washing machine and for the baths that the six girls took in a portable round tub. Like the other rural residents in the area, the Sagers didn’t get what was known as REA until 1951.  

Harry immediately bought a deep freeze that was one of the family’s first conveniences. Running water was brought to the kitchen in ’53, but the house didn’t have a bathroom until 1965 when an addition was built that also included a living room and a bedroom.  

Mary had a pedal sewing machine and was adept at converting flour sacks into dresses for the girls. She also used older garments as the pattern for blouses and other clothing items. In addition, she enjoyed hunting with her husband and was a good shot.  

The story was told at Mary’s 100th birthday party – held at the Senior Citizen Center in Chadron and attended by a large number of friends and relatives – that when Mary was about 90 she had stayed at home to prepare the noon meal while everyone else went to another part of the ranch for some sort of a project.  When the crew arrived for lunch, Mary was not happy. While they were gone she had spotted a coyote snooping around the farmstead, went to get her rifle and it was gone. Someone had taken it without asking. 

While the family was growing up, the Sagers seldom ventured far from home. But in the late 1940s, before Harry Joe had arrived, the six girls loaded into the back of a Jeep, the family’s only vehicle, and went with their parents on a trip to the Black Hills. It remains a memorable event when they reflect on their childhood.  

In later years, Harry and Mary traveled more, nearly always taking a trip to Montana to visit relatives. For her 90th birthday, Mary celebrated by going on a Caribbean cruise.  

The generational breakdown reveals that besides seven children, she had 23 grandchildren, 65 great-grandchildren, 49 great-great grands and the three great-great-greats. The descendants can be proud that “Grandma Mary” has been a productive, diligent person.  They will cherish their memories of her and pass them on to succeeding generations.  

Research shows than less than 1 percent of Americans live to be 100, so Mary has done something really special. She didn’t do it by taking life easy or living a life of luxury.  When asked if her mother was ever sick, Alice replied, “No, she didn’t have time for that.” 

Happy birthday cards may be sent to Mary Sager at 517 Chadron Avenue, Chadron, Nebraska 69337.

Joe American Horse reflects on a great career

By Con Marshall

Sixty-five years ago, Nebraska’s most popular high school track athlete was a guy named Joe. That’s Joe American Horse. In 1957, when he was a senior at Gordon High School, the crowds at the Nebraska State Track Meet at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln reportedly were chanting “Go Joe,” when the Class B mile was about to be run.

Joe didn’t disappoint.  For the third year in a row he was the Class B mile winner and also repeated as the all-class gold medalist.  His time of 4:28.1 was the Class B state record, improving on the one he’d set the year before by seven-tenths of a second.  Nearly everyone thought he would have broken the all-class record if it hadn’t rained and made the cinder track soggy.  He won the race by at least 100 yards.

American Horse had placed second in the Class B mile at state as a freshman.  It was the last time he was defeated in that race during his prep career. 

              

The good news is, Joe, who lives on American Horse Creek east of Pine Ridge, is still going strong.  Earlier this month  he was in Chadron, getting his car serviced at Wahlstrom Ford.  He had time to chat and had someone call this reporter to do that.  It’s obvious that he still enjoys life. He was smiling and laughed often.

              

As someone who was “lapped” by Joe at least once in the mile when I was in high school, I’ve long admired him.  During that era, I recall reading about Joe and have since retrieved stories written by the legendary Gregg McBride, the Omaha World-Herald’s illustrious sports reporter.

Just prior to the 1957 state meet, McBride had written, “It will be ‘Hi Ho Joe,’ not ‘Hi Ho Silver’ at the Nebraska High School Championships. I refer to Joe American Horse, one of the most colorful athletes in Cornhusker prep history.”

McBride went on to tell that when a fan yelled “Go it. Joe,” as the Class B mile was about to begin at state the previous year, American Horse had straightened up out of his crouch and waved at the fans.  Less than 4 ½ minutes after the starting gun was fired, Joe had circled the track four times and had knocked seven seconds off the Class B record.

Bill Madden of the Scottsbluff Star-Herald, also one of Nebraska’s all-time outstanding sportswriters, wrote in 1957 that American Horse was the first athlete in 21 years to win the same event at the state meet three years in a row. 

In addition, the Lincoln Journal and Star named him one of the top 10 athletes in the state in 1956-57.  “Never before has any high school athlete won the hearts of so many track fans as Joe American Horse did four straight years,” it was stated.

Now 85, Joe is still on the go.  He has fond memories of his track experiences and is a master storyteller.

After his terrific high school career, he received a scholarship from the University of Nebraska. Now he could run cross country and also the two-mile during the track season.  In high school, he and everyone else in Nebraska was limited to just one race of 880 yards or more.  The only other race Joe could run was the anchor leg on the mile relay.  As a senior, he teamed up with his brother Emmitt, Jim Taylor and Jerry Jensen to win that race at state.  Emmitt also won the 880 for the Broncs.

Joe didn’t talk much about the races he ran in college, but has lots of memories about related experiences.  One was going to a meet at Michigan State.  He said the Cornhuskers rode the train from Omaha to Chicago and from Chicago to Lansing.  They slept in pullman cars which had beds en route to the meet, but were in passenger cars that contained only seats while returning home.

Another time, he was among the Huskers who flew to the Texas Relays at Texas A&M. The flight wasn’t too sophisticated.  Four Piper Cubs were the mode of transportation.  This was the first time he had ridden in an airplane.  He said getting the pole in the plane for the vaulter took some doing.

Joe chuckles when he discusses a dilemma he had in Texas. The doors of the men’s restrooms said “Colored” and “White.”  “I didn’t know which one to use.”

He believes he was one of just three Native Americans enrolled at Nebraska most of his three years there.  But he thinks it’s unique that during the Drake Relays in Des Moines, he was among three Native Americans in the two-mile.  The others were Niles Brings, who ran for the University of South Dakota, and Billy Mills of the University of Kansas.

“We were all from the same tribe (Oglala Sioux), but ran for different schools,” he pointed out.

He noted that late in the race Mills took the lead “and I couldn’t catch him.”

A few years later, in 1964 in Tokyo, Mills was the first and still is the only American to win the 10,000 meters at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. 

Mills was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation and periodically returns for special occasions, but lived most of his early life in Kansas and has resided in California much of the time as an adult. Billy Mills Hall in Pine Ridge is named in his honor.

American Horse said he did not know Mills until they had competed against one another in college.

“Now, we’re good friends,” Joe said, who added that the home where he and his wife Dorothy live was built under the auspices of the Running Strong program that Mills founded.

During our conversation, American Horse added that the scholarship he received to run at Nebraska had some strings attached.  He was to help sell concessions at NU athletic events. That included at the football game against Oklahoma, just a few hours after he’d competed in a cross country dual with the Sooners. 

The Memorial Stadium steps seemed pretty steep that day, he noted.  He also recalled selling concessions at state basketball tournaments and helping scrape the Memorial Stadium seats so they could be repainted.

Some of his highlights as a college runner included setting the Cornhuskers’ two-mile indoor record of 9:24.6 and 9:18.2 outdoors.  He had a best of 4:12.6 in the outdoors mile.  In 2000, he became the first Native American and the first athlete from Northwest Nebraska to be inducted into the Nebraska High School Sports Hall of Fame.  Rushville’s Kelly Stauffer also went into the Hall of Fame a few minutes later that year.

Joe is pleased that the Hall of Fame’s publication announcing this year’s inductees included photo of him winning the mile at the state meet 65 years ago. 

American Horse left college and joined the Marines prior to what would have been his senior year at UNL. He sustained a broken ankle while he was in the Marines, ending his track career.

He’s kept busy while serving his people through the years.  He was the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council chairman twice in the 1980s and also the vice chairman twice. He’s also a medicine man, who among other activities, assisted with the dedication of the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at Chadron State in 2002 and the naming of Highway 27 between Gordon and Ellsworth the Mari Sandoz Trail.

He added that he also continues to attend sun dances and keeps in touch with and assists several of the foster children he and Dorothy helped raise.

NU Football Treat from History Nebraska!

History Nebraska provides a wonderful package of century-old photographs, film and information – all related to the historic black-and-white film shown above.  This clip is reportedly from a Nebraska - Notre Dame game played in Lincoln in 1919 or 1920.  

In an August 23, 2022 posting, David L. Bristow shares a wealth of information sure to delight Cornhusker football fans.  No.....not from recent history – but from the distant past.  In fact, a century ago!

We encourage you to visit the History Nebraska website.  Check out the "Earliest video of Husker football" –and while you're at it,  join History Nebraska and learn much more about the many fascinating aspects of Nebraska history! 

Chadron – Best Place in Nebraska to Live

By Con Marshall

Chadron recently was in the limelight on the Fox News computer website. It was cited as the best town in Nebraska in which to live. Here’s what was said:

“The City of Chadron is a bit off the beaten path. It’s not Omaha or Lincoln, but rather on the Great Plains. It takes a certain type of individual to want to live in what many consider to be more of a rural environment. With that said, Chadron has a ton of natural beauty.

“Unsurprisingly, outdoor enthusiasts love this area. There’s plenty to do in the sunshine—particularly in the Nebraska National Forest. Interestingly, the city of Chadron is also said to be in the midpoint between New York City and Los Angeles.”

A few years ago, Chadron received a similar designation. That time, the explanation was, “Chadron was once used as a fur trading post in the Great Plains. It’s surrounding beauty make Chadron a wonderful adventure from the Nebraska National Forest to the Pine Ridge National Recreation Area.”

Both selections apparently were made by Stacker, which says it provides “Compelling, research-driven stories that enrich publishers’ coverage and put the world’s events into context for readers. Our team of data-minded journalists, product leaders and media operators make our coverage possible.”

Among Stacker’s specialties is providing lists of “bests” and rankings on a wide variety of topics. Being included on the lists appears to be a plus, especially when our town has the top spot on positive list.

It is disappointing that Chadron State College was not mentioned in the spiel about the city, but neither was North Dakota State mentioned in the description of Fargo as the best town to reside in that state or the University of Central Oklahoma referred to when Edmond was tabbed as that state’s best place to live.

These are not the first times Chadron has been ranked among “the best.” In 2000, the Chadron Record carried a story which said Chadron had been named one of the “Top 50 Sports Towns” by Sports Afield. The magazine cited the area as having some of the best turkey hunting in the West, along with a prominent mixture of whitetail and mule deer.

The story also suggested that anglers try Whitney Lake and Box Butte Reservoir, and also said Chadron is noted as one of the four best mountain biking towns in the United States.

Sports Afield stated that it looks for out-of-the-way communities “where the people are real, the prices are low and your dog is as welcome as you are—maybe more so.”

In 2009, the website Forbes.com selected Chadron as one of the top 10 American towns the visit by car. (It’s hard to get here any other way). The accompanying information that time gave special attention to the Museum of the Fur Trade, while referring to the people who were attracted to its world-class displays as “wacky aficionados.”

Jim Hanson, who has been associated with the museum almost since its founding in 1955, said he took the reference as a supreme compliment.

“We have spent 50 years (now more than 60) collecting the very best there is. If that doesn’t make you a wacky aficionado, I don’t know what does,” Hanson was quoted as saying.

Early '60s Reunion has Great Things to Remember

By Con Marshall 

            

High school class reunions always coincide with Fur Trade Days.  With a long list of events already on the schedule, it’s a great time for old grads to return to their hometown, get reacquainted with their classmates and recall the good times from their high school days

              

That’s happening again this year.  For instance, three Chadron High classes from the early 1960s will have a joint celebration that will begin Saturday following the parade down Main Street.  The gathering will be at the Bill Dowling American Legion Post in the 100 block of Bordeaux Street.

              

It’s not going to bring a huge throng to town, but more than 50, including spouses, have made reservations to participate. Others are welcome join them that afternoon.

At least from an athletic standpoint, the members of these classes will have lots of fond memories to discuss. When they were in high school spanning from 1959 through 1962, the Cardinals went 34-3 on the gridiron with both the 1960 and 1962 teams going undefeated.  The 1959 team should have won them all, but finished 7-1 and the 1961 team went 8-2.

The basketball highlight was a biggie. The Cardinals won the school’s first state tournament championship in March 1961.

What happened in ’59 football? Well, the Cardinals outscored their opponents by 30 points a game in the seven contests they won, but lost to a mediocre Mitchell team 39-13 about mid-season. It was the only time during Coach Gordon (Fuzz) Watts’s 11 years as the Chadron High football mentor that the Cardinals were upset. The score was 39-13. They beat all the other teams by at least three touchdowns, but unexplainably, Chadron fumbled the ball 13 times that night and lost 10 of them.

There also was a major disappointment at the end of that season.  Because of the blizzard conditions in early November, the Cardinals never got to play Rushville, which had a 20-game winning streak going. The game was postponed twice and finally cancelled altogether because of successive blizzards in early November.

Peru State and Chadron State did play at Elliott Field during that period, but the game had to be postponed for more than a week because the highways across Nebraska were so bad Peru could not make the trip. And when the game was played, Eagles’ quarterback Gary Tuggle suffered a frozen finger that newspaper accounts said might have to be amputated (it wasn’t), and two Peru players suffered frozen toes.  Temperatures during that period dipped as low as 18 below.

One of the Cardinals’ wins in 1959 was a 46-0 verdict over Chadron Prep.  It avenged a 21-12 victory that the Junior Eagles had posted the previous year when the teams met on the football field for the “first time in ??? years,” according to the Chadron Record. The facts are, Chadron High and Chadron Prep apparently never played a football game against one another prior to 1958 and ’59 and never played again. Prep was closed at the end of the 1961 school year.

In the fall of ’58, Chadron High had just two seniors on the team—Benny Steele and Ralph Byerly. Prep had nine, including one of the community’s all-time great athletes, Dick Muma, at quarterback and others such as Keith Benthack, Bob Broberg, Ken Cullers, Gene Pinsky and Don Schaefer were capable players.

The Junior Eagles suited up just 16 players for the game in 1959.

By 1959, the Cardinals had a lot more size and experience. Senior starters included ends Ray Cottier and Dave Reaser, linemen Wayne Burk and Lynn Gorr and halfback John Rasmussen, who was the quarterback for most of the Prep game because starter Larry Matthesen was ill. Another senior, Rob Harvey, took over at tackle after Gorr suffered a broken leg.

By the fall of 1960, the Cardinals were potent, to be sure.  They went 8-0 and outscored their opponents by a 34-9 per game margin. All but one of the starters that season were seniors. They were Bill Rice and Randy Riggins at the ends, Gary Thompson at a tackle, Roger Jones and John Urwin were the guards, Chuck Mitchell at center, Matthesen at quarterback, Paul Kindig and Tom Sims at the halfbacks and Larry Miller at fullback. Another senior, Mel Reeves, could capably fill the bill at all of the runningback slots.  

Junior Terry Cogdill was the other starting tackle.  

Matthesen, Miller, Rice and Riggins were the stalwarts for the state championship basketball team, which finished with a 23-2 record. The fifth starter was junior Rex Norman.  The Cardinals’ only losses were early in the season to Rushville 47-45 and Gering 69-65, which went on to reach the Class A State Tourney semifinals.  

Coached by the incomparable Verne Lewellen, the 1960-61 Cardinals defeated Minden 65-59, Hooper 73-60 and Burwell 56-53 at the state tournament.  Matthesen, who was a four-year starter and finished his career with 1,236 points and probably would have tallied at least 200 more if the 3-point shot had been available, was a first-team all-state selection, while both Miller and Rice were placed on the Class B all-tournament team.   

Rice, who became an exceptional track athlete at the University of Montana, won the Class B high jump title that spring by clearing 6-3.  

With Cogdill the only returning starter in the fall of 1961, the Cardinals’ football team had a much different look than it had the year before, but finished with an 8-2 record.  The losses were to Gering and Sidney, both Class A teams that season.  

That was the first year for the Rangeland Conference and the Cardinals won the playoff game over O’Neill 31-13 before wrapping up the season with a 19-0 win over Alliance, another Class A team.  

At the end of the season, Chadron Record sportswriter John DeHaes put Cogdill on the All-West Rangeland team along with Terry Cottier and Rollin Lacy at the ends, Neil Daniels at guard, Norman at center and Denny Bach and Larry Gold in the backfield.  Bach was a junior and Gold a sophomore.  The others were seniors.  

The 1962 Cardinals were a true juggernaut. They went 11-0 and were accorded the Class B state championship by both the Omaha and Lincoln newspapers.  Watts said the 1962 team was probably his best because it had the most depth. The coach concluded his 11 seasons as the Cardinals’ head coach with a 79-17-4 record, believed to be the best in Nebraska during that period.  

Just four seniors—Terry Doyle at end, Leonard Jones at tackle, Lornie Reeves at guard and Bach at halfback—were starters on the 1962 team.  Jones earned first-team all-state honors. The team definitely wrapped up the season on a high note.  It won three games in a 12-day stretch, defeating Sidney 18-6, O’Neill 26-7 in another Rangeland championship game, and Alliance 32-6.  

Another member of the Class of 1961 certainly excelled in athletics during his storied career as an official.  Dale Butler was inducted into the Nebraska High School Sports Hall of Fame in 2009 after he had officiated at least 2,100 baseball, softball, basketball and football games and helped develop several dozen umpires and referees.  

There were still no girls’ sports in the early 1960s, but several members of the Chadron High classes that will be having the reunion this weekend definitely became involved in athletics as mothers and grandmothers.  

Among them are three girls from the Class of ’61. Hazel Campbell Montague’s son Jim set the Chadron High basketball single game scoring record of 39 points in 1982 that still stands, and her grandsons, Cody and Brady Roes, were both football and basketball standouts for the Cardinals.  Cody also was an All-American tight end at Chadron State in 2013.  

Another member of that class, Beverly Grant Miller, now of Lance Creek, Wyo., is the mother of Jason Miller, who was the world-champion steer wrestling champion in 2007. In addition, the late Harriett Burk Lecher, was the mother of Mike Lecher, who has a 105-50 record entering his 17^th season as the Cardinals’ head football coach.  Lecher received Huskerland Prep Report’s Class C1 Mike Berens’s Coaching  Award last fall. It recognizes a coach’s ability to get the best out of his players. 

76 Years Ago! Chadron Record, August 13, 1946

 

"...A Caring, Kind, Humble, and Gentle Man..."

Perry Allen Beguin was born to Hank and Aggie Beguin in Rushville, Nebraska on April 25, 1946.  He went to be with the Lord and his son Brent on May 6, 2022.  He grew up on the Beguin ranch 20 miles south of Rushville and was the youngest of four boys, Blake, Blayne, and Jerry.  He loved the Sandhills and the country way of life.  You can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy.  

He graduated from Rushville High School in 1964.  He attended Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Accounting and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Education from Peru State College in Peru, Nebraska.  

He was married to Verona Stephens on June 2, 1968.  To that union a son, Brent Allen, was born in 1971.  Shawn Henry was born in 1979 and Tina Marie was born in 1982.  He was a loving, devoted family man.  Friends and family knew him as a caring, kind, humble, and gentle man.  He had a great sense of humor once you got to know him and he never lost that.  

Perry worked for the Production Credit in Scottsbluff and Chadron Nebraska, and took a transfer to Pendleton, Oregon.  He also worked in the banking business both in Nebraska and South Dakota. While in Chadron he and his wife sponsored the CSC rodeo team, taking many road trips with those college kids. 

He was the Budget Officer and Rodeo Coach for Eastern Oregon State in LaGrande, Oregon.  One of the highlights for Perry was being chosen as the National Faculty President for the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association for the 1993-94 school year.  He retired from his own Real Estate Appraisal Business in 2015.   

Horses were always a part of his life.  In High School he tried every rodeo event.  In College he was the Calf Roping Champion for the Central Plains Collegiate Rodeo Champion in 1971.   After college he began team roping, first as a heeler, and eventually as a header.  After retirement he was able to spend some time roping in Arizona in the winter.   He was active in Rotary until his illness and was once awarded the annual Outstanding Rotary Member Award as well as the Distinguished Service Paul Harris Fellow Award.   He was a regular church attendant and served as a Deacon in Chadron, Nebraska and Spearfish, South Dakota.  He was a member of Connection Church in Belle Fourche, South Dakota and he knew the Lord as his personal savior.  

Perry was preceded in death by his mother Agnes (Aggie) and his father Jules Henry (Hank), son Brent, brothers Blake and Blayne, his sister-in-law Myrna, and his nephew Clint.

He is survived by his wife Verona, his son Shawn, and his daughter Tina Van Kley (Nick), his 3 granddaughters Carmen, Ariyana, and Ida, and his grandson Sidney, his brother Jerry (Karen), sisters-in-law Mary Jean and Judy, and many nieces and nephews.  

Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 26 at the Connection Church (former Mountain View Baptist at exit 12) in Spearfish, South Dakota with a grave side service taking place on Friday at 1 p.m.  in Rushville, Nebraska.  The family suggests memorials to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Phoenix, Arizona or Hospice.  Donations may be sent to Chamberlain Funeral Home, Box 970, Chadron, Nebraska 69337.  

Honorary Pallbearers:  Dick Lesher, Larry Miller, Al Setera, Roger Whorton, Tom Willnerd, Andy Beguin, Rex Beguin, Doug Johnson, and Michael Schadegg.