Outstanding alumni honor J school with their gifts
By Will Norton Jr.
Dean
One of the great pleasures of being associated with this college is meeting outstanding alumni and friends of this program who have gone on to make significant contributions to their communities throughout the world.
Late last summer I visited in three homes of fascinating Nebraskans who have lived much of their lives in New England. They have made major contributions to their professional worlds and to their alma mater.
I was scheduled to attend an executive committee meeting of the Freedom Forum. When I have meetings outside Nebraska, I try to take an extra day or two to meet alumni and friends of the college.
In August I asked Greg Jensen and Luke Lionberger of the University of Nebraska Foundation to pick me up at a hotel off Central Park in Manhattan when my meeting had ended.
We drove north and east past Yankee Stadium and on to Hamden, Conn., and the home of Lee and Mary Cochran Grimes. I had wanted to meet the Grimes for many years. During one of my first few years at the university, Lee's brother David had called from Los Angeles. He said he was speaking for Lee and a third brother, George. They were proposing a gift in honor of their parents. The George and Eva Grimes Endowment provides funds for students to travel internationally. "We believe there is nothing that can enrich a student's education like traveling abroad," David told me.
Since September 11, 2001, we all understand even more deeply the importance of knowing and understanding those who share space with us on this great planet.
Mary and Lee reminisced about their years in Nebraska and their careers since leaving the campus. As I listened I was reminded of the depth and multi-dimensional character of so many of our alumni. Lee left the university and served in the military during World War II. He attended the schools of journalism at Nebraska and Columbia University and served a stint in the military during the Korean conflict. Then he went to work on his parents' newspaper in Oxnard, Calif. His father, a former managing editor of the Omaha World-Herald, had purchased the newspaper during the 1940s, and Lee and his brothers joined the family operation until the newspaper was sold in 1963.
Mary Cochran Grimes was in sixth grade when her father became governor of Nebraska. His administration spanned the Dust Bowl era and Depression years of 1935 to 1941. We were fascinated by her account of being a teenager in the governor's mansion and having her Lincoln High School classmates over for parties. "We even had a 13 piece orchestra for one party," she told us.
Mary worked in a variety of media after she was graduated from the university. She was a reporter with the Washington Star before she and Lee had children, two sons and a daughter.
A few hours after we left the Grimes home, we arrived in Old Lyme, Conn., at the home of Wayne and Ann Seacrest Southwick. They live at the end of a road on the edge of a marsh on Long Island Sound. From their sunroom you can watch the panoply of life along the ocean.
Their home is tastefully decorated with wonderful impressionist paintings, exquisite sculpture by Wayne and his mentor and other art that reflects the depth of the couple's intellectual life and the breadth of their interests.
Dr. Southwick is a retired professor of orthopedics at Yale Medical School. He and Ann are graduates of the University of Nebraska. The two have been major contributors to our college, helping us to pay for renovation of Andersen Hall and for the equipping of the J.C. Seacrest Lecture Hall.
Ann and two of her cousins, Jettie M. Kelly and Joe R. Seacrest, were raised by their grandmother, Mrs. J. C. Seacrest.
We nibbled shrimp and other snacks and watched the egrets on the marsh while Ann and Wayne talked about life at the university during the early 1940s. We ended the evening with dinner at the Old Lyme Inn, comparing life on campus when they were undergraduates with life on campus today.
The next day we made our way along winding highways bordered by stone walls from the pre-Revolutionary War era. We passed through little New England towns and over bridges, crossing clear streams on a very hot morning as we made our way to Newtown, Conn..
We were greeted by Dick deBrown. A 1940 graduate of our program and a former editor of the Daily Nebraskan, he graduated from the university and worked for University Publications before joining United Press International in Washington, D.C. After several years, he joined Time magazine, covering the White House during part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He moved to New York and joined the staff of McCann-Erickson. Later he was employed in public relations with Carl Byoir and Associates.
He and a companion live in a beautiful lakeside villa on the shore of Lake Taunton. We looked out over the lake and pool as he softly told us what Nebraska had meant to him.
Dick has established provisions for a scholarship fund in his estate. It is one of many funds that will benefit future students in the college.
We told Dick where we had visited the day before, and he said he once had a date with Mary Cochran when she was a young journalist in Washington. Dick said Lee Grimes had been awarded a Hitchcock Scholarship to Columbia University for which he had applied. And Dick had preceded Joe R. Seacrest, Ann's brother, at Phillips Exeter Academy before he enrolled at the University of Nebraska.
The connections among our network of alumni are incredible.
I am in my 13th year as dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska. I have enjoyed dozens and dozens of such visits to the homes of our alumni.
We have become more than acquaintances. In many cases we have become good friends, and many of these acquaintances and friends have contributed significantly to this college.
Years from now, when their contributions are still coming in to the University of Nebraska Foundation offices, I will remember these great experiences and cherish the quality of lives of our alumni and friends, professionals who gave back to their university to help our students today.
I am grateful for the generations of great teachers and administrators who have built the great traditions that shape the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska. Their commitment has attracted such great loyalty to this fine university.
What a privilege to be associated with this university, this college, our alumni, our faculty and our students!
