Copple's legacy a priceless gift
By Will Norton Jr.
Dean
During the weeks before his death on March 18, I had many long conversations with Neale Copple.
We talked about the college.
We discussed the news.
We talked about the college.
We discussed our families.
We talked about the college.
You see, when you talked with Neale you couldn't talk very long without talking about the college.
Neale loved this college. It was his life.
He chose to retire before he was 70, but he missed the college. He missed sitting at his desk and talking to Emily Trickey through the open door between their offices. He missed strategy sessions with Associate Dean Wilma Crumley. He missed the opening faculty meeting of each fall and the daily opportunities to meet with students and solve their problems.
That's why in journalism education throughout the world this loyal Nebraskan was known as the dean of deans. He was a first rate journalist who brought great experience to the classroom. He distinguished himself at the Milwaukee Journal and in his leadership of the coverage of the Charles Starkweather case for the Lincoln Journal.
The Medill School at Northwestern University named him one of its top 50 graduates.
Doug Anderson, the dean at Penn State and a native of Superior, Neb., wrote Neale a letter that he received the week before he died. In that letter Doug called Neale "very simply ... the best journalism education administrator ... ever."
Even though Neale had been retired many years, he left such a mark in our circles that dozens and dozens of journalism and mass communications administrators from throughout the nation wrote him and called and sent e-mails expressing their respect. Some called the college, and some called the hospital. Richard Cole, dean at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, got up at 3:45 a.m. and flew to Lincoln for the afternoon memorial service. Roger Boye, director of undergraduate studies at the Medill School of Journalism at North-western University, drove 10 hours because of weather delays at O'Hare.
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Neale was a dean who loved to talk, to make you feel good about yourself so that you would set your sights on being the best you could be. Our faculty knew this. Our students knew this. So did the bag boys in the grocery stores and the attendants at the convenience stores and the waiters and waitresses in restaurants.
Neale brought his wonderful personal touch to the classroom and helped both his students and his faculty feel they were special.
As a result, he quickly became known as a great teacher, a teacher who was as good in the classroom as he had been in the newsroom.
Wes Albers, the director of the Knight Ridder (Chicago) Tribune Graphics Center, sent me an e-mail message the evening after Neale's death. This is what he wrote:
"I'm sitting here in Washington tonight with my KRT Graphics staff, waiting to see if war begins in Iraq, waiting to do the job that people like Neale Copple, Jim Patten, Jack Botts, Jim Neal, etc., taught me to do so many years ago at UNL.
"I remember Dean Copple coming to my advanced reporting class one day and telling a wonderful story about doing an important interview without taking any notes, then rushing to his car to write everything down before he forgot what was said! He was making a point about listening, about not getting so caught up in note-taking or thinking of your next questions that you didn't listen carefully to the person you were interviewing.
"I don't know any better way," Wes wrote, "to pay tribute to the man than to tell someone ... that something Dean Copple said on a forgotten day in a classroom 28 years ago is something I'll always remember."
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In 1966 when Bill Hall left the University of Nebraska, it was obvious who should be the director of the school. Neale was named director and began hiring a quality faculty, shaping a curriculum devoted to the basics and building a nationally regarded School of Journalism.
By 1972, six short years after he was named director of the School of Journalism, the program at the University of Nebraska was the talk of the nation.
That same year the School of Journalism at the University of Iowa lost its accreditation. I was pursuing my doctorate at Iowa and was one of three students and two faculty who were asked by the president of the university to drive to Lincoln to see how the University of Nebraska had become such a great program.
It was early November, and by the time we reached Newton, Iowa, it was snowing heavily. When we reached Des Moines, it was a full-blown blizzard, and we had to find shelter in a motel. After a day, we decided to try to return to Iowa City.
We never made it to Lincoln, and it took the University of Iowa six more years before it regained accreditation. Even then, it was with the help of Neale Copple who made a last minute visit to the Iowa City campus to help the school fix several problems before the site-team arrived.
As a leader in the accreditation process, Neale crisscrossed the nation, helping dozens and dozens of schools to improve, indeed, to become more like Nebraska's program. I know how much Neale meant to such programs because I headed the program at the University of Mississippi for many years.
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When he decided to retire, it was not an easy transition. The University of Nebraska had lost a legend, and here was this interloper from Mississippi.
One afternoon during my first year or two on campus, Frosty Critchfield came by the college office, and we were discussing the difficulty of following a legend. Frosty quietly asked, "Do you know who followed Vince Lombardi as the coach of the Green Bay Packers?"
I surprised him by saying, "Phil Bengsten."
Neale did everything he could to keep me from being the Phil Bengsten of journalism education. After he retired, we met regularly for lunch to talk about what was going on in the college. His questions got to the heart of many important issues, and he always was supportive.
The College of Journalism and Mass Communications has a beautiful new home, Harold and Marian Andersen Hall. It is a fitting place for Neale's college. However, Neale's great legacy will not merely be our college and our faculty.
It will be the thousands of persons in newsrooms, in advertising agencies and in television studios throughout the nation remembering something Neale taught them or helping someone because Neale had helped them.
* * *
On Monday night, hours before he left us, Wilma Crumley and I stood on each side of Neale's bed, and she and I each held one of his hands.
"Neale," I said. "This is Will. Wilma and I are here."
Slowly his lips moved as he tried to say, "Wilma."
He wanted us to know that he knew we were with him.
For years to come I will remember that moment. I will remember the hours we spent talking beside his bed in Bryan LGH West. I will remember the hundreds of conversations through the years.
And as long as I live, I will thank the Lord for my friend, Neale Copple.
