Andersen's efforts benefit Nebraska
By Rachael Seravalli
J Alumni News staff
For more than 50 years, Marian Andersen's business has been people.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln alumna is well known for the university building that now bears her name, as well as for her ability to convince people to open their checkbooks in support of a favorite cause.
Among other organizations Andersen has been involved in, she co-chaired Campaign Nebraska with her husband, Harold, and helped raise more than $700 million for UNL between 1993 and 2000. She also led the National Red Cross Board that chose Elizabeth Dole as its president.
Andersen's efforts through the years have won her many honors and awards, including United Way Citizen of the Year Award, YWCA Tribute to Women honors and the Perry Branch Award from the NU Foundation. She received an honorary doctorate from UNL at the December 2002 graduation ceremony.
Though her image looms large in the eyes of some, Andersen's character is not presumptuous.
An interview with her wouldn't take very long, she said, maybe 15 or 20 minutes.
Fifteen minutes easily became almost an hour. The Lincoln native has much to say on topics ranging from politics to sports to dogs and can strike up a conversation with just about anyone.
Andersen said her friends can vouch for her tendency to approach complete strangers at baseball games.
"One thing about baseball fans is that they know all sorts of trivia that no one else cares about," she said. "There's common ground."
Terry Fairfield, member of the board of directors for the University of Nebraska Foundation, called her a fan and scholar of the game.
"She's been to every professional park in the country," Fairfield said.
Between 1991 and 1992, Andersen visited 30 different baseball parks, she said.
"But they keep building them, so I have to keep going," she said.
As she sat at a baseball game in Kansas City, Mo., recently, she saw a football stadium in the distance and wondered aloud to her husband if maybe they shouldn't try to visit all the football stadiums in the country.
"'Oh no,' my husband said. 'We're not going to go through that again,'" she said laughing.
When she's not thinking about sports, she's thinking about news. Andersen reads six newspapers a day and often has a stack of magazines and other reading material waiting for her.
Anderson graduated with a journalism degree from UNL in 1949. She wrote for the society section of the Lincoln Journal Star for a year in 1950 before meeting Harold Andersen, who had come to Lincoln to cover the legislature for the Omaha World-Herald.
They married in 1952, and Andersen's husband subsequently became the publisher and chief executive of the Omaha World-Herald.
While she said she often found poor grammar in newspapers these days, she was fascinated by the politics she reads about in them, though her own aspirations continue to remain behind the scenes.
"I've had people tell me I should run for office," she said, "but you have to raise scads of money, it takes energy and everyone scrutinizes every aspect of your life. It's clear to me why the best people aren't running for office."
But that doesn't keep her from taking the initiative to change the things she doesn't like.
About five years ago, Andersen lobbied the city of Omaha to change an ordinance restricting the number of dogs per household from two to three. Andersen and her husband now have three cocker spaniels.
Fairfield said it was Andersen's ability to lead that attracted people to her.
"People want to be a part of projects she's involved in because she succeeds," Fairfield said. "If she wants to improve something, whether it's the university or the Red Cross, she does it.
"If she chose to, she could be the chief executive of a private corporation," he added. "She's dynamic and engaging and a winner."
