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After steep decline, the Wesley House rises under Paul Bryant to become youth academy of excellence in the inner city
The headline attached to this story is misleading, not because it’s untrue, but because it’s outdated. The headline reflected the facts when I wrote the story for The Reader (www.thereader.com) a few years ago, but since then Paul Bryant has left the Wesley House and the organization itself has disbanded. Indeed, there’s a story on this blog entitled “An Omaha Legacy Ends” and filed under the Paul Bryant and Wesley House categories that details the Wesley House’s closing after 139 years of service. Before that closure, Bryant led a revival of a once proud community center that had lost its way and its lustre. Bryant frequented the Wesley House as a youth, when it was a community force, but by the time he found success in the corporate world it had fallen on hard times. As this profile explains bryant left a corporate career to lead the nonprofit and to reinvent it as a youth academy of excellence. You will read about some of the great things he did there in a short time and about some of the dreams he had in store for down the line. In the end, the resources couldn’t match the vision. Paul is doing very much the same work he began at the Wesley House, only now through his own Leadership Institute for Urban Education. Paul is the author of the book, The Purpose Driven Leader.
NOTE: This blog also contains a story entitled “Artist Therman Statom Works with Children…” that profiles how the noted glass artist worked with youths from the Wesley House.
Paul Bryant
After steep decline, the Wesley House rises under Paul Bryant to become youth academy of excellence in the inner city
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Founded as the Omaha City Mission by the Christian Workers Association in 1872, the United Methodist Community Centers-Wesley House is the oldest social service agency in Nebraska. Traditionally focused on the underprivileged, the agency’s adapted over the years to target different groups, trends and needs among the poor. The Wesley House itself has seen hard times, but nothing like the financial quagmire that closed its doors the end of 2004 and start of 2005.
Since executive director Paul Bryant took over in May of 2005– leaving behind a career in banking — the agency’s gained a new lease on life as the Wesley House Leadership Academy of Academic and Artistic Excellence. While trying to get its house in order, it’s embarked on year two of a program to nurture high achievement among inner city children through tutoring, academic and life skills training and enrichment activities. Students are taught everything from small business and stock market concepts to good manners. Kids greet visitors with a firm handshake, direct eye contact and the words “Welcome to the Wesley House.”
The ACADEMIC Summer Academy targets boys ages 7 to 12. An after school program works with boys and girls, ages 7 to 12, over the school year.
In the spare conference room where he teaches a Business in the Boardroom class to 3rd and 4th graders, Bryant fits the exec profile with his crisp attire, tall frame and on-point demeanor. The fact he sounds like a banker, a brother and a preacher bodes well for building the broad-based support the organization needs.
In the Wesley House’s brick and glass building at 2001 North 35th Street the hope stirred by the new program is expressed in the eager faces, urgent voices and insistent raised hands of children vying for coveted blue blazers. Both a prize and a symbol, the jackets are reserved for students who demonstrate a grasp of business principles usually taught in high school or college.
Bryant puts the boys, many from single-parent homes, through their paces. Most are too small to rest their elbows on the table. “What’s the calculation for a balance sheet?” In unison, they answer, “Assets minus liabilities equals net worth.” “What about an income statement?” “Revenues minus expenses equals net income.” “When an asset loses value, what’s that called?” “Depreciation.” “What is it when it gains value?” “Appreciation.”
What may seem too dry or advanced is fun. “It’s structured, it’s cerebral, and they like it. They’re not bouncing off the walls,” he said. “This is a ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you,’ ‘Yes, Ma’am’ and ‘No, sir’ environment. There’s no sagging here. You’ve got to pull your pants up. There’s no cursing, no fighting. You can lose your privileges. That’s just the way it is, and we’re not apologetic about it.”
Holding kids to a higher plain is what it’s all about. Bryant feels so strongly about it that his son Paul (P.J.) attends the academy/after school.
“We’re changing lives,” he said. “I truly believe that. There’s a lot of programs that teach our kids how to score baskets and touchdowns and everything else, but we’re teaching them how to think and how to operate in the real world.”
A lifetime Omahan and a member of the storied Bryant-Fisher family that owns a long history of community service here, Bryant volunteered summers in an after school program operated by Wesley, located near where he grew up. He knew first-hand the positive activities offered there. When he heard about its problems, he felt “an obligation” to help rescue what’s been a community anchor.
“I said, ‘Not the Wesley House. Not another minority-managed organization going down the tubes on hard times. The Wesley House can’t go down’”
He applied for the job and soon left corporate America to head the troubled non-profit. “I was a leader looking for an organization and this is an organization that’s in dire need of some leadership,” he said. “My challenge is to bring this organization to its rightful place of prominence in this community.”
Eyebrows arched and tongues wagged when he left a Wells Fargo VP post to start from scratch with a tarnished agency whose vital signs read critical. He’s fine going from a sure thing to a long shot — and taking a pay cut — as long as kids succeed.
“My happiness really is not associated with money. Wealth isn’t the end all. It’s what you do. I’ve had dinner with President Clinton, I’ve had lunch with Colin Powell. I’ve had cocktails with Henry Kissinger. I’ve taken a seven-day cruise with Oprah Winfrey. I’ve been in Evander Holyfield’s house. My biggest client was Isaiah Thomas. I got no better feeling being in any of those circumstances than I do being with these kids here. When I see them get it. When I see them desire those blazers…I mean, they want ‘em. They want ‘em bad.”
Bryant, who holds master’s degrees in urban studies and urban education, is not an academic per se, but he professes to know what ails the community he calls home.
“I’m from this community. I’m a Bryant-Fisher. I don’t need to do scientific research to know what goes on. I see a culture floundering to find relevance in society post-Martin Luther King, Jr. How to fit into a society that really hasn’t found the value in who you are, and still be true to and proud of who you are.
“Somehow, we’ve got to a point in the inner city where black people think being smart is white behavior, and we’ve got to change that. This is a community that’s not identified by its talent. Ask anybody. Close your eyes and picture a junior high school African-American male. The mental picture you have isn’t going to be of a magna cum laude. But there is no correlation between intellect and income at birth. It’s a matter of what kids are exposed to. We’ve got to start identifying the success stories — the kids who like to read and write and learn science.”
He said the Gallup Organization surveyed the boys in last year’s academy and found some “have higher expectations than their parents. We want to raise standards, and we work with parents to do that.” He said post-testing revealed an increase in kids’ self-esteem. Anecdotally, the students seem to be doing better in school.
“What we want to do is expose inner city kids to cerebral activities and create an environment where it’s cool to be smart,” he said. “Our motto is, ‘Smart People Win.’ If you come here and pick up a book, nobody’s going to call you egghead and push you around and take your lunch money. If you want to write, we encourage you. We want the smart kids to know they’re not islands. We tell them, ‘If you stay in school and get good grades, you’re going to be at the top of your class and get a scholarship to college. And if you keep getting good grades, you’re going to get a good job. If you keep your nose to the grindstone, it’s really going to pay off.’”
Attitudes outside the inner city can get in the way, too, he said. “When I shared with a foundation president that I want these kids to aspire to Ivy-league schools, she told me, ‘Well, wouldn’t Metro (Metropolitan Community College) be more realistic?’” He knew he’d lost her, but he told her anyway that “kids at this age haven’t lost the game — they have the potential to succeed” anywhere.
His message has reached others. At a March 9 press conference he trotted out reps from many partnering organizations. Tutors from UNO, Creighton University, Metro and the Civil Air Patrol aid students with homework and “augment the educational process” with special training in math, reading, the arts, science, technology, etc. Kids display their handiwork in fairs and exhibits. They learn about different careers from professionals they meet on field trips or at Wesley. They track/trade stocks. Their summer garden project is also a small business venture.
A partnership with Mutual of Omaha has created the Technology Project, a pilot program to help bridge the digital divide. Mutual is to donate 60 computers annually to the Wesley House for use by kids in an on-site computer lab now under development and for ACADEMIC Summer Academy students to use at home.
If he can secure funding, Bryant envisions “keeping these kids together for 10 years. At that point, they’re going to be a group of smart young men that understand public and private sector finance and economics. They can truly help make north Omaha a vital part of the city’s growth and development, where we’re no longer the weakest link.” He has plans for early childhood and teen programs.
Opening an academy in an area associated with remedial and recreation programs is a bold move for an agency that appeared on its way out.
Before its recent change of course, Wesley House was providing services to youth in the state juvenile justice system. When juvenile justice staff expressed concerns over Wesley’s program outcomes and reporting methods, referrals made to the agency dropped. Soon, United Way raised its own questions about “the effectiveness” of Welsey programs and services. By 2003, all UW money was pulled. Wesley shifted to serving youth and families in the foster care system, but couldn’t bring in enough clients. With the loss of officials’ trust and of any steady revenue stream, Wesley exhausted $500,000 in reserves on operating expenses, saw its executive director resign and eventually let go all staff and shut down all programs.
Board chairman Dan Johnston confirmed closing the venerable institution was an option, but a decision was made “to give it one more good shot.”
By then, Wesley was decades removed from its days as a model community revitalization engine in the 1960s-early ‘70s War on Poverty. It was the agency’s shining hour. Money poured in and national recognition followed an array of initiatives to empower blacks. Then-executive director Rodney Wead led efforts that spawned a black owned radio station (KOWH), community bank (Community Bank of Nebraska), credit union (Franklin Federal Community Credit Union), minority scholarship program and an ethnic culture center. Later, north side redevelopment organizations led by Michael Maroney (New Community Development Corporation) and Alvin Goodwin (Omaha Economic Development Corporation) sprung up there.
Long before, the organization reached out to help youth, women and families living on the edge. One of 105 UMCC missions/institutions in the U.S., the agency began as a mission serving newly arrived immigrants then settling the Nebraska territory, one of many such shelters that grew out of the Progressive Area’s settlement house movement. Charged by a social reform agenda, these centers provided the types of programs and services then not being offered by government.
As the times dictated, the agency shifted its response. The early 20th century migration of rural families into the city, along with the growing Native American underclass and homeless population, became a prime focus. After years operating downtown, the local UMCC mission relocated to its present site in 1958, just a few blocks from Franklin Elementary School, and with the move made serving the area’s poor black residents a top priority. The neighborhood reflects north Omaha’s dual identity. While many low income families are stuck in a cycle of poverty and the area is run down by distressed houses and vacant lots, pockets of pricey new housing (Miami Heights) and resurgent business/service centers (the revitalized Lake Street corridor from 24th to 30th Streets) can be found.
Although Wesley receives some United Methodist church support, it’s long depended on most of its funding from the United Way and other public/private sources, leaving it vulnerable to the vicissitudes of donors.
Only 12 months into Bryant’s reign the center is still reeling from the aftermath of the United Way pull out. That severing meant the loss of not only hard-to-replace monies — some $300,000 worth annually — but the even more valuable endorsement that comes with UW support. Aware of how much stature Wesley lost in the eyes of the establishment, Bryant, a paradox of by-the-numbers-cruncher, deeply spiritual Christian and community-minded legacy-keeper, approaches his task to reinvent and redeem the agency as nothing less than a calling from above. To justify leaving behind a six-figure income with Wells Fargo (previous to that he was at Gallup and First National Bank), he’s put aside cold hard calculations and proceeded on faith.
“I am operating on faith every step of the way. My moves have not been thought out, studied and projected. When I accepted this job I didn’t have any staff. We had no revenues and a $40,000 debt I’d just found out about. I took a leap of faith. Quite frankly, I don’t have five-year projections. Right now, it’s a matter of survival for this organization. But, hey, I’m on a mission and I’m not too proud to beg,”
Bryant also felt it was time to give back. “I was at a point in my life when I was really looking for significance, and I felt this is what I’m supposed to do.” The agency’s bleak prospects gave him pause, but not enough to deter him. “I just felt pricked in my heart. Something’s got to be done, I thought.”
In short order, he introduced his new vision and set about restoring the agency’s good name. He promised to retire its $40,000 debt in a Biblically-inspired 40 days. He wiped out the deficit in 36 days. But getting there was never a sure thing.
“I can’t tell you how nervous I was. It wasn’t like I had some trump card up my sleeve. The fact is I didn’t have some big corporation in my hip pocket. I stepped out on faith and it happened. Just like this new direction we’re going. The largest contribution was $5,000. There was only one of those. There were several $1,000 donations. The rest was a whole lot of $500, $100, $25, $10 and $5 checks.”
The margin for error is still slim given the $20,000 in monthly operating expenses. “When I came, we had two weeks before our doors could be shut. Now, we’ve probably got a two-month cushion. We are not where we need to be but things are looking much better then they were this time last year,” he said. Another concern is the small number of children being served. Sixteen boys graduated last summer’s academy. Enrollment begins next week for this summer’s academy. A Summer Fun Club currently has 24 kids signed up. About 48 kids attended this past school year’s after school program. It’s not all about numbers, but as numbers go, monies flow. That’s why Bryant, who emphasizes recruitment is largely by word-of-mouth, hopes to see a spike in enrollees.
To bolster the financial footing, ensure continued operations and endow future growth, he hopes grant applications made to foundations and corporations pay off. Getting back in the UWs good graces is another goal. He’s also organized benefit events involving Omaha native and pro football Hall of Famer Gale Sayers and his wife Ardie, who are making Wesley House their official Omaha charitable cause. On April 28, a DVD big screen projection of the original 1971 made-for-television movie Brian’s Song was screened at Omaha Central High School’s auditorium. Bryant said the event raised about $2,000, enough for the agency to pay off a line of credit.
On June 19, the Gale Sayers Wesley House Classic is set for the Players Club at Deer Creek. Entries for the golf tournament sold out a month in advance. Among the celebrities expected to hit the links are National Baseball Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins, Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Rodgers, Cornhusker quarterback legend Jerry Tagge, the NFL’s first black quarterback in Marlin Briscoe, former NBA All-Star Bob Boozer and Creighton University head basketball coach Dana Altman. Tee-off is at 10 a.m.
Bryant knows public events like this can only do so much. Bottom line, he and the Wesley House must prove the agency is back to stay and demonstrate they’ve found a sustainable niche that others buy into. One indication he is there to say, is the new house he and wife Robin are building in the nearby Miami Heights development.
“It’s about longevity. There’s a lot of people who’ve heard about the bad recent history and they want to see if this is a flash in the pan. Will it still be here? Will I still be here? I can’t see going anywhere. I want to be part of the solution. I want to be a bridge-builder.” To bridge the achievement gap. The desired end result is summed up in the academy creed the kids recite from memory. It ends with, “Through self-discipline we will grow into adults of honor and integrity. Our legacy will be a source of pride to our families and communities.”
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Manifest Beauty: Christian Bro. William Woeger devotes his life to Church as artist and creative-cultural-liturgical expert
Omaha’s cultural scene is stronger thanks to Christian Brother William Woeger. He heads the Archdiocese of Omaha‘s Office for Divine Worship but is best known as founder and director of the Cathedral Arts Project based at St. Cecilia Cathedral. The project sponsors many performing and fine arts presentations throughout the year, including a flower festival that draws tens of thousands over a single weekend. He oversaw a major restoration project at the magnificent cathedral a few years ago. Adjacent to the cathedral is an impressive visitors-cultural center that was developed under his leadership. The following story for The Reader (www.thereader.com) apepared while the restoration was still underway. Something I discovered about Woeger in doing the story is that in addition to being a highly respected liturgy expert and arts administrator, he is also a nationally renowned icon artist.
Triptych designed and painted by Bro. William Woeger
Manifest Beauty: Christian Bro. William Woeger devotes life to Church as artist and creative-cultural-liturgical expert
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
If not traveling to confer on a church renovation or to install one of his commissioned art works, national liturgical design consultant and icon painter Brother William Woeger can be found working the phone from his tidy office in the Archdiocese of Omaha chancery. From there, the fastidious Woeger juggles a busy schedule as head of the Office for Divine Worship and as executive director and founder of the popular Cathedral Arts Project. For good measure, the 54-year-old visionary — one of the early driving forces behind Omaha’s compassionate response to the AIDS epidemic — is director of liturgy at St. Cecilia Cathedral, whose $3 million restoration he is shepherding toward completion.
Gaze Upon My Soul
When the demands of his career and vocation get to be too much for the admittedly “driven” Woeger, a 36-year veteran of the Christian Brothers teaching order founded in 1864 by French cleric John Baptist de la Salle, he retreats to the solace of his painting. In keeping with tradition, Woeger’s iconic figures (mostly of Christ) are bathed in an aura of gold light suggestive of the Holy Spirit. His acrylic paint-on-wood works adorn churches in Omaha and around the nation. He recently completed and shipped the last in a set of 15 icons for a new church he helped design in Maryland. Word-of-mouth alone keeps him immersed in new projects. “I don’t advertise. I don’t submit drawings and designs. I don’t do committees,’ he said. Working from a basement studio, he enters a nearly transcendental meditative state amid the solitude and the golden reflected gaze of the icon he is rendering.
“When I am in the act of painting it actually creates a space in my life when I’m not tied into anything else. Aside from the sound of the furnace kicking-on, it’s a very contemplative experience,” he said. “And it’s very interactive in the sense that you begin manipulating the materials and then, at a certain moment — and sometimes it’s quite identifiable — the dynamics flip around and suddenly It’s doing it’s thing to you rather than you doing something to it, and it kind of finishes itself. That most often has to do with the face and the eyes — when the image starts looking back at you — which is at the heart of icons as a focus for prayer.
“The whole notion is very non-Western. The icon becomes a window, if you will, through which you contemplate the divine. Even if the image is not one of Christ but rather one of the saints, the whole metaphor with the gold hue in the background is that the source of the light is not the person — it’s beyond the person — and that is God being mediated through the figure in the painting, which is very incarnation-oriented.”
Bro. William Woeger
Upon This Rock
Born and raised in a south St. Louis German-Catholic family, Woeger felt an affinity for the arts and a calling to religious life as a youth and has combined these passions ever since. He entered the Christian Brothers at 18 and pronounced his perpetual vows at 25. While studying art, theology and philosophy in the ‘60s he developed a social conscience. He began a formal teaching career in 1967 when assigned to Omaha’s Rummel High (now Roncalli), whose art department he established. He later taught at the College of St. Mary. In 1981 he joined the archdiocesan staff, where his focus evolves “depending on what I see around me.”
Through his archdiocesan post he coordinates area liturgical celebrations. As a freelance liturgical designer he integrates music, art, ritual and architecture in churches nationwide. Striving to make each place of worship a “sermon without words,” he goes about “shaping the building around the liturgical action,” adding, “I see what I do as educational. I help clients take liturgical principles and use those as a stepping off point to create a house for the church and the community in which to worship and praise God.” Since each parish has its own distinct personality, he must balance unique cultural characteristics (ethnic, socioeconomic, charismatic, conservative, etc.) with Roman Catholic doctrine and tradition. “There can be a tension there, but it can be a creative thing,” he said.
His services range from all-encompassing design schemes to specific features. “Sometimes I’m involved from the very beginning all the way to the end, including designing the furniture, working with the architect, being a go-between with artists doing windows or sculptures and holding workshops with local liturgical ministers. It’s a helluva package. Other times, I just come in and help with the programming. End of story. Or, other times, I just design furniture or do an icon. It’s much easier to do a brand new building than it is a restoration because it’s no-holds-barred, at least conceptually. Sometimes I work on buildings that have a historic reference where we borrow the architecture vocabulary from another period. St. Vincent DePaul Church in Omaha is like that. It’s a contemporary building but definitely has a Gothic reference.”
Whatever the assignment, he tries making each church a metaphorical emblem of the Catholic faith and its people. “The definition of a symbol is something that points to a reality beyond itself, and church architecture has tremendous potential to do that,” he said. He feels much of modern church design “fails” in this regard by opting for flimsy rather than solid values. “I’m not knocking modern architecture in comparison with classical it-looks-like-a-church architecture. I’m talking about the whole American phenomenon of suburban architecture — the here-today-gone tomorrow strip-mall transitory approach to things as opposed to an approach that establishes a sense of place and an air of permanence. Especially if you buy into the idea church buildings are places where key moments in peoples’ lives are celebrated or sanctified, than the building-as-place becomes a touchstone for their memory and, so, the walls speak.”
Imbuing a church with indelible substance requires rigorous attention to detail. It starts with a philosophy. He said, “It’s about believing in things getting better as they get older. It’s about using quality materials, which isn’t necessarily the most expensive, but ones which the community feels invested in as ‘The best we have to put forward.’ It’s about the materials and design being appropriate. It’s about integrity and all these things bearing the mark of the maker and not appearing to be mass-produced but rather created for sacred purposes. And, in the final analysis, the building should be capable of bearing the weight of mystery. The weight of mystery is what gets you in touch with the presence of God and gives you the sense this is holy space. Using strip mall approaches doesn’t cut it. It can’t carry the profundity. This is God-stuff we’re talking about. It’s pretty heavy, and so there’s no room for the trite, the silly, the mundane, the pedestrian, the pop.”
Makeovers and New Directions
This same philosophy has underpinned the restoration of Omaha landmark St. Cecilia Cathedral, the Thomas Rogers Kimball-designed Spanish renaissance revival building begun in 1905 and completed in 1958. Except that, after Kimball’s death in 1934, the building was never quite finished and the famed Omaha architect’s plans never fully carried-out. Much of the Spanish flavor Kimball intended was ignored or altered. According to Woeger, Kimball’s design drew on the buoyant monastery palace complex of Spanish ruler Philip II. To recapture that model, Woeger selected Evergreene Painting Studios Inc. of New York, to execute the restoration, and Omaha architectural firm Bahr Vermeer Haecker to oversee the project.
Recent interior work done to the Cathedral, including extensive surface cleaning, the use of bold Iberian stencil patterns in the ceiling and nave, the addition of several large murals and various lighting enhancements, has appreciably brightened the building to provide a warmer, more vibrant, more visceral space in which one’s eyes invariably look up to the heavens. The idea was to create a vital ambience for public worship and celebration in which “the whole assembly is praying with one mind, one heart, one voice.” Woeger adds, “We had an opportunity to bring a much more exuberant Spanish renaissance style feeling to the interior finishes. Now, you have the sense the building is bigger and higher. It definitely evokes wonder and awe, and that architecture’s supposed to do that. Now, you can just watch people look up when they walk in. They didn’t use to do that because you really couldn’t quite take it all in it was so dark.”
Making the Cathedral an inspirational community gathering place is something Woeger had in mind when starting Cathedral Arts Project, an autonomous presenting organization sponsoring concerts, art exhibits and an annual flower show. His other impulse was putting St. Cecilia’s squarely in-line with the historic mission of cathedrals as a center of the humanities. “All of the spiritual reality that building stands for is an appropriate context for that which is spiritual about the arts,” he said. “It broadens the scope of the people who enter the life of the Cathedral. And, historically, cathedrals were the center of learning, the center of the arts, the center of humanity, the center of theology and spirituality.”
For Woeger, an “off-the-charts control person” who lost his father at age 9, the AIDS crisis presented a special challenge. “I spent a lot of time with people while they were dying and early on it was sort of making me crazy. I had to learn I couldn’t do anything about this. That the best thing I could do was simply be there for them.”
With the death-sentence urgency of the AIDS crisis largely passed and the Cathedral restoration drawing to a close, Woeger is looking for new challenges. “I’m the kind of person who reinvents himself about every six to eight years. I have to have some new stimuli in order to keep my creative juices flowing. It doesn’t have to be a radical change, but some kind of shift so that things sort of come apart and come back together again in a new configuration.”
Not surprisingly, his renewed focus is on upcoming projects at the Cathedral. First, life-sized statues (of saints) carved in Italy will be installed on exterior niches perched above the main entrance and a side entrance. The niches have sat empty the entire life of the Cathedral. Next, an ambitious organ restoration is on tap. And, once funds are secured, work will begin on a visitors/cultural center that will tell the story of the Cathedral and the legacy of Kimball in a museum to be housed in the former Cathedral High School building. Through such efforts he hopes the Cathedral remains a beacon for generations to come.
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Jeff Slobotski and Silicon Prairie News create nNiche by charting innovation
One of the leaders of Omaha’s much ballyhooed creatives and emerging entrepreneurs community is Jeff Slobotski, who has caught the wave with his Silicon Prairie News site and his annuak Big Omaha event. Jeff not only has lots of great ideas and an abudance of energy and enthusiasm, but he also has the skills to do follow through and to actually make his concepts reality. The following piece I did about Jeff and Silicon Prairie News appeared in Metro Magazine a couple years ago. Since then, Jeff’s endeavors have grown even more. I have a feeling I will be writing about he and his ventures for a long time. I may even be writing for him one day.
Jeff Slobotski and Silicon Prairie News create niche by charting innovation
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in Metro Magazine
Omaha-based Silicon Prairie News (SPN) may not be the next big thing on the Web but that’s OK with founder Jeff Slobotski. The Omaha native envisions his less-than-year-old startup as part social mission and part social networking portal. SPN’s public face is www.siliconprairienews.com, a sleek blog, news and events site devoted to nurturing and linking the area’s entrepreneurial-minded creative class.
Site postings include original published stories, video interviews and listings filed by him and partner Dusty Davidson, owner of the boutique software applications firm, Bright Mix, which hosts SPN. “If you’re looking for news and information around the creative innovative class,” Slobotski said, “that’s what we hope we’ll be able to cover and provide to folks.”
Slobotski, 31, came to admire his hometown as an entrepreneurial hot bed working with political campaigns in Nebraska and as a capital consultant with the Steier Group. He’s further staked-out cutting-edge Omaha in his current day job as sales-marketing guru for New York City-based software design firm Truist.
His travels allows him to compare the climate for startups here with that in centers of innovation like Austin, Texas. What he sees is that, yes, things are hopping as you’d expect in these progressive hubs but there’s also no shortage of enterprising intellectual capital and commerce in Omaha.
“I knew we had a lot of that here — a lot of that same creative class, innovative, entrepreneurial spirit,” said Slobotski, who makes it SPN’s business to track and engage this lively community of Generation X-Y-Z go-getters.
He maintained a personal blog that predated SPN, Midwest to Manhattan, where he commented on New York or San Francisco goings-on. “My office was in Manhattan at that time,” he said. After a while though he decided to turn his attention from what was happening elsewhere to what was happening in his own backyard.
“I thought, Nobody wants to read about me traveling around and writing, ‘Look what I’ve seen’ or ‘Look who I met.’ I like to be behind the scenes anyway — I don’t need to be the highlight of the blog. I wanted to turn that around and say, ‘Hey, look at some of guys or women that are doing it right here.”
That’s when he began formulating the SPN model that features individuals living the dream as entrepreneurs, innovators, mavericks, venture capitalists. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m talking about what I’m seeing in New York and bringing that back here,’ and I was like, ‘No wait, we have that here.” Examples are abundant.
“Rachel Jacobson at Film Streams is an innovator to me. She doesn’t clock in at 8 and clock out at 5, yet she’s really pushing the spirit of what we’re doing as a city,” said Slobotski. “Secret Penguin is another example. It’s a Web design shop that does work for MTV and the NFL, and not a lot of people know that.”
On his SPN site Slobotski’s sung the praises of both Jacobson and Secret Penguin owner Dave Nelson, a pro skateboarder whose youth branding business is built around skateboarding, music and youth cultures. Both Film Streams and Secret Penguin, along with bar/live music venue Slowdown, are part of the Saddle Creek Records complex that anchors the NoDo district’s developing cultural-commercial scene and exemplifies the creative class community Slobotski celebrates.
In his self-described role as “citizen reporter” Slobotski, not a trained journalist but a University of Nebraska at Omaha finance and banking graduate, does a form of advocacy journalism through Silicon Prairie News posts. SPN really is his forum to serve as Omaha’s creative class evangelist and facilitator.
“I see the resources, the talent we have here in town, and again it goes back to those connections or those networks,” he said. “But what good is it that you know people but aren’t helping them develop their skill set or their trade? Our goal is to really build that community and highlight those individuals or those businesses or those ideas to show that you’re not alone. If you’re someone who after you clock out of your 8-to-5 job is moonlighting, working on an idea, it’s like, Hey there’s other guys out there like you and here’s some of their stories.”
Slobotski and Davidson moonlight themselves, doing SPN as a “labor of love” around regular careers. They do more than report on entrepreneurs. They also stage events where innovators across a wide spectrum — from techies to artists — meet and share what they do. The idea’s to foster matches, links, collaborations that result in business needs being met or new ventures being sparked. An incubator for entrepreneurial startups is in the works. Anything arising from this mix of social-business engagement adds to the vibrant creative class scene SPN champions.
Soon after launching the SPN Web site July 25, Slobotski said it became apparent bringing people together in a virtual environment needed a corollary physical gathering. “We said, ‘Let’s get people together face to face rather than just trading emails or text messages or voice mails back and forth. Let’s meet and learn people’s stories.” Thus, SPN organized Omaha’s inaugural BarCamp and Tweetup and a talk by noted Silicon Valley business author/reporter Sarah Lacy.
He said the free events draw on average 100-plus people. SPN’s next event, the May 7-8 BigOmaha conference at Kaneko, will present forward-thinking creatives, innovators and entrepreneurs telling their national and local success stories, including Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library, a hot wine news, tastings, review site, and Rachel Jacobson of Film Streams. BIGOmaha is by-registration-only event. Slobotski said registrants are signed up from around the Midwest.
As Slobotski and Davidson are entrepreneurs in their own right, they, along with peers profiled online or in person, offer insider perspectives on the startup experience and creative class milieu. Slobotski hopes these stories inspire others to follow their own passion and do what they love. It’s all part of the synergy he aspires to promote, one where people with varied skill sets meet via event and do a service trade/barter or work on a project or buy into a vision. One connection may lead to another, and so on. It’s all about being plugged-in or linked-in.
Cross-mingling groups that don’t ordinarily connect, he said, can mean win-wins. “I think each one can respect what the other’s doing and then help each other out. It’s fun, I love meeting people. But who cares if you know this many people. What do you do with those relationships to help others affect change or get involved?”
Beyond a fondness for social media, there’s a social consciousness aspect to Slobotski, who’s founded a charitable organization, Packs of Promise, that provides new backpacks filled with supplies to the homeless through Siena/Francis House. He’s looking at SPN hosting a blog covering green initiatives and businesses.
SPN’s a-work-in-progress. Slobotski found it tough at first finding subjects outside his small circle of friends and associates. But as the word’s gotten out and SPN’s network has increased, he said, “we’ve now got a slate of folks to interview probably 15 to 20 long. Guys are coming out of the woodwork. We can’t keep up with that. We’re doing about a story or two a day” as opposed to a couple a week before. “We just met a guy who works at CSG Systems by day but he’s launched two or three small startup businesses on the side. We want more stories like that.”
He said the site’s at 10,000 to 12,000 hits a month and increasing. Content drives it, which means expanding beyond the local marketplace to do more regional/national coverage. He reported from Austin’s recent South by Southwest fest. Published stories remain the core but Slobotski said video pieces get the most feedback.
“I still think print is relevant and helpful but to be able to see the face of that guy that owns the bakery or that guy that owns the Web design shop telling his story for 3 to 5 minutes — I just think people connect with that a little more.”
He’s also aware SPN treads a fine line with its advocacy, citizen-level reporting. “We’re definitely tweaking and making changes, figuring ways to keep it not too stuffy but also not too weak, too casual and without enough boundaries,” he said. A niche jobs board may be added. A name change is also being considered, as he fears Silicon Prairie may suggest a tech emphasis that really isn’t so.
His long-term goal “is to turn this into a sustainable business — with the right balance, where it’s not ad heavy, but tactfully set-up and structured.”
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Buck O’Neil and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City Offer a Living History Lesson about the National Pastime from a Black Perspective
What follows is one of two cover stories I did on the late Negro Leagues Baseball legend Buck O’Neil. I earlier posted an O’Neil article I did for The Reader (www.thereader.com), and the story I’m posting here appeared in the New Horizons. Both pieces appeared in these Omaha publications mere months before O’Neil passed and were largely based on an interview I did with him in Kansas City at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum he was instrumental in founding. I found the gregarious O’Neil every bit as charming and enthusiastic in person as I saw him on television.
Buck O’Neil and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City Offer a Living History Lesson aboutthe National Pastime from a Black Perspective
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in the New Horizons
Monuments of both the human and brick-and-mortar kind abound at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) in Kansas City, Mo., where the story of a vital but long neglected chapter in the national pastime’s history is told. The NLBM preserves a rich heritage alongside the American Jazz Museum it shares space with in a sleek modern facility of bold colors and designs. It’s only right the NLBM calls Kansas City home, as that city gave birth to the Negro leagues and for decades hosted one of the great black ball clubs — the Kansas City Monarchs.
KC is also the adopted home of Buck O’Neil, widely considered the elder statesman of the Negro leagues. An all-star player and manager with the Monarchs of the Negro National League, the 94-year-old O’Neil co-founded the museum, which opened in a much smaller facility in 1991. The present structure opened in 1997. The NLBM is located smack dab in the middle of the historic cultural hub of KC’s black community, the 18th and Vine District, a gentrified neighborhood of brick, circa-1900s buildings, that in its day featured a 24/7 promenade of people taking in the area’s many clubs, eateries and stores.
A short jaunt off the Paseo exit finds you on John Buck O’Neil Way, which traverses a mixed commercial-residential area of brownstone walk ups — the Jazz Hill Homes — and places of worship — St. Stephen Baptist Church, Paseo Baptist, Bethel AME Church — whose names signify black culture. You arrive at 18th and Vine, to find an Old Market-style environs surrounded by the Blue Room, the Historic Lincoln Building, the Gem Theatre and the Swing Shop. Like a shrine stands the combined baseball-jazz museum and its homage to the game and the music that served to unite and thrill the black community.
The last Negro leagues team folded more than 40 years ago. The color barrier that precipitated the formation of the Negro leagues fell just after World War II ended. Yet African American pioneers in baseball are very much on people’s minds these days due to the July 30 National Baseball Hall of Fame induction of 17 Negro leagues and pre-Negro leagues figures. It’s the largest group from early black baseball to be elected to the Hall at one time.
A name conspicuous by its absence from this new crop of inductees is Buck O’Neil’s. In addition to his feats as a player-manager, he’s devoted himself to ensure the history of the Negro leagues not be lost. He’s perhaps best known for his narration in Ken Burns’ acclaimed Baseball documentary. His vivid descriptions of Negro leagues lore and the rousing place players-teams enjoyed in black communities, put a face on this story as never before. Long before the film, however, he lobbied for recognition of the Negro leagues as a singular slice of history and led the drive for its stars to be inducted in Cooperstown.
“I always thought the story should have been told and I’ve been telling it for the last 50 years,” O’Neil said. “But nobody listened to me until the Ken Burns documentary. Now everybody wants to talk to Buck about it.”
NLBM Marketing Director Bob Kendrick said O’Neil knows well his place in baseball history. “He’s a very proud man. He understands the fact he’s a trailblazer. He understands what this story represents to the core and he’s doing everything in his power to make sure others will have an opportunity to know about those who made great sacrifices and were trailblazers like himself. Education has been at the forefront of his life, and we’re talking about someone who’s the grandson of a slave, who was denied the opportunity to attend public high school in Sarasota, Fla., even though his parents were tax payers, who rose above that to become this elder statesman and icon for everything that is good in this country. He has been everything to this museum. If you had to point to a single individual for the building of this institution and keeping alive the legacy of the Negro leagues, it would be Buck O’Neil.”
“And that’s why we felt so disheartened by the fact the doors to the Hall of Fame were shut on him,” Kendrick said. “It’s difficult to assess his 70-plus-year baseball career and say he wasn’t worthy of inclusion as a contributor. You know, it leaves you to wonder what their criteria were, but certainly all of us understand the remarkable contributions this man has made to the game of baseball, across the board. Fans across the country were not just disappointed but outraged because he is the face of the Negro leagues now. Just as Satchel (Paige) was during his heyday, Buck has become the face of the Negro leagues. He is the reason people care about the Negro leagues. There’s no question about it.”
Bob Kendrick at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
Ever the diplomat, O’Neil downplays the Hall’s snub. “I had an idea I had a chance” to be elected, “but having been on the Veterans Hall of Fame Committee for 20 years I knew what could happen.” He prefers to take the high road. “We’re fixing to put 17 more in there at the end of July. Isn’t that wonderful?” Kendrick doesn’t rule out O’Neil might one day still get in, but he only hopes it’s not too late. “We hope Buck will get this coronation at some point in time, but the thing is we hope that it comes in his lifetime.”
Hall or no Hall his name’s soon to grace the planned Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center that will mark the NLBM’s largest expansion project in a decade. The center will be housed in the nearby Paseo YMCA, a National Historic Landmark regarded as the birthplace of the Negro leagues. A $15 million rehab will provide state-of-the-art facilities for the museum’s oral history and archival work.
The museum O’Neil’s dedicated the past 16 years of his life to charts, in words and images, the rise and fall of the Negro leagues. A “Field of Legends,” complete with life-sized bronze statues of Negro league greats arrayed on a mock diamond, puts you right there in the action. If there’s a recurring theme, it’s that these teams and players made it possible for future generations of blacks to enter major league baseball (MLB). Without the Negro leagues, equal rights for blacks in baseball and other aspects of society might well have waited another generation.
“As Buck so eloquently puts it,” Kendrick said, “it’s nice sometimes we celebrate those who built the bridge as opposed to those who crossed over the bridge. That’s what we’re doing here — we’re celebrating the bridge builders.”
Kendrick said major league players who visit the museum come away awe-struck.
What most captivates people are the stories, told in interactive exhibits, that make this living history come alive. That’s especially true if you’re lucky enough to be there when O’Neil happens by to regale anyone within ear shot with tales of those halcyon times. The much-beloved O’Neil is a familiar figure there. An ebullient man, whose bright attire reflects his sunny disposition, he chats up visitors and staff, charming everyone he greets.
For a recent Legends Luncheon held at the Madrid Theatre in KC, a program that raises funds for the NLBM, O’Neil made the rounds at each table to welcome attendees — “Good to see you guys” — to sign autographs and to pose for pics. During an auction of baseball memorabilia, he worked the crowd, imploring and cajoling them to up their bids. “We’re going to start this off at $40. Forty, who’s going to say 40 for Buck? Fifty? Who’s going to give me 55? C’mon, bro. Thank you, brother. Who’s going to give me $60? What do you say, sugar? There you go, love. Going once, going twice…I’ve got to let her have it,” and with that he saunters to the woman, embraces her and plants a kiss on her cheek.
“The man has never met a stranger in his life,” said Kendrick, who often travels with O’Neil to spread the gospel of the museum’s mission. “I’ll tell you what, he’s the most charismatic individual I’ve ever encountered. The energy he exerts at 94, it’s just amazing to me how he does it. Just his sheer love of humanity, his love of life. When you meet Buck O’Neil, you’ve just got to be on his team.”
O’Neil loved being a Negro leaguer. The way of life it afforded him. The people it allowed him to meet. The game he loved it enabled him to play.
“The only experience I would have traded it for would have been to have done it in the major leagues,” said O’Neil, the prime of whose playing career came before the color barrier fell. “Yeah, that’s the only thing.”
Until the color barrier was broken in 1947, the Negro leagues offered black ballplayers, coaches and managers the next best thing. It was their major leagues.
The warm embrace blacks once extended to the game is in sharp contrast to their low participation in it today. Where blacks used to identify with baseball, it’s now largely seen as a white or Latino or even Asian sport. But not so long ago black-is-beautiful and baseball went hand in hand. The Negro leagues constituted a cultural institution that fostered black pride and generated black commerce.
“The painful images of blacks are pretty much out there — the images of slavery, the struggle of the civil rights movement — but very rarely are our success stories celebrated, and this is a success story” Kendrick said. “Blacks succeeded at the highest level you can succeed playing this game and went on to spark social change in this country. I think it’s an inspirational illustration of what blacks were able to accomplish in the face of tremendous adversity.
“It was an economic stimulus for black businesses. It created a sense of pride in the African American community because while this was shared by others, it still was intrinsically ours. It had been born, anchored and become successful” in the black community, He said. “Negro leagues baseball brought tremendous joy to African Americans during a time that was very difficult for blacks in this country.”
“I always share with our visitors that the story of the Negro leagues embodies the American spirit unlike any other,” Kendrick said, “because in it is everything we pride ourselves in being Americans. It’s a story of courage. It’s a story of men who flat out refused to accept the notion they were unfit to play America’s co-called national pastime. They created leagues of their own that actually rose to rival, and in many cities across this country, surpass the major leagues in popularity and attendance. They were determined, they persevered, they did whatever they had to do to prove to the world they could play this game as well as anyone. That is the prevailing American spirit.”
During an era when a “gentlemen’s agreement” among major league owners and commissioners kept blacks off the field, African Americans created their own baseball universe. In 1920, Andrew “Rube” Foster — “the father of black baseball” — held a meeting with other black team owners at KC’s Paseo YMCA and the result was the Negro National League, the first organized black pro league. Other leagues followed. The hope was the big leagues would eventually take-in one team from each main Negro league. It never happened.
Instead, it took another 27 years before the majors let in blacks. In the meantime, the Negro leagues continued to prosper. The first Colored World Series was held in 1924. New leagues followed. The boom was from 1933 to 1947, with teams in KC, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Birmingham, Memphis, Baltimore, New York, et cetera.
The Negro leagues featured comparable talent as the majors and, as the museum highlights, offered innovations, such as night baseball, years ahead of the bigs. A period poster on display called the attraction “the greatest drawing card outside the major leagues.” Also documented, in box scores and anecdotes, is the fact Negro league teams fared well against major league teams in exhibitions. One only imagines how the record books would be rewritten had greats “Cool Papa” Bell, Judy Johnson, Buck Leonard or Josh Gibson played in the majors. Or if pitcher Satchel Paige made it there in his prime rather than at the tail end of his career.
The museum provides a glimpse into what’s called a “parallel” baseball experience, but one relegated to the back pages of white newspapers and to the shadows of mainstream history. Yet this other world of professional baseball enjoyed every bit the cache and support among black fans the major leagues did among white fans.
Black baseball also attracted white fans, particularly when Negro league teams like the Monarchs barnstormed to play exhibitions versus local town teams or major league clubs. Fans flocked to see the Monarchs at Western League Park and Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha and American Legion Baseball Park in Council Bluffs.
The high times of being part of this unique experience is what O’Neil recalls.
“All you needed was a bus and I’ll tell you what, we traveled in some of the best money could buy during that period. And actually we stayed in some of the best hotels in the country — they just happened to be black owned and operated. We ate in some of the best restaurants in the country. Of course, during that time, the best cooks in the world were black,” said O’Neil his sing-song patios swelled with the solemnity of a preacher and the jive of a hipster. “In that bus you’d have 20 of the best athletes that ever lived. To be able to play, to participate, to compete with these type of athletes, oh, it was outstanding. As a young man from Florida, yeah, up north here in Kansas City playing baseball, outstanding really.”
Black athletes and musicians were THE celebrities in black communities and they socialized together. In KC, they stayed at the Streets Hotel, right down from where the museum stands today.
“At the Streets Hotel I might come down for breakfast and Duke Ellington and them might be there and say, ‘Come over and have breakfast with us this morning.” Or Sarah Vaughn. You’re talking about jazz and baseball. That was here, that was Kansas City,” said O’Neil, whose plaintive voice rises and falls like a soft riff.
When the Monarchs were in town, it was news. “Yeah, we were very well respected,” he said. “I’ll tell you how much — I courted a preacher’s daughter.”
Churches heeded their presence. “Sunday, 11 o’clock service, but when the Monarchs were in town, service started at 10 o’clock so that they (churchgoers) could get to the ball park. And then they would come looking good — dressed to kill. It was actually not only a ball game, it was a social event. The Monarchs, this was the thing. You saw everybody that was somebody there at the ball park. People would hobnob with their friends. Yeah, mmmm…hmmm.” Or as Henry “Pistol” Mason, a Monarchs pitcher O’Neil signed and managed, said, “We had a different brand of baseball. People wanted to see our brand of baseball, with its action and enthusiasm, running and bunting. It was more festive when we played. Going to the ballpark was just like going to a picnic. We had something to prove too — that we were good enough to play in the major leagues.”
Amen, said O’Neil, who feels this extra motivation explains why Negro leagues teams often beat major league teams in exhibitions. “We wanted to prove to the world they weren’t superior because they were major leaguers and we weren’t inferiors because we were Negro leaguers,” he said. Besides, he said, major leaguers “couldn’t afford to twist an ankle or break a finger in an exhibition ball game.”
Home or away, O’Neil said he and his fellow Negro leaguers felt the passion of fans.
“Oh, man, listen, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. at his Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, preached a baseball sermon for the New York Cubans, the New York Black Yankees, the Kansas City Monarchs and the Memphis Red Sox before a four-team doubleheader at Yankee Stadium,” he said. “He preached that sermon, and man, the church was full. They followed us to the ball park. We had 40,000 at Yankee Stadium. We played over at Branch Rickey’s place” — Ebbets Field, home to general manager Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers — “and we had 20,000 there.”
It was Rickey who signed Jackie Robinson away from the Monarchs in 1945 and brought him to the majors in 1947. Robinson was one of five blacks called up to the majors that year. O’Neil said Rickey’s enlightened move to buck the system made sound business sense. “Branch Rickey, the astute businessman that he was, saw this as a brand new clientele” to be mined, O’Neil said.
O’Neil emphasizes the men who broke baseball’s color barrier helped to spark a social revolution. “When Branch Rickey signed Jackie (Robinson) to that contract that was the beginning of the civil rights movement,” he said. “That was before Brown versus Board of Education. That was before sister Rosa Parks said, ‘I won’t go to the back of the bus today.’ Martin Luther King, Jr. was just a sophomore at Morehouse (College). Jackie started the ball rolling right there in baseball.”
In O’Neil’s opinion, “What kept us out of the major leagues was in fact not the fans, but the owners. See, the baseball fans, all they ever asked — Could you play?”
Robinson’s success and the success of players like Larry Doby proved, once and for all, blacks belonged on the same field, paving the way for others to follow. With integration underway, MLB increasingly tapped the Negro leagues’ deep talent pool. Sadly, many greats were deemed too old to invest in and thus never played in the bigs. Even Negro leagues teams began to prefer young prospects, whose contracts they could sell, over old veterans. Devoid of their stars, Negro leagues teams folded and then entire leagues disbanded. The last survived into the early 1960s. By then, blacks were regarded as essential cogs to any successful MLB franchise with the exception of a few hold outs (most notably the Boston Red Sox),
The impact black players had on the majors is undeniable. From the inception of the Rookie of the Year Award in 1949, seven of the first 10 winners were black. From 1949 to 1959, nine of 11 National League MVPs were former Negro leaguers. Future legends and Hall of Famers Robinson, Doby, Monte Irvin, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, among others, all came out of the Negro leagues. Besides their talent, they brought a livelier style of play — the hit-and-run, stretching a single into a double or a double into a triple, stealing home.
As a teen, Omaha’s own baseball icon, Bob Gibson, turned down a Monarchs offer to sign with the St. Louis Cardinals. By then, blacks were established in the majors while the Negro leagues were on their way out.
In a 33-year Chicago Cubs scouting career, O’Neil brought great black talent to the bigs, signing, among others, future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks and Lou Brock. He became MLB’s first black coach with the Cubs. He later scouted for the Royals.
Buck O’Neil Legacy seat at Kaufman Stadium
He doesn’t think much about his own place in history. He’s too busy “running all over the country raising money” for the museum. “But, you see, I’m 94 and I ain’t going to live but 20 more years,” he said, smiling. “After I’m gone I want this to be here forever. That’s why we need an endowment.” To garner that support he meets with everyone from MLB superstars to commissioner Bud Selig to billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to Hollywood celebs to ordinary fans.
What makes him a great ambassador for the Negro leagues and for the game itself is his ability to engage folks from every walk of life. He said he’d like to be remembered as “a spokesman for the Negro leagues — to keep this memory alive.”
To close the Legends Luncheon he did what he usually does at his public appearances — he invited people to join hands and sing along with him a melody from an old song that best expresses the way he feels about baseball and its fans.
“The greatest thing, in all my life, is loving you. Thank you, folks.” Thank you, Buck.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. For details about the museum, its permanent and traveling exhibits and its many educational programs, check out the web site www.nlbm.com or call toll-free at (888) 221-NLBM.
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