November 2008 Archives

Three miles east of Fort Calhoun is Boyer Chute N.W.R., under the management of the very popular, large DeSoto Bend N.W.R. across the river east of Blair.  (DeSoto occasionally runs an old TV documentary I'm in.)  DeSoto is where most of the metro population go to see the migrating flocks of ducks and geese by the thousands, especially snow geese, in spring and fall.  It also has a superb collection of artifacts recovered from the sunken steamboat Bertrand.  Boyer Chute is much smaller, 2,000 acres with five miles of trails, considered a prime birding site, though DeSoto Bend north of it and Fontenelle Forest down in Bellevue have larger bird counts.  As DeSoto Bend has an oxbow lake formed when the Missouri cut through a shorter, straighter path, so Boyer Chute is a fast straight channel off the Missouri with an "island" between this side channel and the big river.  As with Fort Atkinson, I last visited it during the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, because the keel boats for that celebration were moored there.

Ordinarily, I'm not fond of Boyer Chute because I don't like flatness, though I've driven down to the large Squaw Creek N.W.R. near Mound City, Missouri, for the birding (saw an eagle tearing a fish apart in a roadside ditch there once), and that's all flat, north of a hilly ridge.  But Boyer Chute trails are easy because they are flat and short loops.  Seemed a good way to end the day, despite my knees muttering grimly.

Boyer Chute became just a short visit, my knees finally Halloween-night banshees, shrieking after a full day of walking in all the different places, so I didn't get far down a trail beyond the bridge across the narrow chute.  It was all about textures, starting with what I parked under, these.  

My view from the bridge, to crib from Arthur Miller, the wispy willow in front of the tree with the freeze-dried green leaves in front of the winterized cottonwoods, our state tree.     

Squirmy calligraphy by borers, probably the tree's killers. Zoom in for a better reading.

Cottonwood corduroy.  With a good ground-floor apartment for wildlife this winter.  And green plants amid the skeletal trees.

A jumble strung with red vines and leaves hiding the surprise shown below it, tiny pearls.

So what if I scarcely moved over the weekend?!  "Un bel di," One Fine Day, to crib from Puccini, a day to sing about.

Lewis and Clark's 1804 council with the Oto and Missouria was not at Council Bluffs but 20 miles farther north, at a site Clark then suggested for a fort.  In 1819 Cantonment Missouri was established by the military on the river bank, a bad choice.  Next year, the first military post west of the Missouri River, Fort Atkinson was built and lasted to 1827, establishing a number of Nebraskan firsts found on various websites (my source was nebraskastudies.org.):  library, school, brickyard, sawmill, grist (flour) mill, weather records, farm crops, bowling alley, white women (laundresses).  Fifteen miles north of Omaha, on the east edge of Fort Calhoun is the Nebraska State Historical Park re-creating Fort Atkinson and having fine Living History weekends the first weekend of every month from May through October. 

After crossing the Kerrey bridge and seeing the Mid-America Center with Borofsky's Molecule Man, I headed up to Fort Atkinson, not having been there since the Lewis and Clark celebration a few years back, though much of that was on the floodplain below the low bluff where the Missouri once ran.  Except for a caretaker checking something, I had the place to myself and got hung up on all the triangles created by the bright afternoon sun.

The fort is three-sided, the fourth on the east a steep drop-off to the floodplain, the Missouri having moved four or five miles east.  The approach looks southwest, the north side in shadow, the west brightly lit.  The cabins at the left outside the fort square are for the blacksmith, gunsmith, carpenter, and cooper (barrel maker).  It is more authentic than many sites I tracked down in my numerous vacations, which is why I like it. 

The open southwest corner, above, with the gunslit windows marking each room's center, the upright posts denoting the interior walls.

Looking slightly northeast and then straight up the western side to the palisade, at the left of the palisade at a slight distance is the re-created council house of Lewis and Clark and the Native Americans.  Below is a closer view.

The powder magazine sits in the middle of the parade ground, a huge flag usually flying on the pole during the summer season, and very authentically dressed soldiers firing cannons on Living History Weekends.  (One explained his costume in detail, including shirttails long enough to be his underwear too.)  The view is toward the southern side of the block C open toward the east, the steep, high drop-off at the trees on the left. 

The craftsmen were just outside the fort, as I mentioned with the approach photo, their two cabins seen here looking northeast from the central north gate.

See what I mean about triangles?  Above are views from the main entrance at the middle of the western side, the top looking south, the bottom northward.

Another version of the last photo in the preceding entry, this view of the Omaha end of the Kerrey bridge shows the beginning of the short corksdrew down and the NoDo (North Downtown) section undergoing gentrification-redevelopment where the baseball stadium will be, already becoming an upscale area with the Hot Shops nest of artists and the new venue and small concert hall for Saddle Creek Records of Conor Oberst's Bright Eyes and other indie rockers' fame, with Filmstreams and trendy businesses.  (Curiously, the old Czech social-gymnastics center, Sokol Hall, has become nationally famous for indie rock concerts farther south.)  Zooming in will also show the zebra effect on the wind-twisting cables.

At left, looking southwest, is the I-480 bridge between the river cities, the popular Old Market in the center beyond the bridge, the Heartland of America Park and Con Agra campus, which cousin Mike Ellingson and his son Scott helped lay brick for, at the left also beyond the bridge.  In the foreground is Rick's Boatyard, an upscale restaurant with a big parking lot one could possibly use for bridge seeing. 

  

 

In the foreground is the regional headquarters of the National Park Service, the Quest Center behind it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moved from Lincoln, this is now the international headquarters called Gallup University because the organization has education and research added to its famous polling.  I don't know what the new building at left is, but Freedom Park is to the right and Eppley Airfield in the far background.

The views upstream are cut off by the bend, but here are two on a murky autumn day that alerted my sinuses to all the wind-borne molds, pollens, dirt.  The second one shows the scenic Loess Hills in the distance across the floodplain on the Iowa side (I've done an entry on those earlier.)

Opened formally in September, the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge is an expensive earmark meant to become an icon as well as to reinforce the redevelopment of the riverfront on both sides of the Missouri.  You will see some of Omaha's changes on the west end; Council Bluffs is going to put One Renaissance Center in the Playland Park area on the east end.  Our ex-governor when he dated Debra Winger, ex-senator, now the president of The New School in New York City, Kerrey is namesake for gaining us $18 million in federal funds to pay for most of the $22 million--more?--walkway.

Parking is problematic on the Omaha side except possibly on weekends when the National Park Service and Gallup University allow their parking lots to be used.  But CB's Playland Park is simple to get to, the first turn-off toward the east end of the I-480 bridge south of the sleek new cable-strand bridge or otherwise north of Dodge Park.

Sandwiched between the NPS and Gallup with a new condominium tower complex not yet open, Omaha's bridge approach is a simple cork-screw, seen at the left, where new landscaping is going in around an outdoor amphitheater.

 

 

 

 

 

On the other hand, the Iowa side has plenty of easy parking--at least on this early Friday afternoon--but a long trek across the park grass to a very long ramp. ( I assume One Renaissance Center will  replace the grassy space.)  The advantage is a handsome view of the Omaha downtown skyline piled up behind popular Quest Center, which looks like a space ship to me and is #9 in the national top ten of event centers, for its Big Name Concerts (Rolling Stones, U2, Bruce Springsteen, the Police, Bon Jovi)--Pollstar said #5 in 2007--and record-setting athletic events, including a national record for volleyball and the Olympic Swim Trials earlier this year.  

The bridge is supposedly 3,000 feet long, seems to be about 12-15 feet wide, and sways in strong winds, though this day simply hummed loudly through its cables, which, twisting in the wind, took on a black-and-white appearance in some photos.  My photos don't prove it, but there was an impressive steady stream of walkers from both ends.

This foreshortened view below of the open space to the west by my limited telephoto, toward the twin baroque towers of St. Cecilia's Cathedral in the distance, is where a new baseball stadium will be built expressly for the College World Series.  At the left behind the trees is one of the nation's largest murals being painted by a Philadelphia artist with local help, meant to last 25 years at least, with Omaha people and sights/sites; it starts with Peter Kiewit of the international construction firm at the very left and includes The Road to Omaha baseball sculpture now outside Rosenblatt Stadium, the CWS site for decades.  I should think the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, will also find his portrait in it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While slogging through John Bunyan's Slough of Despond with what AOL news calls the #1 ailment that also makes people terribly tired, depression, periodically I manage to simply hurl the corpse up and out at the world, which is what I did on a particularly fine autumn day, October 31st.

I began with two favorites, Joslyn Art Museum and Durham Museum.  Because Joslyn lent 30 19th-century European works to Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz state in Mexico and one of our sister cities, their state museum lent us 36 Diego Rivera works, the first time these have been outside Mexico.  Mexico's most famous painter, noted for his huge murals--and his turbulent marriage to Frida Kahlo--as a student studying in Europe, Rivera had his Cezanne period, his cubist period, his surreal period, etc., all interesting because unexpected, so different from his final folk-like style, and this show covers the range of his works.

Of course, another exhibition at Joslyn is the Mastercraftsmen of Palekh Miniatures, labor-intensive black lacquer papier-mache' works.  Six weeks to make, say, a small box, six to ten weeks to prime the work with lacquer coats, next a picture--think of illuminated manuscripts--put on in five layers, then a protective film, painted filigree, and seven coats of lacquer.  The finely wrought, tiny details are mainly of Russian folklore and famous historical events, though they became propagandistic--and no longer fascinating--in the Stalinist period.

I also got to see the brand-new Sioux Warrior, an outdoor sculpture actually planned back in the 1920s and never executed until now, by Omahan sculptor Matthew Placzek, in the Art Deco style of the museum.  It's 5,000 pounds of bronze 15 feet high on a six-foot base of Lake Superior green granite, the same stone used for the simple benches set around the sculpture.  In the far background is the building once Northern Natural Gas, which became the Enron scandal when it moved to Texas.  The original museum, founded by Sarah Joslyn, is to the left with the original entrance steps.  If you look hard enough, you can see two of the intaglio or sunken-relief sculpted panels that continue around the original building.  The new section by Sir Norman Foster--the London "pickle" is his--is at the right, with the present entrance between them.

Just south of the tourist #1 Old Market, Durham Museum--formerly Western Heritage and long before that Union Pacific Station--gets traveling exhibits through the Smithsonian and has now "Eyewitness:  American Originals from the National Archives," another small but excellent show that includes a radio announcer's shocked anguish at the Hindenburg explosion of May 6, 1937; the Apollo 8 moon landing broadcast; Lady Bird Johnson dictating her memories of the Kennedy assassination; the physician's description of how President Lincoln lingered through the night of April 14, 1865, after being shot; a letter by George Washington, in elegant penmanship, describing to John Hancock a British plot to spread smallpox among the American soldiers; a journal description by John Fremont of western explorations; my favorite, a letter by Harry Truman to Bess, his wife, the very essence of "Give 'Em Hell, Harry" [play and movie], from the Potsdam Conference with Stalin and Churchill, about "telling 'em Santa Claus is dead," with descriptions of them, including Stalin's toasting everyone, even the pianist for playing Tchaikovsky, which Truman misspells and says so.  I intend to go back, for it and several I didn't list and can't remember.

On my way out, I took these three of another Omaha Art Deco masterpiece in Durham's Great Hall, once the railroad waiting station I have photographed before.

The first photo with the clock is the part at the left, the second a panel above the present entrance at right, a gift shop behind the ticket windows at the lower right.

Then, because I worried about parking on the Omaha side, I crossed the I-480 bridge to Council Bluffs' Playland Park, to walk across the new pedestrian bridge between the two cities, the next entry.  After the bridge, I explored the splendid new Council Bluffs, inland from the riverside casinos, to see the Mid-America Center, its counterpart to our Quest Center, where Cher sang and the Omaha Lancers play hockey, because it's being adorned with a fine arts park, one of the benefits of gambling tax revenues making over the city in a $9 million Iowa West Public Art development.  At the moment 21 works by Jun Kaneko are being installed, Omaha's best known international art resident I'll speak of in a later entry.  But that day I went to see Joseph Borofsky's $1.9 million Molecular Man, as the Des Moines Register described it, 50 feet tall, 33,000 pounds of airplane aluminum alloy, the only one as large as the ones in Los Angeles and Berlin.  You can judge the size from the men at the base working on landscaping.  It's actually three silhouettes, but the third is hidden behind the one at the left.  Mid-America Center is at the left, Bass Pro Shops in the background.

From there I drove up to Fort Atkinson and Boyer Chute, also another entry.      

This printed cardboard card, 6 1/2" X 4 1/4", is self-explanatory for Great Grandmother Peters, though in the scrapbook it is black with gilt printing.  I'm not sure why the scan colorized it.

Some time ago I printed this photo of a young boy with an elaborate explanation, "Robert Maher aged 3 years," written on the back, to which I had added my supposition, "b. 30 June 1902 to Thomas Francis and Margaret Brossart Maher, Thomas being the youngest son of Edward and Mary Wise Maher and the youngest brother of Mary Jane Maher Peters." 

While looking through the scrapbook of the oldest family photos, I found this missed one, labeled "Leota Maher and Sons."

If you look at the photographer's name and address in Sacramento, you'll see they are the same.  The standing boy resembles the younger Robert but lacks the curly hair.  I have no Leota Maher in my family pages.  Consequently, I think my addition to the photo of the young Robert is wrong.  There is a James Maher (b. 1863-d. 21 March 1914), born in Muscatine County, Iowa, to Edward and Mary Wise Maher, who died in Sacramento, California, with a note on his genealogy sheet, "James was killed in a construction accident." 

There is another name, Frank, on James' sheet, with a death date of 9 November 1914 and the note, "Frank was a guard at Folsom Prison and was injured on October 16, 1914 during an escape attempt by Frank Creeks and Earl Flash. Mr. Maher died a few weeks later as a result of the wounds.  I have no success to date in tracing any descendants."

I might add that John Maher, b.1863, another brother of Great Grandmother Mary Jane Maher Peters, "Disappeared.  Never heard from again."  I have no explanation for James and John having the same birth year.

Perhaps someone out in Cyberland can explain the two Sacramento photos of Robert and Leota and her sons and connect them to James Maher's existence out there some day. 

As promised in the entry before last, where life-death dates are given, here are other photos of the George and Ella Mae Koftan family, mainly of the two children.  Frances married Robert Park Newkirk.  If I remember what Phyllis Flemming said, Dick had just lost his second wife, the last time she spoke with him.

 I suspect the above is the formal wedding photo of George and Ella Mae (Grandma Fern Koftan's writing).  Below is the gravestone, George dying considerably before his wife, who passed on in 1990.  They and several other Koftans are buried at Clarence, Missouri, including Great Grandparents Joseph and Fannie Koftan.

These photos of Frances and Dick are approximately in chronological order.  I suspect the last is Frances' graduation picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The distance between northeastern Nebraska and northeastern Missouri hardly stopped the Koftans from visiting one another, even before Interstates.  In fact, Great Grandfather Joseph Koftan died in a Norfolk, Nebraska, hospital in 1945 while up here visiting his oldest child/son, Laurence.  I'm not sure when these pictures were taken, but, judging from Denny and me, they preceded that year.  The first group seem to be at the old Niobrara State Park.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above are Fern, Laurence, Velma behind Gary, Audree holding Dennis, Great Grandpa Joseph.

This photo tells us that Earl took the first photo and Velma took this one, as is true of the group below.  Above, Fern, Audree behind Gary, Laurence, Earl behind Denny, and Great Grandpa Joseph.

In my first years we lived in rooms attached to Dad's station, which is where these next three were taken in Center, on the southwest corner.  The first photo has Great Grandpa Joseph, Velma behind Gary, and Laurence.  The second photo has Great Grandpa Joseph behind Denny, Laurence, and Audree.  The third photo has Great Grandpa Joseph, Audree, Laurence behind Denny, and Earl.

 The original photos are small enough that I overlooked the kitten Denny has.  Although I had dogs all my childhood and strongly prefer them to the cats my sisters loved, after my first dog in my very first years, I had a cat when we lived here at the station, Pussyfoot.  Like most females, after some wild nights she birthed litters, so that I remember playing with the kittens in our living room area and also remember having to crawl under the house at the back to retrieve a litter, which was the end of Pussyfoot and her families.  I'd guess Denny's holding one of Pussyfoot's kittens. 

The second oldest of Joseph and Fannie Hlinovsky Koftan's was LeRoy Charles, 12 December 1892-27 October 1972.  Laurence's oldest brother, referred to as Roy, looked like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His wife's name was Alma Bertha (Lindsey), who died in 1955.  They lived longest in Howard, Kansas, where they are both buried   According to "Tales from an Old Country Store" put together by their children of memories, they moved from Missouri to Kansas when LeRoy, Jr., was three, for he considered that his hometown and state.  They had four children, LeRoy Charles, Jr., (15 March 1926), Nettie Louise (10 February 1930), James Edward (18 March 1935), and Kenneth G. (11 August 1940).  Here are Roy and Alma with their first son, LeRoy, in Missouri, so it was around the time they made their major move.

 Here are Roy and Alma with their son, LeRoy, and Fern and Laurence with their son, Larry.

George F. Koftan, 24 March 1901-10 March 1970, was the sixth in the family, after Laurence, LeRoy, Bozena/Bess, Ella, and Frank.  He married Ella Mae Vickers and had two children, Frances Emma (1928) and Richard/Dick Joseph (30 January 1932).  I will have several photos of them in a separate entry.  Here are George and Ella Mae with Frances.

 

Phyllis and Delores identified the family, L-R, as Joe Koftan with his arms around Margaret, Laurence and Fern with Audree, Roy and Alma, George and Ella Mae.

The photos in this entry are among those that had been a mystery to me until Phyllis and Delores easily identified them.  The first one is of a young Margaret, the baby of the family, with her older sister, Ella Koftan Adel, and their mother, Frances/Fannie Hlinovsky Koftan.

Here are sisters Ella and Margaret.

One of Margaret/Babe alone.  I assume it's the Koftan family residence of the time.  I hope Joseph Langhammer, who's apparently interested in the family history the way his Uncle Bill was, who's now in the military, is occasionally checking out this site and sees his grandmother as a teenager (I think).

 Aunt Ella Adel has her twins, Lorraine and Lloyd, along.

And here are the Adel twins with Larry Dale Koftan, Lorraine in the shadow by the car behind Larry.

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of a morning reunion with Jerry and Delores Koftan Steege and Phyllis Koftan Flemming, from Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Shelbina, Missouri, respectively.  They were passing through after a reunion on their mother's side up at Cherokee, Iowa, with their Uncle Myrle Larson's widow and their Wenke cousins.  (They have a brother, Merlyn/Bud.)  They are the daughters of Laurence (Grandpa) Koftan's youngest brother, Joseph, a good friend of my dad, as photos in other entries attest.  In our childhoods we were closer because our parents got married together at Yankton, South Dakota, on that 1933 day too windy to pick corn, as told elsewhere in this family history.  Both  Delores and Phyllis were born at Bloomfield, Nebraska, but I was surprised to learn that Delores was born at the Old Brick House!  Anyway, I took to the meeting some old photos not only of their parents but Koftan ones I couldn't identify, but they could--and did--for which I am deeply grateful.  As a way of thanking them, after the photos I took of the three, I have an early school photo including their mother, Ella Larson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The caption on the photo below is "Arthur Post, Teacher Dist. 66 Knox Co.-Nebr.  [Left to Right:]  Ella Larson, Marjorie Johnson, Neta Meade, Esther Johnson."  A sidenote:  Neta Meade married Otto Hansen to become one of Bloomfield's notable leading couples.  Marjorie and Esther were sisters, originally from northwest of Center, Marjorie later an early girlfriend of Jack Luckert, one of the Morrillville teachers; she married the brother of the head of Vocal Music at Wayne State College (NE), my college senior year advisor, and she wrote to me for a few years in the 1990s from her home in Los Angeles with unusual memories of Center history before she succumbed to Alzheimer's and passed away.