Retired Cozad dentist knew it was what God called him to do after wife’s death

At seminary, Wetovick’s the patriarch

By HARRY G. PERKINS Hub Regional Correspondent, Posted: Monday, August 17, 2009; Kearney HUB on line at:  http://www.kearneyhub.com

JOHNSON LAKE - Students will soon be entering schools and colleges. Few will have the experiences to draw on that 73-year-old Jerry Wetovick of Johnson Lake has.

Wetovick, a retired Cozad dentist, will soon enter his third year as a seminarian at Sacred Heart School of Theology at Hales Corner, Wis., which is near Milwaukee.

This spring, he completed the second year of the three-year program for men who enter the Roman Catholic priesthood as a second career. He was ordained a transitional deacon May 29.

Wetovick owns a 5,500-square-foot lakefront home at Johnson Lake. As a seminary student, his accommodations are about the size of one large storage closet in his home at the lake.

His life changed six months after he retired from dentistry when his wife, Pat, died suddenly from an aneurism Jan. 13, 2007, at their home.

Jerry and Pat had five children who took turns staying overnight with their father. On the sixth night he was alone for the first time.

"I couldn't sleep," Wetovick says, describing how he walked about the house. "I was mad at God … really mad. I demanded, 'Why did you take my wife?'

"All I wanted was to sleep, and when it came it was the greatest peace I've ever had. The next day, I knew what I was supposed to do."

Wetovick believes God was preparing him for what he was about to do. There have been many years of faith in which he had been involved in all aspects of life within the church. He has been further inspired with an extensive collection of religious texts he has accumulated in his adult life.

He says, "God called me, waiting for his moment."

Wetovick called Bishop William J. Dendinger of the Grand Island Diocese. Wetovick was referred to a priest who guided him into studies for the priesthood.

At the seminary he is called "the patriarch" because he is the oldest student.

"Eighteen of the seminarians are men who lost their wives," he said

He laughs, recalling the good-natured kidding he gets. "They ask me, 'What're you gonna do in Nebraska, Wetovick? Bless cows?'"

June 4, 2010, he will be ordained a priest. His assignment will be revealed within a couple months of his ordination.

"God and the Bishop will know, and then I'll know."

Wetovick was born in Fullerton, where he took his first communion. "We were poor, but I didn't know it."

The family moved to Kearney, where he attended St. James Catholic School four years. He graduated from Kearney High School in 1953.

He has fond memories of Kearney. One of his proud moments occurred in 1948 when he was named outstanding paper carrier for the Kearney Hub.

He graduated from Kearney State Teachers College, then studied dentistry at the University of Nebraska and practiced his profession 45 years at Cozad.

He and his wife raised what he describes as an ecumenical family. Of their five children, one is now a Baptist, another is a Lutheran, and a third is a Methodist.

He has 14 grandchildren. It seems unique, but each of his daughters has daughters while each of his sons has sons.

He speaks with conviction when he says, "Everything before the present time was God preparing me to serve as a priest."

By HARRY G. PERKINS , Hub Regional Correspondent, July 11, 2009; Kearney HUB on line at: http://www.kearneyhub.com

“I’ve always liked the out-of-doors, and the money sounded good, so I took his offer to go crab fishing,” Medo said.  He pulled in more than he expected.

Crab fishing in the rolling waters of the Bering Sea was an adventure featuring hard, monotonous work and some danger, but that also was rewarding. The danger came from falling overboard, which sometimes happens, and from the crabs themselves.

Crab fishing has become a staple of television programs such as the Learning Channel’s “Deadliest Catch.”

Medo enjoys watching that and other programs about crab fishing because they bring back memories of excitement, camaraderie and good money earned quickly.

He said he has memories, too, of long hours on the rocking, rolling deck of 100-foot-long vessels and of little sleep. But the money was good, from $20,000 to $40,000 earned in one to two months, depending on the success of a crew’s catch.

“You always wanted to sleep, to rest your body from the fatigue,” he said. Crew members work 20 hours on with four hours off to slip below and grab a brief rest.

On the television shows, he sees boats he can recall from five seasons of crabbing and occasionally sees a crew member he knows.

Medo is 39. He and his wife, Michelle, have three children ranging from 3 to 19 years of age. He graduated from Kearney High School in 1989 and from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 1994.

He returned to Nebraska in 2002 to become manager of Medo’s Resort on Bullhead Point at Johnson Lake.

He went crabbing beginning in the 1990s for the November to December seasons for huge king crabs and in January for the smaller snow crabs.

The Bering Sea is seldom quiet. It’s a place of frequent storms whipping the sea into a boiling frenzy that throws deckhands to the deck. The crew has to be close to its work, so the sides of a crab fishing boat are low. The crew can catch the full force of a huge wave that crashes onto the deck.

The crabs are caught in huge box-shaped metal traps called pots that are connected by long lines and lowered as much as 400 feet to the floor of the sea. Crabs are bottom-feeders, consuming dead fish or any sea organism that reaches the bottom.

The crab meat comes from the legs, and king crabs are mean.

“They’ll grab you if they can. They have a bite that can really injure your fingers, even wearing thick gloves,” Medo said.

“I sorted bait my first year until I got my sea legs because I was a greenhorn, but gradually I did other jobs and eventually rotated my job duties.

“We’d go out for two weeks, then go back out again. One year, we loaded our catch onto a corporate boat and didn’t get a break, but I don’t think they do that anymore.”

For the crew, and especially the boat captain, the moment of excitement is when the huge traps are pulled on board and each trap dumps its catch onto a table to be sorted and counted.

The crews don’t keep everything they catch. Fish can get caught in the traps. Female and juvenile crabs are thrown away. The males are measured,, then are shoved into a holding tank with circulating sea water.

Three huge photographs line the wall in the bar of the resort at Johnson Lake as reminders of what he once did.

“I was excited to come back to the resort.” He spoke somewhat wistfully as he said Johnson Lake sometimes reminds him of his crabbing days. “When it gets cold and windy, and the fog comes rolling in off the lake, I think about what it was like. I know I’ll never do it again.”

By CHRIS BRISTOL, from: Fremont Tribune, http://www.fremontneb.com , June 20, 2009

FREMONT, Neb. (AP) -- Jerry Byrns of Elwood [son of Mike Byrns and grandson of Jim & Phyllis Byrns of 2 Kirby Point, Johnson Lake] just keeps chipping away at it.

"I've been doing this for six years," Byrns said. "I started when I was 13 (years old)."

One nick at a time, Byrns uses his two chain saws to turn tree stumps into totem art at Valley View Golf Course.

Valley View suffered significant damage to many of its trees during the thunderstorm that ripped through the area on June 30, 2008.

"It's a shame losing all those trees," said Mark Simonson, Valley View's course superintendent. "Why ground out all of those stumps? Why not turn it into something positive?"

So Byrns was put to work to turn six large stumps into unique pieces of sculpture.

"I started (chain-saw carving) in Missouri, carving morel mushrooms," Byrns said.

Byrns, who worked as an understudy, said the mushroom carving was so popular he could barely keep up with demand.

After he moved to Elwood, he began creating what he calls "name logs," where he creates a flat face to a log and then carves a name through the log.

Amid a flurry of sawdust, Byrns recently shaped the stumps into a bear, a face and an eagle by slicing large chunks off or deftly drawing in strands of hair and feathers.

"This is the first face I've done," Byrns smiled, "I think it's OK."

After the sculpting is done, the art will have to be burned with a torch before being painted.

---

Information from: Fremont Tribune, http://www.fremontneb.com

by Danny Gruber, Lexington Clipper-Herald, on line at http://www.lexch.com, Published Friday, May 29, 2009

 Howard Hanson went through intense training in

what he jokingly refers to as "Camp Madonna" to

learn to care for his wife, Ann, who suffers from ALS.

JOHNSON LAKE – After nearly a year of tests, Ann Hanson of Johnson Lake was diagnosed Oct. 31, 2008 by her doctor, Pariwat Thaisetthawatkul, a UNMC physician, as having amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

She and her husband, Howard (J.R.), were told to prepare themselves in the near future for a tracheotomy, ventilator, feeding tube and other medical procedures. 

“They kept telling us to have a living will, power of attorney and papers drawn up,” said Howard. “In December, it didn’t look like we’d need those things.”

Mid-January, however, Ann’s condition took a turn downward and the legal papers had to be implemented.

ALS is a form of motor neuron disease that affects the nerve cells in the central nervous system, the ones that control voluntary muscle operation.  In the United States, the condition is often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the baseball superstar who was diagnosed with the disease in the late 1930s. Today, physicist Stephen Hawking is most likely the most well-known example of a living ALS patient.

Stephen Hawking, born in 1942, was 21 when he was diagnosed with ALS. Ann credits Hawking’s attitude of working around the disease and getting on with the task of daily living with his longevity.

“He’s the champion of tolerating a ventilator,” Ann said.

Although Ann was diagnosed in October of 2008, the symptoms of ALS appeared nearly a year earlier in December 2007.

“At Christmas, I kept dropping things,” Ann explained.

A couple of months later, it was February 2008 and it was 18 degrees outside and she fell in front of her car outside the Paxton Consolidated Schools where she was teaching. Howard helped her up and drove her to Kearney. She was admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital and doctors, several doctors, performed all kinds of tests, but didn’t really come up with anything other than she maybe had some herniated discs in her neck snad back.

It was decided she would need to have the discs in her neck repairted. In March, she had surgry to repair three herniated discs in her neck and was told this procedure would probably help her walk better. If this did not work, then the Hansons should think about back surgery during the summer.

In April, she had taken another fall and was taken to Good Samaritan emergency room. After she was dismissed, she and Howard decided to visit with an orthopedic surgeon while in Kearney. It was decided that she needed to have her right knee scoped in June. Following that knee scope, Ann was sent home to rest.

While at home, Ann’s legs hurt and was again taken to the emergency room at Good Samaritan to have an ultrasound done on her legs. It was discovered that she had blood clots in both legs and spent the next four days in the hospital. This took away any chances for back surgery.

Her family doctor, Dr. Ron Scott, sent Ann to Dr. Jan Weber, a neurologist. After some test, Dr. Weber was not satisfied with what she was seeing and sent Ann to see Dr. “Thai” at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. After several trips to Omaha and several test, including a spinal tap, an EMG, blood samples and a muscle biopsy, she received her final diagnosis in October 2008, but not before Ann had endured the scoping of the knee and neck surgery.

“By then they gave me a walker, wheel chair and other necessary equipment” Ann said. “My knees turned to jell-o. I knew when I was going to fall, but couldn’t control them.”  

The disorder causes muscle weakness and atrophy throughout the body. The neurons in the body cease to send messages to muscles. Unable to function, the muscles gradually weaken. The patient may ultimately lose the ability to initiate and control all voluntary movement; generally the muscles for eye movement and bladder control are spared.

“I knew that I had to have medical support to breathe,” Ann said, “have a feed tube and help to be transported.”

“It’s like a circuit board not sending signals anymore,” Howard said.

Although Ann and Howard seem to have their daily life down to a manageable routine, it wasn’t easy getting to that point. After Ann became sick on January 30 and was placed on a ventilator, she was hospitalized for 10 days at Good Samaritan and 41 days at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, which is one of three hospitals in Nebraska well-equipped to care for a patient on a ventilator.

“Each patient at Madonna is assigned a team of specialists. They all came in individually and asked Ann what she wanted to do,” said Howard.

“I want to go back home, I told them,” said Ann. “It’s not an unrealistic goal, they said, but it’s a tough goal.”

While at Madonna, Ann regained the use of speech and able to eat soft foods through her mouth. Following the tracheotomy, Ann was not guaranteed she would speak again or be able to eat food. While at Madonna, both of these functions again became a reality.

In fact, several of the specialists told Ann only a handful of people get to leave the hospital once they are on a ventilator. The requirements are numerous, for example, Ann and Howard had to have a generator, a back up ventilator, humidifier, suctioning machine and a plan for around the clock care.

Although she has full range of feeling, she has no use of her legs or hands and must be fed a liquid diet five times a day; 8 a.m., noon, 4 p.m., 8 p.m. and midnight.

Howard spent 41 days with Ann at Madonna Hospital, learning how to take care of her. He had to agree to go through intense training on learning how to be a 24/7 caregiver as well as being comfortable with the ventilator and patient care related to a person with ALS.

Jokingly, Howard would to refer to his training as being at Camp Madonna

“It felt like you were in boot camp,” said Howard. “What impressed them [the staff at Madonna] was her attitude and her willingness to get out of there.”

By TODD GOTTULA , Hub Staff Writer, 3-18-09, Kearney HUB on line at: http://www.kearneyhub.com      ["Shot" John Lowe III Of Kearney & Mallard Beach south Bay]
    
KEARNEY — Shot Lowe loved money — earning it, growing it and especially holding onto it.  In fact, he often shared an old saying his father taught him years ago: “Don’t use ‘just’ and ‘money’ in the same sentence,” Shot repeatedly told his buddies.

“He said that all the time,” recalled Al Oldfather, Shot’s longtime fishing buddy. “Shot always had an eye on his money. He didn’t spend it freely and was conservative with it.”

Lowe’s grandfather owned a Kearney bank in the 1930s, and his father operated a small loan and lending company that evolved into Lowe Investments, the Kearney real estate investment and property management firm the family operates.

“Shot was a solid businessmen who came from an old English family that was very family oriented,” Oldfather said. “He was a very active, people-oriented person and as outgoing as any man you’ll come across.”

John “Shot” Lowe III died Tuesday at Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney. He was 77.

Lowe spent the winter in New Zealand, where he and his wife, Andrea, owned a home and has vacationed for many years. He returned to Kearney about two weeks ago after he started feeling ill, his son Tim said.

“Shot was an outstanding personality who provided the community with so much leadership for so many years,” said friend Eldon Chamberlain. “He was always concerned about what was going on in town. He did his share and more, and he is really going to be missed.”

Lowe was a longtime land developer, real estate investor and property manager in Kearney and one of the city’s most recognized businessmen.

“Shot contributed in about every way possible to this community. He was a pioneer and leader in so many ways,” said longtime friend Wayne McKinney. “Kearney has suffered a great loss. Shot loved everybody, and everybody loved him. He was one of the funniest, most personable individuals this community has known.”

After serving the U.S. Army in Korea from 1953-55, Lowe began his professional career by selling insurance and real estate. He developed East Lawn Mobile Home Estates with business partner Jim Bamford in 1970, and he was a big supporter of downtown Kearney, where he owned numerous buildings that housed retail stores and apartments.

“Dad was willing to take risks. As a businessman, that’s what I’ll remember most,” Tim Lowe said. “When everybody else was being conservative, he was out there getting things done and taking chances.

“When everybody else took chances, he stepped back and avoided the risks,” Tim Lowe added. “That’s one of the things that made him so successful in real estate.”

Lowe was an active member of the community who served on numerous boards, including the Buffalo County Board of Supervisors for 10 years.

His other community involvement included: Rob Morris Lodge, Scottish Rite Masons, Tehama Shrine Temple, Fort Kearney Shrine Club, Tehama Clowns, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Kearney Elks Lodge, Gateway Farm Expo, Nebraska State College Board of Trustees and Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association.

Other survivors include his sons, John and Andrew, both of Kearney, and daughter, Hannah Stone of Kearney.

Services will be at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Burial with military honors will be at Kearney Cemetery. O’Brien-Straatmann Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.