Julia Thiele, a senior at Clearwater High School, is one of the 48 finalists in the state for Believers and Achievers who will be honored this school year.
The U.S. Bank® and the Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) announced the 2018-2019 Believers and Achievers this week. Beginning in October and continuing through March, 48 Nebraska high school seniors will be honored as Believers & Achievers. From those 48 finalists, eight will receive $500 scholarships from U.S. Bank® to the college or university of their choice at a scholarship banquet to be held on April 28, 2019. These students will be recognized at NSAA State Championships throughout the 2018-19 activities year and on posters sent to all NSAA member schools and U.S. Bank® branches throughout the state. All of the students nominated for the Believers & Achievers awards program represent the very best of Nebraska’s high schools. The 48 finalists and their high schools are: Benjamin Arens, Ainsworth Katie Bathke, Allen Leighton Bubak, Arnold Kyla Wykert, Arthur County Trevor Cumpston, Aurora Lane Bertrand, Axtell Michaela Bartels, Bennington Elijah Vedral, Bishop Neumann Brianna Danehey, Blue Hill Sydney Atkinson, Boyd County Kalen Dockweiler, Callaway Grace McDonald, Centura Julia Thiele, Clearwater Elizabeth Blaser, Columbus Alex Lamoureux, Conestoga Ashtyn Fritz, Creighton Tristan Larson, Doniphan-Trumbull Megan Raszler, Elkhorn Michael Kelly, Elkhorn South Franklin Fields, Falls City Avery Decker, Fremont Kylee Sodomka, Grand Island Seerat Balraj, Grand Island Central Catholic Liby Lange, Hartington-Newcastle Grace Kanel, Humboldt-Table Rock - Steinauer Lorna Maxon, Laurel-Concord-Coleridge Edvin Ramierez Carrillo, Lexington Danielle Higgins, Leyton Jaden Ferguson, Lincoln Southwest Olivia O'Clair, Loomis Paige Wood, Maywood Aubrey Schultis, McPherson County Brianna Barton, Meridian Logan Hoover, Nebraska City Whitney Jensen, Northwest Amanda Zhang, Omaha Brownell-Talbot Emma Hansen, Omaha North Madigan Brodsky, Omaha Westside Leah Palensky, Papillion-LaVista South Ali Ebada, Ralston Kasey Brabec, Schuyler Jatin Cranmore, Scottsbluff Rebekah Klenke, Seward Luryn Hendrickson, Shelton Allison Nesbitt, Sidney Malayna Wingert, Sterling Jarod Hergott, Thayer Central Leighton Mlady, West Holt Antelope County Does Care will host drug recognition training for parents and community members on Wednesday, Sept. 26 at the Clearwater Public School.
The 7 p.m. program will be presented by Officer Brandon Ormesher, Valentine Police officer and drug recognition expert. U.S. Bank® and the Nebraska School Activities Association are proud to announce the 2018-19 local school winners of the Believers and Achievers award. Every member school is able to submit two senior students for recognition in this awards program.
Jacob Long and Julia Thiele been chosen to represent Clearwater. The announcement of the 48 statewide winners of the U.S. Bank® Believers & Achievers award will be announced by the NSAA at a later date. The Clearwater homecoming candidates and court have been announced.
Candidates for king are Chris Kester, Zach King, Jake Long, Austin Pokorny and Clay Thiele. Queen candidates are Taylor Sanne, Katie Stearns and Julia Thiele. Members of the court are first-grade crown bearers Grace Ahlers and Wyatt Bolling; freshmen attendants Cassidy Bearinger and Ty Rix; sophomores Elly Herley and Rafe Grebin and juniors Taylor Rose Bolling and Tyler Hupp. The annual homecoming parade will start at 1 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 5 and the dance is set for Saturday, Oct. 6. Northeast Nebraska Telephone Company Director Omer Hoffman of Clearwater will officially retire from the NNTC Board of Directors after serving as a board member for nearly 60 years.
According to NNTC, it all started because Hoffman wanted a telephone in his home. In the late 1950s, Hoffman, along with Joe Knievel and Maynard Sterns, worked to raise $27,000 with the goal of bringing dial telephones to their area. They went door-to-door asking residents in Clearwater and Bartlett to donate $30 with the promise of a phone. The men raised the money needed to get a government loan which allowed them to buy into Northeast Nebraska Telephone Company. NNTC had just been established in Jackson in 1957. Clearwater and Bartlett joined the company in 1958. From there Hoffman was hooked. Once he established phone service in his area, he stayed on the Board of Directors for six more decades. “I wanted to go off the board the last time and they insisted that I stay on, but do you realize that I’d be 100 years old when I got off the board,” he joked. The 97-year-old rancher has spent two-thirds of his life advocating for telecommunication service in rural Nebraska. He said the biggest change over the years was the addition of providing internet services. “Can you imagine the old ringer phones up until now? It’s all electronic age so you wonder where it’s going, “ Hoffman said. Hoffman has been driving from Clearwater to Jackson to attend meetings for the company for decades. He estimates he has spent three years of his life in total, attending meetings and volunteering for NNTC. “If you live in an area, you should do something to help support the area. We’ve got volunteer firemen, school board members. This was an opportunity for me to be doing something. And I was glad to give back and to get a phone!” Hoffman said. Omer Hoffman will be recognized for his contributions at NNTC’s annual membership meeting on Thursday, Sept. 13 at the NNTC facilities in Jackson. Visitors can enjoy a free meal this afternoon during the Clearwater Market's Grand Opening at their store in Clearwater.
The public can enjoy a meal of grilled hamburgers, brats and hotdogs with sides of salads, chips and cookies until 2:00 Friday afternoon. Customers will be entered to win one of five $20 gift cards with every $50 purchase during business hours today. Save a life by donating blood.
The American Red Cross will host a bloodmobile at the Clearwater American Legion on Wednesday, July 25 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Out with the old and in with the new has been the latest trend in Clearwater’s most recent economic development.
When Jo’s Market closed down, a building for the Clearwater Market was remodeled, and when The Tilden Bank of Clearwater relocated, its old location became The Office. The building that housed The Tilden Bank was built in 1907 and originally called Citizens State Bank. Since its construction, the building had always been used as a bank — until now. The Tilden Bank of Clearwater opened its newly constructed location on Feb. 4, 2017. Bill Kester, Senior Vice President of The Tilden Bank and Clearwater native, said the bank decided to build a new facility because it required more room and wanted a drive through window. “We needed more office space,” Kester said. “And, the bank’s loan volume had grown so that we hired another loan officer. We also wanted a drive through.” Steve Stearns took ownership on on Dec. 22, 2017, and Stearns had a vision of renting it out as satellite offices. “Basically, people who have companies in Lincoln, Omaha or Norfolk or surrounding towns that have clientele back here around these small communities, there’s a chance for them to come back and have an office to meet with those clients,” Stearns said. The building was named The Office, and it celebrated its open house and ribbon cutting on June 28. Stearns said about 60 people attended and were in and out of its doors. He didn’t want to see the building remain vacant and without a use, so Stearns said he decided to take a chance on it. “It was just too good of a building to sit empty. The longer they sit empty, the more downhill they go,” he said. “And, you can’t bring people to town if you don’t have a building open and something going on there. So, I decided to take a chance on it and see what we can do.” The Office is fully furnished and has five offices and a conference room. Two of the offices have already been rented out to Tredas, LLC and Farm Bureau Financial Services. Adam Ickes, PJ Conradt, Ethan Bruland and Zane Abner are the Tredas workers who will spend time in The Office. Tredas was started in December of 2014 by Ickes, Drew Jensen and Doug Simon. It has three other locations: Lincoln, Aurora and Lindsay. The company works with farmers doing risk management commodity brokerage and provides services in marketing, merchandising, commodity consulting, commodity brokerage and crop insurance. Ickes, part owner and broker consultant, is from Page and works in the Lincoln office. Ickes said the northeast Nebraska area will provide good exposure and help them meet with more clients. “It would be nice to have a place to go meet guys and work,” he said. “We currently have clients up there, so having a place to have meetings and stuff would be helpful. That’s kind of our hope.” Conradt said it will be a good opportunity to get to know some of their clients on a more personal level. “We haven’t had a chance to sit down with anyone yet and really get to know each other on more of a personal level and a working level,” he said. “So ideally moving forward, that would be the goal.” Having a lot of good farmers and families in the area makes Clearwater a good location for potential growth, Conradt said. “It gives us an area to kind of put our roots down in and kind of be a presence up in that area where we have clients,” he said. “I feel like there’s a large need for it and potential growth for it in that area.” Ickes and Conradt said they hope to have people work in Clearwater one to two days a week, but they’d eventually like to find someone to work full time. “There won’t be somebody there all of the time, which is going to be somewhat of a variable for us to figure out,” Ickes said. “In the future, hopefully we can find somebody that fits the mold of what we’re trying to do and having somebody be up there full time would be ideal.” Since they will only be there one or two times a week, Conradt said it’s helpful that The Office has a full-time receptionist so people can feel as though they can walk in at any time. “More than anything, you just don’t want to have it so nobody knows when to come in, and she can coordinate a lot of stuff appointment-wise,” he said. “And also, when people come in and say, ‘Hey, I want to talk to the Tredas guys,’ she can say, ‘Well, here’s a business card, here’s their phone number.’ ” Torie Opela works as The Office’s receptionist and is employed as a secretary/receptionist for Farm Bureau’s David Duff. Opela said she will be there from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. She can be reached at 402- 485-2101. While two offices are taken, there are still three open, and Stearns said he would like to see those filled. “I’d like to get a land and title company writer; I’d like to get a real estate agent in it,” Stearns said. “And then, it would be a one-stop shop. Maybe get somebody in there who could write LLC companies, licenses and paperwork on that.” Clearwater Market The other new stop to make in Clearwater is the Clearwater Market, located west of HiWay Mart. The building was donated by the Clearwater Chamber of Commerce. The community rallied together when the town’s previous grocery store, Jo’s Market, was closing down. Its owner, Joan Allemang, had the market for 14 years before listing it for sale in September of 2017. According to Clearwater Economic Development director Gabe Steinmeyer, efforts for the new grocery store began after Allemang announced she would be retiring in the spring. “They had a couple meetings and then worked with our office and with a couple different groups and they got together a number of investors from Clearwater, as the community itself, to put the funding and the backing behind opening up that new location,” he said. To fund the new store, Steinmeyer said they primarily received money from community members but also also used LB 840 as a loan from Clearwater’s economic development group. “They had a large number of families and individuals from Clearwater and the Clearwater area who all came together as partners in an entity, and they all bought shares within that organization,” he said. The community joined forces as it saw and addressed a need for a grocery store in the town, according to Steinmeyer. “It’s pretty important for the Clearwater community, and I think they definitely saw the need,” he said. “There were a couple months when they were without a grocery store and community members there definitely saw the need for the continued presence of a grocery store.” A five-person board of directors consisting of Jesse McKillip, Angie Ahlers, Jarod Bearinger, Bill Thiele and Dana Kester decided who would run the Clearwater Market. The board selected Jeff Henning of Clearwater as the general manager. The market had a soft opening on June 16. Henning said the store was very busy and had a good opening day. Since its doors have been opened, Clearwater Market has been able to sell a wide variety of food. “We have a three-door section and a cooler for the chill produce, and then dry produce, you know, onions, potatoes. We carry a wide variety of produce,” he said. Before managing Clearwater Market, Henning said he had previous experience working as an assistant manager and then manager of another grocery store down in Oklahoma. What surprised him the most was the variety of brand and generic names of products that the smaller store is able to provide, even calling in numerous special orders. However, what impresses Henning even more is the amount of work and effort people put in to make the store a reality. “A lot of people did a lot of work to make this happen, and I was quite impressed with how the community backed them and helped them,” he said. “It couldn’t have happened without the volunteers who spent countless hours getting the store ready to open. So, it was quite a job for them, and I applaud them for what they did.” Even though it had a soft opening on June 16, Henning said Clearwater Market will celebrate its grand opening on July 20. During the grand opening, there will be giveaways from vendors, such as T-shirts, hats and koozies. There will also be free hot dogs donated and grilled by The Tilden Bank, he said. A set time for the grand opening has not yet been decided. A rural Clearwater man has died following a farm-related accident on Monday evening.
The Antelope County Law Enforcement Center received a 911 call at 5:50 p.m., according to a press release from the Antelope County Sheriff’s Department. When rescue personnel arrived, Robert Pokorny, 52, “was discovered at the site with life-threatening injuries caused from a sweep auger within the grain bin,” the release said. Emergency crews from the Antelope County Sheriff’s Department, Nebraska State Patrol and Clearwater Fire and Rescue responded to the call at a grain bin site, located at 857 Road and 514 Avenue near Clearwater. The press release stated that Pokorny was transported to Antelope Memorial Hospital by Clearwater Rescue. He succumbed to his injuries, resulting in his death. The release said “the nature of the incident and resulting injuries sustained by Pokorny were deemed accidental.” Funeral services will be at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, July 13 2018, at St. Theresa’s Catholic Church in Clearwater, Click here for Robert Pokorny's obituary. |
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