Thursday, August 30, 2007

Red to blue

It is that time of year in Lincoln when all the attention is on the start of the University of Nebraska football season. If you've never lived in Lincoln, it's hard to imagine how fixated this State is on college football. There are two seasons here, football and spring practice.

With the first game scheduled for Saturday, I thought it might be an appropriate time to point out the connection between the Lincoln Police Department and the University of Nebraska football team. A couple of senior members of the department, Sgt. Bill Kuhlman and Capt. Dave Beggs, helped me brainstorm everyone we could think of who was both a Lincoln police officer and a Cornhusker football letterman. No doubt we missed some Bugeaters, but here's our alphabetical list:


  1. Dale Adams
  2. Barry Alvarez
  3. Alvin Banks
  4. Joe Buda
  5. John Clarke
  6. Dan Delaney
  7. Mike Eger
  8. Gail Gade
  9. Bruce Hauge
  10. Jim Hawkins
  11. Ron Kirkland
  12. Jim McCord
  13. Donnie McGhee
  14. Harry Meagher
  15. Wayne Meylan
  16. Mike Osborne
  17. John Pitts
  18. Dennis Richnafsky
  19. P.J. Schneider

There would be many more if we had included those players who worked part time as police officers over the summer (a quaint practice the persisted until 1975), but those listed are all Cornhuskers who were actually employed full time as regular police officers.

Some of these officers were short-timers, but others worked long careers to retirement. Hall of famer Wayne Meylan was probably the most successful football player of this group. Several of these men were very successful police officers. Two of the more accomplished were Gail Gade and Dale Adams. Gade left LPD as a lieutenant to become the Univeristy's chief of police. Adams, after serving as LPD's assistant chief and interim chief of police, finished his law enforcement career as the four-term sheriff of Lancaster County.

Two former Huskers wear LPD blue right now. John Clarke earned his letter in 1990. He is a canine handler assigned to the Center Team. Three-year letterman John Pitts was a member of the Cornhusker national championship teams of 1970 and 1971. John is our self-defense instructor and in my opinion he is the toughest person on the Lincoln Police Department. He is also an exceptional citizen, husband, father, grandfather, and an extraordinary gentleman by every measure.

Saturday, three days shy of his 34th anniversary as a Lincoln police officer, you will find John Pitts with an Acme Thunderer directing traffic at the intersection of 10th & O Streets, as he has done for every football season since Richard Nixon was President. John was directing traffic in the heat, cold, rain, wind, and snow at Nebraska football games before 112 of our 317 officers were born. Starting in over 200 games earns him a place in our hall of fame!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

you forgot Ty Denney

Anonymous said...

GO BOISE STATE

Anonymous said...

Kevin Hinton

Anonymous said...

I think Darren Guild was on the team for a while, too, but the Chief's list specifies lettermen, and I didn't find him on the list at Huskers.com.

Anonymous said...

I remember officer P.J. walking up those 'huge' steps next to the student section in the stadium and we would all cheer him with each step up. Of course that was back in the early '80's and though I hate to say it, most of the time I and my fellow students had had more to drink than we should of....oops wait, you can't drink in the stadium.

I believe he was on T.O.'s first team at Nebraska--anyway P.J. was a good and caring officer.

Anonymous said...

Didn't Bob 'Pup' Farber play for UNL?cbpgdg

Tom Casady said...

Sheesh. First a committee of Wayne Staters shakes their finger at me when I walked in the door Thursday muttering something like "What about WILDCATS?", now, it looks like Ty, Kevin, and Bob, and Darren will be looking me up. ;-)

I guess we must have a few former Huskers who didn't make the official list of letter winners at the Athletic Department's web site. What can I say--I lettered in debate.

Anonymous said...

How about a list of where the real foot work at LPD was done, the Track team letter winners.
-the poor speller

Anonymous said...

Go CATS!!!

Anonymous said...

It happens when you reach the 50+ club, memoty, among other things goes. How could you forget Mike Eger? He lettered three times for the Huskers. Didn't you work for/with him in training?

Tom Casady said...

Excuse me, 9:06. Did you look at the list? I think Mike has been there all along. Need a little assistance with "alphabetical order"? ;-)

And yes, Greg, he was my second sergeant, after Bill Larsen on deep nights--second, shift, though, not in the Training Unit. He taught me some interesting and valuable things about Lincoln, and I maintained contact with him after he and Karen relocated to Denver. Ask me about the hilarious story from a W. Colfax (Denver, that is) homicide Mike played a role in, well after his police career, or about Karen's Absolute-World-Class Game-Over-Never-Equalled Come Back to Police Chief Dean Leitner that I witnessed in 1986. You won't get this on my blog, only eye-to-eye. It's making me cry just thinking about it....