Dietrich Dirks
CLASS OF 1992 Dietrich Dirks Dirks was born and raised in Nebraska. He was one of the founders of the Nebraska Broadcasters Association and its first president in 1934 and 1935. His broadcasting career began in Lincoln after graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1924. He started out as sports director but a year […]
Helen Duhamel
CLASS OF 1992 Helen Duhamel was a highly successful businesswoman and broadcaster, establishing a cluster of radio and television stations in western South Dakota and Nebraska. Helen moved from Missouri to Nebraska with her family when she was two years old. She was raised on a ranch on the White River north of Chadron and […]
Larry Rice
CLASS OF 1993 Larry Rice was the owner and general manager of KBRB AM & FM in Ainsworthf or over 40 years. Rice came to Nebraska from Missouri. His ambition was to become a high school coach, but a part-time radio job at KNIM Marysville changed his course to broadcasting. He moved to full-time, then […]
Walt Kavanaugh
CLASS OF 1993 Walt Kavanaugh’s career as a newsman contributed to the legendary success of two stations in the country, KOWH and KFAB, both in Omaha. Walt Kavanaugh was a “South Omaha Boy,” graduating from South High in 1940. After military service as a paratrooper during the war, Walt graduated from Creighton University and entered […]
Gary Fries
CLASS OF 1994 During a career that has spanned nearly 55 years, Gary R. Fries spent his entire professional life on the front lines of Radio as a salesperson, sales manager, general manager, group head, and network president, with first-hand sales experience in markets from Grand Island to New York City. He held numerous executive […]
Tom Brokaw
CLASS OF 1994 Tom Brokaw, while anchor and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News, was equally at ease covering the convulsive changes in world capitals and monitoring the heartbeat of America in small town and inner cities of the United States for nearly a half-century. His beginnings in the business took place in the […]
Mel Sauer
CLASS OF 1995 Mel Sauer enjoyed well over thirty years in radio. Despite being blind since the age of six months, he worked in jobs from utility man to general manager. A native of Bayard, he attended the School for the Blind in Nebraska City from 1947 to 1956 then transferred back to Bayard where […]
Jack Payne
CLASS OF 1995 Jack Payne’s career in broadcasting spans 46 years and includes association with six radio stations and one television station. He is best known in Nebraska for his 17 years at WOW and WOW-TV and his 22 years at KFAB. Love of sports was in Payne’s blood from his youth in his native […]
Fred Seaton
CLASS OF 1996 Fred Seaton’s media career started at the age of six in the composing room of his father’s Manhattan, Kansas newspaper. All through his public school years, he worked on the paper, doing every job in the plant. He got into radio at Kansas State College of Agriculture & Applied Science (now Kansas State), broadcasting […]
John Mitchell
CLASS OF 1996 An Omaha attorney with roots in Kearney, John Mitchell’s radio empire not only endured the tumultuous 1990s but continued to flourish. Mitchell got an early start in radio while in college in the 1940s as a newsreader and sportscaster at KGFW Kearney. After getting his J.D. degree with honors from Georgetown Law […]