Stories are our greatest treasure

For the past dozen years, retiring judge Cloyd Clark has been more closely connected with the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival than any other person. He was there at the first preliminary meeting -- held at McCook Community College -- and he has been involved with all the festivals which have followed.

The judge lives and breathes storytelling. It was Cloyd -- more than a decade ago -- who helped pick the name, Buffalo Commons, from a suggestion by Floyd Hershberger. It was also Cloyd who came up with the original festival theme: "A community's greatest gift is the evolving history of its people, their symbols, their enduring sagas."

That's well said. It hits at the essence of life and our need to chronicle the experiences we have during our living years.

In the days leading up to the 2007 Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival, I stopped by Cloyd's office. It was his last day at the office, and he was a little bit melancholy. "That's the last thing left," he said, pointing to a "Prairie Bouquet" given to him by Dr. Joe Magrath. The bouquet was a combination of switchgrass and corn, picked from the farm of Bob Tiller.

That kind of memento is typical of Cloyd. He's a very distinctive personality, known for his resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt, his crusty manner and his booming voice.

"And so, Cloyd," I asked, "Of all the stories you have heard, what is your favorite?" That was a little much to lay on a guy, but Cloyd didn't disappoint. He re-sponded with typical quickness and candor.

"You know, Gene, one of my favorites -- and I have many -- is about the elder Fred Weber, who came to this area from Germany by way of Russia. The story was first told to me by Jean Kirkus, who had heard it from her late husband, the Rev. Eldo Kirkus of the Trinity Methodist Church in Culbertson. Rev. Kirkus had heard the story first hand from the elder Fred.

"The story is typical of the Germans from Russia who came to this region at the encouragement of the Chicago, Burlington & Quin-cy Railroad. "Really," Cloyd said, "it is a story about the search for freedom."

The elder Fred, the father of Fred, who lives in Culbertson, and Ernest of McCook, was living in Russia when the Communists took over and were conscripting young men into the Red Army during the Bolshevik Revolution.

The senior Fred's granddaughter, Katherine Wilk-inson, tells the story: "The Red Army was pursuing him. To survive, he hid under the floor of the barns where the manure was.

He also hid in haystacks, narrowly avoiding death when the stacks were poked with pitchforks by the pursuers."

Eventually, the elder Fred and his family made it back to Germany, where he worked on the railroad and saved enough money to book passage to the U.S. The elder Fred's son, also named Fred, was born in October of 1921 in Minsk, Russia. The younger Fred was five years old when the Webers came to the United States in 1927.

The Webers made a good life here. The elder Fred was 93 at the time of his death in 1994. His life in the U.S. was spent farming in the Culbertson area. "He told me he was glad this was a good country because he didn't know what other country he would flee to," the younger Fred said.

Freedom didn't come easy for the people of Southwest Nebraska. Fred Weber's ordeal shows that. So do the stories of the hundreds of other families who populate the Golden Plains.

We need to share the sagas, just as the elder Fred Weber did, He told the story to his family and to Rev. Kirkus, who passed it on to his wife, Jean, who told it to Cloyd, who shared it with me, and in turn, you, through this newspaper column.

That's the way storytelling works and why the sharing is so important. As Cloyd once wrote, "We believe that, next to God and family, stories are our greatest treasure."

It's a saying worth re-membering. We need to tell our stories. They are not only the history of our past ... they are the foundation for our future.