Building named after W.W. Wood

Dr. Michael Chipps tells Wendell W. Wood that the main building on North Platte Community College it will be named W.W. Wood at Wednesday night's Board meeting. (Mid-Plains Community College) [Click to enlarge]

NORTH PLATTE -- At Wednesday night's Mid-Plains Community College Board of Governors meeting, the Board unanimously approved naming the main building located on the North Platte Community College North Campus (formerly known as the Voc-Tech Campus) to the W.W. Wood Building. Many in the community have indicated that without Mr. Wood's insistence and persistence, there would be no formalized technical education center in west-central Nebraska. Here are a series of bullet points that explains the rationale for naming the first building constructed on what was then called the Mid-Plains Vocational Technical College.

In his comments, Dr. Michael Chipps, President of Mid-Plains Community College, stated that "although many people were involved in the lobbying, negotiations, working with the counties, chambers of commerce, business people, and local leaders, without the vision, fortitude, courage, leadership, and persistence of Mr. Wendell W. Wood, there would not have been a Vocational Technical College."

· Previous to 1965, Mr. Wood lobbied for technical schools and especially for one in North Platte as a result of his experiences in the military and upon his return home. He saw the need for technical training.

· Mr. Wood was instrumental in getting the legislature to consider a bill to establish four additional technical schools in addition to the first one that was established at Milford and supported by the state. The second school was to be at North Platte, the third at Scottsbluff, the fourth at Norfolk, and the fifth at Omaha.

· Grand Island lobbied for a bill that would establish an area technical school in Grand Island. This bill was eventually passed and the bill Mr. Wood supported that would have allowed technical schools to be established in the priority listed with North Platte being the next technical school was defeated.

· Mr. Wood and others began organizing a trade school made up of a 10-county area including Red Willow County. Mr. Wood again spent a great deal of time talking to organizations and people in those 10 counties in order to get support for the new trade school. He, along with the help of many others, was successful in this endeavor. The first classes were held in the Carnegie Library and the Cohagen Warehouse.

· Without a campus and perhaps some debt, according to the state, the school would be closed, then at that time, Mr. Wood and Mr. Peck worked with Victor Halligan to donate the land now known as North Campus. Mr. Halligan gifted the land for the privilege of being able to use the gift as a tax write-off at a certain appraised value.

· Even with the land, however, there was still no campus. Mr. Wood led the effort to find funding to build a building. No financial institution in the state would lend the money to build a building.

· Mr. Wood used the state's example of having the city of Lincoln buy the land and build the building and subsequently lease the property to the state on a lease/own basis. That maneuver was able to keep the state out of debt. Mr. Wood worked with others to devise the same strategy for funding the first building on the Voc-Tech Campus.

· Mr. Wood and others worked with ranchers, banks, and others to finance the first main building on the North Campus.

· Mr. Wood was the District Manager of Northwestern Public Service. He then bought a wholesale building supply firm (MacDean's) in 1965 and changed name to W. W. Wood, Inc. He sold the business in 1980 and was then self-employed as an investment manager. He is now retired. As of this date, he is 82 years old.