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Endowment honors senator's 'cheerleader and champion'
McCOOK, Neb. -- Birdella Nelson’s dedication to her only child not only served him well in his professional and political life, but will help put McCook in position to raise up leaders for generations to come.
The late cafeteria worker and doctor’s office clerk will accomplish that through an endowment in her honor to the McCook Public Library by her son, former U.S. Senator and Nebraska Governor Ben Nelson, who spoke to a small Heritage Days crowd Saturday afternoon at the library.
The $500,000 Birdella Nelson Endowment will yield about 4 1/2% annually, or about $22,000 the first year, and is projected to grow to about $900,000 in 20 years, yielding about $40,000 a year for improvements to the city library.
The permanent endowment is being channeled through the McCook Community Foundation Fund, helping to boost the MCFF endowment to more than $4 million.
Nelson said he was never lonely as an only child, “mainly because I was raised as an adult. You can’t get into trouble in the backseat of a car when you’re there by yourself.”
He worked his way through the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Explorers systems, and was one merit badge short of the rank of Eagle Scout, when he was overcome by fumes -- “gas fumes and perfumes,” he said.
But his mother was adept at reverse psychology.
“Look,” Birdella told her 15-year-old son, “I’ll finish that merit badge, but I get to wear the badge.”
“But what was most important about that experience was learning how when you start something, to finish it. It was important that you take the responsibility of getting it done yourself, but your parents have to push you along the way … may I say shoved.”
The process started long before his teenage years, he said, when was about four when he found out what the library was all about.
“I watched Miss Slaby, who was right out of central casting for a librarian, take a steel-tip pen, dip it in ink, and then, very, very elegantly, write two, six, six. I was mesmerized by how she made her two, it was nothing like I’d been taught … but I treasured that library card. And my mother, because she didn’t have anything else to do but raising an only child, was able to take me to the library … as often as she could, and sometimes even more often than maybe I wanted to.”
“I’m just here to say thank you to my mother and thank you to the community, and all who have had any part in making my life what it’s become … my parents, my friends in the community, of teachers, pastors and everybody who’s ever cared about how I work and how things worked for me,” Nelson said.
“Well, Birdella Nelson was my cheerleader, and my champion, and so, this is a very small thing to do for the great, great things that she did for me.”
Nelson said one of his priorities for the endowment was that local decisions would determine how it would be used, one of many with local input was Mary Dueland, who recently discovered her own library card, “5358” issued in 1962 or 1963.
A retired teacher, and part of the Library Advisory Board and Library Foundation Board, Dueland explained how the funding would be used to help transition the library from strictly a place to check out books to include the Birdella Nelson Technology Center, an interactive space for innovation and creativity through the use of technology.
Andy Long, executive director of the McCook Economic Development Corp., explained that once he learned of the scope of Nelson’s planned gift, he recruited Mrs. Dueland as well as Dennis Berry, Denise Garey, Laura Ford, Linda Taylor, Steve Batty, Dawson Brunswick, Jody Crocker, Nate Schneider and Ronda Graff for input and feedback on how best to use the gift.
Long said Nelson’s gift was the catalyst that helped inspire him to believe that the “2020s are going to be McCook’s decade,”
“And I think in 10 years, we’ll probably come back here during Heritage Days and say ‘look at how the library has changed. Look at how the community changed, and thank Sen. Nelson and your mom Birdella once more.”