`

Nebraska Authors

Samuel Van Pelt

AKA: Sam

Born 1936-02-10

Died 2017-09-11
Lincoln, NE (USA)

Former Lawyer, Lancaster District Judge, and Lancaster County Sheriff, Samuel Van Pelt was locally renowned for his pithy observations. His book What Psalm-Singing Son of a Bitch Said That?: A Collection of Legal and Political Reminiscences was a 30-year labor of love.

Places Lived

Lincoln, NE
Hickman, NE

Author Of

  • Nonfiction

Keywords

Law; Politics; Memoirs

Education

High School Diploma, 1953, Lincoln High School, Lincoln, NE
Bachelor of Science degree, 1957, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Lincoln, NE
Juris Doctor, 1961, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Lincoln, NE

Occupation

Lawyer
Insurance Director
Lancaster County (Nebraska) District Judge (1972-1983)
Lancaster County (Nebraska) Sheriff (1994)

Places Worked

Lancaster County District Court
Lancaster County Sheriff's Office
Private Law Practice, 1961-1971
Nebraska State Department of Insurance

Honors

Torch of Liberty Award, Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'Rith, 1985

Associations

Senator James Exon
Charles Pallesen, Jr.
Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation

Bibliography

"What Psalm-Singing Son of a Bitch Said That?": A Collection of Legal and Political Reminiscences. 2001.
Big Jim Exon: A Political Biography. co-author with Charles Pallesen, Jr., 2013.

We appreciate corrections and additions to our information about authors, but please read the following guidelines and caveats carefully.

  • The Nebraska Authors database is based on publicly available sources. Unless you are the author contacting us in person, it helps us if you cite the source or sources of your information. We cannot include unsourced information in the database.
  • We may be appreciative of information we choose not to include in the publicly available database.
  • To include an image on an author profile, please send jpg attachment to nebraskaauthors@lincoln.ne.gov. A photo-release agreement is required before the image will be published on this site.
  • Because of the way we are staffed, expect corrections or additions to take time, sometimes up to three months.
  • While we initially included some actual links to external URLs in the database, we will in the future no longer provide functioning links. We will instead record the presence of specific external materials in language that we hope will help intelligent users find it themselves. Web rot, in which actual materials remain online but undergo changes in their URLs, is too demanding in terms of staff time for us to hope to keep external links current.

Please copy, fill out the form below, and email it to NebraskaAuthors@lincoln.ne.gov to suggest a change.

/
Samuel Van Pelt
samuel-van-pelt

Do you have corrections for the above information or other information to add?:

(e.g. Author is buried in Fremont, not in David City / Also wrote for the Daily Nebraskan during her time as a student)