Nebraska Authors

A well known criminal defense attorney and founder of the Berry Law Firm in Lincoln, NE. Berry attended Stanford University, Infantry Officer School at Fort Benning, GA, and the Judge Advocate General School in Charlottesville, VA. During his service, in 1968 and 1969, Berry was the chief defense counsel for II Field Force Vietnam, the largest general court martial jurisdiction for American forces in Vietnam. He also served as defense counsel with the 101st Airborne, the 82nd Airborne, the 1st Infantry Division, the 1st Cavalry Division, and other units. His Vietnam memoir, Those Gallant Men, 1983, recounts his efforts to defend the commander of the Green Berets and some of his officers against murder and conspiracy charges. The book was a Military Book Club selection for the Book of the Month, and is considered an important historical document on the Green Berets trial. Berry has written prize winning poetry and was the lead author of a book on the use of forensic science in criminal cases.

From 1956-1960 Berry studied poetry with Yvor Winters and prose with Wallace Stegner at Stanford University.

Heritage Room collections include three versions of the typescript manuscript for In the House of Our Friends, 1983 and the proof edition of Those Gallant Men.

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Norman Geske came to Lincoln in 1950 to be Assistant Director at the University of Nebraska's University Art Galleries. He was named Director in 1956. In this capacity he shaped the design and mission of the Sheldon Art Gallery, in collaboration with the Nebraska Art Association, now the Sheldon Art Association. He worked with famed architect Philip Johnson to adapt the building to the mission imagined for it. Earlier curators, notably Dwight Kirsch and Mabel Langdon Eiseley, contributed much to the founding of the collection that eventually came to inhabit the Sheldon, Geske built it into the nationally significant collection of 20th century art that it became, through groundbreaking exhibitions and purchases. Geske was invited to curate the American Pavillion at the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1968 because of his success at the Sheldon. Geske was also the leading scholar of the work of the late 19th and early 20th century painter Ralph Albert Blakelock, and was the leading consultant in authenticating works attributed to that artist.

On the Sheldon Art Museum collection see Kirsch, Mabel Eiseley and Karen Janovy

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Morton came to Nebraska in 1854 and was a leading figure in the Democratic Party beginning in territorial days. He was acting Governor of Nebraska on several occasions, and would be Secretary of Agriculture in President Cleveland's cabinet, 1893-97. He began his career as a journalist, writing on agricultural and political topics. Morton was an early President of the Nebraska Historical Society. He wrote a history of Nebraska and published a collection of Native folk tales. Late in his career he was an opponent of William Jennings Bryan's populism and tried to limit its influence in Democratic Party circles. He is best known as a founder of Arbor Day, and for his magnificent home Arbor Lodge, near Nebraska City.

While Secretary of Agriculture Morton encouraged Clarence Paine (then Secretary of the Nebraska State Historical Association) to help establish the Missouri Valley Historical Association, which eventually served as the foundation for the American Historical Association.

See:

James C. Olson, J. Sterling Morton: Pioneer Statesman, Founder of Arbor Day, 1942, 1972.
Nebraska Writers Revised, 1964.
Influence on historical studies see: Lauck, Jon K. "The Prairie Historians and the Foundations of Midwestern History.
"The Annals of Iowa" 71 (2012), 137-173. (Also available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/annals-of-iowa/vol71/iss2/3 )
On Arbor Lodge see the chapter in Lisa Knopp, The Nature of Home: A Lexicon and Essays, 2002

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