Local historians' stories connect to world

When Gene Watson told a story about Grand Island, I listened.

I listened the same way I listened when Gene Budde told one.

Carefully.

They knew names and places and times, but they also had a knack for nuance, an ability to give their stories tone and tenor. They might accomplish this with a raised eyebrow or a hushed voice or a well-placed smile.

Now they are both gone and, with them, volumes of local history, the kind of stories and insights that explain who we were and make us who we are.

Watson died suddenly and unexpectedly over the weekend. Budde left us last November.

Watson's career in law enforcement touched four decades, and like Budde, he had a deep understanding of place, not only as a storyteller but also as a historian.

He was able to link local events to the outside world with connective tissue developed through study, observation and experience. That requires good books and research, a keen eye and a memory fitted with a Rolodex of recall.

Working with both Watson and Budde on the history book "150: A Commemoration of the Sesquicentennial of Hall County," I usually lapsed into silence while one of them wove into the conversation a clear, detailed story about Central Nebraska life. I remember worrying that my words may not do justice to the kind of history they were imparting.

Certainly, I would be hard-pressed to capture the twinkle in the storyteller's eye when he reached the denouement, when the clincher tied up loose ends and made history make sense.



Curious faces

Both men wrote dozens of stories, too, historical accounts of our neighbors and neighborhoods. Many of those appeared in The Independent, some in "150," a vivid and varied compendium of the area's history since 1867.

Of course, today, the Internet can provide millions of details for books like "150." Careful historians and writers are loathe to accept on its face, information from a single site without a prior credibility check, but with some electronic elbow grease, the Internet can provide profitable veins of data.

Still, if you are mining the past, there is nothing like holding an original photo in your hands, its corners bent, the odd stares within from curious faces frozen in a time when cameras were rare; or reading an ancient letter, its fountain-pen ink dark and heavy and blotched where the writer paused, searching for perhaps the perfect word to describe a perfect moment; or poring over a fragile, yellowed newspaper clipping, its skin marble smooth, its story and style without the burdens of today's more perfunctory journalistic constraints.

The best, however, is a conversation with someone who was there, or even someone who knew someone who was there. And if that person is skilled at storytelling, then the past comes alive in four-color relief, its narrative a wonder of newsy detail and surprise.



Backyards, world

As we expand and refine our technologies, they will help us bring our histories into sharper focus. With its hard wire to databases and archives, the Internet has unlimited potential to enable us to view our past more clearly.

We should, however, never underestimate the value of local history, especially the kind that is stored in the ample memories of its eyewitnesses. Some are walking encyclopedias of yesterday, men and women who can explain the intricate webs that history weaves -- webs that connect our backyards to the rest of the world.

It was all the reason I needed to listen carefully to the stories of Gene Watson and Gene Budde.



George Ayoub is senior writer at The Independent.