Save the date for the FranNet Annual Celebration & Fundraiser to benefit The 50 Mile March Foundation.Their mission is to empower veterans facing mental health challenges and homelessness by fostering a community of hope and relentless support.
This Omaha event takes place on Friday, November 8 from 4PM -7 PM.
Enjoy networking, great hors d’oeuvres, drinks, prizes, swag, and auctions.
Lexi Christensen behind the host desk at Clio’s Restaurant
OmahaNebraska.com here with..
My name is Lexi Christensen, and I’m the General Manager of Clio in Omaha’s Old Market.
How long has Clio’s been open?
Clio opened on June 3rd just this last year. So just two months ago, we celebrated our birthday. So yeah, very fresh in the Old Market still.
And were you here when it opened?
Yeah, I was here June 3rd. But my time with Clio actually started on April 15th. That’s when our job fair started. We had a five-week hiring event where Monday through Friday 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM we were taking interviews, building our team both for the kitchen, but then for our front of house for our house servers and bartenders as well. So yeah, April 15th is when I started on the project.
Have you been in the Omaha area a long time?
Yeah, born and raised. So Omaha is in my blood, if you will.
So you have a really good feeling, especially for the Old Market area…
I think so. Yeah. My family is still based out west. I grew up off of 160th and Q and then I went to Creighton. I moved downtown when I was 18, and I’ve been in, like, the downtown, Midtown area ever since. Yeah. The Old Market’s definitely…as someone who’s from West Omaha, I didn’t appreciate it as much as I could have. But in my time at Creighton and then especially in the restaurant industry, I’ve definitely learned to truly love the space for what it is.
There’s so many amazing things about, you know, each neighborhood.
Yeah, 100%.
What did you do before you came to work for Clio?
Directly before Clio, I was the assistant general manager over at Plank, so Plank is within our parent company still, and I was the AGM [Assistant General Manager] over there for a year and seven months. And then before that I was a server at one of the steakhouses downtown, and then before that I was still in school. So I’m still relatively new in the restaurant industry, which is crazy to think about. I’m very lucky to have the support and the teachers that I’ve had in the past few years to get me to where I’m at right now.
I’ve been here a couple of times. The service has been amazing. The food has been great. You are doing so many things right.
Thank you. Yeah, it’s definitely been…as many things, it’s been a process. We’re still growing and learning every single day, but I’m very proud of the community we’ve formed within Clio, both with our kitchen team and then our front-of-house service team. Truly, just some of the most genuine and hard-working individuals I’ve had the pleasure of working with. And I think that’s what’s unique about Flagship, our company, too. We’ll talk a little bit more about that later.
We can talk about it now, if you’d like.
Cool, yeah. We’re part of Flagship Restaurant Group. Flagship started in 2002 when our four main owners kind of came together and started the first Blue Sushi. So Blue Sushi off of 144th and Maple is the OG restaurant in our company. And then we’ve expanded…now, I think Clio was restaurant number 40 if I remember correctly, so we have 40 different restaurants, between, like, eight or nine concepts in twelve or thirteen states. A lot of it is Midwest and Southwest focused, but we go a little bit east, and then I guess Denver is in us, too. But it’s mostly Midwest and Southwest, I would say.
So Flagship has Plank, Blue Sushi, Clio, and…
Yeah. And so in the Omaha area, Plank, Blue Sushi, Clio… we also have Memoir off of 10th and Harney. We have Blatt Beer and Table. So we have one downtown here and one out west—Roja out west—and then the Flagship Commons in the Westroads Mall, and then we have a few, like, really eclectic concepts in other places, right? So in Des Moines, we have this really cool kind of like island-tiki-bar-inspired place called Revival. So Revival is really cool. We have two bar-centric kind of concepts. One is called Ghost Donkey, so Ghost Donkey’s a Mezcal tequila bar.
I’ve heard about that.
Yeah, we’re actually gonna have one in Omaha at the end of September.
Ah, that’s why I’ve heard about it.
Yeah. And then also at the end of September, another concept, Champagne Lanes, or we kind of shorthand it to CPL. So Ghost Donkey and CPL are going to be here in Omaha in the next, like, month or month and a half. It’s going to come up really quickly. So those are really cool concepts. Champagne lanes is a concept where they do champagne on tap, so sparkling wine on tap with fried chicken bites, because champagne and fried chicken pair really well together.
I did not know that.
Yeah. So the champagne is, you know, nice and dry and it kind of like, makes your mouth kind of pucker a little bit. And then the greasy, kind of fatty, in the fried chicken complements it and balances out really well.
Okay.
So it’s just like a really fun pairing there, and then Champagne Lanes also has duck pin bowling. So mini-bowling; that’s where they get the “Lanes” part. And then we have this really cool concept in Phoenix and one in Texas called Palma. Again, kind of like island inspired, but they have a really cool menu there too. So yeah, they do. They, as in our owners and all of the minds that work together with this. They just do a really good job. The team that comes up with the menus for these concepts is pretty extensive, so it’s like, depending on the concept, it’s anywhere from four to like six or seven chefs that come together for these menu creations. And then our operations team, they’ll come together to kind of come up with the steps of service. So like how the store is run and operated, and that can be anywhere from like three to even like eight to ten people. You know, it’s a lot of really great people that are coming together to get these concepts going.
Sounds like a very collaborative experience, which is often, you know, richer in fruit than just one or two people together and then sounds like a lot of teamwork here on this side. You said you were trying to create a family within this.
Yeah, 100 percent.
How do you do that? It’s so hard for restaurants and places to get this kind of flow going that I see, and it feels like you’ve been here a while. I mean, you’re new and fresh, but the teamwork seems like it’s just been this way for years.
Yeah. Well, that’s a really big compliment. Thank you. That was definitely something that our management team strived for since day one. So even before our hiring event, I met with our head chef. His name is Donnie Topolsky. Donnie’s been with the company for going on, almost seven years now. For the first, like, six 6-1/2 years of his tenure, he was at the chef at Blatt West. So, Donnie and I had a brief meeting shortly after he got hired on to that position, and we are in this transitionary period, and in that meeting, Donnie and I came to the agreement that our goal is to make sure that our relationship between our front of house and our back of house and our relationship between all of these people are built on teamwork.
So when we were in the interviews, I think it was like the second or third question we asked every single candidate was “What’s your teamwork style?” And then we would follow it up with “What’s your relationship with front of house?” or “back of house?” So, that was definitely a precedent that we set really, really early on. And that was intentional because this is such a unique concept. It’s so beautiful. And you know, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve only ever worked with collaborative teams. I really like that my experience is like that, because that’s a little unique.
Not a lot of people come from restaurant backgrounds that are as collaborative as we sit here as my experience in the past is. So yeah, just setting that precedent literally since day one. And then I think it helps that it kind of trickles down, right, so our owners are all, like, very family-based people, like, that’s their priority, right? Making sure that our families are taken care of, ourselves are taken care of, and then we can take care of our job, right?
So, that’s something that is set from our owners, but then even specifically at our store level, all of us managers have weekly meetings. So, there’s three front house managers, myself, and then I have two AGM’s, and then we have our head chef and two sous chefs, so we all come together every Monday and kind of just talk about the restaurant. We talk about our goals. We talk about where we’re excelling, where we have room for improvement, and I think the team sees that and it definitely just helps with that positive energy that we have going on here.
Well, this is very different than other restaurants downtown and also other restaurants in the city. What’s sort of the inspiration for that? And could you tell people what makes Clio so special?
Yeah. So, the creative process of Clio went through a really interesting evolution. My understanding is that when they first proposed this idea of a wine-bar-themed restaurant, because that’s kind of what the foundation was, right? We have this awesome company sommelier who’s actually one of our managers here too. Her name is Shannon Salsbury. She’s just a genius, and she chooses really lovely wines. And she’s very, very smart about the wines that she’s choosing. So yeah, Shannon, and you know, Shannon and team kind of came together and said, “Well, how can we do a wine bar concept?” So, it started out with maybe just like an Italian influence and doing like an antipasti and charcuterie board, maybe some flatbreads. But then as they were traveling and doing research for what we can do with this space, they kind of came upon this Mediterranean restaurant idea and just ran with it. So, then they visited some really cool restaurants in Chicago and Austin, TX. And that’s where they got the big inspiration for Mediterranean. But the name Clio we borrow from Greek mythology. The Greeks have eight muses, right? So Clio is the Greek muse of history. And so we kind of took that as our opportunity to share the history of our families. Right? So when you go and look at, you know, all of the people that in that are in our company, like, we have so many influenced from the Mediterranean. We have folks that have family from Lebanon, from France, from Italy, some Greeks in there, too, right? So, the Mediterranean was our inspiration. And then where the flavors came from, kind of, is just what spoke to us from our families’ history.
It’s interesting because you look at the dishes and you’ll have harissa, which is from my experience just from Tunisia, maybe from other places, and then you, but you have somehow amazingly paired it with things you wouldn’t think…and then the harissa is not so hot. So I don’t know how you come up with all those flavors. It’s really interesting.
I’m never going to claim that I’m a culinary genius. You definitely don’t want me in the kitchen—I can tell you that much—but I can tell you that the way that the flavors complement each other is kind of where we get a lot of those expressions from. So yeah, 100 percent harissa is typically a little bit on the spicier side, but the way that we express ours with the trout fillet for instance, right? We have our harissa trout. Or we put harissa in our tomato sauces. And so the fattiness from the trout or the acidity from the tomato sauce does a really great job of cutting the spiciness and balancing out that dish really well. And that’s a huge theme across our whole menu. I think when you take a look at the menu, you may notice a few flavors and words kind of repeat themselves, but although they repeat themselves, they are shown in such different and unique ways.
That’s what I thought was also interesting, because I saw it’s like, well, this looks like it’s going to be the same as this, and it was not.
Right, yeah. My favorite example of that is in our mezze section. So mezze is kind of like a Greek word where it’s another word for antipasti, right? So small plate that can be coursed out. And we have our Turkish beef dumplings…
They’re wonderful.
They’re so good, and then we have our stuffed dates, and they both have this really beautiful tomato sauce. They have slightly different spices in them, but I think they taste pretty similar, but when they’re paired with the other items in those dishes, they’re such a different experience.
White bowl with square Turkish beef dumplings with harissa-tomato sauce dotted with sour cream and cilantro
Yes. I happened to try those, too.
Yes. So yeah, you can definitely speak on the Turkish beef dumplings, which I should also side note. Turkish dumplings are a little bit different than your traditional kind of like Eastern Asian dumplings, right? They’re folded very beautifully and intricately, but they look a little more similar to like a ravioli. So that’s how we compare it. It’s a little bit similar to, like, a ravioli, rather than, like, a Chinese dumpling, maybe. So yeah, like, the Turkish beef dumplings have this really beautiful pasta-like dough. And then it’s got that really nice beef center and this beautiful tomato sauce.
Merguez sausage stuffed dates swimming in tomato sauce
And then the stuffed dates have those dates, and again another beef center but wrapped in prosciutto. And they’re just so different and so unique, but still complement each other really, really well, so yeah, I love those two dishes.
I’m pretty sure you can’t pick one, but what are some of your favorite dishes or ones you would love people to try?
Yeah. So I was actually just talking to a table about this yesterday. I feel like when guests come here, they almost have to have all four spreads. So we have four house-made spreads that are beautiful. There’s hummus, there’s baba ghanoush, there’s labneh, and there’s muhammara. And you can get each of them individually or you can get a half-size portion of all four on one plate for $20. It comes with three pitas, and it is such a great way to start out the experience because it’s so many beautiful colors on the plate. The plate itself is really pretty, but then all of the flavors are so unique, but again, complement each other so well. I love to do all four and then get a little bit of spread on one bite and do all of it together because you get the smokiness from the muhammara, you get the creaminess from the labneh, you get just like that classic garlic hummus in there. And then the baba ghanoush, which is roasted and pureed eggplant, just like a very creamy texture. Super good. So yeah, that’s one of my top recommendations. I also think it’s a shame if you don’t get any of those kebab options. But you know, choose whichever kebab you like. There really is no wrong choice. They’ve got that salmon kebab and it has this za’atar seasoning on it. Za’atar is a very common Mediterranean seasoning. There’s thyme, there’s salt, there’s pepper. There’s one or two spices in there that I can’t remember off the top of my head.
Sumac?
Yeah, sumac’s in there, 100 percent. So the salmon kebab is delicious. We also have a chicken kebab, so we use thigh meat for our chicken. You’ll notice that. The thigh meat relative to breast meat is a little bit juicier. There is a little bit higher fat percentage, but it really does help with the tenderness of the dish.
There’s certain dishes where that is really the right choice.
100 percent, yeah. And then that final kebab option is a beef kefta kebab. So kefta is…you know, initially when they were going through the process, they were wondering if we could do like a beef and lamb mixture because I think that’s what traditional kefta is, if I remember correctly. But this one is mostly just a beef. So we grind beef and we put it in these little rectangular molds and then stick them on the skewer. And we grill them and then we put them in the oven, and it’s really beautiful. So yeah, any of those kebab options are great.
All of those kebabs come on a bed of saffron rice that we make fresh, I think twice a day because of how much we’re going through. And then there’s a cucumber tomato salad. We’ve got pickled sumac onions on there. We’ve got Juanita peppers, which are kind of like banana peppers. They’re a little bit on the spicier side. And then we also have a little dollop of hummus on there as well.
There’s a very large selection of wine, as you were mentioning before, and some cocktails. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Absolutely. So like I said, Shannon is just a genius when it comes to wine programming. And I say that for a few different reasons. For starters, Shannon is very intentional with the wineries that she sources from. For Clio specifically, we don’t have any domestic wine in-house. All of our wine comes from the Mediterranean. We have bottles from Macedonia, Armenia, Italy, France, Turkey. We have some really, really unique flavors in there, which is really cool.
She also does a really great job with sourcing from wineries that are very fair trade. So whether they’re family owned and only have a very small business or they’re just like ethically and responsibly running their business. Making sure that all of the grapes that we have are hand harvested or have best practices. We like to source a lot of green wines too, so wines that don’t overuse water or pesticides, chemicals, any of that stuff.
Our cocktail list is made by Dustin Fox. He’s the bar program manager for the company, so all of our cocktails are from Dustin. And Dustin, again, is just a genius in his craft, where he does a really great job of getting classic cocktails but then putting a unique twist on them so that it’s unique to whatever concept that we’re catering to. We have a pretty small cocktail list. We’ve got three spritzers to choose from, so we have a very classic aperitiva spritz, kind of like an aperol spritz. We have a Hugo spritz, so it’s got that elderflower liqueur and mints in there, and then we have a limoncello spritz that’s actually topped off with a little bit of rosé rather than traditional prosecco. We still have really nice weather, so they’re great for patio. And then our cocktail list is six cocktails, all wonderfully paired together, but again, very similar to our food menu, so unique in their own way. So I think if a guest starts out with, you know, a spritz and then moves to a cocktail and then moves to a glass of wine, there’s truly no bad pairing in any of that, especially when you take into consideration all of the great food that’s going to come along with it as well. And then we have a really cool list of non-alcoholic cocktails too, so we’ve got three NA [non-alcholic] beverages. And then we have a few bottled and canned beers, and then we’ve got a couple of water options as well.
Any question I haven’t asked you that you would like me to ask?
Hmm. Well, I do like to point out that there are a few local places we partner with, because I love supporting local and I love being in a company that also supports local. So Miller Dohrmann Farm, that’s where we get our flour, our whole wheat grain, for all of the pita that we make. We also buy eggplant from them. So we have a few eggplant in those dishes and we’re moving through quite a bit of it, which is cool. So we support Miller Dohrmann and we’ve had a chance to host them in here and I’ve met them a couple of times. They are just such an awesome couple. They have such an awesome farm. They do a really good job over there.
We also work with Maven Bar, so Maven Social has a few bars in Omaha, but specifically in the Old Market we’ve got Berry and Rye down the street and then Laka Lono is actually our basement, so a tiki bar is owned by Maven right below us, and we source our perfect ice from them. So they like carve this ice, and it looks really perfectly clear. It’s really cool. It goes in a few of our cocktails. And then we also partner with Hardy Coffee. They give us our coffee beans for… we have an espresso machine back there, so we can make lattes and cappuccinos. But then we also make a cold brew concentrate, and that cold brew concentrate goes in our espresso martini.
Chocolate creme brulée with five artful dollops of cinnamon creme with mint leaf flags surrounding three mandarin orange slices in white bowl on marble table
Sounds good. I think it’s also in the creme brulee, no?
So the creme brulée has Turkish coffee in it. Those aren’t the beans that we source from Hardy, but the creme brulée does pair really well with the espresso martini. So I would say that’s one of my favorite pairings. If I’m looking for something like a little sweet treat, an espresso martini and chocolate creme brulée would be like my go-to pairing.
I guess another thing that’s fun to point out is the pita process is really intense.
I was guessing you made them here because it was very different and very wonderful.
We do. We make them fresh every single day. Yeah. So the pita that we have, the guests will come to find out that have a little bit of a nice crisp on the outside, but mostly they’re really soft and fluffy, but they’re not chewy by any means. Like they don’t overwhelm your palate. They don’t overwhelm the flavors that you’re pairing it with.
And lovely pockets with those too. I haven’t seen pita with pockets in a long time, and that’s what I’m used to.
Yeah. So we have this really amazing pizza oven back there that we actually got custom made for our store. I think we had it travel all the way from the East Coast somewhere, right? So yeah, we brought it in quite the distance. And that pizza oven just does wonders. It’s mostly an oak wood, if I remember correctly. But it’s a wood fire, a little gas-assisted as well. But it has that very nice, smoky flavor without overbearing anything. And so, yeah, our pita process starts with our starter, right? So it’s a sourdough pita, and so we have this starter dough that we feed every day, and from that starter we portion out the dough, and you know, I see the prep cooks back there rolling it out and… Day of production, we have one of our cooks come in at 6:00 in the morning, and he’ll start just like pumping out pita. He’ll, like, roll them out on the trays and then get the trays and start putting them in the oven. And then we keep them stored very, you know, organized. And then when it’s time to have service and the guests order them, we’ll put them in the oven again so that when the guests order it the first time it doesn’t take ten minutes to make a pita. So yeah, it’s a very intense process, but we do a really good job, I think.
Veterans in Business Forum, VIBF: Red, white and blue logo
Save the date for the next Veterans in Business Forum-20 September at 0800 (8:00 AM)!
Learn how the Nebraska Enterprise Fund and their talented team can help grow your business.
All are welcome. You need not be a veteran nor a business owner to attend.
The guest speaker is: Jim Reiff
Jim is currently the Executive Director of the Nebraska Enterprise Fund (NEF), a certified CDFI serving small and microbusiness across Nebraska and SW Iowa with over $25 Million of Assets. Beyond NEF, Jim serves on the Advisory Board Member of MetaFund, an investment CDFI based in Oklahoma, and the Board of ROAM the regional Bike Share.
Jim has spent over 20 years in the economic development field focused on micro and small business financing and development. He started full time work in the economic field at the Northeast Nebraska Economic Development District. He subsequently took several international roles in Albania, India, and the Latin American region leading microfinance programming.
Jim is a graduate of St. Olaf College, and Eastern University with an M.S. in Economic Development, is certified as an Economic Development Finance Professional. He has served in the US Army Reserves and as a Peace Corps Volunteer. His oldest child is a middle school educator and youngest studies journalism at UN-L.
Nebraska Enterprise Fund:
The Nebraska Enterprise Fund was established in October 1994 to support the growth and development of Micro Development Organizations (MDOs) and small and micro businesses. It became recognized as a Community Development Finance Institution in 1997. Throughout its history, NEF has supported over 22 other MDO’s in Nebraska helping them create capacity, develop revolving loan funds, and in several cases securing their own CDFI designation.
In 2010, based on market conditions and input from various stakeholders, NEF began its direct and gap financing program with its own revolving loan fund. Today, NEF continues to serve all of Nebraska and SW Iowa with its products and services. NEF is an SBA Microlender and Community Advantage lender.
To date, NEF’s funding and support has come from a wide range of stakeholders. NEF has received grants for portfolio from the CDFI Fund, State of Nebraska, and local foundations. Operating support has come from the SBA Microloan, USDA RMAP program, multiple foundations and several banks, as well as earned income. NEF has also leveraged borrowed funds for its portfolio from SBA, USDA, five local banks, OFN, Episcopal Church Development Fund, OCF, and the Peter Kiewit Foundation.
Today, NEF holds over $25 million of assets to reach diverse and underserved small and micro-businesses. It seeks to augment the banking sector and ensures that viable businesses that may not yet be bankable have access to capital and technical assistance needed by them to succeed and grow. NEF’s focus is supporting businesses that are owned, located, and/or hire populations in distressed communities.
Over the past three years, NEF has provided significant impact through its ongoing products, and services as follows:
. $16,677,386 of financing
. 361 loans disbursed
. 1207.5 jobs impacted from direct/gap financing
. 58% of loans to BIPOC owned businesses
. 39% of loans to women
. 151 start-up businesses funded
. 17,240 participants attended training programs
. 17,970 one-to-one coaching sessions
o 49% of sessions provided to Clients of Color
o 58% of those responding were start-up businesses
Veterans in Business Forum, 20 September 2024, Flyer (text below)
Guest Speaker: Jim Reiff, Nebraska Enterprise Fund
Time: 0800 – 0900 (8:00 AM- 9:00 AM)
Location: UNO
College of Business Administration
Mammel Hall, Room 117
6708 Pine Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68182
Contact: Michel Thornhill
info@littlemountainwebdesign.com
All are welcome to attend.
RSVPs are requested but not required.
info@littlemountainwebdesign.com
VIBF: Veterans in Business Forum
www.veteransinbusinessforum.org
402.932.7243
Reminder: All work (photographs, graphics, text, etc.) on this blog and website, unless otherwise noted, are copyrighted by OmahaNebraska.com and Little Mountain Web Design. Please ask permission and for details to use our photographs.
The 501st and the Defenders Detachment are Star Wars costume clubs and so much more! They volunteer in the community, raise money for others and attend events.
OmahaNebraska.com interviewed three members at their booth at the Offutt Air Show.
The 501st and the Defenders Detachment (Colin Oestreich, John Jaeckel and McKenna Hager)
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Colin Oestreich, Shore Trooper Squad Leader from the Defenders Detachment
Please tell me about how you got here, either as a volunteer or in your service.
Okay, I’m a retired Master Sergeant from this Air Force Base. I’ve been doing charity work my entire life, so continuing doing charity work in this capacity is just a lot of fun. So that’s why we do it. We never get paid. We only give to charity. We raise about $40 million a year as a whole throughout the entire organization just doing this.
That’s wonderful. I see you guys around, it’s a very supportive community. People get very excited to see you and hope you come to their event.
Oh yeah, all they have to do is ask for us to show up. So that’s the 501st Legion and now the Defenders Detachment, which is a newer group. This is only made up of military, police, civilian first responders, etc. So we represent…all of us are also members of that group too.
Tell me about your costume, please.
The costume itself, we have to make our own costumes. There’s no way to just purchase these. They’re not Halloween costumes. They have to be 100% movie accurate and of movie quality. And typically ours are a little bit better quality than the movie standards because we have to be right in front of you. So what you can do on screen, you can’t get away with in front of people. We have to be very careful.
How do we find you and ask you to come to an event or join you?
Tell me about your character or your character’s name.
Okay. This is a shore trooper. This is a squad leader shore trooper because of the variation of the costume. This was first seen in the movie Rogue One then has shown up again in the show Andor and has also been in The Mandalorian—in a few scenes there were shore troopers—so that’s what this costume primarily is.
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with John Jaeckel, First Order Storm Trooper from the 501st Legion
Please tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got here.
Well, I’m a Nebraska native, lived here most of my life, was in the military. Got out. I decided I wanted to do something a little bit different, so started looking into Star Wars. Joined the 501st Legion in 2000. I’ve been doing this for going on 24 years now.
This weekend ended up being my 501st official event with the club, so it’s been a pretty interesting ride. We’ve been doing charity events all over the country for years. We travel, we have members all over the world. We’ve been on every continent and yeah, we do it just because we love the costuming, we love Star Wars, we love having fun and bringing enjoyment and excitement to people’s lives. The air show—we used to do it regularly, and then as everyone knows, it’s been on hiatus for six years. But they remembered us and invited us back, and we love being here.
Please tell me a little bit about your costume and the adventures making it.
All right, so this is the first order storm trooper armor that I’m wearing today. It’s a kit that you order online. This was actually one of the promotional kits made for the Force Away kits. When they released it, our club got a special access where they only offered a limited number. It’s not a basic kit. There are different skill levels. This is one of the more advanced ones. There’s a lot to it. It has some upgrades and changes and variations that some of the other armors don’t have…that can make it a little more uncomfortable to wear. For example, this one has rubber gaskets on it. So as you can imagine, the rubber gaskets on the knees, the elbows, shoulders, it gets very hot, but it is a fun armor to wear.
It’s wonderful.
Oh, thank you.
Anything people should know before they embark on the adventure of making the costume?
Yes, resources are available. No one should have to start out on their own. One of the nice things about clubs like the 501st Legion is we help people out. We have armor parties where everyone gets together and they bring their projects together. The other thing is it can seem kind of overwhelming at first, but again, you know, reaching out to the organizations, we can take you through the baby steps. It’s an investment in time and money, but the nice thing about it is you can spread that cost over a long time, so it’s not a a big upfront investment. It’s something where you take your time, build your way into, get to know the organization. Everyone joins these clubs for different reasons. Some people like charity work, some people like sporting events, some people like air shows. There’s different reasons that people do it. And so we kind of we all have that melting pot. They may come out and do it. Other people joined, they got the costume, they built it, they just threw it on a mannequin in their basement, and that’s perfectly fine. Not everyone wants to come out and do what we do or do it the way we do it, and that’s perfectly fine.
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with McKenna Hager, Scout Trooper from the 501st Legion
Please tell me about how you got here.
I actually have been an unofficial member of the 501st Legion for probably about 15 years now. I’ve just been a friend of the Garrison and going on official trips with them for probably that long, and I officially, finally fulfilled my dream of joining them this June 2024. So it’s been a long time coming, but I finally got to fulfill that dream.
Please tell me more. Tell me about your character.
So I am a Return of the Jedi Scout Trooper, and it’s one of my favorite characters. I’ve always loved the character. I’m not sure why; it’s always been one of my favorites, and so it was the first character that I decided to go for.
And tell me a little bit about your costume.
So the Scout Trooper, it consists of a flight suit that has knee-high boots, knee plates, forearm braces, bicep braces, shoulder pads, a chest plate with a back plate that has a backpack on it, a cummerbund in the middle with a belt, waist pouches, and then a cloth codpiece so I can have considerable more flexibility than most of the other troopers.
And it’s nice you can raise the helmet.
Yes. And I have a visor helmet, so I can actually raise the helmet versus most of these guys have to take the whole helmet off in order to breathe.
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Aviation Students, Joseph Hibbert and Trevor Denker
UNO aviation students: Joseph Hibbert and Trevor Denker
Tell me why you were interested in the program. Why Omaha? Why aviation?
Trevor Denker: I’ve always known from a young age that I wanted to be a pilot. I think I’ve modeled off of my grandpa. He was an airline pilot for a while, so I looked up to him. Being from Nebraska, really close to Omaha, it just seemed like it was a good fit financially, being close to home. Everything just kind of seemed to line up and worked for me. I’m going into my second year in the program. I’m really liking that. I’m having a lot of fun, meeting a lot of friends. I’m just getting closer every day to my end goal of being an airline pilot and stuff.
Joseph Hibbert: So my dad was…he started getting some flight training and took me on a flight and that really sparked my interest in aviation. I started looking at careers that I could do and decided to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force … so joined UNO to do the aviation major there. Saw that there was flight team that I could do, it sounded very fun, joined it. I’ll be going into my freshman year, so meeting a bunch of new people, great people. Having a lot of fun. Really excited.
Thank you. Anything you want to say or add about the program?
Trevor Denker: It’s a lot of fun. I recommend getting involved whenever you can, whether it’s flight team or just going out to like an athletic game or something. Be involved. Having fun, enjoy. Enjoy the journey along the way of becoming whatever you want to do, with whatever you want to be as a pilot.
Do either of you have your PPL [Private Pilots License]?
Trevor Denker: I do. I have my instrument rated private pilot.
Thank you. Thank you both.
Trevor Denker and Joseph Hibbert: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Major Tommy Reynolds
Major Tommy Reynolds
OmahaNebraska.com here with..
… Tommy Reynolds. I’m a major in the US Air Force and right now I’m an instructor pilot at Euro NATO joint jet pilot training and Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, and I am an instructor specifically in the program called “Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals,” which is kind of a graduate-level pilot training program where we take freshly minted winged aviators that just completed the undergraduate pilot training program and we shift their mindsets from basic airmanship to using their airplane as a weapon. That’s the long and short of what we do.
How did you come to join?
Joining the Air Force… I won’t say it was preordained, but I come from a heritage of military aviators through my father and his father. My dad joked a long time ago that we were descended from flying dinosaurs. It turns out that we think dinosaurs now have feathers, so you know that kind of makes sense. But I was taken to air shows like this one when I was young, and…enthralled by the speed and the agility and the power of the aircraft. And, you know, when you see something extraordinary like that at a young age, it imprints pretty hard. So I knew for me early on that that was a calling… that I wanted to fly that type of airplane. To fly that type of airplane, the commitment was to serve, because nobody else really has airplanes like this to do what they’re doing here at these air shows and demonstrations. So it was a natural selection for me to go and try and commission into the Air Force to fly these airplanes.
Please tell me a little bit about the track.
There’s art and science to all of it. The science is in the engineering and the capabilities of the platform. You know, the speed and the G forces and the thrust and the drag, all those forces combined. The art is really understanding how you as a pilot interface into the machine and how far you can take your body, how far you can take the airplane so it maximizes performance. The craft that I have right now is building upon a career of flying combat aircraft and bringing that knowledge and more importantly the experience—the wisdom, if you will—back to young pilots who have no idea what’s in front of them. They might have the knowledge, they might have the capabilities, but they don’t yet have the wisdom because they haven’t gone through the experience. So it’s my job and my fellow instructors’ job to take our experience from the combat air forces and bring that as early as possible into the minds of these young pilots. The sooner you can introduce that mindset and the methodologies and the experience into those young pilots, the better off they will be when it’s time for them to face the same challenges.
That’s wonderful. Sounds like good advice for everybody, too.
I think so.
Any advice for somebody wanting to join?
If you want to join as a military aviator, there are some hard, set requirements. One of those, which is arguably the most challenging, is you have to have a bachelor’s degree to be a military officer. And only officers in the Air Force fly. They’re only pilots, right? They will only be pilots. So you have to have a four-year… you have to have a bachelor’s degree. So that’s really the hard and fast rule. You can speak to a recruiter. They’re all over the country. They have a great option—a pathway, if you will—to aviation through the University of Nebraska at Omaha right now. And in fact, their tent is that red one over there, if you haven’t visited them yet, but they have an aviation institute and it will take a civilian who has graduated high school and wants to be a professional aviator, and it will earn them a four-year bachelor’s degree at the end of the program, but they will also earn all of the credentials and licensing that they need to either go commercial, private, or be in a position to commission into the military through something like an officer training school, which bypasses a service academy, or a reserve officer training for ROTC path. So there are lots of different ways to get to being eligible for pilot training. So I would speak with a recruiter, seek out an aviation institute like the Aviation Institute at UNO. There are others around the country that follow a similar model, but there are many pathways to it. But I would say just reach out to a recruiter—find a recruiting office, tell them what you want to do, and they can start steering you towards the right agencies to get you what you need.
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with 1st Sgt. Jason Schiermeyer
Army National Guard tent with First Sergeant Jason Schiermeyer on right
Please tell me what you do and how you got here.
So, currently a part of the 72nd Civil Support team, we’re a HAZMAT unit that assists local first responders in all sorts of responses ranging from chemical, biological, radiological, and even some explosive stuff, some precursors for that, just to help them contain the situation, identify what’s there, assist them in any follow-on actions to get rid of it. We don’t ever take over a scene; we just assist them.
We want to make sure that the National Guard plays a pivotal role with the local first responders using some of the equipment that we have that they might not be able to afford or have access to. We have a wide range of very expensive, very dependable devices to be able to help them do that quickly for public safety and make sure that the public can return to an area or feel safe in an area that we’re working in.
What’s some of the special gear that they might need to borrow?
Some of the special gear that we have…so it starts with our being able to protect our skin and our lungs down range, so we typically go down in some sort of hazmat suit that will help block elements of harm, whether that’s chemical or biological, from being able to affect us physiologically. And when we do that, we’re going to be limited on air, so we have to have some sort of breathing apparatus to be able to maintain that breathing while we’re down range, trying to figure out what’s going on. And then when we’re down there, we carry a multitude of different devices to be able to see if there’s something there or not there, or if it is there, what it is. So we usually take down the technology from every section that we have to at least see if there’s a presence there. So whether it’s chemical, like a chemical detector, a biological detector, or a radiological detector, even like pH paper like little paper stuff, just to see if there’s something there. So that’s our first thing is just, Is there something there? Is there something not there? And then if there is, then we have lots of other equipment that we can bring and help us identify it. Basically, we make the area as safe as possible for the public, really.
Thank you. Please tell us about the National Guard.
So, I’ve been in the National Guard for I believe around 30 years. I started with the Army Reserves and then went over to the National Guard about 10 years later. So I’ve had the opportunity to be able to go across several different units. Started out as a ground surveillance reconnaissance doing ManTech radar systems, remote battlefield sensory systems. Then I was a military policeman for a long time, and then chemical, then back to military police and back to chemical.So, what I saw over those 30 years is I’ve seen a lot of different range of civilian soldiers come through. A lot of them joined for tuition assistance, schooling, and stuff like that, to be able to better themselves and not have that debt when they get out of school. Some of them just love the patriotism of wanting to serve. That’s what I did, and there’s obviously benefits that come with that.There’s also…you saw an uptick after 9/11. Anytime something bad happens to this country, we have a lot of people that want to help defend our homeland, so you’ll see an uptick in the people just showing that patriotism.But the Guard offers another family away from your family as well. I mean, I think you when you depend on somebody as close…in either the situation like we have, whether it’s a chemical environment or somebody going overseas, you have to depend on that person to for your livelihood and your safety. So, you draw really tight bonds. And once you’re in the Guard, a lot of people tend to stay in the Guard because of that—because that might not be something they get from their normal family, unfortunately. But yeah, there’s tons of opportunities in the Guard.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of time away from your normal life. You can still have a whole other life, a civilian career, school on top of it. So, don’t think that just because you go to the Guard, that means you need to stop everything else. It just adds another element to your life that really makes you a better person I think in a lot of ways—professionally, disciplinary-wise, and stuff like that.
Thank you. And why Army?
My brother’s Navy. My sister was Army. The job opportunity that I had in the Army was what I wanted to do for me, personally. I think there’s great stuff out there for anybody that has the propensity to serve. It doesn’t matter what branch you go into, whether it’s Army, Navy, Air Force Branch, Air Force Coast Guard, you should find pride in what you’re serving for. And if it’s got a job that you like, that you can love and continue, go for it.
So, obviously, we want people to come to the Army because we think we have the coolest stuff. We have the biggest staff, but we actually have more airframes than the Air Force, believe it or not. Both my kids are in the Guard. My daughter, she does logistics. She’s kind of full-time in the state, temporary full-time in the state doing that. My son is full-time temporary; he does funeral honors, so honoring our past fallen members and stuff like that. But he also works on Black Hawks and does the aviation stuff as well. So there’s just a lot of different things you can do. And then, if it’s not for you, you can find something else. But with the Army being the largest element, there’s a ton of options to be able to find stuff that you love.
