On the first day of his retirement in early March, Allen Beermann ate his blueberries, drank his pomegranate juice and headed for the office.
Though he’s no longer on anyone’s payroll, Beermann still has work to do, sorting through the memorabilia of a lifetime of public service and gracious hosting.
There is a money clip from Ronald Reagan, engraved with the Presidential seal. And a pocket watch from “Bush Number One,†also with a Presidential seal. Open it, and it plays “Hail to the Chief.â€
A large globe inlaid with gemstones, including blue lapis for the oceans, was a gift from the president of the Republic of China, which is still Nebraska’s sixth-largest trading partner, Beermann says.
Around the Haymarket office are hundreds of gifts Beermann has received during his 30 years with the Secretary of State office and his 25 years as head of the Nebraska Press Association.
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Each item has its own story.
There is Beermann shaking hands with Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll, at a concert in Omaha. Presley also played in Lincoln, where he did some business with the Secretary of State. Elvis and his people were very good business people who made sure that everyone was paid and tipped before they left town, says Beermann. They also selected a charity in every concert community and checked with the Secretary of State’s office to make sure the selected charity was in good standing with the state.
“That’s how I got involved. We helped them select a charity,†says Beermann,
There is a pen from Pope John Paul with a seal of the pope. Along with the pen, Beermann and his wife Linda got a private tour of the Sistine Chapel, an hour alone there. A friend, famous tenor Ian DeNolfo, sang the Lord’s Prayer to the couple, Beermann recalls.
Humorous moments
There have been funny moments over the years. A Chinese businessman, John Lin, who helped with trade missions and recently helped with the UNL women’s volleyball team trip, stayed at the governor’s mansion with Gov. Dave Heineman and First Lady Sally Gannon. It was Sept. 11, 2011, with all the heightened security. Lin made a phone call from his room, trying to reach his wife. He dialed the 9 for an outside line, then 011 for a foreign country. But he forgot to dial the zero. Within minutes the governor’s house was surrounded by police, fire trucks and ambulances.
Beermann is a country boy, raised on a farm in Dakota County, who went to a country school.
“However, my school was not a one-room school. It had two rooms,†and was called Brushy Bend School because it sat in the brush on a bend in the road.
Beermann is the son of immigrants, both from Germany, though his mother came from the Russian zone. They were first-generation Americans who studied English at night as new immigrants and wanted to make sure their four children would go to college.
During his senior year at Creighton Law School, Beermann came to Lincoln to do the paperwork required to become a notary. Secretary of State Frank Marsh offered to give him a ride back to Creighton, and on the way suggested he might want to apply for an administrative assistant position after he passed his bar exam that summer. Beermann did, was hired, and after working in the Secretary of State’s office for several years, he was elected Secretary of State, an office he held for 24 years through six elections from 1971-1995.
“And that’s how it happened,†he says of his good luck and hard work. “Things like that can only happen in America,†says Beermann, whose parents were able to attend his first inauguration and were overwhelmed – his mom started crying – that the son of an immigrant could be a practicing attorney and a public official.
Proposing to marry Linda
Beermann also asked Linda, former Lincoln television weather reporter, to marry him at that first inauguration, handing her the ring just as they were to be introduced for the grand march.
The couple had an Edwardian-style wedding in Nebraska City. In his office are pictures of the bride and the groom, Allen in a top hat and walking stick that belonged to Linda’s grandfather. There is also a replica of the carriage the couple rode in, “last used by President Grover Cleveland.â€
Beermann’s foreign trips began with people-to-people missions, where ordinary citizens traveled and stayed in the homes of people in other countries. Later, he was Secretary of State just as Nebraska began doing trade missions, and he helped set up dozens of those early trips.
He was an experienced traveler and knew protocol, appropriate seating arrangements and cultural customs. He knew that you open gifts in private, not in the public ceremony, in many Asian countries. And you give a little bow when you hand over your business card, not stuff it in your pocket. He remembers one trade mission exhibit where a local company was about to give out green ball caps, unaware that green was “kind of a scarlet letter color†to the Chinese at the time.
Beermann, who’s been to 50 countries, has represented the state so often in public and private life that he’s often called Nebraska’s unofficial ambassador. And at 80, he has been elevated from state fossil to the state’s official “oldest living relic†by a Nebraska History certificate. In fact, when historic dates are mentioned at Lincoln Rotary Club #14, where Beermann attends faithfully each week, someone will shout, “Beermann was there.â€
Consummate public servant
Beermann describes the three spheres of his life: his professional life as Secretary of State and head of the state Press Association; his military career, where he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Judge Advocate General Corps, and his charitable work. He is proud of all three.
“He was just a consummate public servant. He really was. His heart was always in the right place,†says lobbyist Walt Radcliffe, who worked with Beermann on projects over the decades. .
“Whoever he worked for, whether the people of the estate or the Press Association or a philanthropic group, they always got twice their money's worth. He always follows through, works hard.â€
And Beermann says a lifetime of working with people of many faiths, many cultures, many philosophies has taught him the importance of being civil. “Everyone has flaws. No one is perfect. But that is no reason not to respect others.â€
He says he ran for election in an era when local and state politicians respected each other and ran on their own merits, not on denigrating the other candidate. In fact, he and his initial Secretary of State opponent, Stan Matzke, were friends, and traveled together to at least one debate, Beermann says.
Beermann worked with six governors in the Secretary of State’s office – three Democrats, three Republicans – and got along with them all.
But there have been a few controversial moments over the years. Beermann was the lone vote on the three-member Board of Pardons to reduce the death penalty to a life sentence for Harold Lamont Otey.
Beermann says he was not opposed to the death penalty, and he believed Otey was guilty, but he felt someone needed to make a statement about this particular case. Otey’s attorney had never tried a criminal case, let alone prepare for a death penalty case. And he had little time to prepare for the case.
“I felt someone needed to make a statement that something was not right about the case,†Beermann says. Otey was executed in 1994, the first Nebraska execution since Charles Starkweather in 1959.
And on his first day of gainful unemployment, the man who, with his wife, has emceed three governor's inaugurations and hosted 27 voyages aboard the USS Nebraska, a nuclear submarine, begins to pack up those memories, one box of commemorative pens at a time.
The solution might just be dynamite, Beermann says.
He is joking, of course.