OMAHA — Bob Kerrey likes to tell a story about the bridge that spans the Missouri River between Omaha and Council Bluffs, Iowa — and was named in his honor.
The former U.S. senator and Nebraska governor said he was walking alone across the bridge when he passed a man biking in the opposite direction.
“I heard him hit the brakes, and the tires squealed,” Kerrey recalled Saturday. “I turned back and he said to me, ‘I never voted for you ever. I didn’t like anything you did. I was opposed to everything you did, including this bridge, but I was wrong. This is great.’”
In a homecoming of sorts, the now 80-year-old Kerrey paid a visit to the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge on Saturday morning.
A group of former staff members organized a bridge walk with Kerrey as part of a larger reunion this weekend, where hundreds of his former staffers, colleagues and campaign supporters reunited.
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The idea for the reunion came back when Kerrey and some of his former staffers attended a funeral of a Navy SEAL with whom Kerrey had served. Some of the people on that trip came up with the idea to bring together everyone involved across Kerrey’s political career, he said.
“It’s a good reunion, it really is,” Kerrey said between catching up with familiar faces. “It’s a happy time.”
Kerrey, who celebrated his 80th birthday in August, said he is doing well despite a recent health scare. He had been diagnosed with cancer but was able to undergo successful treatment, he said.
“When you get another lease on life, it feels pretty good,” he said.
Kerrey grew up in Lincoln and, after graduating in 1965 from the University of Nebraska with a pharmacy degree, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1966. He then volunteered to train with the Navy SEALs.
Kerrey went on to serve in Vietnam in 1969 and he lost his right leg below the knee during a mission. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest honor for war valor.
Kerrey did not enter politics until 1982, when he was elected Nebraska governor in his first run for political office. Kerrey served from 1983 to 1987 and surprised supporters when he decided against seeking a second term. But after the death of Sen. Ed Zorinsky in early 1987, Kerrey ran for the U.S. Senate and won in 1988. He served from 1989 to 2001.
Kerrey, a Democrat, also ran unsuccessfully for his party’s presidential nomination in 1992. And he also fell short in a 2012 bid to take back his former Senate seat. Other than that race, Kerrey has largely stayed out of politics over the past two decades.
Before the walk Saturday morning, Kerrey spoke to the crowd about how the pedestrian bridge started. At first, it was just an idea he had that he wasn’t sure was even feasible.
As senator, Kerrey had pulled together government officials on both sides of the river to discuss how to get people “back to the river,” which at that time was dominated by a lead refining plant and other industrial sites, said Bob Holmstedt, who served as Kerrey’s state director.
At one of those planning meetings, the group was looking at the maps of the existing and developing trails in Omaha and Council Bluffs. Kerrey then shared the idea of connecting the trails on both sides of the river, Holmstedt said.
“We need a bridge,” he remembered Kerrey saying. “I’ll go get the money to build a bridge.”
Kerrey did end up securing $19 million in federal funding, much of the money needed for the bridge.
Once the proposed design that stands today was shown to the public, it changed some of the skeptics’ minds, said Larry Foster, the current president of Omaha’s Back to The River Foundation.
“They saw it and it sold itself,” Foster said Saturday.
Kerrey was no longer in Nebraska by the time the pedestrian bridge was actually built, but he was responsible for the congressional earmark that accounted for the vast majority of its funding, so a naming committee decided it should be named after him.
“It was rightfully named after the right guy who got the money for us,” former Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey said.
Now, 15 years after it opened, the bridge has become a fixture of Omaha’s landscape and a connector between Omaha and Council Bluffs. In 2022, the bridge was used over 1 million times, Foster said.
“It’s a special place,” Foster said.