Bob Boozer. Bob Gibson. Gale and Roger Seyers. All Nebraska sports legends. But what you may not know is that they grew up just blocks from each other in North Omaha.
“24th and Glory is a story about triumph and tragedy,” said the author, Dirk Chatelain.
The award-winning journalist, Dirk Chatelain, gave a lecture at Notre Dame Sisters Housing last Thursday. He spoke about the parallels between the city’s most prominent athletes and the North Omaha neighborhood from which they came from.
“It turned into story that on the surface is about sports, but it’s really about a neighborhood,” said Chatelain.
Published in the summer of 2019, “24th and Glory” represents over 10 years of work Chatelain committed to learning about the culture of segregation and racial tensions in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
Chatelain said the challenge was understanding everything to the point where he could share it. Marlin Briscoe, Bob Boozer and Bob Gibson are just a few of the interviews Chatelain conducted to gather more information for the story.
“I did interviews with about probably 60 to 70 interviews and in addition to that kind of a compliment to it I did a lot of archival research,” said Chatelain.
While these sports legends legacies are remembered, Chatelain said he thinks the city of Omaha can do better in acknowledging the injustice the North Omaha community faces all those years ago.
“I don’t think the people will have appreciated to this point what the neighborhoods role in their success,” said Chatelain.
Attendees of the lecture said they learned about how much the North Omaha community influenced these athletes’ lives.
“For me to learn about a town and its events when I was actually here and didn’t know any of it or learn it,” said Sister Cynthia Hruby of the Notre Dame Sisters.
“I never had the idea that they came from the same neighborhood,” said Notre Dame Sisters resident, Mike Driscoll.
Chatelain said he hopes his book is the first step towards acknowledging the tragedies North Omaha faced, while showing how these heroes faced discrimination and even forgave their wrongdoers.
