Otoe, NE

Place: Otoe, NE
Weather: Partly Cloudy, 70/86F
Route: From Beatrice 61 miles NE US-136 E and NE-50 N.

Population: 175 (2017)
Genealogy: Three of the next four days will be spent in places related to my family - places that I have visited often over my life.  Each has some interesting stories associated with them. The first place is Otoe, Nebraska - a small town east of Lincoln and south of Omaha. My paternal grandmother Margaret was born in Otoe in 1928. Both of her grandfathers were born near Hannover, Germany - but she was actually the 3rd generation to be born in America through each of her grandmothers.
Otoe was originally named "Berlin", however there was a strong anti-German sentiment in the area during WWI. There were even a series of fires in downtown in 1918 blamed on outsiders. The townspeople decided that changing the name of the town might help it not be such a lightening rod and the name was changed to Otoe (same as the county) in October 1918, just a month before the end of WWI.
The February after the name change my grandmother Margaret's parents Henry and Anna were married.  Henry's job was something relatively new - he was a mechanic.  One story about him, may be apocryphal, but is still worth telling.  In the 1920's the postal service started using airplanes to deliver the mail.  The pilots used highways for navigation - for the Kansas City to Omaha route highway 50 was used, which passed just a few miles from Otoe.
One day an airmail pilot on this route was having some trouble with his plane and had to land on highway 50. Since Henry was one of the few mechanics in the area - he worked on the plane and the nice young man stayed at their house.  Less than a year later the young man, Charles Lindbergh, became one of the most famous people in the world, when he successfully flew from New York to Paris.
My grandmother was only a few months old when Henry died. He was 29-years old and died of a simple infection, that if it would have happened a decade later could have been cured by penicillin. When he died, my great-grandmother Anna had four children to care for.  All four of her children ended up being incredible people.  All the descendants of those four children still get together for reunions - in fact we had one planned for this 4th of July.  There is a picture of me with Anna just two months after I was born - she passed away at the age of 80 later that year.

Images:

Henry and his family (he is top row second from the left) in 1913.

Great grandma Siemers and me in May 1977.