By general consensus, Denny Berens was just about the nicest guy in the world.
He knew everybody. Listened to their stories and situations. Often gathered people together to talk about common interests or challenges.
Then things happened.
“I would call him the catalyst,” Gail Brand said. “He was just so dynamic.”
Berens died Dec. 30 at the age of 80.
A native of Charter Oak, Iowa, Denny came to Seward to study education at Concordia College. He met Charlyne Radke there and they married before he graduated in 1967. He earned a Master’s degree between the births of their daughters, Rebecca and Rachel.
Charlyne said Becky and Rachel were occasionally embarrassed growing up, because their father was “the friendliest man in Nebraska” but came to realize what a positive trait it was.
Denny taught elementary school in Sioux City, Iowa, and Seward for a time before he was drawn into the newspaper business in Seward with Charlyne.
“Denny described himself as a farm boy by birth, a teacher by training, a newspaper publisher by accident and a public servant by choice,” she said.
“It’s true that we sort of stumbled into the newspaper business, but it was Denny’s commitment to the community that made him an effective newspaper guy, I think. I was the editor and the ‘journalist,’ but he very quickly caught on to the ways the paper could be a positive force in the county, bringing people together to share concerns and experiences and goals.”
Denny and Charlyne Berens were co-publishers of the Seward County Independent from 1976 to 1990, and the paper was often cited with Nebraska Press Association honors as well as an Aksarben Community Service Award during their time here.
Denny became a part of the business community, working with the chamber and taking a role in the 1980s downtown redevelopment efforts.
Clark Kolterman, who had a downtown business in those years, said Denny was involved in economic development and the promotion of Seward.
“If there was an industry that came to town he would be one of the ones front and center with the bankers and developers,” Kolterman said.
Denny and Charlyne were key players in getting the Seward County Courthouse Historic District into the National Register of Historic Places. But Kolterman said Denny loved the history and would come up with unique puzzles or new postcards promoting the historic district in the Independent’s print shop.
He shared that interest in history with his friend and hunting partner Jay Cattle, Kolterman said.
Denny’s facilitation skills were well known and popular, Kolterman said, because he always looked at the big picture.
If he took a pen to a big white pad at the front of a room with people talking, groups got organized.
That is how Brand got to know his work when she joined the Seward County Extension Service staff in the 1990s. At one point, a committee was formed to address issues around a few of the area nonprofit organizations, out of which came a new nonprofit called Seward County Bridges.
“He led the group,” Brand said.
The nonprofit was established to facilitate other small groups in Seward County that needed grant funding but didn’t have grant writers or the capacity to accept and manage grants – bridging the gap between where the groups were and where they were trying to go.
Terri Siebert served as the group’s first coordinator and grant writer, and recalls helping a fledgling mentorship program in the county called Adventures in Mentoring (AIM) that later joined Tom Osborne’s TeamMates organization.
“His ideas were so on target,” Siebert said of Denny. “He knew how to connect with people.”
Bridges helped get the county’s youth diversion program going and the Seward Youth Center that was built on Fourth Street, and helped with economic development all over the county, Brand said.
“His idea was that communities had to get together and by supporting each other, they could do more,” Brand said. “He was a pretty amazing man.”
Later, Bridges came under the Seward County Chamber and Development Partnership umbrella, where it continues as a 501(c)3. Now SCCDP staff manage its IRS filings and gift receipting. Bridges has been involved with bringing millions of dollars into Seward County through many nonprofit efforts.
Charlyne said Denny’s commitment to community and bringing people together also made him effective in his work as director of the Nebraska Office of Rural Health.
Denny led the rural health office from 1990 until retiring in 2012, taking on state and national roles related to rural health and community development. His recognition included a national community health leadership award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the opportunity to serve on that foundation’s award committee from 1998 to 2014.
In Seward, he was recognized with Concordia University Nebraska’s 2010 Distinguished Service to Church, Community and Country Award.
Jan Matzke and her husband, Chuck, share two grandchildren with Denny and Charlyne and became good friends through family gatherings and shared commutes to see the grandkids.
Daughter Rebecca Berens Matzke and her husband, Bill are parents to Katherine and William Matzke and daughter Rachel Berens-VanHeest and her husband, Michael, are parents to Lex Berens-VanHeest.
“I know that he really, really, really enjoyed his grandchildren a lot,” Jan Matzke said.
Retirement brought time for travel, Denny’s work in the garden and meeting new people.
But long after Denny moved to Lincoln, he remained connected to Seward County, said SCCDP CEO and President Jonathan Jank.
“Even though he was not physically here he just had a pulse on the community,” Jank said.
Jank got to know Denny via phone calls and emails since joining the SCCDP in 2008.
Berens would periodically reach out to talk about what was happening here.
“He was always such an encourager to me,” Jank said. “What a gift he was.”
Berens sent him an email around Thanksgiving saying he was thankful for Jank’s work in Seward.
“Continue to focus on entrepreneurial training and visioning,” Denny wrote.“ ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ A good biblical quote.”
