During his engagement in dairy development work, Otto Liebers encouraged his sons to interest themselves in 4-H dairy work. These enterprising young men sold Guernsey milk to neighbors eventually evolving into the Skyline Dairy operation. Otto served dairy organizations and served on important committees where his influence was felt throughout the United States. Otto Liebers was elected as state senator for the 18th legislative district in 1951.
No one could have a greater and truer friend than Otto H. Liebers. In making this personal appraisal, I do it realizing that scores of others have the same feeling for him. It is, however, my great privilege to try to put into words the thoughts that all of us have.
Otto Liebers is a man who has a most unusual concern for the future and a firm and optimistic belief in it. He has the unusual ability to put aside the past and concentrate his energies on the things that he can do something about. He has a deep and sincere concern for people and their welfare; a belief in excellence in all things, whether they be his business, government, schools, his church, his family, or the community. These are some of the qualities of the man we honor tonight -- a man whose career spans the years from the pioneer days in Nebraska to the Space Age.
Mr. Liebers was born of pioneer parents in Kearney County near Minden on June 25, 1887, one of a family of nine children. He attended a country school, the high school at Minden, the Baptist College at Grand Island, the School of Agriculture at Lincoln and finally, the University of Nebraska College of Agriculture from which he graduated, at the head of his class, in 1913.
Following graduation, Mr. Liebers joined a new endeavor that was to become the greatest experiment in adult education in the world, the Agricultural Extension Service. He became the first County Agricultural Agent in the State of Nebraska and was assigned to Gage County. There were no prototypes and no examples to follow. The men on the land were suspicious of these “book farmers”, and the County Agent was not always received cordially. Mr. Liebers went about his job, however, with enthusiasm and perseverance and, in cooperation with the farmers, laid the foundation for a progressive agricultural community. Somehow it seems most appropriate that Nebraska’s first county agent should be honored by the Nebraska Hall of Agricultural Achievement in the new Nebraska Center for Continuing Education -- a structure and program he helped to inspire and for which recently he helped to raise the funds.
Following his tour of duty in Gage County, Mr. Liebers became the Agricultural and Immigration Agent for the Burlington Railroad, Lines West, with headquarters in Denver. In 1919, he returned to Nebraska to become the organizer and manager of the Nebraska Dairy Development Society. In this constructive work he was associated with such noted Nebraskans as Dan Stephens of Fremont and Carl Gray, one of the Union Pacific Railroad’s great presidents, in bringing to Nebraska purebred dairy cattle for distribution to farmers. Some of the outstanding dairy herds in the state can be traced to this original stock.
After ten years with the dairy development program, Mr. Liebers began a 15-year career as appraiser for the Federal Land Bank. In this work he assisted the Federal Land Bank in establishing sound real estate loan policies which were of benefit to bank and borrower.
In order for us to pick up another thread in his career, it is necessary that we backtrack a few years to an event that I know Mr. Liebers considers the most important one of his life. In September, 1913, he and Miss Ethel L. Kindig of Beatrice were married. Their three children were Harry (who died in young manhood), Lawrence, who now shares a major responsibility in the family business, and Ruth, now Mrs. Robert Ellis of Lincoln.
When Mr. Liebers was engaged in dairy development work, the family lived on a small acreage east of Lincoln. It was here that the Liebers encouraged their children to become active in 4-H dairy work. As their herds expanded, they began selling the rich Guernsey milk to friends and neighbors. More and more people asked for the Liebers product. From this modest beginning have grown the famous Skyline Dairy enterprises.
From the beginning, Mr. Liebers has believed that quality is not only a word but a way of life. The dairy has been operated on the highest standards, and its products reflect this business integrity. It is a solid foundation upon which a substantial business has been built.
Mr. Liebers is known and honored by dairymen throughout the country, and especially so if they happen to be admirers of Guernsey cattle or Golden Guernsey milk. He is an honorary director of the Nebraska State Guernsey Breeders Association and a former president of the Nebraska State Dairymen’s Association Interbreed Council. He has served for many years as a director of the American Guernsey Cattle Club. In this latter capacity he has assisted in the development of modern marketing facilities and programs for Guernsey cattle breeders and has helped to popularize the Guernsey breed throughout the United States.
Mr. Liebers’ interests have not all been concerned with business. For all the years he has had a keen interest in athletics, especially Cornhusker football. From 1907, through 1960 attended all home football games, which must be some kind of a record. He frequently entertains members of the coaching staff with one of the famous Liebers’ dinners with choice of flavors for dessert. (You end up trying them all.) One of these dinners, however, was not at the Libers’ home but at a well-known public eating establishment in Lincoln. On this occasion I was included along with the coaches. When the waitress took our orders, all of the coaches and George Round ordered coffee until I reminded them of our host’s business interest, whereupon we all changed our orders to milk except Mr. Liebers who insisted upon coffee. The joke was on us, however, as I am sure you have guessed already. The containers did not say “Skyline”; they carried the Roberts label.
Mr. Liebers has continued to be a pioneer throughout all of his career -- not only as our first county agent, as the introducer of purebred dairy cattle into the state, as the founder of a family business, and the designer of new techniques of land appraisal, but also more recently in the field of soil and water conservation and in the field of government.
Out of his efforts in the field of soil and water conservation has grown a movement of national proportions which has brought a new concept into being in our struggle to use soil and water correctly. This is the “small watershed” program which aims to hold precipitation on the land as it falls and, when this fails, to retard the water with upstream dams to prevent destructive floods downstream.
First with Mr. Raymond A. McConnell, Jr. and more recently with such association as former Governor Robert Crosby and Byron Dunn, he has labored mightily on behalf of the Salt-Wahoo Watershed Association to secure state and national legislation to put this program into action and to secure the complete cooperation of communities and farmers within the watershed.
One measure of the effectiveness of this “common sense” approach to a basic problem of our state is found in the fact that small watershed groups are springing up in other parts of our state and in many other states across the nation. Much remains to be done, but much is already under way. We in Nebraska who owe so much to our agricultural wealth can take pride in Mr. Liebers’ leadership in this important field.
In the Nebraska Unicameral, where he served as Senator from the 18th Legislative District from 1952 to 1960, Mr. Liebers has sponsored legislation designed to improve government, education at all levels, agriculture, and agriculturally-related industries. As chairman of the Legislative Council Committee on Taxation, he devoted much time and energy toward making our assessment and taxation system more efficient and effective. As chairman of the Budget Committee in his last term, he brought about great improvements in the budget-making process. His honesty and sincerity in state governmental affairs have won for him an enviable respect among his colleagues. Governors of both parties have sought his advice and counsel.
Just a month ago he was named chairman of the Board of Directors of the newly formed Nebraska Research Institute. On his shoulders once again is placed a pioneering responsibility.
For his interest in government, agriculture, and education, he has been recognized in many ways. When the Ford Foundation established a subsidiary corporation call Resources for the Future, Inc., to make exhaustive studies of America’s natural resources, it is more than accidental that Otto Liebers was asked to serve on its Board of Directors. He has received the Distinguished Service Award of the University of Nebraska (and may I say no one ever deserved this award more richly!). He has been honored by the Kiwanis Club as a recipient of its Distinguished Service Award and only last week by the Nebraska Associated Industries.
His greatest honor, however, is the esteem in which he is held by Nebraskans everywhere. He has not only talked but practiced a successful agriculture. A high sense of integrity has helped to build for him a successful business. A devoted interest in our basic resources has improved our state for both present and future generations. An unwavering determination to make state government responsive to the needs of its people has identified him as a sound public servant. And all these things he has done with understanding, good humor, and an abiding faith in the future of Nebraska.
He must be described as a happy and successful man whose pace has never slowed, whose zest for living is unusually contagious, and whose youthful, optimistic view of the future puts him in a special class of his own.
