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Todd Nelson, right, with Col. Barney Oldfield in his signature red attire. |
had Barney in our lives know that the arrival of his Christmas cards
could be counted on like fruitcake and mistletoe. Usually they were
the first cards of the season, since Barney always got them prepared
somewhere around August. He had to start early because he sent
hundreds–if not thousands–of them to his friends all over the world.
All of them were signed, most with personal notes, and they were often
filled with clippings of his latest accomplishments. Like a stamp
collector’s dream, the envelopes would always be covered in wildly
mismatched postage of all varieties — a P.R. trick Barney learned years
ago to make his mailings special. It just wasn’t Christmas without one
of his fat brightly checkered envelopes sticking out of our mailboxes.
But this year, we’ll have to do without. Barney died in April; he
would have been 94 this December 18th.
Barney was a legend in his own lifetime. He was, among other things, a
journalist, a press agent to Hollywood stars, a military Colonel, and
friend to presidents, kings, professional athletes and celebrities.
Although he lived and worked all over the world, settling in Beverly
Hills for the better part of the last thirty years, he never forgot his
roots in Nebraska and his scholarships and medical philanthropy total
millions of dollars. He was, without question, one of the most
interesting and influential characters to come out of Nebraska.
I’m not a P.R. man, so I won’t try to list all his
accomplishments — Barney did that himself better than anybody. But I am
a friend, for over 20 years, and he was my mentor and advisor in ways
I’ll never forget. He took me under his wing soon after I came to
California to work in the entertainment industry. Over time, he helped
me start a networking group of Nebraskans in the arts, which has now
grown to over 1500 people, THE NEBRASKA COAST CONNECTION. Our regular lunches at the Beverly Hilton and our phone conversations over the years gave me not only career focus,
but a deep respect for the spirit and style Barney brought to his life. He always had a wildly entertaining story of Lucille Ball or General
Eisenhower or George Foreman or his lifelong friendship with a certain
actor-turned-President, Ronald Reagan. Barney had a deft way of
spinning a tale, with a wink and a chuckle, so you weren’t always sure
of what was fact and what was fiction. But he made you believe that
even if it wasn’t 100 percent true, it should be.
He thrived on sharing the letters and photographs that would “prove”
his adventures and connections — all of us who were on Barney’s mailing
list have received reams of his xeroxed clippings, complete with typed
notes in all the margins, reflecting the latest mention of his good
deeds or honors. Barney’s condo in Lincoln is wallpapered floor to
ceiling with Oldfield memorabilia, and his archives at the Nebraska
Historical Society have even more.
In later years, I introduced Barney to the internet — no small feat for a
man who still cherished the old typewriter he carried while parachuting
behind enemy lines as head of the press corps in WWII. I had always
wanted to make a film about Barney, but couldn’t figure out how to tell
his story in less than miniseries length. A comprehensive Web site
proved more wieldy. With Barney’s help, my friends and I built a site
for him at www.oldfields.org, which has become a kind of online museum
of Oldfield stories, photos, writings and scholarship information. He
never quite got over how the internet made his work available day and
night to a worldwide audience — all without him having to type and copy
and send thick envelopes covered in stamps. He never grew tired of
adding to it, making it a site that has drawn national praise from
historians, educators and fellow philanthropists.
Barney loved hearing from schoolchildren who wrote book reports on him,
or from BBC journalists, or old army buddies, all of whom would find
him through his Web site. Even in the hospital, faced with a dire
prognosis last spring, he was cheerfully scheming how to improve his
site and keep it fresh long after he couldn’t manage it himself. “The
most wonderful invention in the history of the world,” he told me at
his bedside, making me promise to keep it going and keep his vision
alive.
I think it was this eye toward the future that was Barney’s real
philanthropic genius. He always named his scholarships and grants
after the people who meant the most to him, keeping their memories
going longer than any cold plaque or statue could do. There is the
scholarship named after the high school English teacher who encouraged
him to write, the scholarship in tribute to his old friend the
heavyweight champ George Foreman, the scholarships named to honor the
Nebraska soldiers killed at D-Day. A large medical research grant at
UNMC is named for Barney’s wife, Vada, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s.
Recipients of these awards — and the hundreds of others like them — don’t
just get a check. They also get the video or the book that Barney
produced about the lives of the people who inspired the award, and in
some cases they get to meet the inspirers or their descendents.
Barney’s unusual techniques are inspiring other philanthropic efforts
across the country, and his army is growing: the Oldfields Dollars For
Scholars Fund that Barney created has helped 50 chapters in towns
across Nebraska raise hundreds of thousands of dollars this year for
education. Barney wasn’t a religious man, but he always said this was
his vision of heaven — to keep doing good works from the Great Beyond.
For those of us around the world who miss Barney, we can take solace in
the knowledge that his life and works go on. If you don’t find a
holiday card from Barney in your mailbox this year, here’s an idea: go
to www.oldfields.org and look for our Christmas card from Barney
online. Check out his Web site and see it in the lives of the hundreds
of students and doctors and journalists and soldiers who have been
helped by Barney. He hasn’t missed a beat in his continuing efforts to
make the world a better place. From now on, he’ll just do it without
the stamps.
Todd Nelson is a filmmaker in Los Angeles, and the chairman/founder of
the Nebraska Coast Connection, an alliance of entertainment
professionals in Hollywood.