Midtown street to be ceremonially named Benschoter Avenue

The City of Omaha is renaming South 32nd Avenue between Frances and Martha Streets “Benschoter Avenue” in honor of Reba Benschoter, PhD, and her husband, Leon “Benny” Benschoter.

Dr. Benschoter, who died Jan. 1, 2023, was a famed UNMC faculty member whose groundbreaking work made the medical center the birthplace of distance learning and telemedicine. While these modalities now are an everyday part of education and clinical care, Dr. Benschoter and her UNMC team were the first to put them into practice, in 1964.

Benny Benschoter helped establish Omaha’s first public television station. He later founded Creighton’s biomedical communications department and became vice president for health sciences at the university.

An unveiling ceremony for the street sign is set for Sunday, Sept. 29, at 10:45 a.m., at the corner of South 32nd Avenue and Frances Streets.

At UNMC, Dr. Benschoter was a driving force in the establishment of rural health care workforce pathways in Nebraska and led the then-School of Allied Health Professions from 1985-95.

But her national legacy is in the use of technology to reach across distances to deliver both education and clinical care. Dr. Benschoter came to UNMC in 1957 as an audiovisual specialist in the college of medicine’s Nebraska Psychiatric Institute. She later was named director of institue’s communications division. She led the landmark project that pioneered telemedicine in the United States. (Dr. Benschoter always was sure to credit Cecil Wittson, MD, and engineer Van Johnson.)

See more about the Benschoters.

The corner of South 32^nd Avenue and Frances Streets is the site of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, where the Benschoters were active parishioners.