{"id":22206,"date":"2017-05-11T15:58:14","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T21:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=22206"},"modified":"2017-05-16T15:33:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T21:33:01","slug":"clements-banks-on-new-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=22206","title":{"rendered":"Clements banks on new career"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. Robert Clements\u00a0takes the field at Memorial Stadium as members of the UNL Band Alumni Association prepare to practice with the Cornhusker Marching Band on a game day morning in 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

To say that newly-appointed Sen. Robert Clements has deep roots in his legislative district would be an understatement. His great-great-grandfather John came to the area in 1868 to homestead as an immigrant from England. He went on to be one of the four men who incorporated the village of Elmwood in 1886.<\/p>\n

The soft-spoken senator also has deep roots in the banking industry. His grandfather Guy began working in the American Exchange Bank in Elmwood in 1907, when it was owned by author Bess Streeter Aldrich\u2019s family. Members of the Clements family have been involved there ever since, including the senator\u2019s father Dwight, twin brother Richard, son Andrew and nephew Aaron.<\/p>\n

Clements didn\u2019t get his start at American Exchange, however. After earning his degree in mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he moved to Kansas City.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to find out if I had enough talent to get a job on my own, and not just based on my last name,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After a successful few years, he decided to move back home. He and wife Peggy \u2013 high school sweethearts who\u2019ve now been married for 44 years \u2013 had two young children and wanted to raise them in a small town. So Clements joined the family business, eventually becoming the bank\u2019s executive vice president.<\/p>\n

The couple now has five children and 11 grandchildren, and seemingly all that is important to Clements can be traced back to family. In the fifth grade his uncle taught him to play taps on the bugle. He\u2019s been playing it with the American Legion on Memorial Day ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see it as my way of honoring those who served,\u201d he said, noting that he missed the Vietnam draft by three months. \u201cI still appreciate those who went in my place.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his love of the trumpet goes back even further, to a much less somber root. The theme song to his favorite childhood television show \u2013 \u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d \u2013 featured the instrument prominently.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all goes back to the \u201cWilliam Tell Overture\u201d \u2013 the truth comes out,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

As a trumpeter during his undergraduate years, Clements marched in three Orange Bowl parades and became a charter member of the UNL Alumni Band Association. The alumni band plays once a year at Memorial Stadium, which Clements said continues to be thrilling.<\/p>\n

Clements\u2019 introduction to life as a senator, however, was less so. He was appointed in February to fill a seat left vacant by the resignation of Sen. Bill Kintner, and had to hit the ground running since the legislative session already had begun.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first week, I thought to myself, if someone else wants this job, they can have it,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

As a member of the Appropriations Committee, Clements was faced with an \u201coverwhelming\u201d amount of information and the grave responsibility of balancing the state\u2019s budget. It was daunting at first, he said, but the willingness of fellow senators to help was a pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI truly feel like I was meant to be here, given the way it all worked out,\u201d Clements said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To say that newly-appointed Sen. Robert Clements has deep roots in his legislative district would be an understatement. His great-great-grandfather John came to the area in 1868 to homestead as an immigrant from England. He went on to be one of the four men who incorporated the village of Elmwood in 1886.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[240],"class_list":["post-22206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-robert-clements"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/MeetClements_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22206"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22214,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22206\/revisions\/22214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}