{"id":34327,"date":"2023-05-12T14:12:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T20:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=34327"},"modified":"2023-05-12T14:12:01","modified_gmt":"2023-05-12T20:12:01","slug":"dover-finds-adventure-in-the-everyday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=34327","title":{"rendered":"Dover finds adventure in the everyday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. Robert Dover (right) and long-time friend Mark Dahlheim take a break while hiking in Montana’s Glacier National Park<\/em><\/p>\n

Even the peeling paint in Sen. Robert Dover\u2019s temporary 12th floor Capitol office can\u2019t dim his enthusiasm for his \u201cdream job\u201d as a state senator. With its arched windows and Tuscan yellow walls, the space could, with a bit of effort, evoke a charming ambience, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll you need is a nice little Brie or Camembert \u2026 a little romantic accordion music and it could feel like you\u2019re in Europe,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

Dover would know. He and wife Ann spent more than a month traveling through Europe and Egypt in the early 1990s for their honeymoon. Dover seized on the trip as an opportunity to provide his new wife \u2014 who had never been on an airplane before \u2014 with a whirlwind, romantic experience of a lifetime.<\/p>\n

That willingness to charge headlong into adventure began early.<\/p>\n

As a first-year, pre-med student at the University of Nebraska, Dover\u2019s life took an unexpected turn after a confrontation with his father, who believed his son should be taking business classes instead. The conversation ended when Dover\u2019s father reminded him who was footing the bill for college.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I took my tv, my stereo, my clothes and my car \u2014 because that\u2019s all you own as a college student \u2014 and I drove to Montana,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

Dover found work as a roughneck on an oil rig and spent three years making friends with coworkers from all around the country and hiking in the mountains on his days off. He enjoyed it so much that he considered moving to Abu Dhabi to continue in the oil fields there, but the pull of home was stronger.<\/p>\n

After coming back to Nebraska, Dover studied business and Spanish at Wayne State College \u2014 spending some time honing his language skills in Valencia, Spain \u2014 before once again choosing home and family. The relationship with his father mended, Dover agreed to forgo his plan to attend law school in California to stay in Norfolk and work in the family business.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that I could find adventure anywhere,\u201d Dover said. And he has.<\/p>\n

He refers to his kitchen as \u201cthe best restaurant in Norfolk,\u201d where he prepares everything from paella and hand rolled dolmades with lemon and dill sauce to spaetzle and risotto. He even recently filmed a \u201chow to\u201d video for fellow senators on the best way to prepare a rack of lamb.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s honestly hard to go out to dinner because I find myself thinking, \u2018I could make this dish better,\u2019\u201d Dover laughed.<\/p>\n

He and Ann raised four children, two of whom now live on quarter sections of land 10 miles south of Norfolk that have been in the family since it was homesteaded back in the 1880s, and Dover has had a successful career in real estate. He also has provided many years of community service through fundraising and volunteerism in the arts, economic development and scouting.<\/p>\n

Whether sharing his culinary skills, spending countless hours poring over binders of budget information as a member of the Appropriations Committee, or sharing his sense of adventure with family and friends, Dover says his goal always is to be helpful.<\/p>\n

\u201cHelping is what I do. I don\u2019t know any other way to be,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m always going to try and get people to talk to each other and see each other\u2019s point of view \u2014 that\u2019s how the world changes for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even the peeling paint in Sen. Robert Dover\u2019s temporary 12th floor Capitol office can\u2019t dim his enthusiasm for his \u201cdream job\u201d as a state senator. With its arched windows and Tuscan yellow walls, the space could, with a bit of effort, evoke a charming ambience, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34317,"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":[277],"class_list":["post-34327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-robert-dover"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Dover_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34327","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=34327"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34330,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34327\/revisions\/34330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}