{"id":37236,"date":"2025-01-31T17:16:10","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T23:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=37236"},"modified":"2025-01-31T17:16:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T23:16:10","slug":"rountree-begins-new-chapter-of-public-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=37236","title":{"rendered":"Rountree begins new chapter of public service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: On a 2024 trip to Greece to celebrate daughter Rachel’s elopement ceremony, Sen. Victor Rountree and his wife Cheryl, along with son Isaac and daughter Naomi, visit the village of Kastraki.<\/em><\/p>\n

Whether describing the tobacco fields he worked as a young man in the South or being struck by the beauty of his future wife after catching a glimpse of her across a JCPenney department store, Bellevue Sen. Victor Rountree tells a great story.<\/p>\n

When asked about that meeting in Georgia with Cheryl, his wife of more than 40 years, his response was a hearty laugh and a question. \u201cHow much time do you have?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rountree was born in his aunt\u2019s house in Wilson, North Carolina \u2014 his mother assisted by a midwife \u2014 and grew up in nearby Elm City. The fourth child of nine siblings, he spent his summers and weekends working in the fields and helping with his father\u2019s construction business, laying water and sewer lines and building manholes by hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how we paid for our school clothes and earned our spending money,\u201d he said. \u201cHard work was all we knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

That work ethic served Rountree well as he developed an interest in politics through various youth programs. In 1977, as a high school senior participating in the Presidential Classroom for Young Americans in Washington, DC, he met legendary US Rep. Shirley Chisholm \u2014 the first Black woman elected to Congress and first Black candidate to vie for the presidential nomination of a major political party.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy luck, she was in her office that day,\u201d Rountree said. \u201cI went in and she took the time to speak with me. I was 17 and she was so inspiring and encouraging. She told me we need good people in government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The encounter stayed with Rountree, though it took nearly 50 years for those youthful ambitions to be realized.<\/p>\n

After joining the US Air Force, Rountree enjoyed postings all over the world, including two tours in England and a stint at Sembach Air Base in Germany right as the Berlin Wall fell.<\/p>\n

But it was a fateful posting at Grand Forks AFB that was unexpectedly pivotal in the trajectory of Rountree\u2019s life. Despite the shock of 40 below zero temps and snow to their knees the day of their arrival, over time the family put down roots in middle America and stayed in North Dakota for nine years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found a church and a community there that provided the stability we needed,\u201d Rountree said. \u201cIt would have been a difficult time otherwise. The church became our anchor and our rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Always a devout person, the freshman senator became an ordained pastor after his retirement from military life and founded a ministry in Bellevue in 2012. No matter his role, the District 3 senator has always found a way to serve.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are my business,\u201d Rountree said. \u201cAs a member of the Air Force, as a pastor, as a fellow human being and now as a state senator \u2014 I\u2019m here to do the work of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if you see him in the Capitol hallways, you should ask to hear the rest of the story of how he met his wife. It\u2019s a good one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether describing the tobacco fields he worked as a young man in the South or being struck by the beauty of his future wife after catching a glimpse of her across a JCPenney department store, Bellevue Sen. Victor Rountree tells a great story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37219,"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":[299],"class_list":["post-37236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-victor-rountree"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Rountree_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37236","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=37236"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37238,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37236\/revisions\/37238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}