{"id":37301,"date":"2025-02-08T00:07:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T06:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=37301"},"modified":"2025-02-08T00:07:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T06:07:32","slug":"clouse-carves-out-a-space-at-the-capitol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=37301","title":{"rendered":"Clouse carves out a space at the Capitol"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: An avid golfer, Sen. Stan Clouse said he has played more than 100 Nebraska courses.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sen. Stan Clouse has no shortage of pictures of his impressive wood carvings to display. What started out as a way to cope with the loss of his young son has turned into a lifelong hobby and creative outlet for the Kearney senator.<\/p>\n

Clouse\u2019s only child, Jeremiah, died at age 10 from a brain stem tumor that he\u2019d been diagnosed with only two years before. A fellow member of the freshman senator\u2019s church suggested wood carving as a way to occupy his hands and mind in his grief.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was therapy for me,\u201d Clouse said. \u201cIt still is. The loss that I\u2019ve experienced gives me the perspective that I need to just keep going. I\u2019m a person of faith, so I believe that there\u2019s a plan, even if I don\u2019t know what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clouse believes that plan also brought LaVon to a seat at his table at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes banquet after the death of his first wife. LaVon, whom he married in 2023, was herself a widow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt helps that we knew each other\u2019s spouses before they died,\u201d Clouse said. \u201cIt makes it easier to accept them as still part of both of our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wood carvings that also have become such a part of his life \u2014 some done with mallets, others thin reliefs or full-size busts \u2014 often are donated as fundraising auction items to the many nonprofits and community organizations that Clouse has been involved in over the years in District 37.<\/p>\n

In fact, Clouse said one of the biggest challenges now that he\u2019s in Lincoln serving as a state senator is missing out on the happenings back home in Kearney, where he served on the city council and was mayor for 18 years.<\/p>\n

Clouse grew up in the small town of Brady. He graduated in 1975 with a class of 18 \u2014 one of the biggest in the school\u2019s history \u2014 and got a job at the Nebraska Public Power District just a year later as an ironworker helping build the Gerald Gentleman Station coal plant in Sutherland.<\/p>\n

That affinity for small-town life never left Clouse, and getting to visit many of Nebraska\u2019s small towns is one of the side benefits of his other passion: golf.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal is to play every golf course in Nebraska,\u201d Clouse laughed, something he may achieve now that he\u2019s retired from a 40-year career at NPPD.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love playing small-town courses,\u201d Clouse said. \u201cI love traveling and seeing the state, stopping in coffee shops or wine shops while I\u2019m there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But golf will have to wait for a bit. For now, the senator said he looks forward to bringing his many years of municipal experience to the Capitol.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the issues I\u2019m encountering here are things I\u2019m familiar with, it\u2019s just a different approach,\u201d Clouse said. \u201cI\u2019m ready for the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Stan Clouse has no shortage of pictures of his impressive wood carvings to display. What started out as a way to cope with the loss of his young son has turned into a lifelong hobby and creative outlet for the Kearney senator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37305,"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":[308],"class_list":["post-37301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-stan-clouse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Clouse_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37301","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=37301"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37342,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37301\/revisions\/37342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}