{"id":4271,"date":"2011-04-08T14:37:09","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T20:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=4271"},"modified":"2017-04-06T13:30:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T19:30:08","slug":"a-student-of-law-harr-turns-to-lawmaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=4271","title":{"rendered":"A student of law, Harr turns to lawmaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. Burke Harr with his wife, Jennifer, and daughters, Augusta and Rita.<\/em><\/p>\n

After receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, Sen. Burke Harr had a decision to make: he could enter law school directly or take a year off to obtain some real world experience before beginning his legal studies. Harr chose the latter.<\/p>\n

The Omaha native set course for California\u2019s Silicon Valley to participate in a program sponsored by Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Harr worked at the Peninsula Family Resource Center, which mostly served single mothers receiving assistance from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gave me a chance to get out and do something of substance,\u201d Harr said. \u201cI had been pretty lucky in my life up to then and I wanted to have a chance to give back a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

The center provided clients with rent assistance, a full food pantry and clothes for job interviews, Harr said, with the goal of helping them become self-sufficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to teach how to budget, the importance of delayed gratification, how to open a checking account and how to use mass transit to get to work,\u201d Harr said.<\/p>\n

Harr said the program demonstrated to him poverty\u2019s prevalence in even the richest parts of the world.<\/p>\n

Harr enrolled in the Notre Dame Law School the following year. He moved back after graduating to take a clerkship with the Nebraska Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when I first got the bug of the Legislature,\u201d he said, adding that working in the same building as legislative employees showed him their love for the institution.<\/p>\n

His subsequent jobs included prosecuting for the Douglas County Attorney\u2019s Office, practicing real estate law and starting his own business consulting firm with a friend.<\/p>\n

The senator also is an avid outdoorsman, although his hunting activities have been curbed by the birth of his two young daughters, Rita and Augusta.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, my hobby is my family,\u201d Harr said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, Sen. Burke Harr had a decision to make: he could enter law school directly or take a year off to obtain some real world experience before beginning his legal studies. Harr chose the latter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21462,"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":true,"_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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[167,18],"tags":[108],"class_list":["post-4271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-senator-features","tag-sen-burke-harr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MeetHarr_blog2017.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4271","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=4271"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21702,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4271\/revisions\/21702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}