{"id":61,"date":"2007-01-26T21:41:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-27T03:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/linux\/wordpress\/?p=61"},"modified":"2017-04-06T13:38:20","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T19:38:20","slug":"wightman-goes-the-distance-in-public-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"Wightman goes the distance in public service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. Wightman holds his two-year-old granddaughter, Margaret, on his first day in the Legislature.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sen. John Wightman tries to go on a walk outside everyday.<\/p>\n

Even in cold, winter months.<\/p>\n

He said he tries to walk at least two miles and sometimes as many as seven. It\u2019s a good chance to organize his thoughts, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you can see, it doesn\u2019t make me thin,\u201d Wightman said, with a laugh.
\nEven more than walking, Wightman enjoys playing with his granddaughters.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s my best recreational activity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Wightman has four granddaughters ranging in age from two to seven. A large, framed photo of them is the first thing he points out to visitors in his office.<\/p>\n

Wightman graduated from Kearney State College, now the University of Nebraska at Kearney, in 1959 and was a high school teacher for one year after that. He taught all high school subjects at a small school in Dannebrog before heading to law school.<\/p>\n

After graduating from the University of Nebraska College of Law in 1963, Wightman returned to his hometown of Lexington and began a general law practice, which today he runs with one of his sons, Jeff.<\/p>\n

Wightman and his wife, Janet, have three children, two of whom are lawyers and one who is a professor at a private college.<\/p>\n

In addition to his law practice, Wightman served on the Lexington City Council for 20 years and the county economic eevelopment board for 10 years.<\/p>\n

He said public service has always been an interest of his. Wightman\u2019s father served on the Overton school board and Wightman traces the beginning of his interest to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy interest then developed through school,\u201d he said. \u201cPublic policy affects everybody\u2019s life to a great extent. Creating efficiency where the public gets more for the money spent is something I\u2019m interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. John Wightman tries to go on a walk outside everyday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21410,"comment_status":"open","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":[221],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-senator-features","tag-sen-wightman-holds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MeetWightman_blog2017.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","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=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21724,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/21724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}