Brotherly Bonds in Afghanistan
Longtime connections support a UNO center
By Robyn Murray
It began with an introduction.
Cory Heins was visiting Nebraska to meet with Susan Norby, a former development officer at the University of Nebraska Foundation. Norby had guided Cory’s father and uncle through years of giving to their alma maters — the colleges of dentistry and engineering on the UNL campuses. Heins was touring the colleges and taking in a Husker football game.
Norby had another idea. She nudged Cory’s focus north — to Omaha and to UNO.
“I came out there, and she said ‘I’ve got someone real interesting I want to introduce you to,’” Heins recalls. Norby had arranged a meeting with Tom Gouttierre, then dean of international studies and head of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at UNO.
The center had national and international gravitas, but Heins knew nothing about it. Even though, as Norby knew, Heins had already been to Afghanistan as a relief worker.
That was sure to change if Norby could get him to meet the inspirational Gouttierre.
Gouttierre, who retired in 2015, built UNO’s Center for Afghanistan Studies from scratch, turning it into one of the United State’s most important cultural links to the war-ravaged country. He established a rich partnership with Kabul University, trained teachers and journalists, and helped create jobs in the region. He even befriended Hamid Karzai, who was president of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Karzai would call for Gouttierre’s counsel numerous times and visited Nebraska in 2005, when UNO presented him with an honorary doctorate. Gouttierre also was one of the first experts to warn the U.S of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden.
All this began when Gouttierre was in the Peace Corps and helped turn a ragtag team of young Afghans into the country’s first national basketball team. He coached them to their first international win against China in 1973. (For a great read, Google Sports Illustrated’s “The Wizard of Kabul” story.)
“He had just unbelievable knowledge,” Heins says. “I was blown over by his resume.”
Heins had his own Afghanistan experience to tout. In 2001, he volunteered with World Concern, a nonprofit headquartered just 15 minutes from his home in Seattle, Washington. They were coordinating a relief project with three other organizations, and they needed a representative to monitor the supply chain.
“I was really green at that time,” he says. “But they knew I knew how to travel.” The advice from the relief director: “Keep your knees bent and be flexible,” Heins says. “I think that was code for ‘We don’t know, but you’ll figure it out. Good luck.’”
Heins went to northern Afghanistan, where he spent a cold winter living alone in a small compound. “I lived up in the mountains with the Afghans just on my own,” Heins says. “We were so removed. There was no electricity. There were no computers, no email . . . I had no idea what was going on in the outside world.”
Heins monitored the relief project — keeping tabs on more than a thousand trucks coming in from neighboring Tajikistan and helping during distribution days, when hundreds of Afghans would flock to the small town to receive vital supplies.
It was a successful operation, and Heins went back to Afghanistan to continue relief work in 2002 and 2004. After meeting Gouttierre, Heins was invited to travel again to Afghanistan in 2010, when he accompanied Gouttierre as his guest, meeting Afghan dignitaries and getting to watch Gouttierre on “Good Morning Afghanistan,” a local news program.
Heins was impressed with the respect Gouttierre garnered and the UNO center’s deep ties to the country. It remains America’s primary cultural and scholarly link with the nation of Afghanistan.
“They have so much credibility,” Heins says, “so many years of experience. It’s so well run, so efficiently run.”
Now that Gouttierre has retired, the program continues under the leadership of Sher Jan Ahmadzai, who comes to UNO from Karzai’s Office of the President, where he managed Karzai’s day-to-day schedule and fostered relationships with leaders across the country.
Heins has invested significantly in UNO’s Center for Afghanistan Studies with 10 gifts to date. He plans to continue his support.
His hopes for it are simple — he just wants it to keep going.
“They have been able to despite really tough periods,” he says. “That’s one thing I like about them: They’ll be around.”
Family Tradition — Giving
Cory Heins is not a UNO graduate. So why does he give to the university’s Center for Afghanistan Studies?
The center’s work was an inspiration to do so. And the center’s former director, Tom Gouttierre, made a compelling case for Heins to support its work.
More than anything else, though, giving is simply a family tradition. And the Heins family’s support of the University of Nebraska is nothing if not longstanding.
Like, 70 consecutive years longstanding.
Cory’s father, Roscoe, and mother, Helen, met on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln campus in 1948. Roscoe was a dental college student; Helen a musician who planned to teach piano.
They would graduate, marry, have children and together run a successful business.
And they would give.
Both knew the value of a dollar, coming of age during the Great Depression. Helen was raised in Presho, South Dakota, a small farming community. Her parents were Syrian Lebanese — her father immigrated in 1907 — and they owned a small grocery store in Presho.
Roscoe grew up in Ruskin, Nebraska, where from age 3 he lived with an older sister following the death of their mother. He enrolled at Nebraska in 1934 and worked his way through college, often having to stop taking courses so he could take on whatever job he could find. He left school again when World War II broke out. Roscoe served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, flying 32 B-24 bombing missions over Europe.
When the war ended, he returned to UNL. It took Roscoe 14 years to finish his degree, but he finally graduated from the College of Dentistry in 1949, the same year Helen earned her UNL diploma. They married a few months later.
The couple moved north to Poulsbo, Washington, a small town on the edge of Liberty Bay, off Puget Sound. Roscoe started a dental practice there, Helen working as receptionist, bookkeeper and dental assistant.
Roscoe starting giving back to the university the first year after he graduated. His first donation was in 1950, and he never missed a year (OK, he did miss one year but gave double the next to make up for it).
He couldn’t afford much at first, but gave what he could.
“He didn’t have any money,” Cory says. “They didn’t have a car for the first four years they were there. But he had a real connection. He was very, very grateful to the university.”
Roscoe attributed much of his success to the start he was afforded at the University of Nebraska. Once, while looking around at his comfortable home in Poulsbo, Roscoe told his son: “Everything that I have here, look at this house, look at this great little office I had, I owe all of this to the university,” Cory recalls of his father who passed away in 2009.
“I am so grateful to the university because without them, I would not have this.”
Eventually, the giving became more substantial, helping build a research wing at UNMC’s College of Dentistry through the Roscoe & Helen Heins Fund for Excellence in Dental Education.
Cory has followed their lead, contributing to UNO’s Center for
Afghanistan Studies.
Year after year, of course — nine consecutive years so far.