CHUCK HAGEL
Chuck Hagel has had plenty of titles preceding his name: Army sergeant; CEO; U.S. senator; secretary of defense. And, as many of his fellow Mavericks proudly point out, UNO graduate. A 1971 UNO graduate, Hagel came to UNO after serving in Vietnam, where he received two Purple Hearts, among other honors. He started classes in 1969 and graduated two years later with a BGS as a history major. “I’m very fond of that institution for obvious reasons,” Hagel once told the Omaha World-Herald. Soon thereafter he began his political career on Nebraska Congressman John McCollister’s staff. He later started Vanguard Cellular, a mobile phone service carrier, but later got back into politics. Nebraskans in 1996 voted him to the U.S. Senate. He was re-elected in 2002, retiring in 2008. Some expected him to run for the presidency in 2008, but he never entered the race (he announced such on UNO’s campus at the Thompson Alumni Center). Hagel’s post-senate affairs included time as a UNO distinguished professor. In 2013 he was sworn in as the country’s 24th secretary of defense, holding that office until 2015. He delivered his first public speech as U.S. Secretary of Defense on the UNO campus.