Success Story
R.J. Bichlmeier
Professor
The career of R.J. Bichlmeier has come full circle. After spending 17 years working outside of Nebraska, 50-year-old Bichlmeier is home, teaching at Northeast Community College in Norfolk, his alma mater.
But nostalgic memories are not what drew Bichlmeier and his wife, Lynne, back to Nebraska. Although the Bichlmeiers, who were high school sweethearts at Norfolk High School, grew up, married and had two daughters in Norfolk, longing for the good old days is not what brought them back. It was family.
“Both my wife’s and my family are getting older and we wanted to be by them,” Bichlmeier said. “We just felt the urge to come back home.” Bichlmeier’s roots in the Norfolk area date to the 1880s, when his grandparents moved from Ohio and Wisconsin. His wife also has had family in the area since the late 19th century.
Bichlmeier graduated from Norfolk High in 1973 before going to Northeast Community College, where he earned a degree in electronics in 1975. After that, he worked at various electronic and manufacturing jobs before settling down at Goodyear in 1978. Five years later, he was offered a promotion that required him to move to Ohio. The idea of leaving Norfolk was foreign to Bichlmeier, who never before had seriously considered leaving.
“I didn’t having the burning desire to get out of this place,” Bichlmeier said. “I didn’t see a reason to leave.” But the promotion at Goodyear was too tempting for Bichlmeier to decline. “I never thought I’d ever leave because I lived with a small view of the world, but this opportunity came along and I couldn’t pass it up,” he said.
So, Bichlmeier, his wife and their two daughters, Amanda and Jessica, moved to St. Mary’s, Ohio, in 1983. Bichlmeier spent six years working as an electrical foreman there before opportunity knocked once again. This time, the promotion would take him to Wisconsin. Bichlmeier accepted the job and became a senior staff engineer at Goodyear in Sun Prairie, Wis. The family spent six years there before moving to Newberne, Tenn., where Bichlmeier worked as an engineering manager for Dana Corp.
Bichlmeier is candid about the negatives of moving so often, such as uprooting his daughters from school, leaving good friends behind and separating his daughters from their grandparents. But despite these drawbacks, Bichlmeier said, he has welcomed the learning experiences the moves provided. In the end, Bichlmeier said, it was family that drew them back to Nebraska. They felt the time was right; their daughters had graduated from college, and Bichlmeier was tired of having to travel to see family.
“Every vacation (when we were not in Nebraska), we knew where we were going,” Bichlmeier said. Five years ago, the Bichlmeiers moved to Neligh, where Lynne had the opportunity to manage the Thriftway store there. Bichlemeier’s father died a couple of years later.
“I don’t think I could have survived being away. He died of cancer,” Bichlmeier said. “It was tough enough being here.” For Bichlmeier, home is where the family is.
“This is home; that’s why we came back,” he said. “We know it’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty nice place to live.”
- Story Courtesy of the Norfolk Daily News
