John W. Breckenridge

John grew up on the high plains of northwestern Kansas working on farms with his parents Harold and Esther and 3 brothers, Donald, Leon, and David. He graduated from Woodston Rural High School in 1946. After graduation, he attended various colleges in Kansas as time and money allowed, and spent one year at York College in York, NE where he met his incredible wife, Opal Anderson, who passed away in 2010 after 59 years of marriage. He was one of the very earliest airmen in the nascent U.S. Air Force, entering basic training in 1950 at Shepherd Field in Texas. In 1952 he was assigned to the Special Weapons Support Wing at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as part of Operation Ivy and witnessed the test of the first thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb. Returning from overseas, John, was greeted by Opal and their new baby boy, Paul, and was assigned to the Air Force ROTC unit of Colorado State College of Education in Greeley, CO where he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree while still in the USAF. After his discharge, he remained in Greeley to obtain a Master of Arts degree, and welcome his only daughter, Joyce, into the world.

His early career in education included teaching, administration, and any thing else that was needed in a series of small schools back home on the high plains of Kansas. During this procession across the plains, his third and final child, Mark was born. In 1964 John accepted a position as Dean of Students at Hastings College in Nebraska and the family moved again. A homecoming of sorts as Hastings is only 60 miles from York, the town where John met Opal and Paul and Mark were born.

Recalling his USAF service, and the depredation suffered by the Marshallese during atomic testing, in 1968 John moved his family to Majuro, Marshall Islands. John served as Director of Secondary Education for the Marshall Islands district of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and Principal of the only High School in a country of 29 coral atolls with a land area of 70 square miles spread across 772,000 square miles of ocean.

1970 brought the family back to Nebraska and John continued his study towards a doctorate degree in education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As an adjunct to his academic study, he worked at the guidance counseling center in the Student Union, then joined the staff of the Counseling Center, eventually becoming Associate Director of the Counseling Center. Between the time required as Associate Director and the demands of raising a family, John was never able to complete his doctoral studies, but he served the students of UN-L well until his retirement 1996.

In 1998, John and Opal moved to Immanuel Village in Omaha, and John volunteered his time to organize and serve on the Residents Advisory Council for Immanuel Village. He was a founding member of the Affordable Housing Board of Immanuel Communities in Omaha, and after Opal’s passing in 2010, spent time during the summer months with a native Hopi tribal school in Arizona. A strong supporter of Nebraska Cornhusker athletics since his days as Tom Osborne’s classmate in 1970, a fitting final note is that on the day he died, November 8th, 2025, Nebraska’s football team, both men’s and women’s basketball teams, and the women’s volleyball team ALL WON. And the evening before, the wrestling team won. GO BIG RED.