LINCOLN, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) — John Maisch, an Oklahoma attorney who became a key figure in the closing of the notorious beer stores in the Nebraska border village of Whiteclay, died unexpectedly Thursday. He was 51.
Funeral services were pending Friday in Edmond, Oklahoma.
Maisch, a former state liquor law prosecutor and a native of the Hastings area, produced a documentary, “Sober Indian/Dangerous Indian,” in 2013.
Skid Row of the Plains
The film, and dozens of screenings done across the country by Maisch and fellow activist Frank LaMere, put a spotlight on the misery caused by the beer sales at Whiteclay, where up to 4 million cans of beer were sold in a year.
Almost all of those sales were to the residents of the adjacent Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol possession is banned, but alcoholism and related problems, including fetal alcohol syndrome in infants, are rampant.
Whiteclay was known as the “Skid Row of the Plains” because of the vagrants who drank and urinated openly on its dusty streets.
‘A man of courage’
“John was a man of endless courage, energy and optimism,” said Dennis Carlson, a Lincoln attorney who joined in the fight to close and transform Whiteclay. “He was a visionary who could see things as they should be rather than what they were at the moment.”
“He was a real hero to my dad,” said Jennifer LaMere, the oldest daughter of Frank LaMere, who died in 2019.
Jennifer LaMere, who lives in Oklahoma City, said she appreciated that Maisch called on her for advice about what to do next in Whiteclay. She and Carlson both said that while Frank LaMere provided the inspiration for changing Whiteclay, Maisch was the tactician, who could figure out what issues to highlight and what authorities to engage.
Maisch, who taught legal studies at the University of Central Oklahoma, continued to work to reform Whiteclay into a “place of healing” after the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission voted in 2017 to close the liquor stores. The issue cited by the commission was a lack of law enforcement in the unincorporated village, an issue Maisch had spotlighted.
Sold land for housing, health programs
Maisch used his own money to purchase the former Lakota Hope Ministry site in Whiteclay and adjacent property in an effort to spur redevelopment in the village. In January, he sold 48 acres to a tribal entity, the Thunder Valley Development Corporation, to use for housing and health programs.
Maisch said he got involved in Whiteclay after reading about the alcohol-related problems it caused and because of his experience in dealing with liquor law enforcement. “Finding the Courage to Enter the Moral Conflict,” was the title of a talk he gave in 2015 about the village.
“I think it was just a situation where he saw a wrong and needed to do something,” Carlson said.
Survivors include his wife, Julia, and a son, Jacoby.
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