DANA ANNOUNCES NAME OF NEW ATHLETIC FACILITY AT DEDICATION, OCT. 11

Dana College will officially name and dedicate its new athletic facility, the Gardner-Hawks Center, at a special ceremony Oct. 11 at 9 a.m. The ceremony will also dedicate and officially name the Cooperman Atrium, the new entry hall and special events space for the facility. The event is part of Dana’s Homecoming festivities, but is also free and open to the public.

The Gardner-Hawks Center was completed in August, and has added 34,200 square feet to Dana’s existing athletic facility, Borup Coliseum. The center’s focal point is a new competition gym that seats 2,210 with an additional 814 overflow seats. The new gym is a state-of-the-art space with a sophisticated sound system, multiple ethernet connections for Internet use, a walking track and the ability to convert into three practice courts.

The Center includes much more, including the Cooperman Atrium, the main entry point for both the Gardner-Hawks Center and Borup Coliseum. It contains a new event admissions desk, concession stand, restrooms and the Legacy Wall, an artistic remembrance of the hundreds of people who gave to Dana’s Legacy Campaign to fund the facility.

The Gardner-Hawks Center has also added 15 offices, a laundry facility, a training room, a conference area, a multimedia classroom and storage rooms. During the construction process, the existing Borup Coliseum was renovated, updating and expanding locker rooms, offices and the wrestling practice room.

In all, the Garnder-Hawks Center construction and Borup Coliseum renovation cost $6 million. The center is named after the two families whose foundations provided the major gifts — the Dan and Jeanne Gardner family of Wakefield, Neb., and the Howard and Myrna Hawks family of Omaha. The Cooperman Atrium is named for Harold and Merriam Cooperman of Omaha, generous supporters of Dana College. A key challenge gift came from the Peter Kiewit Foundation of Omaha. The remaining funds came from hundreds of smaller individual gifts to the Legacy Campaign.

Dan and Jeanne Gardner, along with their family, started the Gardner Foundation in 1992. Dan, formerly president of the M.G. Waldbaum Company of Wakefield, Neb., passed away in 2001. He was one of the nation’s key leaders in the egg and poultry industry. Jeanne has been an active community leader and is currently a member of the Dana Board of Regents. The Gardner Foundation generously supports higher education in the state of Nebraska, notably at Dana and Wayne State College. The foundation’s board is comprised of Jeanne, her daughter, Leslie Bebee, and sons, David Gardner and Kirk Gardner.

Howard Hawks co-founded Tenaska, Inc., an international energy company headquartered in Omaha in 1987. Affiliates Tenaska Marketing Ventures and Tenaska Marketing Canada together rank among the Top 20 natural gas marketing companies in the United States. Tenaska Power Services, the company’s electric marketing affiliate, is the largest company of its kind in the Texas market. Hawks was elected in 2002 to the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. Myrna Hawks was a member of the Dana College Board of Regents from 1997 to 2000. After Myrna’s death in January 2001, Howard remarried, and his wife, Rhonda, joined him as head of the Hawks Foundation, which supports young people interested in attending faith-based colleges and universities, working as missionaries or becoming social workers.

Harold Cooperman opened his first grocery store in Omaha at 16th and Fort in 1938, the same year he married his late wife, Merriam. Upon returning from active service in World War II, Cooperman opened grocery stores in Ralston, Ashland and Creighton, Neb., and Pictstown, S.D. In 1980, he opened No Frills Supermarket, the first warehouse supermarket in the Omaha metropolitan area. The chain has expanded to include nine stores in southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa, including a store in Blair.

Dana College is a private, liberal arts institution that currently enrolls approximately 600 students. The campus is located on 150 acres overlooking the Missouri River Valley in Blair, Neb. Dana grants bachelor’s degrees in more than 35 liberal arts, business, education and pre-professional programs, with an emphasis on personalized teaching from experienced and dedicated faculty. Dana is a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and its athletic teams compete in the Great Plains Athletic Conference.

More information on Dana College can be found at www.dana.edu.

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For more information contact:

Sarah Cavanah
Communications Coordinator
Dana College
(402) 426-7216
scavanah@fs1.dana.edu