This week's top stories

Parking lot installed on Hordville site
Ten months after the old Hordville school building was demolished a construction company poured a 120-by-134 foot parking lot on the site last week, complete with handicap parking, striping, lighting, sidewalks and a zero-step entrance to the Hordville Event Center. 
The company is scheduled to finish all the concrete before December. Next on the agenda is to finish the new entrance and hallway, install a serve-over window in the bar area, and new service entrance to the south.
“To make this all happen we have received sizeable grant money from the Hamilton Community Foundation, but also another wonderful thing has taken place,” reported Rod Blase, a longtime Hordville resident and member of the village board.

Aurora scouts earn prestigious Eagle badges, together
Five Aurora teenagers received Boy Scouting’s highest honor together Saturday, earning their Eagle Scout badges as the final step in a journey all agree cemented lifelong friendships as well as lessons for life.
Mitchel Breuer, Aiden Feely, Jeremy Hunter and twin brothers Colin and Astin Kennedy were honored during a combined ceremony at the United Methodist Church, where they added their names to Aurora Troop 28’s long list of Eagle Scouts.
The five boys have known each other for years, though it was a trip to a national scouting jamboree in West Virginia back in 2017 that took their scouting, and friendship, to another level.

Wanek enjoying life as Nebraska FFA president 
Aurora graduate Ellie Wanek ended her senior year in a flash, complete with turning in her blue Aurora FFA jacket and presidential title for another one.
“It was literally like the scariest thing I think I’ve ever been through,” Wanek said, recalling the moments when she learned she’d been chosen as president of the Nebraska State FFA chapter. “I had gotten so close with so many of the girls throughout the interview process, so as they were announcing and their names were called I was getting so excited for all these girls. And then all of a sudden we got to the last name and I realized that my name hadn’t been called.” 
It took a second to register that this was the “make or break” moment for her. She had been so caught up in celebrating the success of her friends, she said, that she forgot to listen for her own name.

Come Home to Christmas
Downtown Aurora looked a bit like the set of a Hallmark movie Saturday as hundreds of people kicked off the holiday season with a day-long Come Home to Christmas celebration.
Julie Wasem, an Aurora Chamber of Commerce board member who helped lead the event’s planning committee, said the weather was perfect and the smiles were plentiful, creating a feel-good day for the community.
“I was thoroughly excited with the number of people who came from all over the place,” Wasem said. “The event brought people from New York, Chicago, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa and many, many from towns around Nebraska, so that was kind of fun. There were lots of people from all over, you know, visiting their parents, but we also had people who came to town especially for this.”

Oz’s last stand
The shock. Disbelief. Finality. A bit of frustration, too. 
All of those emotions hit Austin Allen at once. 
Nebraska quarterback Logan Smothers had just tossed the game-clinching interception with 43 seconds left. 
Another one-score defeat nearly impossible to comprehend. 
Allen looked on from where his route ended, near the Nebraska bench, hands on hips with a certain defeated look on his face. 
In eight previous losses, the former Husky looked forward in an effort to fix Nebraska’s woes. 
This time, however, it was all over. 
Black Friday was Allen’s final game in a Nebraska uniform. Two receptions for 55 yards for one of the Huskers’ most prolific tight ends in school history.
Surely one of the tallest.

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