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- A long time journalist, Betty (Heidbreder) Dunn, born and reared on a farm east of York,
Nebraska says she “thinks Nebraska when she sits down to start a book even though
she has lived in the big state of Texas since the early 1970s.”
- Dunn began her writing career in her hometown daily news office at York. From there
she ventured to Denver where she worked for the Rocky Mountain Contractor, a
construction magazine that also issued daily reports. She returned to her home state a
year later as a reporter for the Scottsbluff Star-Herald before becoming the state editor
for the North Platte Telegraph. This position gave her the opportunity to travel the
surrounding central Nebraska region digging up color and feature stories to help
promote the newspaper’s circulation department. Doing this she was exposed and
experienced the inner workings of people personalities and situations that have
enhanced her writing career. A few years later she became a staff writer for the Lincoln
Journal, now known as the Lincoln Journal Star. Following her marriage to an Air Force
lst Lieutenant she met at Lincoln’s Pioneer Park golf course, she was a writer on the
Columbus, Ohio Citizen and since, while rearing three sons, she has continued to free
lance for national magazines and newspapers.
- The first edition of Ju-Ju Swallowed a Penny was published in 1994. A memoir of her
childhood on a Depression Era farm in York County, Nebraska, the book has earned the
status of a socio-economic study of that era. The name Ju-Ju was what Dunn called her
brother because, as a small child, she could not say Junior. (Her childhood home east
of York a few miles is now where a large ethanol plant has marked the landscape for
several years.) The 2nd edition of Ju-Ju-Swallowed a Penny was published in 2006 and
contains added chapters and photos. The 1st edition of Ju-Ju Swallowed a Penny was
recorded for the Nebraska Library Commission’s Talking Book and Braille Service and
made available to those individuals visually or physically impaired. This led to a
telephone call from one of these individuals, an ‘unknown’ person in one of Dunn’s 1st
edition chapters. This phone call, along with demand for the book, led to publishing the
2nd edition. Nebraskans, familiar with the book, are asking for a 3rd edition. She says:
“Maybe!!”
- Dunn’s two novels both have Nebraska locales. In The Shadow of the Bluff is set in
western Nebraska along the historic Oregon Trail at Scottsbluff. It is a tough, vivid story
of the life of migrant workers from Mexico and the Texas Rio Grande Valley who
swarmed in and out of the area each spring and summer to work the sugar beet, potato
and bean fields. The time is about 1960. Many of the novel’s incidents have a similarity
to events she covered and wrote about as a news reporter at Scottsbluff.
- Her second novel, The Courthouse, is a story of the divisive issues among citizens of a
small eastern Nebraska town over the town’s historic courthouse. There is intrigue,
bribery and humor. The locale and some of the characters closely resemble her home
town.
- Dunn most recently published a biography of Jackie Pung, Women’s Golf Legend – an
early LPGA professional from Hawaii. She vividly portrays Pung’s extraordinary life.
The author, herself once a single digit amateur golf enthusiast, came to know Pung by
happenstance. She wrote a USGA Golf Journal profile of Pung that won the author a trip
to Hawaii where she spent several days with Pung, who was eager to have her story
told. Dunn had taken up golf while at Scottsbluff and through the years won many club
championships in Nebraska, Louisiana and Texas. She is a past New Orleans City
Champion.
- Dunn presently lives on a small Texas ranch with her now retired husband. She says
“she has returned to her early Nebraska farm roots and credits her writing to a high
school English teacher who was a tough task master.” She is now working on another
novel again with a Nebraska locale and continues to freelance articles. She also actively
raises purebred Beefmaster cattle. She has three sons and three grandchildren.
Website maintained by Betty Dunn - Last Update February 2012
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BETTY DUNN BOOKS