Jasper L. McBrien
Jasper L. McBrien
“The education of youth was his passion.”
Biography
Jasper “Joe” L. McBrien was born in Missouri in 1867 and came to Nebraska as a young child in a covered wagon with his parents. This afforded him the opportunity to attend school for nine months, as opposed to the three-month school term available in the Ozarks. He met and married his wife, Eva Forbes, while serving as county superintendent of schools in two Nebraska cities before being name state superintendent of public instruction for Nebraska. From 1913 to 1921 he served as a specialist in rural education for the Federal Office of Education in Washington, D. C. He then headed the Rural Education Department of Indiana State University. From 1921-1933, Mr. McBrien resided in Oklahoma and later served the federal government in making a survey of Sioux Indian Reservations of North and South Dakota to study school needs. He returned to the State of Nebraska’s Education Department and died in Lincoln in 1935.
Fun fact
Jasper L. McBrien was the author of America First, a patriotic reader, as well as the author of a patriotic drama which was presented in Washington, D.C. and on several university campuses.
Oklahoma connections
McBrien came to Oklahoma in 1921 to serve as Professor of Rural Education and Director of Community Activities at Central State Teachers College (now the University of Central Oklahoma) in Edmond, Oklahoma.