Charlie and Suzy Wright
Charlie Wright was born in 1932 and raised in Scottsbluff, where he graduated from high school in 1950. As a boy he climbed the CCC switchback trail to the top of Scotts Bluff, where he explored the area that Curly Hair, later known as the famous Oglala Lakota thunder dreamer, Crazy Horse, cried his vision quest.
From the top of the Bluff he could see Ft. Laramie to the west, Rebecca Winters Grave to the east, the North Platte River to the North and the Oregon Trail to the South. Not until after he retired in 1997 did Charlie learn that his home, as well as the entire town of Scottsbluff, was located on the north side of the North Platte River on land that was forcibly taken from the Sioux Indians by President Grant and the U. S. Army during the Great Sioux War.
A third-generation Nebraska lawyer, He earned his law degree at the University of Nebraska and spent two years in the Western Pacific aboard the USS LST-887, serving as a line officer in the U.S. Navy.
Charlie practiced law in Denver and Lincoln and enjoyed serving on the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and its Foundation, the National Reining Horse Association and the Nature Conservancy. Charlie’s grandfather, father and two uncles all practiced law in Nebraska, and his brother John serves as a judge on the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Suzy was born in 1933, raised in Omaha and graduated from the University of Nebraska. Charlie and Suzy were married in 1955. Suzy taught first grade at the Irving Child Center supporting them while Charlie completed law school.
In 2007 Charlie and Suzy created the Standing Bear Scholarship Fund with the Nebraska State Bar Foundation where they established its Endowment Management Committee to oversee the operation and investment of its nine permanent endowment funds.
Charlie is currently completing work on his manuscript entitled Law at Little Big Horn, which will be published by the Texas Tech University Press in the spring of 2015.
