Raymond A. McConnell Jr.

(1915-1979) lived in Lincoln. Journalist, editor, served in editorial capacity at newspapers in Nebraska and California from 1937 to 1979, was directly responsible with his news staff at the Nebraska State Journal when it earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for meritorious public service for establishing the "Nebraska All-Star Primary," a presidential preference primary election in 1948, which spotlighted, through a bi-partisan committee, issues early in the presidential campaign; named one of America's ten outstanding young men of 1950 by United States Junior Chamber of Commerce, recipient of Distinguished Service Award in 1973 for being instrumental in 1953 in initiation by the U.S. Administration and Congress of the national "pilot watershed" program which resulted in passage of the National Watershed Development Act a year later. Consult Lincoln Evening Journal, May 5, 1949, p. 1 and October 21, 1955, p. 5 and UNL Nebraska Alumnus, February 1951, p. 4 and obituaries in Lincoln Journal, October 23, 1979, pp. 4, 11 and New York Times, October 25, 1979, p. D-27 and Who Was Who in America, Vol 7 (1981) 386.

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