An Interview with 1987 alum JOHN A. MAISCH

Cornhusker Boys’ State

July 17, 2017

John A. Maisch was elected Nebraska Boys State Governor in 1987, representing Bunker Hill. He would represent Boys Nation later that summer. A Grand Island Senior High graduate, Maisch went on to earn a business degree from Midland University (Fremont, Nebraska) in 1992 and law degree from the University of Tulsa College of Law in 1995. Following a year in private practice, Maisch became an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Oklahoma in 1996. He returned to private practice in 2001, where he focused on commercial real estate transactions. In 2008, Maisch became the General Counsel to the Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Law Enforcement (ABLE) Commission, where his responsibilities included prosecuting liquor stores and bars that sold alcoholic beverages to minors. He served as the full-time ABLE Commission’s General Counsel until 2012, when he became an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma, a four year, public university with over 16,000 students in Edmond, Oklahoma.

Maisch has been a member of several civic organizations, including the Oklahoma City Downtown Lions Club, where he served as club president in 2000, and the Downtown Rotary Club. He helped draft consumer protection legislation requiring Oklahoma audiologists and hearing aid dealers to provide refunds to the hearing impaired in 2001, and legislation that reformed Oklahoma’s alcoholic beverage laws in 2015. Maisch’s most recent work involved directing and producing a documentary about Whiteclay, Nebraska, an unincorporated town of less than 12 people in northwestern Nebraska. Located 200 yards from the dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Whiteclay’s beer stores sold approximately 3.5 million cans of beer per year. The documentary, Sober Indian | Dangerous Indian, premiered at the REEL Recovery Film festival in San Francisco in 2014, and has been screened throughout the United States. The documentary was also screened at a film festival in Cape Town, South Africa.