Val Lane, (O'Brien Straatmann Redinger Funeral Home, Courtesy)
KEARNEY — Val Lane, a highly regarded engineer who was inducted into the Nebraska Broadcaster’s Association Hall of Fame, has died at the age of 68 in Kearney.
Lane died at CHI Good Samaritan Hospital on Friday, July 18. Funeral services have been set for Wednesday, July 23 at 10:30 a.m. at St. James Catholic Church with Father Josh Brown officiating, internment will follow at Kearney Cemetery.
Lane was born on June 18, 1957, in Valentine to Paul and Leona Lane. He grew up in Ainsworth before his family relocated to Kearney. Lane received his education at Kearney High School and graduated with the class of 1975.
Lane married Sherry (Espenhover) on Sept. 8, 1979 in Kearney, Nebraska. Together they raised two children, their daughter Jennifer and son Brian.
Lane worked for Stanal Sound Company as a sound engineer. He traveled and toured around the world with various music artists.
Lane and his wife opened their own television repair business Comstock TV, later becoming Central Electronics in Kearney.
He later was employed by WAITT Radio as a radio engineer and most recently served as a contract engineer servicing radio and television stations across Nebraska.
Mark Reid, operations manager for the NRG Media studio in Kearney, worked with Lane for several decades and offered his thoughts on Lane’s work.
“Val could fix anything and often times had a fix that even customer service technicians could not provide. If he had a solution to an issue I trusted his solutions any day. If it was ‘Val Rigged’ it worked,” Reid said.
Lane was well known for under promising and over delivering in his engineering work.
“He was busy as anyone could get and in high demand by radio stations across Nebraska. If you had a project that needed done or something needed to be updated it was always ‘two weeks.’ Yet in the many emergencies that we had over the years, if he was in town the issues were solved promptly,” said Reid.
The life of a contract engineer was never dull, Reid recalled one situation with Lane, “At times we had lost power at our transmitter sites there was an occasion he responded, ‘A raccoon caused the problem…bad day for the raccoon.”
Reid noted that most of his contact with Lane was when tower crews were contracted to climb the radio towers and replace strobe lights. He noted there were often postponements cancellations due to high winds or inclement weather.
One day Lane simply said, “Not much work done today, climber got sick 300 feet up.” Again, never a dull moment.
“His passing ends a local engineering era and a great loss of local internal knowledge of radio stations, transmitters and systems,” Reid said and noted people like Lane are impossible to replace.
For his engineering work, Lane was inducted into the Nebraska Broadcaster’s Association Hall of Fame in August of 2023.
In addition to his work as an engineer, Lane enjoyed flying airplanes and pursued building his own Velocity aircraft. He was also a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association.
Memorials are suggested to the family for future designation. Condolences may be shared online at www.osrfh.com.
