Missel finds her calling helping youth

Even though Michele Missel isn’t originally from Nebraska, she’s adopted Fremont as her home.

She said she came to Fremont knowing very little about the area 26 years ago.

“I’m from Detroit,” she said. “My dad was a firefighter, so we had to live in the city. I went to a Catholic school.”

As newlyweds, she and her husband, Bob, moved to Fremont so Bob could take over Sampter’s clothing store, which his grandfather started.

Before moving here, Michele had misconceptions about the state.

“I barely knew where Nebraska was. People told me there were no trees here and that people here wore overalls.”

She quickly learned those stereotypes were not true, but there were still uncertainties.

“It was a while before I knew what I wanted to do. The thought was that Bob would run the store, and I would eventually work there,” she said. “Thank God that didn’t happen. Retail is not my thing.”

But she started to get some direction a couple of years after they moved here.

“I saw an ad in the paper for a homemaker, so I applied for it and got it,” she said.

The homemaker position had her working with families whose kids were state wards. Her job was to supervise family visits and work with those parents to help them learn parenting skills, budgeting, grocery shopping and other life skills so many people take for granted.

Then she came to a realization.

“I realized I needed to learn a few things for my job. I decided to go to school and went to Metro and got a two-year degree.”

Shortly after, the title of her job was changed from homemaker to family support services, and before long she started working as a case manager for child welfare protection and safety, working with “all the kids that nobody wanted.”

She recruited new foster care families, retained foster care families and helped find temporary homes for kids who were taken out of the homes where they lived.

That job helped give her life the direction she sought.

Graduating from Dana College in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in social work, she worked for the state in Dodge and Washington counties. She received a master’s degree in social work in 2002 at University of Nebraska at Omaha.

“It doesn’t surprise me that most people here didn’t know who I was,” she said. “I spent a lot of time working in Washington County.”

But that changed in 2003 when she started working full time out of Fremont. She stopped working for the state in 2007 to enter private practice.

She could be seen volunteering in the Fremont community before 2003.

About 18 years ago, Missel was on the board of directors for John C. Fremont Days Inc.

“I was on the board before the days of golf carts and cell phones,” she said. “So when we wanted to find someone we had to get our feet moving.”

She joined the Newcomers’ Club when they first moved here, and she and Bob joined First United Methodist Church, where she started teaching Sunday school early on until their girls, Megan and Jennifer, who were born here, were adolescents.

She’s also been involved in a parent-teacher-student association at the old Fremont Junior High School and as a Girl Scouts Brownie leader with their girls.

Now, she serves on the advisory board of the Jefferson House, volunteers at the Fremont Family YMCA teaching swimming and a yoga-pilates hybrid program.

“I’ve always been involved with kids or community or families,” Missel said, adding she seems to get along well with kids.

“I love life. I like to have fun, and children are so fun and so outgoing. They have less inhibition. They’re not afraid to do something.”

But Missel said there is a fine line.

“I can also control them as I need to,” she said. “You have to be able to control them, but as much as I love children, I love families.

“I feel the need to give back. Fremont allows me to give back. It brings me happiness.”

While her community work brings her joy, her career in social work has brought her a different joy. One of the former state wards that she worked with is an unofficial member of the family.

“I have to talk about Darin,” she said. “Even though he isn’t officially adopted, he’s part of our family. I worked with him a lot when he was younger, and after he turned 18 he reinitiated contact. We’ve kind of taken him in. He’s ours. He’s part of the family.”