Fletcher Reel, a.k.a. H. Fletcher Reel, a.k.a. Ward Reel, a.k.a. Butch Reel, a.k.a. Harry Reel, is the business partner of State Senator Suzanne Geist and live-in romantic partner of gubernatorial candidate Theresa Thibodeau’s campaign manager, Colleen Brennan. In 2007, Reel was convicted of two misdemeanors in connection with his years-long sexual harassment of a teenage girl while he was a high school teacher.
State Senator Suzanne Geist has been promoting her new “no bias” (lol) media venture, Nebraska Sunrise News, which will supposedly launch next month. The web site is lacking in detail, but fortunately Geist (whom we have written about previously) clarified to a political group on Facebook that she is running it with Fletcher Reel.
Fletcher Reel’s LinkedIn page–under the name “H. Fletcher Reel”–has a lengthy list of professional accomplishments (in addition to a sassy photo). He is the publisher of Nebraska Sunrise News; he previously worked for Erin Reel (his much younger ex-wife) Literary Agency in Beverly Hills, California; and in the early 80s he worked for NASA.
Well, as it happens, someone named Fletcher Reel was also a high school football coach and theater teacher in Calabasas, California, in the early 2000s, and left the job when he was accused of sexually harassing his teenage students. *That* Fletcher Reel’s full name is *Ward* Fletcher Reel, so you may fairly assume he and Geist’s partner, *H.* Fletcher Reel, are two different people. But you would be incorrect.
As the divorce papers with Erin Reel (whom H. Fletcher acknowledges as his former employer) indicate, “H. Fletcher Reel” is actually named “Ward Fletcher Reel.” And they lived about a 25-minute drive from Calabasas High School when Reel, then in his 50s, was put on leave for kissing, touching, and making lewd sexual comments to students.
(More evidence for the fact that H. Fletcher Reel and Ward Fletcher Reel are one and the same: a newsletter from 1983, which discusses new hires at the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C., explains that a newly hired Ward Fletcher Reel had just left a job at NASA–the job claimed by “H. Fletcher” Reel.)
Reel had been charged with seven misdemeanors in connection with his actions as Calabasas High School. Five were dropped–one count of misdemeanor sexual battery and four counts of annoying or molesting a minor. He pleaded guilty to two: contributing to the delinquency of a minor and one count of annoying or molesting a minor. He was sentenced to probation.
Many of the allegations against Reel were corroborated by other students. He repeatedly kissed one student beginning in her sophomore year, grabbed her thigh, caressed her neck, and asked her to sit on his lap almost every class period. He asked her to play the part of a girl whose father caught her in the act of having sex. He told her about the oral sex his wife had supposedly performed on him, and told her that his wife enjoyed having sex with other couples. The harassment became so unbearable that the student left the high school and was homeschooled for the remainder of her senior year. (Just take a moment to consider how Reel’s harassment marred her high school years.) The school’s insurance company spent $300,000 in his legal defense.
And Reel’s sexual harassment was not limited to the student who he drove out of school. An unnamed student reported to the principal that Reel had offered to give two girls “blow job lessons.” A school employee reported to the principal and Title IX administrator that Reel had hit on her and told her he had sex with a student’s mother during theater camp, and that he had bragged about all the girls he had had sex with at previous jobs. (Reel had previously worked as a teacher in Florida.)
In response to the allegations that he had asked teenage girls to sit on his lap, the 50-some-odd-years-old Reel had responded that he had no idea this was against school district rules.
Some time after his convictions, Reel moved back to Nebraska. In 2015 he started an organization called “American Revolution II” with a nutter-butter neighbor who is also behind Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom. He became active in the football booster group for Millard South High School. He and his wife divorced in 2017, and sometime around then Reel began a serious relationship with Colleen Brennan, the former self-declared “Democrat” racist blogger who was bafflingly appointed to the Omaha City Council with only two objecting seated members before her performative public Demexit and migration to the NEGOP. She now manages the gubernatorial campaign of Theresa Thibodeau, who attended the Capitol Riot with her sister, Omaha City Council member Aimee Melton, and bull jizz billionaire gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster. Colleen and his American Revolution II neighbor refer to him as “Butch.”
But wait! There’s more! “H. Fletcher” a.k.a. “Ward Fletcher” a.k.a. “Butch” also goes by “Harry F. Reel.” To be fair, this is probably what the “H” supposedly stands for, but at any rate it is yet another LinkedIn profile with a slightly different but mostly the same work experience and, sadly, a less sassy photo.
What’s missing from both his LinkedIn profiles is that he was even the mayor of Missouri Valley, Iowa, in the 90s! And around this time, shortly before lobbing himself across country to become a harasser of teenage girls, he even owned a childcare center! We have no idea why these work experiences are missing from his LinkedIn accounts. But this guy’s list of acknowledged and unacknowledged professional accomplishments–soldier, Reagan campaigner, NASA spokesman, small town mayor, childcare center owner, Government Printing Office, high school football coach, sex pest high school drama teacher–gives us serious Music Man vibes.
So now H/Harry/Ward/Fletcher/Butch Reel has teamed up with Suzanne Geist to bring you stories chosen “by seasoned editors who care about their responsibility to the public.” The web address of Colleen’s racist blog, nebraskasunrise.com, now redirects to her main squeeze’s totally legit media venture.
