A Little History
Maybe, just maybe, God sent the Broom Man to Omaha to help us see better. Remembered in city lore for his six decades of walking streets and neighborhoods selling brooms door to door, the Rev. Livingston Wills maintained a blind faith in people. Literally. The ordained minister, blind from birth, was a fixture and an icon, almost universally recognized in his black suit and black hat, broomsticks over his shoulders.
Inspiring Omaha with his perseverance and kindness, he might walk 10 miles a day. “He walked 10 feet above the average man,” a fellow minister said at the Broom Man’s 2008 funeral. “He was a great man, leaving a great legacy upon Omaha.”
A bishop compared him to the itinerant prophet Elisha. A Catholic priest called Wills, the longtime piano-playing pastor of Tabernacle Church of Christ Holiness, “the saint of Omaha.”
Pastor Wills always said he trusted in the Lord to use him and watch over him. Friends affectionately joked that whistling was his sonar, helping him avoid bumping into things. Reverend Wills walked with the lord until his death at 91. Mourners, some of whom held brooms at his gravesite, were urged to think of him whenever they heard the hymn, “Sweep the Devil Out.”
He never carried a chip on his shoulder, just brooms – and a lifelong message of good will.
(From page 154 of "Uniquely Omaha," by Michael Kelly. Published in 2015 by the Omaha World-Herald.)
Pictures Gathered of Reverend Livingston Wills "the Broom Man"
