Payback: "College student" makes good on traffic fines, 41 years later

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Kent Broyhill has finally made good on his promise to pay the parking tickets he accrued when he was a student at the University of Nebraska.

He graduated in 1974, so that would be a 41 year debt.

Broyhill sent $100 to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He tried to pay the fines at the campus police station before his graduation, but an officer told him that the school only accepted cash, the Lincoln Journal Star reported. Broyhill's pockets were empty, so the officer gave him a pass as long as he paid the fines as soon as he could.

Broyhill said he forgot about the tickets until a conversation with a college friend and realized that he hadn't kept his word. He sent the $100 with a note explaining what had happened to the college's Parking and Transit Services, where it landed on Director Dan Carpenter's desk.

"I can't remember how many tickets I had, or what I owed, so I got out my checkbook and sent (the university) $100," said Broyhill, who lives in South Sioux City. "I promised I would pay them. It was the right thing to do."

Parking staff checked through files but couldn't find Broyhill's name. Carpenter said the school doesn't have records of paper tickets written back that far but that Broyhill's tickets likely were deemed "uncollectible" sometime in the 1970s or 1980s.

The college sent the money back to Broyhill, because the $100 was probably more than what his tickets were worth, and thanked him for his gesture.

"We got a kick out of it, that's for sure," Carpenter said.

Broyhill said trying to pay the fines puts his mind at ease, even decades later.

"We were busy at graduation, and all this stuff was adding up, and it just kind of slipped my mind," he said. "But I paid them."

Tried to, at least.