Campaign Update

Whitten Installed as First Sekt Chair

Creighton University law professor Ralph Whitten was installed as the first holder of the Senator Allen A. Sekt Endowed Chair in Law on Sept. 8.

Whitten has been a professor of law at Creighton since 1977. He holds undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas and has a Master of Laws degree from Harvard. He teaches and writes in the area of civil procedure and conflict of laws.

The Sekt Endowed Chair in Law is the fourth endowed chair in the School of Law and the 33rd endowed chair at Creighton University.

Allen Sekt graduated from Creighton School of Law in 1936 and first practiced law in Sioux City, Iowa. He later moved to San Francisco, where he met his wife, Lillian.

While conducting business in Guam, he fell in love with the island and its residents; it became home to the Sekts for nearly 30 years. In Guam, Sekt launched a successful land development business, which included office and hotel projects. He started a car rental agency, a used car lot and later owned a car dealership. Perhaps most notably, Sekt was elected as a senator to the island’s legislature, and he became Guam’s voice in Congress during the 1970s.

In retirement, Sekt moved to Oahu, Hawaii, and later to Green Valley, Ariz. He died in 2007, at the age of 93, in Phoenix. Sekt left a rich legacy of public service to his adopted home of Guam and to the university he loved. Students in the School of Law have benefited from the Honorable Allen A. Sekt Endowed Scholarship, and will benefit in the future from the endowed chair that bears his name.