Here I sit staring at a blank sheet of paper, wondering what I can tell you about myself that I haven’t already said in the previous 7 or 8 mini-bios. To summarize, I was born in Sheboygan, grew up in Cedarburg, and spent 51 months in the Air Force as a Russian Linguist. I left the service during the turmoil of the late '60s and found my calling as a social worker, emphasizing Community Organization and Urban Affairs. Just before my graduation, funding for CO was cut, and I retrained as a therapist and a School Social Worker. I retired from working in schools in 2001, and I left my clinical work in 2011.
Jan and I have been married for 58 years. We have two great sons and four wonderful grandchildren. We have a great-grandson!! We moved to Mequon for the schools in 1975 and settled in Thiensville in 1978. When I was semi-retired, I made a New Year’s resolution to join a service club. Joining the MT Sunrise Rotary Club was one of the few resolutions I believe I kept.
All that said, I guess the surprise for me is that I am viewed by many as being the local historian. I got involved with the Mequon Historical Society when I was a Thiensville rep on the Town Center Committee. I was looking into branding the project, and I spent a lot of time at the Historical Society office talking to people and searching for a distinctive theme for the Town Center. What I learned was that the society had fallen on hard times. The society had no money, no recent newsletters, no annual meetings, and no membership list. The good people involved in the society were in their 80s, and there was no succession plan in place.
For the first time in my career, I became a Community Organizer!! I worked my way onto the board and raised $600 from Connie, The Mequon Foundation, and this Rotary Club. I brought in John Gurda as a speaker, drew over 100 attendees, and signed up over 40 new members in one night. When the dust settled, we had enough money left over to put out a newsletter and pay the phone bill. On the evening of Gurda’s presentation, we were scheduled to hold a short annual meeting before his talk. When the time for the meeting came, the president of the society had not yet arrived. I stepped up, ran the meeting, and two months later, I was elected as the society’s board president.
I am pleased to say that The Mequon-Thiensville Historical Society (one of my first actions was to add Thiensville to our name) now has over 300 paid members, we are solvent, and our Facebook group has over 7,000 history-loving members who live or have roots in the Thiensville-Mequon community. The society has built a great board and “employs” an active group of volunteers. We have enjoyed fantastic support from individuals and businesses in the community, including the MT Sunrise Rotary Club.
I am pleased to say that we have fostered a loving awareness of our community's history and established a solid organization that will preserve our historical legacy for generations to come.