Here in hometown Milwaukee, we searched out the names that are not The Names. We sought out the little guys, the not-at-all-famous, the just-below-the-radars and the oh-yeah-I’ve-heard-ofs. Are our appetites any less for people we don’t know? We think not. These are the real deals. These 50 people are the stuff that conversations are made of – and the conversationalists. They are the masters of singular unusual talents or the jugglers of a menagerie of seemingly opposite arts. They have memorable quirky personalities or oddly normal ones for the breadth of their pursuits. In short, they are people you should know. Launch the red carpet.
Indie Visions
It’s unlikely you’ve seen Portia Cobb’s films. The UWM associate film professor makes short experimental documentaries that play mostly at art galleries and indie film fests. She migrated to Milwaukee from California in 1992 for UWM, but as often as she can, she boards a plane for West Africa and continues her historical and cultural research – work that’s led to the reflective, autobiographical Don’t Hurry Back (1996) and an upcoming documentary, for which she spent the summer of ’01 in Senegal taping traditional African music. This spring, Cobb, 48, hopes to complete Yonges Island, concerning land, race, the South and Cobb’s own family.
Funny Hubby
Lew Lewandowski, 54, gets an on-air tongue-lashing before most of us have had our first cup of coffee. As husband to 96.5 WKLH’s Carole Caine, Lew is equally vilified and sainted on his wife’s morning radio show. But he swears most of the dirt dished on-air is not true, insisting, “I’m not hung like a Tic Tac.” If Carole is the “celebrity” in the family, Lew is the funnyman – his foreign accents, including one that sounds like Cheech Marin, are so good they almost make you forget he’s not a pot-smoking hippie. Owner of a waste management company and dad to 9- and 13-year-olds, Lew likes to poke fun at the world: “I just have fun with it.”
Sweet Strings
Pickin ’n’ grinnin’ his way through an encyclopedic repertoire that’s as historically enlightening as it is entertaining, multi-instrumentalist Tom Schwark, 50, is nationally renowned for his string work with The Reedy Buzzards, an acclaimed traditional country-gospel recording act. Closer to home, he is manager/tenor mandolinist for the 103-year-old Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra, an aggregation of 30 performing preservationists ranging in age from 17 to 96. The oldest such group in America, the MMO can be experienced in concert annually or on its recent CD, which spotlights locally composed vintage material.
Art Addict
Accountant Elaine Erickson, 52, has an expensive habit: her light-filled Buffalo Street gallery, the third in her nine-year career as an art dealer. When called to do the books for dealer David Barnett, she fell in love with art. Facing a difficult time – her mother had died, her sister was dying, she lost her job and was supporting two children – the art “comforted me.” A controller for a financial firm, her salary supports the gallery. “It’s hard,” she says, “but I can’t imagine my life without it.”
The Caretaker
Born Matilde Knobel in Germany in 1932, Sister Mildred joined the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary at age 25, after spending her teenage years recuperating from typhoid fever. She moved to Wisconsin with a group of sisters in 1959, two years after she joined the community. While a sister, she has served as a nurse and been certified as a reflexologist. Now the 70-year-old often shovels the walk, mows the lawn and takes out the garbage at the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary Movement House on Wisconsin Avenue, her home since 1966. “I like to be outside,” she says. “That’s my joy.”
Successful Scratching
Illinois native Malcolm Michiles, 32, moved to Milwaukee in 1989 and spent seven years with the city’s rock-hop band Citizen King, whose hit single “Better Days” climbed the Top 10 charts before the group dissolved in 1999. Michiles’ “scratching” – manually spinning turntables to mix melodies – has since been featured in many spheres, including releases by Garbage, Coors commercials, the entrance music for the Chicago Bulls and an independent film. Father to a 6-year-old daughter, the Bay Viewer is currently building a music studio and plans to expand his TV and film music repertoire.
Tough Guy
When 32-year-old Duke Roufus starts raving about his hometown, it’s best to agree. After all, the four-time world champion kickboxer could remove the head of the average Joe with an effortless roundhouse – though he never would. The genial butt-whooper opened his eponymous kickboxing gym in 1997 and has since trained everyone from champion professionals to old ladies looking to shed poundage. Retiring from kickboxing in October, Roufus, who has appeared on TV’s “Walker Texas Ranger” and commentated for ESPN2, is hoping to take his expertise to TV and movies; he’s currently starring in a feature film, Knock Out, set in Milwaukee.
Diva of Sound
Singer-songwriter Mary Karlzen may originally come from – gulp – Illinois, but we can forgive her. The 37-year-old charismatic folk/rock diva began her recording career in 1992 and has since recorded six releases. Universal critical acclaim and rotation of her videos on VH1 attracted monolith Atlantic Records, which released her second LP and two Christmas albums. Now recording for independent label Y&T Music, Karlzen enjoys artistic freedom that she didn’t have with Atlantic.
Savvy Proprietress
Dasha Kelly, 33, and husband Kendall own Mecca – a bar that seeks to redefine, Kelly says, “young urban professional.” Although high-class drinking isn’t required, classy behavior is a must at the North Side club offering football and alternative lifestyle nights in the same week. Also popular is poetry night, when this published author (her first novel is due out soon) and well-traveled poet lets her words shine. As a mother, freelance writer and marketing consultant, Kelly says life is full but fulfilling. “It never occurs to me it can’t be done,” she says.
Children’s Champion
When Susan Conwell, 38, left her truck stop waitress job in tiny Marytown for Princeton, her parents feared she’d forget her humble roots. She didn’t, though she worked for a U.S. senator (Proxmire), lived in Russia, traveled India, taught in a Chicago high school and ran a Washington, D.C., homeless shelter before graduating from Harvard Law. Back home, Conwell worked for Legal Aid, settled in Riverwest and, with her husband, attorney Vince Vukelich, adopted their foster boys, abandoned twins. Inspired by the experience, Conwell founded and co-directs the area’s premier advocacy group for kids in out-of-home care, In Their Best Interests Inc.
Buzzed on Beans
Eric Resch dreams beans. A UW-Madison grad encouraged by a no-nonsense mom and an engineer dad whose Green Bay company produces furniture, he conjured Stone Creek Coffee in ’93 with borrowed loot and monies willed from his tea-loving grandmother. As owner of a Fifth Street roasting, grinding and packaging place, the 33-year-old hates being idle, fishes in the western states with flies he ties, produces stained glass, hikes, telemarks and bikes mountains. Plus, he’s pursuing a Northwestern University MBA and rehabbing his East Side home. And beans per pound? No time to count ’em.
Juggling Talents
Mark Eberhage, Ph.D. (a.k.a., Mark G.E.), couldn’t just be a psychologist. He couldn’t just be a musician. Or just a filmmaker. He could juggle, though. Eberhage’s main gig is as president of Behavioral Solutions Inc., a geriatric behavioral health consulting company. When the affable 42-year-old has camera in hand, a dark, cerebral sensibility takes over and the result is a documentary about the making of the movie Wisconsin Death Trip. Or a creepy cinematic homage to the late Edward Gorey. His band, cyberCHUMP, released its second CD last spring – another is due out this month – and… and.… More films? Yup. Performance art? Sure, why not.
Brew Baron
Marty Weigel, 43, plays all the “B” roles: bar owner, biker, beer man. Proprietor of Benno’s on Greenfield, he complained to Willard Romantini that his TV show, “All in Good Taste,” was too much about food and wine and soon found himself as the show’s reluctant “beer man.” “My stomach still does flops when we tape,” says Weigel. His antidote for the jitters: mountain biking. President of Metro Mountain Bikers and a founder of the races at Crystal Ridge, he’s the city’s most avid proponent of the sport. The father of four, he’s also a big-time PTA volunteer: “I get to do the head lice checks.”
Counter Kibitzer
The face of soup in Milwaukee changed when Richard Regner opened Soup Bros. in a then pin-drop-quiet location off of South Second Street. In four years, other people with vision have come, bringing their bars and restaurants and unique style. The 47-year-old Whitefish Bay native’s idea was so simple, yet no one had filled the niche. Soup Bros. North on Prospect Avenue is the same basic grab-and-go concept, so Regner, who has mega front-of-house restaurant experience from his New York days, can still stand behind the counter and kibitz with customers, which is just as much his specialty as Northern white bean and sausage.
Courageous Caregiver
Willingly living in the Inner City, sitting in jail for an anti-nuclear demonstration and serving the sick in Africa may not have been what Karen Ivantic-Doucette’s traditional middle-class family had in mind for her. But this nurse practitioner, nursing instructor, wife and mother of four doesn’t let anything get in her way of caring for AIDS patients and serving the underprivileged. It’s a call President George W. Bush recognized, naming her to his HIV/AIDS advisory council. Most of the time, though, Ivantic-Doucette, 45, can be found at Aurora Sinai’s Positive Health Clinic doing what she does best – serving others.
One-Woman Show
“ ‘I can’t’ wasn’t in their vocabulary,” Margaret Rogers says of the gutsy Celtic women who have seasoned her plays. A choral singer and voice teacher of many years – and a woman whose vocabulary is laced with words from the ancient Hittite language – the Illinois-bred Rogers staged her first play, at Milwaukee Irish Fest, in 1986 and performed her one-woman Lady Gregory’s Ghost there last summer. An admirer of strong women of history (and men – she’s written four plays about James Joyce), Rogers just launched her latest, about first-century German writer Hildegard of Bingen, at Marquette University.
The Scribe
Shorewood native Louisa Kamps, 35, is a recent returnee from New York. She made it in the Big Apple for 12 years as a freelance writer, including a stint on staff at Elle, where she’s still a contributing writer. Her other publications include Food & Wine, Glamour, Self, The New York Times Book Review, New Yorker and more. Her most stressful interview was with a pre-Calista Harrison Ford. Being back feels okay: “I’m taking full advantage of open, free tennis courts. And I cook now,” because for the first time in years, she has a kitchen!
Missionary of Culture
Adekola Adedapo, 54, began her career as a jazz singer on a dare, but she’s been performing on stage since age 4. When she was in her 20s, she walked away from two years at a South Carolina commune with a firm grasp of African culture and religion. Since then, she’s been on a mission to educate about African-American heritage through storytelling, singing and acting. It’s hard to keep up with this mother of three – appearing on “Hotel Milwaukee,” singing at Caroline’s, teaching at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, traveling to schools to teach jazz and performing in theater productions.
Pulpit Power
Fr. Eleazar Perez, 43, grew up in a poor, isolated region in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains and went to the seminary at age 12. Assigned to open a church, he encountered a drug cartel that held the local people economic hostages. When authorities looked the other way, Perez began speaking out. Cartel members threatened him and shot at his truck. For his safety, authorities advised him to leave the country. He arrived here in 1999 and is ministering to Hispanics in six South Side parishes, often sharing his home with the needy. “It’s not enough just to pray,” says Perez. “You have to get involved in your community.”
Medical Explorer
As its director for eight years, Dr. David Harder has helped make the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Cardiovascular Research Center recognized consistently as being in the top five cardiovascular centers in the nation over the past few years. With $60 million in research grants, CRC has already advanced nonsurgical treatments for heart disease and offered new hope for treating Alzheimer’s and bipolar disease. As COO of the new Environmental Renaissance Co., Harder, 52, assists investors in evaluating potential applications of biological breakthroughs. He lured to Milwaukee the prestigious American Journal of Physiology, Heart and Circulatory Physiology, which he now edits.
Smooth Operator
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel utilities reporter Lee Hawkins, in his late 20s, faces the challenge of attracting a young audience to support his independently produced R&B CD Serenade. This single St. Paul native, grounded in Baptist faith and a musical family, says he has a “Midwestern sensibility,” like that of Eric Benét, with whom he shares a producer. How does he live the dual life of business reporter and serenely hip singer-songwriter? “It’s all storytelling,” he says.
Stirring it Up
Firecracker actress/B&B owner Carol Hirschi loved the “rubbernecks at rush hour” that her big Vagina Monologues front-entrance banner created when it played at the Brumder Mansion theater last year. “My mailman rang the bell, asking, ‘What’s the Virginia Monologues?’ ” the 47-year-old ComedySportz alum snickers. Hirschi, who made audiences scream the “c” word in VM, loves commotion. Last October, as her Victorian B&B was morphing into Castle Dracula for a Halloween show, Hirschi was boning up on Edward Albee material for season two of Cornerstone Theatre (whose home is the Brumder), co-founded by her friend, film/TV actor Cotter Smith.
Power Player
By day, Sheri Dieck taps away at a computer for a Milwaukee HMO. By night and on weekends, she busts through defensive lines as a running back for the Wisconsin Riveters, the latest addition to the four-year-old Women’s Professional Football League. The Kenosha-based Riveters were undefeated in their debut regular season, then lost to Houston in the league championship. Responsible for much of the offense was Dieck, who rushed for more than 1,300 yards and scored 17 touchdowns in eight games. “I love the contact,” says Dieck, 29, a former cop. “That’s the best part.”
Opening Doors
Gerard Randall, 48, has a great sense of humor but is plenty serious. As president of the Private Industry Council, he uses federal dollars to find jobs for displaced workers and help at-risk kids. Off the clock, Randall, a former MPS teacher, sits on eight art- and education-related boards to help with Milwaukee’s most vexing challenges – education and income disparity and hyper-segregation – and is the only African-American UW regent. With the few minutes left over, Randall cooks in his restored Brewer’s Hill home, often for Wisconsin’s most influential. And he mentors lots of kids, proving he knows how influence really works.
Rat G-Man
Dr. Howard J. Jacob, 41, is responsible for thousands of rats, but he’s no Pied Piper. These rats are valuable scientific models for developing new drugs. A Harvard researcher, Jacobs was lured in 1999 to the Medical College of Wisconsin, the number-one physiology department in the country, to direct its Human Molecular and Genetics Center. There, he’s creating the Rosetta stone for deciphering the rat genome and linking it to the 90 percent similar human genome. This summer, his team identified the gene responsible for insulin-dependant diabetes and is “so close to finding the genes responsible for high blood pressure and kidney disease,” he says, “I can almost taste it.”
Political Hopeful
You’d expect Dashal Young to be in D.C. by now, with his conservative political talk that wins him a good ribbing from some fellow African Americans. Though he’s a close confidant of County Executive Scott Walker and has been involved in campaigns around town, Young, 36, once left behind political job opportunities to teach at MPS’ Gaenslen K-8 School. In the summer, he is assistant director of Marquette University’s National Youth Sports Program and works occasionally at Children’s Hospital. But there’s a political career ahead, he assures us. It’s just a matter of when.
Detective
Detective Lori Gaglione has worked undercover in the narcotics and anti-prostitution units in her 18 years with the Milwaukee Police Department, but she found her niche in Sensitive Crimes. Faced with expiring statutes of limitations on unsolved sexual assault cases, Gaglione, 43, nagged an assistant DA to file John Doe arrest warrants in 1999 based on DNA profiles, allowing future prosecutions if perpetrators are found through DNA matches. Her ingenuity won her the Good Housekeeping Award for Women in Government in 2001.
Cyber Champ
The transformation of a floundering Audubon Middle School into Audubon Technology and Communication Center began in 1991 when science/English teacher Cary Werner noticed the motivational value of the school’s 15 Apple 2Es. Werner, 43, now Audubon’s technology coordinator, urged her principal to dump the school’s humanities focus and follow the computer trend. She subsequently earned a master’s degree, wrote a slew of grants and ferreted out funding sources. Family PC magazine named Audubon among the nation’s 100 hottest wired schools in 2001.
Art of Allure
This fall, you could have seen the work of installation/performance artist Harvey Opgenorth, 25, in three Chicago exhibitions, then driven back to Milwaukee and viewed his art in a stage set for Wild Space Dance Company. Publications like Art Forum have singled out his alluring camouflage series (he poses in front of famous paintings dressed in the same colors). He’s one of the founders of Milwaukee’s Rust Spot, an artists’ group that’s been creating site-specific pieces for Gallery Night. Says the inventive Opgenorth, also a waiter/graphic designer: “I’m on the path of a successful artist. I really am.”
The Passionate Giver
For Chicago native Laura Owens, 41, her passion to work with the disabled is the product of plain old compassion. This teacher didn’t even really know anyone with a disability before she decided to embark on a new path, first becoming a special education instructor, then starting her own company, Creative Employment Opportunities, which places those with disabilities in meaningful jobs. She also works full time as an assistant professor in UWM’s exceptional education program and runs a nonprofit she founded, ArtWorks for Milwaukee, which puts at-risk teens in art apprenticeships.
Conspiracy Debunker
Although born in Kennedy, Alabama, professor John McAdams didn’t take interest in President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination until long after he joined Marquette’s political science department in 1977. The Shorewood resident’s interest was sparked by the movie JFK, and he started his conspiracy-debunking Web site in 1995. An adherent to the lone gunman theory, McAdams, 57, teaches a course on the assassination’s conspiracy theories, from which NBC’s “Today Show” broadcasted segments in 2001. Says McAdams: “Students really want to know what happened.”
Fast-Tracked
Paula Suozzi shaped 500 meatballs for her Friday the 13th (!), 2001 wedding to Bialystock & Bloom’s Jonathan West, but most folks know her as the associate artistic director of Skylight Opera Theatre who’s done work around the country, including at the New York Metropolitan Opera Co. A first-time mom (and devoted triathlete), she shapes up at Humboldt Park with Dorthea Louise snuggled frontside. Her regimen includes swimming and teaching spin classes. Family life is cozy in a 1924 Bay View bungalow, but no way will this 37-year-old sit and knit. Like meatballs and sauce, Suozzi and the fast track are virtually indivisible.
Finding a Mission
After two nephews were murdered in 1989, Constance Clark Riemer’s family met on Sundays to work through their grief. During those gatherings, her nieces and nephews – aware of her acting experience – expressed their desire to perform. And so the Milwaukee native founded the African-American Children’s Theater in 1990, directing the first show and turning it into full-time work. Now the full-fledged company enrolls about 100 children, and Clark Riemer, 54, works as its fund-raiser. “I used their leadership to make this happen,” she says. “Now it belongs to [the] community.”
TrailBlazer
The African country of Cameroon’s entire winter Olympic team lives, goes to school and works at an architecture firm in Milwaukee. His name is Isaac Menyoli. Interested in Nordic skiing as a youngster, the 30-year-old, who only began skiing after moving to Milwaukee in 1995, competed in Salt Lake City’s Olympics. The possibility of winning a medal is nonexistent, but substantial international media attention allowed him to accomplish an important personal mission: to raise awareness of AIDS in Africa. Menyoli, working on his master’s degree in architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, hopes to compete in the 2006 Olympics.
Poet of Pride
Latina activist Carmen Murguia has performed her poetry at universities all over America and has two published collections. She teaches writing to kids in a community program called Arte de Mi Barrio, works as a secretary and is studying for a bachelor’s degree in education policy and community studies at UWM. After a close lesbian friend was murdered in a hate crime, Murguia, 36, started a resource center bearing her friend’s name, the Juana Vega Center, aimed at helping gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Latinos accept and gain pride in who they are.
Plastic Purveyor
Frank Berry is one resourceful guy. Unemployable at age 10, he subcontracted paper routes. While working as a receptionist in college, he sold audio equipment from his desk. Later he co-founded a Milwaukee-based plastics company, Premier Plastics, but overwhelmed by the increasing market for landfill-bound disposables, Berry is giving back. In his Riverwest studio devoted to “reclaiming the value of fallen goods,” Berry, 50, helps kids resist trendy dumpster-destined junk by turning sustainable artifacts into cool stuff, like scrap-item jewelry.
Home in Hollywood
Two years after Racine native Jeff Kurz chose love in Milwaukee over seven years as an executive vice president for Mir-amax Films in Hollywood, he’s on the cusp of turning his own independent film company, Belle City Pictures, into a household name. With Columbia Pictures and Zent-America Entertainment deals in the works, Kurz, 42, has just teamed up with Madison Straight Story writer John Roach to produce a film about at-risk Ho-Chunk teen marathon runners in Black River Falls. Kurz, who commutes between Milwaukee and L.A., hopes to unify Wisconsin film producers, bringing Hollywood a little closer to home.
The Personal Paparazzo
It’s 1964 and Gianni Bozzacchi crashes his Alfa Romeo speeding down an Italian highway, a favorite pastime. But he lives to burn rubber as Elizabeth Taylor’s personal photographer, after a lucky turn shooting her on a movie set in Africa. That’s stashed in his book, Elizabeth Taylor: The Queen and I. At 59, Bozzacchi’s script now includes home gardening in Franklin (where he shared a home with his late second wife and their daughter), and lest you think he’s a has-been, jetting to Florence to shape The Renaissance for television. Does he yearn for yesteryear? “I don’t,” he says. “Back then, my life was in black-and-white. Today, it’s in color.”
Soulful Singer
Last July, Erin Berghouse faced a heady choice: sing for Phil Donahue or the pope. It was a no-brainer. She performed before John Paul II at World Youth Day in Toronto. A singer-songwriter with a Christian message, Berghouse has seen a lot of doors open lately. She’s performed at Lilith Fair with Sarah McLachlan and Natalie Merchant and on the Catholic TV Network. She’s written inspirational songs for Camp Heartland and the National MS Society. She’s had her music aired by NBC and Fox Sports. Founder of the Wisconsin Composers Circle, Berghouse is now working joyfully on her third CD.
Merchant of Adventure
When he was in his 20s, Eli Rosenblatt lived in China and Taiwan, taught himself the language and learned the culture. It paid off – he married a Chinese woman from Taiwan. Now 38, Rosenblatt goes four times a year to traipse around remote areas of Tibet, China, Nepal and Mongolia, shopping for unusual art and antiques to sell at his Third Ward shop ARTASIA (and online to buyers all over the world). Rosenblatt is also an artist (a creator of big, powerful canvases) and the father of two.
Principally Positive
They are the students some teachers would rather forget, but Roberta “Bobbi” Lipeles affectionately calls her 90 “at-risk” high school pupils at Loyola Academy “angels.” The 51-year-old principal knows the name of every student at the MPS alternative school, run in partnership with the Council for the Spanish Speaking, and wields a stern but caring eye. Lipeles has worked in a variety of fields – from accounting to radio DJ-ing to education activism. But she always wanted to teach and persevered to earn her degree in education from UWM at age 40.
The NewsMan
From 1943 to 1977, Avery Wittenberger covered Milwaukee County government for The Milwaukee Journal and, according to those who knew him, would have smelled and exposed the county pension scandal. Wittenberger was known as “the vacuum cleaner” – little escaped his attention. “Get to know everyone on your run,” he advises young reporters. The lay of the South Dakota farmland of his youth clearly honed his skills in the business. At 90, this 2002 Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame honoree is certain that the surest way to forecast storms is to thoroughly study the far horizon.
Nature’s Mother
Mary Ann Ihm dropped out of a doctoral program in 1979 to grow peas. She’s growing them still, along with carrots, kohlrabi and varieties of squash you can’t even name. Ihm is founder of Wellspring, a 32-acre education center and organic garden along the Milwaukee River near Newburg. She’s the live-in caretaker of a happy habitat that doubles as summer camp, B&B, hostel and retreat, with a sweat lodge and meditation labyrinth. Ihm and interns help teens grow green thumbs and, to pay the bills, will deliver fresh veggies to your door every week. Not a bad job – and life.
Urban Innovators
Throw design work at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design grads Jeremy Shamrowicz, 29 (right), and Jesse Meyer, 26, and their visions become metal, concrete and wood creations like you’ve never seen. Sure, they can draw and sculpt. But they also weld and bend steel. They pour concrete molds for tabletops and counters that have been mistaken for marble. Meyer left for California to pursue his dream of working in special effects after graduation. But then Shamrowicz fell upon two floors of Third Ward space and called Meyer, who drove three days straight back to Milwaukee. The result: Flux Design, a 3-year-old company now based in Riverwest, with employees averaging age 26. The group also runs Gallery 326 on Water Street, where they hawk their wares and host one of the hottest Gallery Night spots. They’ve designed and produced the interior of the nightclub Eve, the lobby of advertising firm Laughlin/Constable, a plethora of condo interiors and individual furniture pieces for the well-to-do. “I’m the face guy and [Jesse’s] the backbone,” says the boisterous Shamrowicz, whose office is wallpapered with Star Wars figures (still in the box). Did we mention that his son’s name is Anakin?
Healing Voice
Lina Juarbe strives to attain three things for survivors of sexual abuse: truth, justice and healing. As executive director of the sexual assault Healing Center at Aurora Sinai Medical Center, Juarbe challenges the community to create a safer Milwaukee. She recently helped facilitate listening and support sessions for victims of abuse by priests for the Milwaukee archdiocese. At just 32, this Kenosha resident, wife and mother says she was working with survivors before she recognized her own experience and pain as a victim: “If you’re not okay, I’m not okay. I have to fight for your justice in order to assure mine.”
Stalwart Senior
Verve and pluck – Dorothy Seeley has ’em both. A steelworker for 26 years, Seeley operated a 60-ton crane at Nordberg Manufacturing (“the biggest they had”) and once met Eleanor Roosevelt (“I held her coat”). In 1968, she was one of the first women to run for state Senate (“I lost”). She’s been active lately as founder of United Seniors of Wisconsin. With proceeds from the USW bingo hall, Seeley gives to the Milwaukee Rescue Mission, the Veterans Hospital and a wellness center for the elderly. At 86, she lilts forward a few degrees, but she’s still devoted to the cause.
Full-court Press
Bruce Pearl has been very, very good to UWM basketball. In his first year as head coach, the men’s team set attendance records and posted the most wins ever in Division I play. Last season, the new kid in town netted a coach-of-the-year award, erasing the painful memory of Bo Ryan’s defection to UW-Madison. This year, a poll picked the Panthers to win the league championship. Still, Pearl, at 42, tries not to take himself too seriously. “Look, I teach kids in baggy shorts to run up and down the court and put a ball in a basket,” he says. The approach seems to be working.
The Seeker
When Jay Brickman retired from a 39-year career as a rabbi at Temple Sinai, he began honoring the Jungian belief that in later life we should strengthen less-used parts of ourselves. So this scholarly, previously sedentary fellow – at 78 – now does t’ai chi, bikes, plays golf, weaves raffia baskets and volunteers at the Central Library bookstore. He teaches classes in dream interpretation, as well as the Bible and biblical Hebrew, and has written two spiritual books. Brickman is active in the Interfaith Conference. He strongly believes “we are all one.”
Edited by Natalie Dorman With Edith Brin, McKenna Bryant, Kurt Chandler, Ann Christenson, Pat Dillon, John Fennell, Elizabeth Geldermann, Perry M. Lamek, Judith Ann Moriarty, Mary Van de Kamp Nohl and Mario Quadracci
