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My Early History |
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| 1962 | Colfax, Wisconsin | |
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I have changed in the last thirty-nine years. My younger brother, Ted, has the baseball bat. My dad is down on his knees fixing the machine. My dad had 2 poems written about him. The first one was written by my brother-in-law. The second was a gift from a former interim pastor at Colfax Lutheran who lived for a year in our old farm house. |
It was election year and the Wisconsin Primary was so important to the Kennedy's that Bobbie Kennedy even visited Colfax High School. The summer before I made my first trip to Madison. It was for for State 4-H club week. From that point on, I knew I wanted to go to the University of Wisconsin. Therefore, I started at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1963. Four years earlier, Wisconsin's second worst tornado hit Colfax. Colfax tornado link. We only lost a few trees, but one of my classmates lost his life. Colfax lost its vitality after the tornado and is just a shell of what it was in the 1950's. The first eight grades of my education was at a two room country school called Knapp Settlement. For those of you who may know something about the history of this area of Wisconsin, Knapp, Stout, and Tainter were all part of the lumber baron history of the state. Check out the Knapp, Stout and Company, The Tainter Gate, James Huff Stout, and the Mabel Tainter Memorial Theater. One of my favorite memories of 4-H was performing plays and musical numbers in this theater with its Victorian painted sinks and luxury boxes.
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