One of our favorite things about creating Badger Insider magazine is hearing from our readers. Every issue, we receive photos and notes that make us laugh, cry, smile, and reminisce. Here’s what we heard from you in the spring of 2016:
Badgers became obsessed with biking: Nancy Bliss Shook ’68, MS’96, MS’02 and George Shook MS’65, PhD’67 tandem-biked nearly 2,000 miles, from Vancouver to the Mexican border; while Jim Fehlberg ’62, LLB’65; Richard Hill ’69; and Jim Berry IV ’64 — better know as the Wisconsin Bombers — spent one week in the saddle exploring the southern Oregon coast. Sisters Kay Kuester Doran ’57 and Mary Beth Kuester ’60, MS’74 showed the Buckingham Club the true meaning of style at a home football game. Alan Paberzs ’04, MPA’05 and his wife had the sopresa of a lifetime when they were seated next to two other Badgers in a tiny boat en route to Positano, Italy. Ken Becker ’49 reminded us that his Bucky is bigger than ours. Six lifelong learners (and prolific degree holders) — Sue Meulendyke Fondrie ’73, Kim Wieczorek PhD’01, Susan Wray MS’00, PhD’04, Ann Schulte PhD’01, Kevin Kumashiro MA’97, PhD’00, and Mary Klehr ’93, MA’91, PhD’09 — reunited at an educational policy conference. The Indianapolis Badgers, along with one dog and one accordion, held their annual picnic. And Douglas Falk ’72 won our Most Adventerous Reader award by perusing the Summer issue in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador.
Reader Reactions
The article on page 15 (Fall 2015) awakened some memories. The Minneapolis Symphony used to play every year in Madison at the Wisconsin Union Theater. The orchestra was playing Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra in 1950 when its timpanist suffered a fatal heart attack. When the death became known, the orchestra responded by playing the second movement (a funeral march) from Beethoven’s Third Symphony, not the Seventh.
The most macabre touch was a letter from the symphony manager about the next year’s programming, saying that this selection was so popular in the symphony’s repertoire that they were willing to repeat the performance for us. I was on the Union music committee, and the reply conveyed by our wonderful mentor, Fan Turnbull Taylor ’38, was, “Thanks but no, thanks!”
Erling Thoresen ’53
Coconut Grove, Florida
Loved the story about therapy dogs (Fall 2015). I have been on the staff of an animal hospital in Illinois for about 26 years, and a year after I began working there, I set up a then-new concept — a volunteer therapy-dog group. The group, known as the Lincolnshire Animal Hospital Dog Therapy Group, is known all over the Chicago area and is in great demand.
What is it about contact with nonhuman animals that is so therapeutic? I guess it’s the nonjudgmental and unconditional love that they offer to all. At any rate, visiting with our dogs is a pleasure that goes both ways: it’s as therapeutic for us as it seems to be for those with whom we visit.
Marilyn Grabin Putz ’54, ’54
Highland Park, Illinois
