News

Editor’s note: The following information was provided by the Dwight Foster Public Library.

The Dwight Foster Public Library will welcome Martha Bergland, author of the recently published “Birdman of Koshkonong” at 1 p.m. on Saturday, December 11. The program will be held in the FCCU Community Room on the first floor of the library.

Thure Kumlien was one of Wisconsin’s earliest Swedish settlers and an accomplished ornithologist, botanist, and naturalist in the mid-1800s, though his name is not well known today. He settled on the shore of Lake Koshkonong in 1843 and soon began sending bird specimens to museums and collectors in Europe and the eastern United States, including the Smithsonian. Later, he prepared natural history exhibits for the newly established University of Wisconsin and became the first curator and third employee of the new Milwaukee Public Museum.

For all of his achievements, Kumlien never gained the widespread notoriety of Wisconsin naturalists John Muir, Increase Lapham, or Aldo Leopold. Kumlien did his work behind the scenes, content to spend his days in the marshes and swamps rather than in the public eye. He once wrote that he was not “cut out for pretensions and show in the world.” Yet, his detailed observations of the Midwest’s natural world—including the impact of early agriculture on the environment—were hugely important to the fields of ornithology and botany. As this carefully researched and lovingly rendered biography proves, Thure Kumlien deserves to be remembered as one of Wisconsin’s most influential naturalists.

Martha Bergland is the coauthor, with Paul Hayes, of Studying Wisconsin—a Society Press biography of famed Wisconsin naturalist Increase Lapham, which won the Milwaukee County Historical Society’s Gambrinus Prize. She taught for many years at Milwaukee Area Technical College. She lives in Glendale, Wisconsin.

Contact Amy Lutzke at (920) 563-7790 for additional information.

Editor’s note: The following information was provided by the Walworth County Department of Health & Human Services.

Walworth County Announces Youth Suicide Prevention Initiative
Community-Wide Hope Squads Would Support School-Aged Children and Adolescents

The Walworth County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)
announces a new collaboration with Hope Squad, a school-based, peer-to-peer suicide prevention program for young children and adolescents that is part of a communitywide effort to support the mental health and well-being of school-aged children. DHHS will host a community outreach session on November 30, 2021, to introduce the Hope Squad program to local parents, caregivers, community members, and partner organizations. School board members, staff, and educators will participate in two school-focused sessions earlier in the day. Ultimately, the goal is for all Walworth County schools to
implement their own Hope Squads.

The Hope Squad community outreach session will be held via Zoom. Hope Squad Founder and Executive Director Dr. Greg Hudnell and his team will give a presentation about Hope Squad followed by a Q&A. The community outreach session will take place on Nov. 30 at 6 p.m. Participants can register at www.co.walworth.wi.us/995/Hope-Squad.

“Walworth County has had four youth suicides thus far in 2021—far higher than any recent year. Given this statistic, adolescent mental health and well-being needs to be a top priority in our community, particularly as we consider the potential negative impacts of the COVID pandemic,”says Walworth County Public Health Officer Erica Bergstrom. “Hope Squad is another tool to add to our toolbox as we work to support the mental health of our children.”

Hope Squads, which are in over 1,100 schools throughout the United States and Canada, prevent youth suicide through education, training and peer intervention. A unique aspect of Hope Squad is that students nominate peers they trust to become Hope Squad members. Hope Squad advisors then train these student members on how to act as peer advocates, recognize signs of suicide contemplation, and respectfully report any concerns to an adult. At the elementary level, this training focuses on safety, kindness, anti-bullying and resilience. For middle school and high school Hope Squad members, the curriculum emphasizes understanding of suicide prevention awareness, mental health and self-care. Regardless of age, all Hope Squad members strive to create safe school environments, promote connectedness, support anti-bullying, encourage mental wellness, reduce mental health stigma, and prevent substance abuse.

Hope Squad is currently used locally in the Whitewater Unified, Big Foot High School, Elkhorn Area, and Delavan-Darien School Districts.

“Since implementation, the program has helped to create a group empowerment and structure where the students can help and respond,” says Elkhorn Area School District Superintendent Jason Tadlock. “There has been positive feedback, even though the program is in the infancy stages. The County supporting such an endeavor would provide countywide buy-in with multiple schools working together and using the same strategies, which will ultimately help with cohesion between school districts and DHHS.”

Learn more about Hope Squad at www.hopesquad.com. Questions regarding the local
implementation of Hope Squad and the upcoming outreach sessions can be directed to Walworth County Public Health at 262-741-3200 or walcoph@co.walworth.wi.us.

Students from 18 high schools throughout Southeast Wisconsin and Northeast Illinois gathered at the Milwaukee School of Engineering on Friday, November 19, for their annual Opportunity Conference Computer Programming Competition. Whitewater was represented by seniors Elijah Grall, Cooper Hammond, Arno Crowley, Guin Yeager, and Collin Hoxie, juniors Brooke Bazeley and Drew Swartz, and freshman Andrew O’Toole.

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The students worked in teams of four, using two laptops per team, to solve as many of the nine competition problems as possible in Java or Python. Teams electronically submitted their solutions to the judges as they finished them and were either rewarded with positive points or with a deduction of 3 points and a message to try again. After 2.5 hours of steady hard work, the competition was closed, and students headed off to the auditorium to learn about Rosie, MSOE’s supercomputer, and how it uses deep neural networks to solve problems. When the winners of the competition were announced, a team from Whitefish Bay High School came out on top.

The students are looking forward to the next in-person contest, which will be at Marquette University in the spring.

Article and Photos Submitted by Laura Masbruch
Whitewater High School Computer Science Teacher
lmasbruch@wwusd.org

“Home for the Holidays”
Tuesday, November 23, 1 p.m. (Comedy/Drama/Romance)1 hour, 43 minutes; Rated PG-13 (1995)
A requested film for the Thanksgiving season. A forty-year old single woman flies home to spend Thanksgiving with her wild, wacky, dysfunctional family. Starring Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft, Robert Downey, Jr., Charles Durning, Dylan McDermott, and Geraldine Chaplin. Directed by Jodie Foster. 

Whitewater skyline changes. UWW chimney gone.

Steve Watson writes, “August 17th while on my daily bike ride, I noticed some framework on top of the chimney, at the UWW power/heating plant. Then on the 25th I saw the platform, and discovered the chimney was being removed. The heating plant construction began in 1962 and came online in 1964. It used coal fired boilers and needed a tall chimney to remove the smoke. It was 174 or maybe 180 feet tall.
I remember when it was being built. On the Fourth of July a large flag would be hanging up there. Then at Christmas a lighted tree.

The chimney was in use till 1997, when UWW started getting steam supplied from the new power plant on County trunk U. Then UWW updated the plant to natural gas, so
a tall chimney is no longer needed. After 57 years, tear down began. The crews removed about 6 feet per day by pushing it down inside the chimney. A clean out opening at the base allowed them to put it in a dumpster and hauled away.

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Our thanks to Steve Watson for these very interesting time sequence photos.

— Our Readers Share: We hope that you might have something that you’d be willing to share.  Anything that’s been created by someone else should, of course, be credited, and you should ask their permission if you’re able. We cannot post copyrighted material without permission. We can’t guarantee that we’ll have space for all submissions, and contributions will be subject to editorial board approval. The one definite exclusion is anything politically oriented. We will assume that you’re willing for us to include your name as the submitter unless you indicate that you prefer to remain anonymous. Send to whitewaterbanner@gmail.com or click on “submit a story” near the top right of our homepage.  Thanks for thinking about this!

(Whitewater Lions Club submission) Again this year the Whitewater Lions Club, along with many other Lions Clubs throughout Wisconsin, is collecting deer hides.  The deer hides are collected during the deer hunting season and then delivered to the Wisconsin Lions Camp in Rosholt, Wisconsin.  The Wisconsin Camp offers an opportunity for children and adults with disabilities to experience real camp life with peers growing up with similar challenges.  Each year thousands of deer hides are collected and sold to help fund the many aspects of providing free camping for hundreds of kids from throughout the State.

The Whitewater Lions Club has collection points at their clubhouse located on Whitewater Lake at N7462 Kettle Moraine Drive and at the residence of Lion Steve Malone at 6636 Sturtevant Rd.  

By Al Stanek
Whitewater Banner volunteer staff
whitewaterbanner@gmail.com

The City of Whitewater’s revitalization plan for its two downtown lakes may need to be re-examined due to higher-than-expected dredging bids presented to the Whitewater Common Council on November 16.

Both Cravath and Trippe lakes have experienced excess growth of unwanted plant species over the years along with a reduction in lake depth due primarily to silt infiltration. The 70 acre Cravath Lake east of Whitewater’s City Hall and the east side Trippe Lake (121 acres) were scheduled for dredging as part of a revitalization effort estimated to cost less than $1.5 million. Both lakes, at one time, were deeper and cleaner with a swimming beach on Trippe Lake and rented paddle boats and water ski shows featured at Cravath Lake.

City Parks and Recreation Director Eric Boettcher told the Common Council that the two bids on the dredging project both exceeded the budgeted dollar estimate. One bid was just under $2.5 million and another just over $3.8 million.

The council voted to reject both bids and begin negotiations with a contractor of staff’s choosing for options that could accommodate the project’s budget. Options generated at the Common Council level included just dredging one lake, estimating how much dredging could be done under the proposed budget, doing some dredging in future years, and getting the firms that showed interest in the project to spend more time examining the lakes.

City resident Geoff Hale, who accompanied representatives of proposed bidders and city staff as they reviewed the lakes and the proposed area where the dredged material would go, commented that bidding firm representatives did not even walk any of the lakes area. Parks and Recreation Director Boettcher pointed out that the site review took place right after a 2.5 inch rainfall and an exceptionally wet period which might have indicated more of an obstacle to the project than normal.

The November 16 Common Council meeting also included an initial rejection of a proposed future commitment of $3 million of city funds to a library remodeling and expansion project for the City’s Irvin L. Young Memorial Library. The total project is expected to cost just over $5 million with the Library Board of Trustees committed to providing the remaining over $2 million.

While City staff and members of the Common Council expressed support for the project, they were concerned with the cost estimates. Library Director Stacey Lunsford explained that a fundraising campaign will begin next year and that a firm commitment of funds from the City would make fundraising less difficult. Library Board of Trustees President Anne Hartwick said that they have been working with five similar sized communities who have successfully raised funding for a library project and pointed out that all but one of those projects obtained a commitment of city funds in advance of fundraising. Hartwick also argued that using a standard cost per square foot estimate to compare the project’s cost with other building projects would be deceiving as the project includes only roughly 7,000 square feet of new construction with significant remodeling of the remaining nearly 12,000 square feet of the existing structure which was built in 1993.

In other business the Common Council approved a 2022 city operating budget of just over $10 million and independent Wastewater Utility, Water Utility and Stormwater Utility budgets that totaled over $15 million. This adopted budget included an estimate of city expenses for 2023 which can be amended by future Common Council action.

The City Budget Public Hearing presentation included an analysis that indicated that last year’s city residential property rate was the second lowest among nine area communities and cautioned that changes in how Fire and Emergency Medical Services are funded in the future may require a significant increase in the 2022 city tax levy. There were no public comments offered during the hearing.

Common Council members also heard an announcement by Council President and long-time council member Lynn Binnie that he will not be seeking re-election in April. Binnie represents the city’s 4th District which includes much of the city’s southwest neighborhoods. Binnie was first elected in 2008 and has served as Common Council President since 2020.