Winter/Spring 2024

Contents

From the Collections: Buddy “L” Outdoor Railroad Train Set
by S. Benjamin Wideman

Jens Jensen’s Landscape Plan for Manitowoc Lincoln High School
by Robert P. Fay

The Maid and the Socialite: The Brave Women Behind Green Bay’s Scandalous Minahan Trials
by Lynda Drews

An Interview with Lynda Drews
by Drew DuBord

——

Anniversaries

Eight Seconds and Sixty-Five Years: The Manawa Lions Club Mid-Western Rodeo
by John Kendall Thompson

Green Bay’s Yankee Daughters
by Maggie Rawlings and Madelyn Kennedy

Half a Century of Giving: An Interview with the Volunteer Center of Brown County
by Eric J. Morgan

——

Brown County Historical Society 2023 Writing Competition Winners
by Virginia Feld Johnson, Aja Nelson, and Amy A. Amschler

“I forgot you were a cheesehead”: Colin Kaepernick, African American Memoir, and Wisconsin in Colin in Black and White
by Eric Burin

Landmarks: Quilting the Past with the Present: Courtney Woolen Mill
by Katrina Gebert

From the Editor

“Anniversaries are like birthdays,” wrote Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser during the Jimmy Carter administration, “occasions to celebrate and to think ahead, usually among friends with whom one shares not only the past but also the future.” Brzezinski’s observation was astute, as anniversaries are about our communities as much as they are about ourselves. Humans love to mark the passage of time, celebrating birthdays, holding class reunions, and acknowledging anniversaries of all sorts, from marriages to employment to sporting championships. We also love the commemoration of historical events, which are crucial to the historical profession. Remembering specific events at regular intervals allows us as both historians and a society to both revisit and maintain public interest in the past. As history is in constant need of interrogation and fresh perspectives, historical commemorations present opportunities for us to not only explore the past, but also to examine how the past has shaped us and our communities while also, as Brzezinski noted,to look forward to our futures.

In 2023, three longstanding Northeast Wisconsin organizations achieved important historical milestones, and we are excited to celebrate those organizations and their longevity in this issue of Voyageur. Those organizations are: the Green Bay and De Pere Antiquarian Society, which celebrated its centennial of historic preservation; the Manawa Lions Club Mid-Western Rodeo, which commemorated its sixty-fifth year of bucking broncos; and the Volunteer Center of Brown County, which marked its fiftieth anniversary of service. We hope that you will enjoy the articles on these organizations featured in this issue.

Voyageur itself is celebrating its fortieth year of preserving Northeast Wisconsin’s past in 2024, and our Summer/Fall 2024 volume will be a special anniversary issue. We will also hold several public events to celebrate with our readers, the first in March and the second in July. Our first event will be a talk by Lynda Drews, author of The Maid and the Socialite—an excerpt of which appears in this issue—and Chris Dunbar, executive director of the Brown County Historical Society. In celebration of both Voyageur and Women’s History Month, Lynda and Chris will speak on “Hear Their Stories: The Women of Green Bay at the Dawn of the 20th Century” on Thursday, March 21 at the Village Grille at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 and all proceeds will benefit the Brown County Historical Society’s Voyageur fund. We hope that many of you will be able to join us for Lynda and Chris’ talk.

To all of you who are celebrating anniversaries of your own this year: salut! Please enjoy this issue of Voyageur.

Eric J. Morgan

Editor-in-Chief, Voyageur: Northeast Wisconsin’s Historical Review

Associate Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies and History

University of Wisconsin-Green Bay