summer/fall 2024

Contents

Maple Sugaring Among Northern Indians (Winter 1985/1986)
by Carol Mason

Searching for Wisconsin’s Folk Songs (Summer 1986)
by Helene Stratman-Thomas

A Night Before the Music Died: Buddy Holly at the Riverside Ballroom (Winter/Spring 1993)
by Mark Steuer

Oneida Boarding Schools: An Oral History (Winter/Spring 1996)
by Kathy Jensen

Bay Beach: “Something Doing All the Time” (Winter 1999)
by Jeanne Van Ess

Dear Father and Mother (Winter/Spring 2000)
by Ray Clark

The Wisconsin State League (Summer/Fall 2001)
by Cliff Christl

Big Labor in a Small Town: The Hortonville Teachers’ Strike (Winter/Spring 2003)
by Jason F. Hellwig

So Ole Says to Lena: Folk Humor of the Upper Midwest (Winter/Spring 2003)
by James P. Leary

Living in Fear: Northeast Wisconsin’s Polio Epidemics (Winter/Spring 2007)
by Amanda Boeker and Valerie Brandt

Chicken Little: The Day Sputnik Fell on Manitowoc (Summer/Fall 2008)
by Victoria Goff and Barb Bundy-Jost

Jim Zwerg, Freedom Rider: An Interview with Appleton’s Famous Civil Rights Activist (Winter/Spring 2009)
by WGBH Boston

Fill’Er Up: Northeast Wisconsin Gas Stations (Summer/Fall 2011)
by Jim Drager and Mark Speltz

From the Editor

I have recently become fascinated with cosmology, the science of the universe’s origin and development. Perhaps it was inevitable that, as a historian, my curiosity about the past would eventually move beyond human history to ponder the universe in its entirety. While watching astronomer Carl Sagan’s awe-inspiring 1980 television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, I learned of the Cosmic Calendar, which scales the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe into a single year. The Big Bang occurred at midnight on January 1; the Milky Way Galaxy formed on March 16 and our Solar System on September 2; dinosaurs ruled the earth on December 25; and finally, modern humans appeared on December 31 at 11:52 p.m., with modern history beginning in the very last second of the last minute of the year. Forty years is but a single blink of an eye in Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar, but for Voyageur, forty years of publication offers us a worthy moment to celebrate, reflect, and look forward.

For this special fortieth anniversary issue, the magazine’s editors, art director, and design and editorial students reviewed every single issue of the magazine from 1984 onward to choose articles to highlight some of the best of Voyageur from its past. We sought to include exemplary articles that spanned the magazine’s twenty-six-county coverage area as well as diverse topics and time periods. The articles have all been completely redesigned as well. While we wanted to include many more articles than those that appear before you—a fact testifying to the amazing breadth and depth of content the magazine has included over the years—we were of course limited by size and space constraints. We hope, though, that you enjoy this look back at some of the most interesting articles in the magazine’s history as well as the evolution of Voyageur over forty years of publication.

I would like to thank all the magazine’s myriad contributors over the past forty years: hundreds of authors, reviewers, editorial committee members, student editorial and design staff, managers, art directors, and so many others who contributed to this collective enterprise. The magazine’s founders and past editors-in-chief were all instrumental in guiding Voyageur through various challenges and changes, and we are grateful for their leadership. Deep gratitude must also be given to the many local businesses and organizations that have supported the magazine through paid advertisements over four decades and to our critical patron donors. Finally, we are grateful to the Brown County Historical Society and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay for supporting this collaborative project.

I have now served as editor-in-chief of Voyageur for five years, and I am continually amazed at and humbled by the engaging and important articles that our authors and student editorial and design staff create. Like the study of our vast universe, history is an ever-evolving discipline, and my goal is to continue to produce relevant and dynamic content that connects Voyageur readers to our shared past, bringing the stories of our diverse peoples and communities to you through our magazine and events such as our Author Talk Series. This is, ultimately, your magazine. My final thank-you, then, is to our readers: without you and your support, this magazine would not exist. Thank you for your dedication to preserving Northeast Wisconsin’s history, and we hope that you will help us to continue the magazine’s mission for many more years to come. We dedicate this fortieth anniversary issue to you.

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