(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lowe.
This week, I'll try to introduce you to the late
Senator William Proxmeyer.
Enjoy the intricate designs of Croatian folk art
called Pisanica.
And listen to the surprising stories told by
our states oldest trees.
Then stick around for a glimpse of the delts you
don't know about In Wisconsin.
(upbeat music)
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of a
Liant Energy who brings safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
A Liant Energy offering energy saving ideas on the web.
UW Health providing specialty and primary care for all
ages throughout Wisconsin.
Information on UW Health Physicians and Clinics and on
University of Wisconsin Hospital is available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges providing local education
for the crucial occupations essential to our communities.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges.
Communities first.
- Tonight we bring you some very sad news.
Former United States Senator William Proxmeyer died this
morning at the age of 90.
Proxmeyer represented Wisconsin voters in
Washington DC for 32 years from 1957 to 1989.
Proxmeyer was known as a maverick who
repeatedly won re-election while spending little more than
the filing fee on his campaigns.
He didn't buy television ads.
Instead Proxmeyer dedicated himself to shaking
hands in front of the floral pavilion at the
state fair and everywhere else.
In 1987, not long after William Proxmeyer announced he would
not run for re-election, Wisconsin Public Television
reporter Dave Iverson profiled Senator Proxmeyer.
Tonight we bring you that look back at William
Proxmeyer and his career.
- I called this press conference to announce that I will not
run for re-election in 1988.
In front of 15 microphones, an assortment of
democratic notables and the assembled press,
Wisconsin senior senator said the reason was simple.
He was simply becoming two senior.
- Why have I decided not to run?
Well, I decided not to run because I'm 71 years old.
I'd be 73 years old.
If I were re-elected when I took office in 1989, I'd be almost
80 years old when I retired in 1994, whenever it is.
95. And that's too old.
The inevitability of age had finally caught up with the
Senate's most famous jogger, a man known as much for
exercise as legislation.
In fact, Proxmeyer has always been known for his
youthful vigor, his dog and determination to persist.
It's a trait that goes back to his college days.
Proxmeyer was educated at Yale and admittedly
lousy football player who played on a team coached by
Jerry Ford.
After the war in a stint at Harvard
Business School, Proxmeyer decided on a career in
politics. A self-described carpet beggar, this
Illinois native, needed a state to campaign in.
Proxmeyer's biographer, the late Jay Sykes, recalled
why Proxmeyer picked Wisconsin in this 1983
documentary. He had narrowed down to
Oregon and Wisconsin.
And he determined that after his scientific analysis and
nothing spontaneous about this, that why Wisconsin held out
the greatest hope, progressive tradition, open primaries,
which mean a maverick could come in without party
support or party opposition and start running and
winning. And he guessed right.
Before his first try for office, Proxmeyer
landed a job as a reporter for the Madison Capitol
Times. Then in a matter of months, he ran for the
state assembly and won.
It was 1950 and Proxmeyer wouldn't win again for
seven years.
He lost successive races for
governor in 1952, 54 and 56.
You know, a lot of people have built their
careers on defeats, including A.
Bam Lincoln.
Lincoln lost for everything.
He was even lost in business.
He businesses that were ruined and so forth.
So that I think you learn
when you got in losing and people don't necessarily
hold it against you.
What did you learn?
Well, I think I learned that
what I was doing, I just fell into it and I liked
it and it also worked.
That is meeting people shaking
hands with people just getting on Main Street and town
after town after town walking up and down the street going into
the stores and shops, introducing myself to
everybody who's hand I could grab, saying who I was,
just keeping that up over and over again.
That seemed to be paying off.
That seemed to be working.
That person to person grab whatever hand you
can style became his campaign calling card in
the Senate race of 1957.
The race was to succeed the late legendary Joe McCarthy.
Proxmeyer shared only one thing with his infamous predecessor,
the ability to be distinctive.
He won the race and was quickly tabbed a Maverick, a
loner in the most exclusive club in the country,
the US Senate.
People are eccentric because they're
different and I like being different.
I think that in the case of it.
I have a sense of security
that I can be different and I don't have to conform
to everybody else.
Proxmeyer established his lone wolf status
instantly by challenging the diminuting presence of
Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson.
A lot of people are sent a Johnson
and these people would call me, it wouldn't call
me in the office because they figure their phones
were tapped by Johnson.
They call me at home.
They'd say keep it up.
Wonderful. Give it to them.
All kinds of senators did that but they said,
"Don't mention my name."
They were really living in fear of Johnson.
It was a risky but deliberate strategy to carve out his
own identity in the Senate.
Proxmeyer's first legislative aide Ralph Hewitt remembers.
I used to stand in the chamber under that great road tunnel up
there, the light coming through.
Waiting to see a lightning bolt come down through
it and strike my man dead.
Nothing ever struck him dead.
He got a long fine.
He chose to do what he did.
He didn't stumble into it because he was dumb or
didn't know what the rooms were and all that sort of thing.
Proxmeyer chose the role that he played deliberately and got
by with it and made it big.
Over the next 30 years, Proxmeyer became known for
unique political feats.
Re-election campaigns that cost less than $200.
Never missing a role call vote in the last 20 years.
And giving daily speeches on a topic he cared about deeply.
For 19 years, he rose daily on the
Senate floor to speak on the topic of genocide.
Well, I feel the felt that the genocide treaty was
something was absolutely essential and it was
appalling. But a genocide treaty initiated by the
United States, the United Nations in 1947 and sent
to the Senate in 1949.
Had never been ratified by the United States Senate
when every other advanced country in the world had
ratified the convention, except the United States.
There was a group of right-wing reactionaries
who stood in the way and the President didn't have
the gumption to push it.
Finally, after all those years,
a President who had the support of the right-wing
and obviously couldn't be called a super liberal
came out for it.
Reagan did.
I think he was forced to do it, but he did do his
credit, came out for it, and we got it ratified.
I wanted to ask you about your own interest in
the presidency, which you fought about at least in '72,
I believe.
Would Bill Proxmeyer have made a good president?
Well, I think I'd make a terrific president.
I'd love to be President of the United States.
Except that it's not as good a job as being a
senator. He was a senator, a judge, a vice president
president, and he said by far the best job was a
senator. The difficulty of being president is you
have to, even if you're very diligent and very have a good
background and on top of things, you still have to delegate
a tremendous amount of authority to other people,
you have to rely on other people, and maybe
it's too big a job.
What are you proud of stuff in
terms of your legislative accomplishments, your
record in the U.S.
Well, I'm proud of the fact that
I think I've been right and trying to hold on spending
long before it became an issue, long before we had the the
terrific savage deficits we have.
I was pleading for it.
Proxmeyer's views on spending won him few friends at
the Pentagon at NASA or even sometimes back home.
He didn't always bring home the proverbial bacon.
What he did do was publicize
the spending question.
He did it by inventing the golden fleece.
Well, now the golden fleece
has gotten results.
We find in two thirds of the cases, two out of three cases.
The program has decided we completely discontinued or
a shop he cut back.
When you get people spending
for example $103,000 in a study to determine
whether sunfish that drink tequila or more
aggressive than sunfish that drink gin.
It's ridiculous.
You know, you can go up to the campus and University
of Wisconsin and you can get volunteers for
that for nothing.
This is a democracy.
Now some people have the view that
you'll like somebody they go off to Washington as
a congressman or a senator or they become a governor
state legislator and then they do what they think is right and
that's it.
Well, that's fine, but it's not enough.
That's not enough.
Words Bill Proxmeyer lives by.
What else would keep a man
still pumping hands after all these years?
I've shaken I think about about a hundred thousand
hands a year for 35 years.
That's about three and a half million hands.
Now I must say a lot of those
are repetitions some people say.
I'm shaking hands with you more than
shaking hands with my wife.
And indeed a half hour after our interview the senator was
back on the street shaking hands and not at all sure who our
crew was.
Hi fellas.
I'm just here.
Hey, see you later.
If being a senator is the best job in the world what's second
best? Or would you like to be a talk show host?
I mean, what would you want to do?
I used to be tease with my dad.
He was interested more in money than anything
and I said I wanted to be a charge money
millionaire when I was a 21.
I think being a television or being a newspaper
columnist or the combination of the two would be
just marvelous.
That would be delightful too.
I'd love that.
Does that mean John Petra-Cunner and I
both have to watch that?
Yes indeed.
[Music]
While we bring you the stories of the more famous figures in
the state, we also like bringing you stories about the less
well-known people who add to the diverse richness of Wisconsin.
One of those people is Stephanie Lemke-Voljoneck.
She grew up in a Croatian mountain village and
emigrated here in the 1970s.
Produced her Liz Kurner reports, she brought with her
and shares of vibrant heritage.
[Music]
For Stephanie Lemke-Voljoneck, creating embroidered eggs is
more than artistic expression.
It helps her feel connected to family in Croatia and to
happy memories from childhood.
It's also a way to cope with some of the difficulties
that have come her way.
I think it is just something so simple that means so much.
The style of decorating eggs is unique to the area
where Stephanie grew up, south of Zagreb in Croatia.
It's called Pisanica.
Pisanica is a Slavic word for writing.
So it would be like Pisanica, Pisanica, writing with a
thread. For hundreds of years, children were given these
beautiful eggs at Easter.
Stephanie learned how to create this art form from her mother.
On a visit to the old country, Stephanie discovered that this
art form has almost died out.
This thread you would grab when you come from the site.
She's keeping traditional live here by teaching others,
including her granddaughters, Madeline and Lauren.
I give them plastic needles and I put the thread on
and they are doing it and they are so excited about
grammar sakes, you know.
You are making one for me or you darling.
I'm going to pass the tradition on because I think that
we need to look back and where we are from, you know.
Stephanie grew up in a mountain village in Croatia,
an area where faith and art go hand in hand.
The traditional pattern embroidered on the eggs
is called a "God's Eye".
In Stephanie's family, the God's Eye pattern was
not simply a decoration.
She still remembers what it meant to her mother.
She would use like the egg and she would point
the God's Eye in front of us and she would say now
focus on the center of that egg and then she would move the egg
from side to side and she says, "See now the eye, you can
still see the eye and that's how it is with God.
God can see you no matter what
you are doing.
So God is always watching over you.
That was enough to scare us for good."
The beauty of Stephanie's intricate creations is
even more remarkable for the effort it requires
from hands crippled by rheumatoid arthritis.
"I have severe rheumatoid arthritis
for about 30 years now and I have plastic knuckles
and I have plastic elbows and metal knees and spinal fusion.
So I'm like the bionic woman.
My hands have little nodules which are normal for people with
arthritis but not in not so many.
It doesn't bother me, you know, except sometimes people
look at them and they are afraid of them or
something or like my little granddaughter says to me.
One time she came to me and she hugs me and she
kisses my hand and she says, "Oh Baka, I love your hands
but you know sometimes when I look at them I feel
like running.
They look like monster's hands."
A sense of humor and a passion
to create often carry her through difficult times.
While healing from elbow surgery Stephanie couldn't
manage the two-handed art of egg decorating.
Instead she took up a paintbrush.
Inspiration again came from her childhood.
"My first painting is the painting of my mother
in my house making the eggs.
She is sitting there by the table and we are
sitting around waiting for the eggs to be done.
We were very poor and so to have an egg for one
person was like a special gift.
We were a big family and a close family.
My great grandmother, my grandma, my mom dad
and my dad's father, my grandfather lived together and
then five children.
All in one room, house with
the dirt floor."
Another early painting depicts a
favorite Easter memory.
"In that painting you see Vuzmanka which is the
Easter fire that is burned at 4 o'clock in the morning and
all the children and all the people in the town wake up and
are united in this particular moment in prayer and hopes
for better future.
It was such a magical moment
you know that it stayed with me for up to today
you know and I will carry it until I die because it
was just so beautiful."
But these beautiful memories
are also colored with sadness.
Stephanie grew up in a region of Croatia ravaged
by war.
"A lot of men lost their life in a war there.
Therefore the region was the poorest
region and most households were headed by women."
It was poverty that forced Stephanie to leave her
homeland. She found a job in Germany then moved to
America in the early 1970s.
She's traveled far from her childhood home and faced
a great deal of physical hardship along the way.
But through it all crafting her eggs has been a
constant a way to keep going through good times and bad.
"This is what I think it's important to find in life just
something to do for the times when you don't feel like doing
anything you know don't give it you just go on you know."
[Music]
Stephanie Lemke, Volionic, teaches the art of
Croatian egg embroidery at Folkler Village near
Dajval. Folkler Village also offers a full calendar
of events.
At the end of this month they're hosting a
four-day celebration of seasonal traditions from
around the world.
The family-friendly event has
ethnic food, dancing, crafts and storytelling and
begins December 28th.
If you'd like to know more,
check out the link to Folkler Village on our website.
[Music]
While some hold on to history and tradition through
art, others look to the living world around us.
Madison Arborist and author Bruce Allison celebrates
a link between some of our state's trees and
Wisconsin history.
Producer Joanne Garrett found
Allison also has a deep curiosity about the ways
our lives and trees intersect.
[Music]
Trees root us.
They give us a sense of place.
They give us a sense of our moment in time.
People and trees co-evolve.
Trees are equally as complex as mammals.
They have the same nucleic acids that form the
basis of our genetic code.
They also have cells that got cell walls, mitochondria.
They have a skin that holds all the organs together on
the outside.
That's the bark.
The molecule at the center of hemoglobin is the same as
the molecule of chlorophyll, except that chlorophyll
has magnesium as an element in the center and the
hemoglobin has iron in the center.
Otherwise, that molecule is the same.
We're made of the same stuff.
We are connected in many physical ways and
I think that probably explains why we seem to be
connected in emotional ways.
We're connected and those connections are
explored through portraits of trees in every root and
anchor, a book by Madison author Bruce Allison.
Allison is an arborist.
He knows the science and tending
of trees, but Allison's book is about history.
The history of Wisconsin's famous and historic trees
and the ways in which stories of people and
trees have intertwined.
We're right by the president's
oak. It's a beautiful burrow oak over 250 years old.
A burrow oak on the campus of the University
of Wisconsin in Madison.
It's been rooted and reaching upward since well before
Wisconsin became a state.
And this tree actually predates the university.
During the Civil War period, the camp randall soldiers would
supposedly, according to legend, use it for gunnery practice.
And that explains why we have large holes in
the crowd of that tree.
There is another kind of tree on the Madison campus
that has been just as much a part of people's
memories. These graceful elms formed a cool shady canopy
over the famed Baskin Hill.
These are two magnificent elms that were part of the
original plant here, which is now over 150 years ago.
Many of those people that have graduated from university,
this is probably that one visual image that they
carry with them of those large trees that had
crowns that were fusing one against the other.
Elms were a dominant tree.
In fact, in the book we call
it "Remember the Elms" because the connection is
very, very strong.
Elms were often planted as
memorial trees, using a tree as a way to remember a
loved one.
At weddings, it would be very common for
people to take two elms apples, plant them side by
side, and then twist the trunks together so that
over time they would grow together and ultimately
fuse so that when eyes and arborists, perhaps,
you know, 100 years later, come to take that tree down
if it died, I would find in the center as we cut
through a cross-section of the truck double hearts
and they would literally be rotating as they went higher up.
We loved our elms and we all suffered a loss when Dutch
Elm disease ravaged the state.
This is a photo of the last Elm on State Street, Madison, 1974.
Those few that remain on the Madison campus
are lovingly tended, and notculated, protected.
Out of the hundreds on the whole
campus, only 17 survived.
Trees like us are terribly mortal.
And so many of the stories in the book
are about trees that are no longer there.
The Fort Howard Elm, for example,
which was at Fort Howard, which has now become
Green Bay.
It was there at the time of the Pontiac
conspiracy, so it was there for the Native Americans
time. It was there for the French time.
It was there for the British time.
And then finally there for the American time.
It's a kind of Dutch Elm disease, but not until
it had 200 years to watch the people in our state.
They stood watch.
They often served a purpose.
This was a signal tree, a trail marker tree in
the Horacan Marsh.
This is the Indian halfway
tree, paced off by Native American runners.
It's the halfway point
between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.
This is the Civil War signup tree, where volunteers
mustered up before they left for training camps
and onto that terrible war.
The tree still survives in Deleven.
A sycamore in Grand County holds a
single sad story of a father in the Civil War.
He received a letter saying your son has been very
terribly wounded.
He's in a hospital in Ohio.
The father made that very arduous
trip all the way to Ohio and was with his son at the
moment. The son expired.
It literally died in his arms.
As he brought his son's coffin back to
the homestead in Wisconsin.
The father found a local tree sampling, picked that
up and brought it with him to commemorate that moment
of saying goodbye to his son.
The father planted that tree.
It was a sycamore tree, very common in Ohio,
not quite as common here.
And that sycamore is now one of the oldest and
largest in the state.
It grows on the site near the
burial of the son and on the original homestead.
We all have that special tree that represents
our family in some way.
For the book, Alison shows a silver
maple on the Jones dairy farm, where generations of Joneses,
including Francis High Street, Milo Jones, and
Adele Graves, have gathered.
This was a tree that was planted in 1876 by grandfather
several times back.
Generations. It's a beautiful tree and it was
fun for one of my cousins weddings when they put
the swing in the tree.
And now that my kids enjoy
coming here and spending a lot of time swinging in
the swing on the trees.
Oh, we had wonderful summers here.
Swam a lot.
I think the grown-up swam, but they also sat in the
shade more than we did.
We have this tie to trees and that tie is
explored in portraits of trees past and present
in every root and anchor.
Alison's book on Wisconsin's famous and historic trees.
The next time you see a stately old tree, take a
few minutes to wonder about the stories wrapped up
in its past.
As we leave you tonight, we're going to stop off
at the delts.
The delts of the O'Clair River, that is,
it's a state natural area where cascading
water and encroaching ice signal the seasons change.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
See you next week.
[Music]
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliance Energy, who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliance Energy, offering energy-saving
ideas on the web.
UW Health, providing specialty
and primary care for all ages throughout Wisconsin.
Information on UW Health physicians and clinics
and on University of Wisconsin Hospital is available
on the web.
Wisconsin's technical colleges,
providing the people of Wisconsin with the knowledge
and skills they'll need for the economy of tomorrow.
Wisconsin's technical colleges.
Communities first.
[Music]