NEWS RELEASES February '12

Negro Baseball League Forum Rescheduled for March 14
February 29, 2012

Dennis Biddle's presentation on the Negro Baseball League, scheduled for February 29 has been postponed until March 14 at 6:00 pm in the cafeteria at UW-Marinette. Biddle, a former baseball player, will present a film and talk on the history of the league.

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Cleopatra Exhibit Video at Spies Library March 14
February 27. 2012

James LaMalfa, UW-Marinette art professor, will show a 45-minute video featuring the underwater archeology of Frank Giddio and the European Institute for Underwater Archeology’s work over the last 15 years. Their efforts to raise artifacts from the waters off the harbor of Alexandria, Egypt, yielded thousands of artifacts from the reign of Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt.

“Our field trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum on Friday, February 17 was the second trip to view this once-in-a-life-time exhibit.” LaMalfa said. “I want to share the video and my notes from the field trip with the public. The artifacts from the reign of Cleopatra were exhibited at only two other museums in the US besides the Milwaukee Public Museum after which they will be returned to Egypt. The exhibit will be open through April.”

LaMalfa will begin his presentation at 6:30 pm on Wednesday March 14. Admission is free. For further information call the Spies Library, Cheryl Hoffman at 906-863-3911, or James LaMalfa at 715 735 4322, or email james.lamalfa@uwc.edu.

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Pleger Exhibit Opens March 1 at UW-Marinette
February 27, 2012

Ernie Pleger, a member of the Menominee Area Arts Council and nationally recognized watercolorist, will show his original watercolors and prints in an exhibition called “Just Add Water” at the UW-Marinette art gallery during the month of March. His exhibit features limited edition prints and original watercolors, some for sale, including a copy of “USS Freedom”, a watercolor that was installed aboard the first LCS ship built by Marinette Marine for the US Navy and presently on active duty.

Pleger studied art at Michigan State University and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. Following service in the US Army, he earned a law degree from the University of Wisconsin and practiced law in Marinette until his retirement in 1997. “I have been painting in watercolor, on and off, for many years, and on a regular basis since my retirement,” said Pleger.

His paintings are part of many private and corporate collections and have been accepted in juried competitive exhibitions at the Hardy Gallery in Ephraim, Wisconsin, the Neville Public Museum (2010 award winner) in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the Wustum Museum of Fine Art in Racine, Wisconsin, the Florida Art Center National 100 in Havana, Florida and the Barnsite National Juried Fine Art Exhibition in Kewaunee, Wisconsin.

“Watercolor is an exciting, if unpredictable, medium to work with and, I think, lends itself well to rendering marine subjects which are my favorites,” said Pleger. “Many of the paintings in this show depict things seen on our lakes, rivers and shores, with a barn thrown in to remind us that we’re still in Wisconsin.”

“We are pleased to present the work of Ernie Pleger at the UW-Marinette art gallery”, said curator Professor James LaMalfa. “This exhibit coincides with our watercolor class which is offered every two years. Ernie is going to give our students a tour of his paintings. They need to see the widest possible styles of art to develop their own personal approach.”

Pleger’s works may be seen at the Pioneer Gallery in Sister Bay, Gallery 10 in Gill’s Rock, the Cupola House in Egg Harbor, the Lake Country Gallery in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, the Cornerstone Gallery in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the Frameworks in Escanaba, and locally at the Serving Spoon in Menominee and Heider Paint in Marinette.

Pleger will be available to meet the public in the gallery from 6:00 to 7:30 pm Friday, March 2 before the opening of Theatre on the Bay’s spring production, “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

UW-Marinette gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm and during Theatre on the Bay productions. “The Diary of Anne Frank” will be presented March 2-4 and 9-11 with curtain times at 7:30 pm Fridays and Saturdays and 2:00 pm Sundays.

For further information contact LaMalfa at james.lamalfa@uwc.edu or call 715-735-4322.

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Forum on Negro Baseball League Feb. 29 at UW-Marinette
February 24, 2012

Retired social worker and former Negro League Baseball player Dennis "Bose" Biddle will present a film and talk at UW-Marinette Wednesday, February 29 from 6:00-8:00 pm in the cafeteria of the Main Building. The event is sponsored by the Campus Activities Board and free and open to the public.

According to The History Makers website, Biddle was born on June 24, 1935 in Magnolia, Arkansas. His career in baseball began in 1953 when he was seventeen years old. He was playing in the state championship in Arkansas for the National Farmers' Association. A scout and booking agent for the Negro League Chicago American Giants saw him pitch a no-hitter in the championship and asked him if he would like to try out with the Chicago American Giants. Biddle played for the Chicago American Giants in 1953 and 1954. Because he was only seventeen years old when he played, Biddle was entered into the Congressional Record as the youngest person to play in the Negro baseball leagues. In 1955, the Chicago Cubs were interested in purchasing his contract from the Chicago American Giants. Unfortunately, on the first day of spring training, Biddle jammed his leg and broke his ankle in two places while sliding into third base. The injury never fully healed and Biddle's baseball career ended.

At the age of twenty-two, Biddle went back to school in 1958. He received his B.A. degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin. Biddle worked for the next twenty-four years with the State of Wisconsin as a social worker in the corrections system. After retiring from the corrections system, he began working for a social service agency called C.Y.D. - Career Youth Development. In this capacity, he continues to work with the same type of youth he worked with when he was a social worker.

In 1996, Biddle founded the organization, Yesterday's Negro League Baseball Players LLC to support the surviving members of the Negro League baseball teams and defend their economic interests.

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UW-Marinette Students Receive P.E.O. Scholarships
February 17, 2012

Two UW-Marinette students have received scholarships from P.E.O. Chapter Q, an international philanthropic organization for professional women dedicated to providing educational opportunities for women.

Cathy Lemery of Marinette received the P.E.O. Chapter Q scholarship, and Rahnee Warzon of Porterfield received the Wanda Snyder Memorial Scholarship - created in honor of a former Chapter Q member, administered through P.E.O. Chapter member Aurie Feifarek said, “Chapter Q members are proud to support UW-Marinette students such as Cathy and Rahnee in order to help them achieve their educational aspirations.”

A single mom who is raising two sons after her husband passed away in 2006, Lemery continues to be involved with The Annual Shaun Lemery Memorial Softball Tournament with friends and family, which raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society each year and local families who have or had loved ones fighting those diseases. She is on target to get her associate’s degree at UW-Marinette in December, but plans on taking as many credits in Marinette as possible before transferring to UW-Green Bay.

Lemery radiates enthusiasm when she speaks about her studies at UW-Marinette. “I’m excited to be a sophomore in college already,” she said recently. “Life is busy with two boys active in sports and a part-time job, but I am very excited by what I am learning, particularly my courses related to teaching elementary education such as Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence, Geometry for Elementary Teachers, and Physical Education for Elementary Schools.”

Warzon’s family, too, has had to deal with the death of their father this year, but Rahnee is focused on her future, which includes a medical degree and fluency in Spanish so that she can be a “pediatrician and open up an orphanage in a Spanish-speaking country.”

She has put herself on a fast track by earning college credits through a concurrent enrollment class at Marinette High School, and by taking winterim and summer courses and overloads in the fall and spring at UW-Marinette. By August, she will have earned enough credits in a year and a half to get her Associate’s Degree. In the fall, she will transfer to UW-Green Bay to major in pre-med and Spanish.

“I like kids and I like Spanish,” she says. “I do a lot of work with kids through Faith Baptist Church in Peshtigo, including teaching Sunday school to pre-schoolers and working with junior high girls every week. She is also the financial director for the UW-Marinette Student Government and a member of the campus Psych Club and Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society. Carrying 20 credits this semester is not enough. She also holds two jobs. “I like a good challenge. That is why I overload myself,” says Warzon. “I get bored when I don’t have enough to do.”

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Reddinger Receives Research Grant
February 16, 2012

Dr. Amy Reddinger, assistant professor of English at UW-Marinette, has received a UW Colleges Summer Research Grant, one of the "most important professional development opportunities available to UW Colleges faculty at this time," according to UW Colleges Provost Greg Lampe.

A UW Colleges Summer Research Grant provides an opportunity for faculty recipients to spend their summer concentrating on their research and scholarship. Dr. Reddinger will utilize her grant to continue working on her book project “Something Different: Racial Narratives in Postwar Cookbooks,” which, as her proposal described, “analyzes the way that popular cookbooks…take up, respond to, and represent shifting US ideologies of race as represented in food culture.”

“I have been working on this project in some form or another since my first year of my PhD program at the University of Washington. My Master’s thesis and part of my dissertation focused on analyzing cookbooks as important cultural texts that reflect ideologies of race and gender,” says Reddinger.

After her essay “Pineapple Glaze and Backyard Luaus: Cold War Cookbooks and the 50th State” was published in the 2009 book Cold War Book History, she was encouraged by an editor to expand her research into a book. “Since then I have been working on a book-length version of this project, which will look at a range of events in US history, including the Civil Rights movement, the occupation of Japan after World War II, and the ways in which these events are reflected in cookbooks of the period,” says Reddinger.

Reddinger spent time last summer in Hawai’i where she utilized the resources of the historic Pearl Harbor site for her research with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This summer she will conduct her research at the Schlessinger Library at Radcliffe/Harvard and at the New York Public Library, as well at corporate archives in the Midwest.

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The Diary of Anne Frank opens March 2 at Theatre on the Bay
February 15, 2012

The most moving play to come out of World War II is not a grim record of war and persecution. Rather, it is a brilliant account of a young girl on the verge of becoming a woman who, although living under the shadow of imminent death, rises above her situation to record her observations of life with honesty, humor, and compassion. Revealing her own maturing spirit, she could write in her diary, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” “The Diary of Anne Frank” is recommended as family entertainment for its message of essential human nobility as well as for its historical value.

“The Diary of Anne Frank,” directed by Rebecca Stone Thornberry, is Theatre on the Bay’s spring production at UW-Marinette playing two weekends March 2-4 and 9-11 in the Herbert L. Williams Theatre on the Nancy Gehrke Stage. Curtain time is 7:30 pm Friday and Saturday and 2:00 pm Sunday.

When “The Diary of Anne Frank” made its debut on Broadway in 1955, its unanimously warm welcome by New York critics destroyed theatre goers’ early suspicions that it would be gloomy. The original cast played to standing-room-only audiences for 90 weeks and the play took the year’s major theatrical prizes, including the Pulitzer. In 1956, it opened simultaneously in 18 European cities and, on the anniversary of the diarist’s birth, special performances were given in theatres throughout Germany.

“The Diary of Anne Frank” is based on the diary of a teen-ager found by her father among the litter in the Frank’s Amsterdam hideout following World War II. Published in 1952 as “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” it became a best-seller. The stage version by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett followed. The diarist’s father was a constant aid in its preparation although he could never bring himself to see the play.

All of the play’s characters are drawn from those who spent two years in the Dutch attic. The attic, along with the Frank home in Frankfort, Germany, has since become a museum.

John Thornberry has the role of Otto Frank, the wise, affectionate and strong head of the Jewish family who, with no heroics, organizes and sustains the refugee colony of eight during the Holocaust era.

Cassidy Woodbury plays Anne, a typical teenager who confides to her journal her disagreements with her mother, her burgeoning love for the young son of another couple sharing the hideout, and the affections and irritations to which the confined refugees were subject.

Anne Garcia has the role of Anne’s unassertive mother and Karlie Allgeyer plays her placid older sister. Lori Payne-Csaki will be seen as Mrs. Van Daan, the frivolous mother of the second family occupying the secret annex. Tristan Schuh plays her grouchy, greedy husband, and Wes Beyer, their shy young son. William Clyma enacts the role of Dussell, a lonely dentist who comes to share their refuge.

Roles of the sympathetic Gentiles who help the refugees with food and other necessities are taken by Peter Dodds and Alicia Hnatuk.

The set was designed by John Thornberry and built by Bruce Neece, John Thornberry, Kelsey Glander, and Andrew Dzurick.  Costumes are being coordinated by Melody Neece and Hannah Neece. The production stage manager is Hannah Neece. Lighting design and sound board operation is by Dylan Kielcheski. Nick Tellez will operate the light board during performances.

Tickets are $12 for adults and $8 for students. They may be purchased from Angeli Foods in Marinette and Menominee beginning February 17 and at the box office one hour before curtain.

Area schools are invited to a special student matinee at 9 am on March 8. Please contact maureen.frawley@uwc.edu or call 715-735-4310 for more information about the student matinee.

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Education Opportunities at the Job Fair February 24
February 14, 2012

Adults who are considering earning a bachelor's degree will have an opportunity to learn what they can do to achieve that goal at the upcoming Job Fair at UW-Marinette February 24 between 9 am and 12 pm at the Field House.

Sponsored by U.S. Congressmen Reid Ribble and Dan Benishek, the Job Fair will have representatives from over 50 businesses and industries. In addition, representatives from UW System schools, private colleges and universities, and technical schools will be on hand with information about educational opportunities, financial aid, admission requirements, credit transfer, flex schedules and online programs.

UW-Marinette has many options for those who want to complete Bachelor Degree programs without traveling long distances to classes or relocating. "We are here to help people advance in their professional lives or just realize a lifelong dream of obtaining a college degree," says Mary Voyles, UW-Marinette Coordinator of Services for Adult Students.

Representatives from 12 higher education institutions will be at the Job Fair to talk with prospective students about available educational options.

"The public is invited to drop in any time between 9:00 am and 12:00 pm to talk with advisors from UW-Marinette, the UW-Green Bay Adult Degree and BSN Completion programs, UW-Madison, the UW-Milwaukee Connections Program, the UW-Oshkosh Center for New Learning, the UW-Platteville Engineering Degree Program, the UW-Stevens Point Collaborative Degree Program, UW-Superior, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Lakeland College, Concordia College, and Northern Michigan University," said Voyles.

Stop in to meet with reps from each campus and learn about what these schools have to offer, including distance education opportunities," said Voyles. For more information, contact Voyles at 715-735-4301 or register on-line at www.marinette.uwc.edu.

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“Music to Build By” Concert February 11
February 9, 2012

Local bands “Misconception” and “The Valkyrie Beside Me” will be featured at the Live United Benefit Concert Saturday, February 11 at 6:30 pm the Herbert L. Williams Theatre at UW-Marinette. Tickets are $4 at the door or $3 with a non-perishable food item or a book.

Money raised by the concert will help twelve students from UW-Marinette participate in a “United Way Alternative Spring Break” volunteer project in New Orleans. Amber Kaufman, John Wieting, Nikki Prudhomme, Nate Tipler, Jessica Grenier, Kayler Bailey, Kevin Scoggins, Kelsey Glander, Derek Miller, Nick Robinson, Clayton Dudkuwicz and Casey Rysewyk will leave for New Orleans March 15 to help rebuild homes in St. Bernard Parish with Habitat for Humanity.

Last March, Kaufman, Wieting, Glander, Miller and Cody Block spent their first volunteer spring break in St. Bernard Parish. “Last year 1/3 of New Orleans was uninhabitable,” said Kaufman, a sophomore majoring in elementary education. The French Quarter is beautiful, but only a drive a short distance away, not much has changed since Katrina.”

“The community was thankful to have us there,” said Wieting, who is an English/psychology major. “Someone saw Kelsey’s volunteer shirt and bought him dinner. New Orleans is a wonderful city. We had no problem just wandering around and never felt unsafe at any time.”

Weiting said they had a basic orientation before being assigned to their work crew. “It’s a learn-as-you- go thing. They also respect what you know. Cody had worked in construction. I had hung drywall.”

“You go to your jobsite and meet the people you will work with for a week,” said Glander. “We worked with people from Chicago and a group of Mennonites who whistled as an alternative to listening to music on the radio.”

“The experience was amazing and very rewarding,” said Glander, a theatre major. “We worked with a crew on drywall and insulation. Insurance wouldn’t pay for any repairs below the roof for many homeowners there,” he added.

Kaufman said that they know they made a difference in people’s lives. “We worked on a house for a man who had cancer. The only thing he wanted was to be able to die in his own house, which he did four days after moving in.”

“Probably the worst thing that happened was when the Saints won the super bowl and people kind of forgot that there was still a lot to do there,” said Kaufman.

Derek Miller, a geography major, said “It was also a great cultural experience. We stayed in the French Quarter. No street corner was without a musician.”

The group needs to raise enough money for transportation, lodging and food. “Last year we raised everything we needed,” said Miller. “This year, there are more of us, so we will have to raise more money.”

“For more information or to donate, contact Amber Kaufman at 715-927-7727.

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