Delta Chi….. fraternities aren’t all bad ideas.

Posted on by kwundrow

outer-banks

Still kicking after all these years

It’s been a too long time since those lazy hazy days of college, emphasis on hazy.  You know, when the first 60 degree day meant everyone cut classes and met at South Park.  For me some 45 years have passed.  I guess I need to bring my potential readers up to date.  I pledged Delta Chi in the fall of 1970 and graduated from the Big O in December of 1973.  My degree was in teaching and I accepted a position in Loyal, Wisconsin.  If you know where that is, my question would be why?  I met Jean Warnke (Alpha Phi) in my Senior year and we were married in April of 1974.  Too young, too soon?  Our marriage ended in 1976.  Our divorce proceedings centered on the division of our only two assets, a 1974 Pinto station wagon and the wedding pictures.  She got the Pinto and I got the pictures.  Any advice on what you do with those?  I moved to Madison, Wisconsin where I took a teaching position in the suburb of Oregon.  In that teaching position, I met and later married Deb Shepherd in 1980.  In the ensuing years we raised two beautiful daughters, Bailey (1984) and Kathryn (1991).  Our teaching careers, Deb taught at Lomira and DeForest, lasted until 2011 for Deb, shout out to Scott Walker, and 1998 for me.  I had developed a tax planning business and sold that to a Madison firm in 1998, retired from teaching and took a position with that purchasing company.  I obtained my investment licenses and worked with my clients as their financial advisor as well as acting as the financial manager for the firm.  In August of 2017, hearing Garrison Keillor retire after declaring “44 years is long enough to work at anything”, I left my planning career and am now enjoying retirement, traveling with Deb, volunteering for a national org and helping to spoil my two grandchildren, Jackson (2014) and Adela (2017).  For entertainment, I write entries in a blog called “Kenisms”, my daughter’s idea, and can be followed at www.kenismsblog.com.   That is, if you feel the urge to do that sort of thing.  My topics range from humorous recollections to travel stories and epiphanies.  Yes, I said epiphanies, as in life’s little ironies and aha moments.

There needs to be a point to this dialog so here it is.  This writing was inspired by the question “what has Delta Chi meant to your life journey or something like that.”  In pledge class, we were taught that each of the three legs of the Delta stood for a principal.  I remember that one was “service” and while thanks to my college night life, I have a vague recollection of the other two.  I will go with “brotherhood”, i.e. socializing, and apparently “fortitude” as it took that to survive the Delta Chi socializing.  I remember shoveling sand, tons of it, into the basement of the Delta Chi house on Scott Street as a pledge.  This was done as preparation for one of the many theme parties that were thrown in its sacred confines.  If you are thinking of some resemblance to “Animal House”, I have always been convinced that one of the writers had to be a brother.  That or John Belushi must have crashed one of our parties.  Did I mention that we actually had a house monkey when I resided there, or is that still a well-kept secret?  If so, Oops.

I spent a year and a half in the house on Scott Street, sharing a room with a view on the third floor with my roommate, Nick Yarmac.  I remember fondly a weekend road trip to visit his home in, wait for it, Connecticut.  That, like so many other decisions, was made late on a Thursday night drinking $1 buckets at “Toschs” and then leaving that Friday afternoon for Connecticut.  I mention this, because it speaks to the brotherhood and fortitude principal.  When an opportunity cropped up and you had a chance to share the adventure, you seized it.  You didn’t question the sanity of it, you might have given some thought to the risk but when a brother called and an adventure was offered, you jumped on the idea.  That has had a great deal to do with my success in both of my careers, first in public education and then in financial planning.  That willingness to take a risk, that ability to network with people and that desire to experience life as an adventure are all rooted in my Delta Chi experience.  I have passed that attitude on to my daughters and am working on nurturing it in my grandchildren.  I taught it to my seventh grade math students and my financial clients.  It is the only way to approach life if you are intent on not letting it pass you by and just becoming another cog in the wheel.

But I cannot forget “service”.  That principal guided everything I did for my students and my clients and still drives me as a SCORE volunteer.  Ironically, my favorite job in college was bartending with Tom Fricke at Dino’s Titan Tap in Oshkosh where I “served” up beer to our patrons.  That establishment more or less became the offsite fraternity house.  Hey, service takes on many forms.  That principal resonated with me and I have dedicated my life to it.  It actually served me well.  There is truth in the adage that the more you give the more you get.

Delta Chi in the 70’s was the entity that got me through college.  It was a brother to lean on when you needed one, it was the built in social network that gave you a group of friends to look out for you on a too much night out and it was a resource for academic advice when needed.  Who can forget the “test bank” or is that another well-kept secret?

I will offer a shout out to some brothers I remember fondly but also through a disclaimer in here, that if your name doesn’t appear it doesn’t mean you were any less memorable, but I am told I am limited to “characters” in this article.  To Tom Knoll, my big brother, where are you now.  You taught me to drink scotch out of necessity and it remains to this day as my favored drink.  To Mike Daly, my little brother, did you inherit any of my beliefs?  If so, I want to offer a late apology.  To Dave Koch, Bruce Whitehead, Jon Wolfgram, the Tiles brothers, Ed and Wally, Buddy Bannow and Chris Crager, my drinking buddies and cohorts in fraternity hijinks, you still out there?  To Plank, Roskom and Sonlietner, my attempt to drag my former high school classmates into the depths of depravity, how goes it?  And as I write this, to the multitude of other brothers that keep popping into my brain, thanks for the memories.

In conclusion, if for no other reason than this has to end, we are all older and supposedly wiser.  We have neared the end of or already retired from our careers.  We have likely raised a family and from the Facebook pictures, are now spoiling grandchildren.  Through all those years, still brothers, yes you too Kimbal.  Delta Chi was an underlying reason we made it.  Maybe the networking.  Maybe the dedication to service.  Maybe just the brotherhood in the adventure at its beginnings and friends to the end of the journey of life.  It has been and continues to be fraternal.

Ken Wundrow

Delta Chi Alum class of 1970

Grandkids selfie

What Makes an Adventure

Posted on by kwundrow

Each year for the past forty years, I have attended the Indy 500.  Over the past twenty years my daughters have come with me.  Now in consideration for my friends’ questioning of my sanity, what sane person watches cars circling a track for three hours, it’s not just about the cars, even though 230 miles per hour is something you can only experience sitting 100 feet away, it’s so much more.   It’s the adventure.

For us the weekend starts on Friday with our trek down to Lafayette, Indiana.  It morphs into a golf tournament Saturday morning and then follows up with the annual reunion of the group of attendees, now numbering 30 plus, some who have traveled from as far away as Florida to the south and just below Canada to the north.  Sunday morning, race day, finds us assembling our caravan in preparation for our drive to the track in Indianapolis.  There we will tailgate with 350,000 other spectators for the greatest spectacle in sports.  You see it’s not just the race, it’s everything that goes with it. If you are a people watcher, the sheer size of the crowd will hold you in amazement.  If it’s the rush of speed, well there’s plenty of that and it’s not just the race cars driving fast but all the would be racers driving the highways into Indianapolis that Sunday morning.   It’s the hoopla, the track, the parade.  It’s the celebrities and the cameras.  It’s the spectacle.

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For me there is one more element that draws me back each year.  This is my chance, at least once a year, to spend time with my two, now adult, daughters.  When I was approached by my then 14-year-old daughter, asking to go with me for my annual “boys” weekend, I was taken aback.  I explained the logistics of spending a long weekend with twenty some guys bent on talking about race cars and well…… being guys.  I was only mildly surprised, after all she was already pretty headstrong, when she told me she was fully prepared to hold her own.  When she explained in detail the workings of the cars and her knowledge of the drivers, I realized that this was to be our next logical adventure.  Five years later, my younger daughter literally tricked her way into attendance and there were now two women fully integrated into the Wisconsin Indy crowd.  Some twenty years later, they still hold sway each year and command respect from the guys and actually represent the “elder” version of the second generation.  They make me proud each and every year as I listen to the reminiscing and the conversations they so comfortably center themselves into.

Indy second generation

I have never regretted for a moment having two daughters as my only children.  I was careful to give them every chance to be the beautiful women they are while letting them experience all the adventures a father would share with his son.  The Indy 500 is just one of those adventures.  Each year we plan and prepare for our trip, excitement growing through the entire month of May.  It is seventy-two hours of conversations about life and goals and achievements, uninterrupted by other family members, apologies to my wife.  It is a chance to bond and to share an experience with two people I love and respect.

Indy daughters

It’s not just the race, it’s everything that surrounds it, but more than anything else, it is the adventure shared.  Just a heads up, if you choose to argue the merits of this race with my daughters, you best do your homework.

Retirement…a Bottle of Wine and Sunset on my Deck

Posted on by kwundrow

Hopefully the title got your attention.  I apologize to my readers, now numbering in the tens, for my lull in writing.  I should also tell you that after a bottle of wine, kindly provided by our neighbors, that this, at least in my own mind, will be a great read.  I am happily, almost comfortably into my ninth month of retirement.  Ironically, a couple can produce a child in that time frame but I guess finding one’s self in retirement is sort of the equivalent.

Achievement

Not sure why this picture seems approprite, but something about the child, the mask and the arms raised in victory strikes a cord with me.

On Vaction

In my vacation phase somewhere up north.

I have found my purpose and that seemed to be everyone’s fear for me when I announced my retirement.  “What are you going to do with yourself?”  That seemed to be everyone’s concern.  If you remember, I started making lists.  I am happy, no elated to tell you that I checked and I haven’t accomplished any of those things yet.  The list was stupid.  It was too long and it included things I assumed would put everyone’s worries at ease.  Turns out it only made me tired thinking of all I would have to accomplish.

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So let me tell you how it is actually working out.  The book I am writing, it will be a great success if two things can happen.  One, I can take one hundred years to write it and two, I will live that long and some how have any of the faculties left to write coherently.  I had one bottle of wine and you are currently witnessing the results.   The alternative to that plan is that there is a publisher out there looking to publish the world’s shortest, we are talking ten pages, “how to succeed at life” novel.  Can you call ten pages a novel?  Then there’s the travel.  We have managed a four day get away to a Florida convention resort where we begged to be upgraded to a real room, you know, one with a view of actual water and I don’t mean the retention pond beyond the parking lot.  We squeezed in a week skiing in Colorado, everyone says go South, somewhere warm, by the ocean, we go to snow covered mountains.  And then there was the golf.  I was going to golf every week if not every day….. right, not so much.  But it turns out that was a good thing as retirement doesn’t actually improve your golf game.  Turns out it requires practice, patience and perseverance, of which I have, oh yeah, none of those qualities or at least not the time for them.

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But not all is lost.  I have found the secret to retirement.  It turns out it is doing nothing and feeling busy.  It is enjoying a sunrise with coffee on your deck. It is reading the paper for enjoyment instead of worry, you just skip all the news stories and focus on the comics.  It is changing your mind and doing the last thing on your list instead of the first.  It is skipping everything and sitting on the deck, watching the sunset and finishing off a bottle of wine with no regrets for tomorrow morning.  It is letting the day find you instead of trying to find yourself.

Grandkids selfie

There is one other accomplishment for which I am both proud and grateful.  I found an organization, SCORE, that has completely fulfilled me.  I discovered that the passion in my career came from helping and mentoring others, sometimes helping them do and become things even I couldn’t do for myself.  In this volunteer position, I get to mentor new businesses.  I marvel at their dreams and aspirations and then I get to answer their questions and tell them what I learned from both my mistakes and my successes.  I return from these sessions recharged and envigorated.  It is the exercise of your passion that rewards you for the years you spent working at figuring out what it was.

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So take heart all you worriers.  I am alive and doing well in retirement.  My list has been put in the back of my desk drawer where it belongs and I am allowing each new day to write its own “to do” list for me.  Now if you don’t mind, I will sign off.  I’ve got a million things to not do yet today.  Manana.

What’s the Greatest Thing about being a Grandpa?

Posted on by kwundrow

We are given children and we become parents.  We nurture them.  We support their every need.  We watch them grow, gritting our teeth through the tough times, loving them even when they tell you they want new parents.  We hold our breath as they take their first steps and then again when they take their big steps….. first day of school, first date, first job.  And then, just about the time you are ready to be put out to the parenthood pasture, they make you a grandpa.

You get to start all over, maybe even fix a few of your mistakes.  You once again get to feel a tiny hand in yours just like you felt so long ago.  You get to see the wonder and awe of every new thing through their innocent eyes.  You get to watch the progress of life all over again, and somehow, as different as it is, it is somehow so strangely the same.

This time around, you get to be the spoiler when you want to.  You get to call everything an adventure and declare every day a McDonald’s day.  After all, why shouldn’t each day have a happy meal.  You get to be the historian, reliving the past with stories and recreating it with activities.  You might even get to rebuild the clubhouse their mom played in as a little girl.  Oh it’s a bit bigger this time around and even a tad fancier, but that’s just what grandpas do.  And when they climb up into their clubhouse, the smile on their face makes all the aches and pains of a now much older carpenter, go magically away.

Original Clubhouse

1989 Original Clubhouse

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2018 New Clubhouse

But what’s the greatest thing about being a grandpa.  Simply put…..everything.  They say life begins again after forty or whatever age you pick, but I say life begins again with the birth of each new grandchild.   It’s life’s sequel playing out before your very eyes and once again you are given a supporting role.

Glad to be Opa and pleased with the gift of a second go round.

I wonder as he wanders

Posted on by kwundrow

My grandson, Jackson, is now four years old and is into his “why” years.  To his credit he generally accepts your answer to his why question fairly gracefully.  He may follow the first why with several additional whys but he is usually satisfied within three or four.  Jackson is observant and is constantly checking out everything as to how it works.  I have stepped into my role as Opa and have taken him on excursions to discover new things.  Along the way, Jackson has become very fond of Home Depot.  Before I wander further, I must compliment Home Depot on the clever marketing trick that they have developed to lure in unsuspecting grandpas with their grandchildren.  Every other Saturday or so they offer a free “build it” class for kids.  They cordon off an area in the lumber aisle and the kids get a complimentary craft kit and are able to assemble and paint their project.  Now how can they afford all those free precut kits and paint supplies you ask?  Let’s put it this way, I have yet to leave the store on one of these “free” days without $100 to $200 worth of goods.  I guess they saw me coming because those end caps as they are called, are just beckoning with all those shiny tools I never knew I needed but certainly couldn’t live without.

Into this very inviting space comes Jackson.  A typical trip to Home Depot will last upwards of two hours.  Now this makes his parents and Mimi quite happy as it allows them two uninterrupted hours to catch their breath, though that generally ends up being spent chasing our one-year-old granddaughter Adela, around the house as she now has their undivided attention.  Meanwhile Jackson is wandering.  We must open, walk through, and close every entry door in the home exterior section.  This of course means that we must also explore, until satisfied, how each storm window opens, closes and locks.  Chalk up most of our first hour.

Hour number two finds us in the appliance and kitchen area.  It is at this point that I begin my wondering.  Jackson is most fascinated with refrigerators.  And what man, young or old, wouldn’t be?  Dish washers, clothes dryers, washers, merely utilitarian, but refrigerators, or fridges as we men call them, are works of art.  They used to just keep things cold, period.  Not anymore.  They are divided into zones of coldness because no one wants meat at the same temperature as their lettuce and that would be nowhere near the perfect temperature for milk and wine.  Yes I said wine.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg lettuce.  They have see through doors that light up at the Sheldon like three raps (reference Big Bang Theory).   And that door has a compartment within the door!  Believe me when I tell you Jackson marvels at that feature.  He tells me immediately that the “door in a door” invention is just for him and his supply of juice boxes, you know, the ones that squirt all over when you try to insert the straw.  Those boxes, but that’s another story for some other time.  I digress.

Had enough?  But wait, there’s more.  The really “cool” fridges have computers built in.  They will track your every move and then make your grocery list for you.  No more secret snacking after midnight guys.  That list is then sent to your cell phone.  Throw in a linked Alexa or Siri, and you have the beginnings of an appliance conspiracy.  I suspect they might even have their own Facebook page where they report on and laugh about their owners.  There’s probably a camera hidden in that door within the door.  Don’t believe me?  Search “my refrigerator” on your Facebook page and see if it agrees to accept your friend request.

After a thorough examination of every one of these refrigerators, Jackson tells me he is adding the one with the most impressive engineering to “his list”.  Now I am wondering just how serious is this list?  We move on to the stoves.  Not much time needed here, I suspect he likes eating the food more than preparing it.  I will let his Aunt Kat and Eli work on the development of that talent.  Within minutes, Jackson has decided on the grill top gas grill.  He is particularly fascinated with the nobs he can push in or pull out. We decide on the shiniest model and add it to his now growing list.  French style entry doors, crank out storm windows, a $5400 refrigerator with all the bells and whistles and a four burner grill top gas stove now adorn “the list”.

On to the cabinets.  And again guys, amazing innovations for you manly organizers out there.  In no time flat we are on a quest to verify which cabinets and cupboards are fitted with self-closing drawers.  Apparently it has come to the attention of kitchen designers that we are running out of our kitchens without remembering, or taking the time I guess, to shut the drawers and close the doors.  Jackson tells me that “his cabinets” MUST have these self-closers or they are not making “the list”.  We have almost isolated the winner when we discover two not to be without features.  Wait for it ……. ultimate in convenience and organization, the toe kick hidden flat pan drawer and the pull out, wire framed organizer, drop-down upper cabinet.  The entire innards float effortlessly down to the countertop where Jackson declares “there’s where my fruit snack packs go.”  And these, of course, have now been added to the list.

In the course of our two-hour adventure, Jackson’s description, I have staved off several persistent floor sales reps, visited almost every section and aisle and if his parents fulfill his list, will have spent somewhere in the vicinity of $40,000 on Jackson’s house.  Way to go Home Depot.  We head for the front to escape and then head to McDonald’s to discuss the details of our finds and of course, to get our happy meal and toy.

And so, I wonder?  Will Jackson become a designer?  Or maybe an engineer?  One of the store reps, after watching him carefully study the icemakers, suggested he consider being a plumber as they make so much more than engineers, her belief not necessarily mine and apologies to both careers.  Maybe he will write for a consumer magazine.  No matter what Jackson decides, I am amazed at watching the inquisitive mind of a four-year-old boy at work and humbled at his ability to figure out the technology and mechanics by simple observations.  I am sure that if we just encourage the curiosity of our children and grandchildren, the future is bright for a never-ending evolution of new and creative conveniences.

And now it’s time to visit an electronics store.  Oh God.  Thank you Jackson for letting me wonder as you wandered.