In the late fifties and early sixties Dennis attended
college at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. There he majored in economics.
He married his wife, Janet Kersemeier, in 1960, they have three children:
David, Karin, and Daniel.
Is there anything that you would to say about the nineteen
sixties to begin?
Looking back at it now, it seems as average then as it
seems to be now. In the late
forties, you were getting out of the war, and everyone was trying to get their
life back and get in focus. Then in
the early fifties you had the Korean War, so as you got into the late fifties
and into the sixties, people had more money. They had more leisure time.
Everybody did not have to work as much, so the young people, including
myself, had opportunities to go to school more and have more leisure time.
At the same time there were a lot of new ideas around.
I would say looking back, there was a lot of turmoil.
There were a lot of things going on: civil rights and space race.
Is there any specific event that you remember from the
sixties?
I grew up in a community where there were no blacks, and
there were no Indians until I moved to Rothschild in the fifties.
I had never seen an Indian before. You
go to school, and there are no blacks. You
don’t really know what’s going on or the problems they had.
You read about them and hear about them, but you don’t experience them.
When I went to school in Madison, there were a few blacks in that school.
Unless you went into the black areas, you didn’t see what housing they
had or how they had to live.
Are there any events that struck you as a huge issue with
our society?
I worked part time as an appliance dealer, so I had to help
deliver appliances. We would get
into some of the black areas and get into some of the housing that they had.
Virtually they were forced to live there, because they didn’t have the
money to live anywhere else. Some
of the housing was pretty poor, shaky, and junky.
I got involved in politics a little bit.
I tend to be Republican. When
I was in school in 1960, Herbert Humphrey was running for president against
Kennedy. I was going to school with a kid by the name of John W.
Kennedy. John and I knew Dave Obey.
Dave Obey was always involved in politics, and Dave was in school down
there. Dave decided that he would
have John make a Kennedy for Humphrey club, because Humphrey was running against
Kennedy, John F. Kennedy. We had
this Kennedy for Humphrey club. Hubert
Humphrey came on campus to speak, in order to have it look like he had a lot of
support; Obey had to get a whole bunch of people there.
I got involved in that, and I was there and helped out as much as I
could, did what they told me to do. My
heart wasn’t in it; I was just doing it to help them out.
That’s about as close as I ever got to the politics.
Did you support a specific candidate, or did you not really
get involved?
Whoever was a Republican.
Dave Obey was really involved in politics on campus.
He would try to get other guys and me to help out with events that he
had. I would help out, but it never
excited me, it never got me involved enough to get involved in politics
seriously.
Did you think Kennedy was a good President?
Because of his age and the fact that he was an excellent
speaker, he had enthusiasm, he looked like he could do things. He had some ideas
that were good, but as far as what he ever accomplished, it wasn’t that much
because he didn’t have that much time to do things.
We were living in Kenosha when he was assassinated. I was working for
Goodyear and I remember watching the television when it happened, and then I
remembered watching on television when Oswald was assassinated, because you
could see it from the front, right there.
What did you think of the Kennedy assassination; do you
agree with the government’s theory?
Yes, because nobody has made, what I feel is, a convincing
argument to the contrary. The way
they do these things is they say, “Well here’s what happened and what if
such and such happened,” and then they carry on from there as though this
thing did happen. You could always
do a what if, but proving it is something else.
The Bay of Pigs Incident also took place during Kennedy’s
presidency, do you remember that?
Yes, I remember the Bay of Pigs. Again, the only thing that you see is what’s on television.
You always get what actually happened, or how it came about, much later a
lot of times. I remember when that
happened, watching, and hearing about it on television.
You say you saw it on TV, but did these events have any
kind of impact on you?
Yes, but you get the view of what they want you to hear,
and sure you’re disappointed that they weren’t able to overthrow Castro, and
that all these people were hurt, but again it doesn’t affect you individually.
It doesn’t impact you because nothing has happened to you personally.
It’s like watching the war in Iraq; it has not impacted me personally,
because I don’t know anybody there. After
a while you come to expect that things are going to happen. You’re always being surprised, and the world is never going
to be a totally safe place. Who
knows the stuff that’s happening now? How
will you know how it’s going to affect you twenty years from now?
Somebody could say that this is going to happen, or that’s going to
happen, and of course a lot of these things never happen, and a lot of things
change in response to things that happen.
Could you tell us what life was like in the sixties? Was it
easy going, or were there a lot of hard times?
From a personal standpoint, I had just gotten married in
1960, so you’re just starting out in life.
I made 400 dollars a month. That
was an amount you could live by, because I paid 80 dollars a month for rent for
my apartment. You could buy
hamburger for 25 cents a pound. You’d
pay five, six hundred dollars for a used car.
You could live on that, you didn’t live high, but you could live
comfortably. Of course everybody is
trying to get ahead and earn more, but even at that time there were people that
made a lot less than that, and they didn’t have the welfare systems that they
have today.
Did the women in the 1960’s just keep mostly to their
housework?
No, you have the women’s movement even then, but then
again there’s always been some women’s movement.
Trying to get better jobs and equal pay.
Did it seem like the women’s movement had taken a step up
in the sixties?
Yes, you always have to have a base to start from, you
don’t start from zero, you start from a base and go from there.
Yes, there was some movement then to try and get more equal rights for
women.
Did you have any sort of views about the women during the
sixties, or the women’s movement, or was it not that big of an issue to you?
No, it wasn’t because I never felt that a woman’s place
was in a home, or that you had a division of labor. I never had to work with women until I got into school, and
thinking back, even then I had no women instructors.
You say that you had no women instructors, how would
describe school back then, would you say school is tougher now?
I’d say it is tougher now, especially history, because
there’s a lot more of it. I think
there are a lot more issues with students that schools have to deal with now.
Drugs other than alcohol weren’t an issue, at least in the schools I
went to, or schools in this area. Even
when I was in college in Madison, I never saw open drug use or anything like
that. I was totally unaware of it.
I’m sure it went on, but I wasn’t aware of it.
I do remember, after getting out of school, we were living in Kenosha,
and we went back to Madison to visit. We
went to the capitol, and it was on a Saturday.
There was hardly anybody there. So
we went into the capitol, and walked around a little.
Then we went out onto the State Street side of the capitol.
There in front of the door was a line of policemen with their helmets
down and their nightsticks. We were
walking around in front of them and right at the end of State Street. They had some kind of rally.
We weren’t a part of it, so we weren’t paying any attention.
We started walking away, we got about a block away and the students
rushed the cops, and there was stuff flying and tear gas everywhere.
We just got out of there, but another ten minutes we would have been
right there. Again we weren’t
involved in it.
That’s one memory that you have of violence, do you
remember anything about the hippies?
Yes, I took classes in the Commerce Building.
On top of the Commerce Building was the Army Research Center.
The Army Research Center was a math research center financed by the army.
They did basic math research for flying and defense and much more.
Of course the war protestors were against that and were always trying to
get into the Math Resource Center. They
would sit in the Commerce Building hallways.
They would sit on the floor against the wall with their legs hanging out.
Some of the guys who went to classes there and didn’t want to be
bothered by them, would literally kick their way down the hallway, kicking them
out of the way. Some of them would
throw stuff on them, and spit on them and different things like that.
It was there and was just how life was like back then, at least in the
Commerce Building. The hippies
would also love everybody. They
would love everybody and not love anybody specific, because that way you don’t
have to apply that love to one individual.
Would you say the hippies were one main difference between
people back then and people now?
Even now though you go to Madison and things look basically
no different than they did then. You
still get the weird stuff, your kids that are literally on the loose, and are on
their own and can do whatever they want; they are trying different stuff.
So you would say it is pretty similar and you get kind of a
flashback when you go there?
Yes, especially when you see the hippies running the
tee-shirt shops.
So what would you say is one big difference between the
people and the lifestyle from then to now?
There’s a lot more money available now, a lot more money
available now. There are more drugs
available now than there was then -a lot more.
Music was involved a lot in the lifestyle of the sixties;
did the Beatles have an impact on you?
It’s hard to say, did I change my life because of them,
no. Did I like their music, some of
it.
What other kind of music did you listen to besides the
Beatles?
A lot of Rock n’ Roll music. Buddy Holly, Chubby Checker.
Rock n’ Roll was all you heard on a lot of the stations, Rock n’ Roll
was said to be the end of society, just like rap music is now.
One difference between now and then is the technology; what
would you say was the most significant invention?
The invention of the transistor. Transistors were made for miniaturization, to make things
smaller, to make things cheaper. They
enabled you to pack more into a small space.
They helped develop radar. When
I was in college, they had a computer. The
computer took virtually one whole room. It had huge ducts that went in to cool it down, vacuum tubes.
It didn’t really have the processing power that you would have in the
very cheapest computer that was available in the early eighties, it was nothing. I remember taking part in teaching experiments, where they
thought they could use computers to teach with. You’d sit there in front of the screen and they would have
the lesson or the questions up on the screen.
It was no more than a projector. That
was merely the beginning of it, and now you can buy an F-M radio for a dollar.
Then the cheapest radios you could get were twenty dollars.
A lot of the stuff was starting to be made in Japan, so it could be made
cheaper, and they were more innovative. It virtually killed the business in the
United States by the end of the seventies. There aren’t hardly any electronics
except the real high-end stuff; everything was built in Japan and China.
It went from radios to television sets; did you have a TV?
Yes, we had a couple, we always had one or two television
sets, or radios because I just loved that kind of stuff.
What were some of your favorite TV shows, or shows that
were popular in the sixties?
It’s hard to place into a specific time period.
Laurence Welk, Ed Sullivan, Dick Van Dyke, Red Skelton, I Love Lucy.
Did you watch any sports on television, or was that not
very popular?
They had some sports like baseball and football.
It wasn’t as popular as it is now, and I didn’t really enjoy sports
as much. I worked in the same place
as one of the Packers worked, so he would discuss the games.
Did you watch the 1968 Olympics on television? Do you
remember the black athletes doing the black power salute during the anthem, how
did you react to that?
Yes. I was
upset that they would use that to make a statement.
Do you feel it embarrassed the country?
Yes, but I do remember Father Groppi, he was a white
Catholic priest, who led marches down to the south side where the whites lived,
open housing marches to protest the housing policies of the people that lived
there (Milwaukee). When we moved
from Kenosha up to Milwaukee, we didn’t know a lot about the city.
We got the newspaper, we looked through the prices, and we don’t know
the addresses, so we called. The
man said it was in such and such a place. The
guy said do you know anything about the city and we said no.
He said well this is on the north side, I said that didn’t make a
difference to me. He asked if I was
white, I said yes and he said “you don’t want to live here.”
That just shows you how the black and whites were.
We did end up living on the north side, but it was the far north side,
past where the black area was.
So it was basically like the town was segregated?
Definitely yes, it’s probably still one of the most
segregated cities in the United States.
How did you personally feel about the segregation of the
blacks and whites during the 1960’s?
It didn’t bother me
Do you remember anything about Martin Luther King?
Yes, I remember the marches that he was involved in and the
speeches that he gave.
Did you experience the civil rights movement directly or
indirectly?
Indirectly, it never affected me a lot. They
used to have a baseball team in Wausau, and the black players could not stay at
the Wausau Hotel; they weren’t allowed to.
There were no local laws about it; it was just the way it was accepted.
Of course there were no laws against segregation, it was not considered
an unlawful thing to do.
Do you feel that because the United States was more focused
on television and civil rights, that it affected us in other stuff for example
the space race?
I don’t think that affected the space race.
The space race was all about how much they wanted to put into it. At that
time they didn’t realize that they were behind the Soviet Union, until they
put up Sputnik. And once they made
a commitment to it, they did what they said they were going to do.
I don’t think the other stuff really affected the space race.
Do you remember hearing a lot about the space race on
television?
Yes, I would watch it, it was interesting.
I would read a lot of magazines, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and
they always had that kind of stuff. I
read and found out whatever I could find out about it.
Do you remember any astronauts specifically?
I remember watching the first launch of an American
satellite and how that went. The
United States had what was called a Vanguard, which was the rocket that they
were going to launch, it was supposed to be strictly civilian; it was to have no
military applications or anything like that.
Then you would see the thing take off and then come back down.
The first satellite by the United States was actually launched with a
Redstone rocket, which was a military rocket.
The United States wanted space exploration at that time to be a civilian
thing, they had talked about putting up satellites that had military uses, or
they could establish a military base on the moon if they ever got to the moon.
They wanted to have it strictly a civilian thing so that the military
wasn’t involved. The civilian
idea didn’t work because they weren’t able to put one up and the military
did.
Did you watch the landing on the moon? What did you think
of that?
Yes, I thought that was just super.
It was one of the greatest accomplishments.
To actually see it in real time to know that it’s happening as you’re
watching it. It’s just
fascinating to me.
Did you ever expect before that that we could possibly ever
get to the moon?
Yes, because I am a great reader of science fiction, and
when you get real life imitating science fiction, that’s super.
Do you think the space race was worth it?
Yes, I think it was. If
nothing else, it’s important for you to know what’s out there.
There are a lot of other things that come out of it, just the basic
research for civilization. Some people say that all that money could have gone to feed
the hungry, well the hungry are always going to need stuff.
But to have something that invigorates people, that causes everybody to
come together, to go for a common goal, that’s great.
Is there anything else that you have to add about life in
the sixties?
No, it just was what it was, and we just lived it, like we
do now.
Oral
History Project 
