1986

Heinz Felder reports from Germany (although his e-mail was sent while in Brazil) that Stora Enso gave him a job promotion to senior vice president. Since Feb. 1, he has been responsible for all worldwide purchasing in the group, including raw materials, technical materials, IT, travel and services. After years as paper mill director in France, he is back to a lot of traveling. He and his family are looking forward to moving back to Dusseldorf, Germany. Heinz also joked that after eight years, his children are almost 100 percent "Frenchies," so it will take some time to get them back into the German mode.

Willy Kotas lets me know that he survived Carnival and earned more beads than his wife. He didn't say how and I didn't ask.

	Heinz Felder '86
	Josh '86, Jamie and Zach Field visiting "Saturday Night Live"

Nikki Pope has taken on the task of West Coast reporter. The West Coast includes all of Earth. She received her bar certificate as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. Nikki is very excited about that and bets that is a first for the class of 1986. Anyway, it means she can argue before the Supreme Court on behalf of Bigelow Tea when they take over the tea industry in a monopolistic play to rival Ma Bell and the Evil Empire. Although she is pretty much out of the marketing world, she still keeps a toe in through her involvement with the Northern California Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to the exoneration of innocent people and the correction of systemic problems in the legal system that lead to wrongful conviction. This year, NCIP held its second awards dinner, which gave her an opportunity to work with Ginger Campbell, who has been planning events since we graduated (probably before graduation if you count the creative session that led to "The B-School Shuffle"). Ginger attended the event in San Francisco on March 16 along with about 400 guests there to see Robin Wright Penn and Dr. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter present awards. On the drive up to The City (yes, there's only one "City," NYC notwithstanding), Ginger yakked on the phone with Tom Moore, but because Nikki is a conscientious driver, she did not yak with Tommy herself. The event was a tremendous success, especially in light of the tightened philanthropic budgets this year. Nikki has also been spending a lot of time on Facebook lately. Everyone she wants to stay in touch with has a Facebook account. (Apparently, I did not make the list.) She has reconnected with Greg Day and called him out of the blue. He's loving life in Texas and sounds exactly as she remembers him from college, not just KSM.

Nikki also announced that Cindi Bigelow is creatively using the social networking world to spread the word about the healing powers of tea. Nikki is thinking there probably isn't a company in America that isn't providing "Constant Comment" and "I Love Lemon" to keep its employees calm and happy. Of course, now that Cindi has Nikki hooked on the Ginger Snappish/I Love Lemon combo, she can only get the ginger on the black market when it's not the holiday season. Maybe there is a year-round market for the ginger? Cindi did not have time to comment this issue. They are working around the clock on a special tea for tax-day protests. Basically, it's an empty tea bag with the Lipton logo. Most people will not notice a difference.

Kelvin Walker announced that he and his wife Celia D. Walker had a son, William Kingston Walker, born March 16 at 7 pounds, 2 ounces. Kelvin says, "He's growing like a weed!"

Roger Clark and I exchanged a few e-mails, instead of meeting face to face. As Roger pointed out, we live in the same town and he can hit my parents' house with a rock from his house, but we never run into each other. I have asked him to stop throwing rocks at my parents' house, since I own it now. Roger did ask me what Eugene was up to and if he is still skiing. Eugene, the ball is in your court or slope. Roger is pleased that life is pretty good for the Clark family, in spite of the ugly economy. What has become his family business (portable commercial furniture) is down despite his best efforts, after some rapid growth over the past few years. He considered tea for comfort, but settled on Irish Whiskey — perhaps there's a cross-promotion idea in there for Cindi. (See what happens when you don't contribute!) In family news, their oldest son, Danny, is a junior at University School of Milwaukee and preparing for the college application process next year. Their younger son, Jack, will be entering high school next year, also at University School. Beth '88 is working part-time for the family business and doing considerable volunteer work. They will be traveling to Europe this summer, for what may be the final "family summer vacation." With a little luck, the Europeans will print more money than the Treasury and the greenback will spend well. If the airlines lower the checked baggage fee, I might consider stowing away and traveling with Roger's family.

Josh Field has replaced Howard Stern as the "King of all Media." And he provided this update from the East Coast (Florida) surfing capital. For the third anniversary of his company, Space Coast Business Media Group, he hosted a party for 300 local business leaders, clients and friends that included a private concert with singer/songwriter Karla Bonoff and Kenny Edwards. His company was named 2008 "Business of the Year" by the Cocoa Beach Chamber of Commerce and he was honored as 2008 "Entrepreneur of the Year" by the Melbourne-Palm Bay Chamber of Commerce. Josh also is serving the community on various boards, including the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast, the Brevard Cultural Alliance, the Founders Forum, and the Board of Overseers for the College of Business at the Florida Institute of Technology. On the family front, his oldest son, Adam, just finished his freshman year at the University of Florida (Go Gators, national champs). And their youngest, Zach, finished his junior year of high school. Translation: Jamie and Josh are one year away from being empty nesters ... yahoo! (And how many guestrooms will they have?) Josh and Jamie had a great trip to New York this past fall, the highlights being a private tour of "30 Rock," where they got backstage and on set at SNL, Conan, The Today Show, and the news department; they also met the Pussycat Dolls (meow!), Kathie Lee Gifford, Hoda Kotb, Natalie Morales, and others while there. They saw live tapings of Letterman and Regis. They had a personal invitation from NBC president Jeff Zucker (they are longtime friends of Zucker's wife) to their pre-Super Bowl party at Universal Studios in Orlando, where they partied down to performances by Jimmy Fallon and Fergie and hung with numerous NBC personalities, including Al Roker, Hayden Panettiere ("Heroes"), Zach Levi ("Chuck"), Kyle Chandler ("Friday Night Lights") and Jeff Goldblum ("Law & Order").

Over the past few months I have received nice e-mails from Doug Allen and Tony Mann. They both say hello to everybody and hope to be at our next Reunion, which is only two years away. Let the planning begin. I keep in touch with a few members of the Class of 1985. Rob Ahrensdorf has been nice enough to invite Laurie and me to Phoenix. John Baumann and I connected in Madison for a Badger football game and will golf together a few times this summer. In the last issue, I invited any of you who are in the Milwaukee area or visiting here to contact me to be a guest lecturer at UWM. While the class of 1986 has let me down, the class of 1985 has answered the call. Alison Hancock Heiser and I had a quick cup of coffee, if you count two and half hours quick to discuss how she could bring her extensive work experiences to the youngsters. Alison moved to Neenah, Wis., three years ago and left Kimberly-Clark to form her own marketing consulting company. If things work out, Alison will be a guest lecturer this fall when I teach "Topics in Marketing."

My four years of working in commercial real estate ended in March. I am sleeping better and my health has improved. I am on the board of directors for a senior living center in Mequon, Wis. So far I have asked if the facility has to remain kosher. It does. And can we change the name of the facility. Apparently, the family that donated millions of dollars to honor their mother wants her name to remain. When I am not teaching, I have been doing some fun traveling to San Diego, Atlanta and Seattle. This summer will include bad golf being played in Milwaukee, Monroe, Spring Green and Sister Bay. If you missed it, the hit of the Special K Revue was a song sung by a Madonna lookalike ("Don't cry for me, poor taxpayers. I have all the bailout I need.") Nicky Bullets would have killed with material like that. You are all still invited to be a guest lecturer and let's hear from some new people. We all have a story to tell. Some of them are even true and interesting!