Fwd: her heart was in Baraboo
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Max Magee
Mar 6, 2023, 5:44:48 PM3/6/23
to Notorious Canary-Trainers
Cross-posting from the Hounds List, out of curiosity, has anyone known or met Brenda Rotzoll, from Baraboo?
https://www.wiscnews.com/community/baraboonewsrepublic/a-lifetime-of-writing-about-the-world-but-her-heart-was-in-baraboo/article_13a59cbb-ea98-53d1-aa96-f73c0dfbe188.html
Max
An excerpt of a story by Jonathan Shipley in “The Wisconsin State Journal” (Madison) 05 March under the headline “HEART NEVER LEFT HER HOME: BRENDA ROTZOLL, WHO COVERED CASTRO AND POPE, REFLECTS AT 83”:
>The young woman from Baraboo was a spy. The UW-Madison student was spending her holiday break terrified. The valedictorian of the Baraboo High School class of 1957, whose commencement speech was "My Elephants Are Not Pink;" who was Baraboo's first National Merit Scholarship winner; walked the streets of Havana nervously.
She had a pad of paper and a pen. Those were her chosen weapons against the Communist front brought violently to light by Fidel Castro. She took notes. She wrote. She, frightened as she was, knew how important her assignment was. She knew it was important for people to know the facts and to know how news events, like Castro's rise to power, can affect lives, no matter how far away those lives are.
She was there, in Cuba, during the height of the Cold War, the young woman from Baraboo. [. . . ]
The young woman from Baraboo wrote seven articles for the paper on her Cuba trip. [. . . ]
The patch of United States soil Brenda Rotzoll, that young writerly spy in Cuba, cherished most, and still cherishes most, is Baraboo. The 83-year-old, now residing in town at SSM Health St. Clare Meadows, has lived and written about people and places the world over: from Rome to Australia; Africa to London; New Hampshire to New York, but, she said, "my heart has always been right here in Baraboo."
She said, now legally blind and who asks others to read stories for her (like this one), "I've had marvelous opportunities and wrote about them." A proud journalist, having worked from June 1961 to November 2004, she said, "I don't think I've missed very much."
[. . . ]
She had always loved reading. She checked out most of the books from the Baraboo public library, read them, and then, turned around and checked them out again. She was keen, as a girl, to learn as much as she could about as many things as she could. She loved the library. She loved school.
Though she enjoyed the who-done-its, and read Sherlock Holmes voraciously, she wanted to learn about the real world; she wanted to see how it came to be the way it was; wanted to see how it was shaped, and by whom.
"I was born to be a service reporter," she said.
[. . . ]
After graduating cum laude from UW-Madison, she worked at United Press International (UPI). She worked first in their Milwaukee office, then to Chicago, then to England, then to Rome, then to New Hampshire, then back to Chicago to work for the Chicago Sun-Times until her retirement.
She liked covering all manner of stories, though she particularly liked the hard news. "It's got to be today's news today," she said. Being a woman in a predominantly male profession didn't faze her. "I baked a lot of homemade cookies and brought them into the office."
[. . . ]
While in Rome, Rotzoll covered fashion and spent a great deal of time covering the goings-on at the Vatican. A lifelong Episcopalian, she said, "I was not impressed." Nor did she want to kiss the pope's ring. "It's an extremely unsanitary practice." She relented, however. She has kissed a pope's ring.
[. . . ]
Rotzoll has not missed very much.
She's traveled the world and written about a lot of it: strikes and sports; traffic fatalities and Fred Astaire; presidents and petticoats. She wrote about a hijacking and took the last voyage of the Queen Mary. She's written about murderers and wrote one article titled "The potato scones of Anworth: their justified fame lives."
She's lived so she could share the lives of others through sentence and paragraph. "People need to know things," she said. "It's important." She continued, "The more journalists there are, the better our country will be."<
What an interesting woman! Did she carry that love of Sherlock Holmes into adulthood? Did she join a Sherlockian scion in any place she lived? How about the Notorious Canary Trainers in Madison?
~May Blunder
I'm personally not familiar with her, but as May/Karen points out, she's led a very interesting life!
https://www.wiscnews.com/community/baraboonewsrepublic/a-lifetime-of-writing-about-the-world-but-her-heart-was-in-baraboo/article_13a59cbb-ea98-53d1-aa96-f73c0dfbe188.html
Max
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Karen Murdock <murdo...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 5, 2023 at 5:26 PM
Subject: her heart was in Baraboo
To: hounds-l <houn...@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk>
From: Karen Murdock <murdo...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 5, 2023 at 5:26 PM
Subject: her heart was in Baraboo
To: hounds-l <houn...@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk>
>The young woman from Baraboo was a spy. The UW-Madison student was spending her holiday break terrified. The valedictorian of the Baraboo High School class of 1957, whose commencement speech was "My Elephants Are Not Pink;" who was Baraboo's first National Merit Scholarship winner; walked the streets of Havana nervously.
She had a pad of paper and a pen. Those were her chosen weapons against the Communist front brought violently to light by Fidel Castro. She took notes. She wrote. She, frightened as she was, knew how important her assignment was. She knew it was important for people to know the facts and to know how news events, like Castro's rise to power, can affect lives, no matter how far away those lives are.
She was there, in Cuba, during the height of the Cold War, the young woman from Baraboo. [. . . ]
The young woman from Baraboo wrote seven articles for the paper on her Cuba trip. [. . . ]
The patch of United States soil Brenda Rotzoll, that young writerly spy in Cuba, cherished most, and still cherishes most, is Baraboo. The 83-year-old, now residing in town at SSM Health St. Clare Meadows, has lived and written about people and places the world over: from Rome to Australia; Africa to London; New Hampshire to New York, but, she said, "my heart has always been right here in Baraboo."
She said, now legally blind and who asks others to read stories for her (like this one), "I've had marvelous opportunities and wrote about them." A proud journalist, having worked from June 1961 to November 2004, she said, "I don't think I've missed very much."
[. . . ]
She had always loved reading. She checked out most of the books from the Baraboo public library, read them, and then, turned around and checked them out again. She was keen, as a girl, to learn as much as she could about as many things as she could. She loved the library. She loved school.
Though she enjoyed the who-done-its, and read Sherlock Holmes voraciously, she wanted to learn about the real world; she wanted to see how it came to be the way it was; wanted to see how it was shaped, and by whom.
"I was born to be a service reporter," she said.
[. . . ]
After graduating cum laude from UW-Madison, she worked at United Press International (UPI). She worked first in their Milwaukee office, then to Chicago, then to England, then to Rome, then to New Hampshire, then back to Chicago to work for the Chicago Sun-Times until her retirement.
She liked covering all manner of stories, though she particularly liked the hard news. "It's got to be today's news today," she said. Being a woman in a predominantly male profession didn't faze her. "I baked a lot of homemade cookies and brought them into the office."
[. . . ]
While in Rome, Rotzoll covered fashion and spent a great deal of time covering the goings-on at the Vatican. A lifelong Episcopalian, she said, "I was not impressed." Nor did she want to kiss the pope's ring. "It's an extremely unsanitary practice." She relented, however. She has kissed a pope's ring.
[. . . ]
Rotzoll has not missed very much.
She's traveled the world and written about a lot of it: strikes and sports; traffic fatalities and Fred Astaire; presidents and petticoats. She wrote about a hijacking and took the last voyage of the Queen Mary. She's written about murderers and wrote one article titled "The potato scones of Anworth: their justified fame lives."
She's lived so she could share the lives of others through sentence and paragraph. "People need to know things," she said. "It's important." She continued, "The more journalists there are, the better our country will be."<
What an interesting woman! Did she carry that love of Sherlock Holmes into adulthood? Did she join a Sherlockian scion in any place she lived? How about the Notorious Canary Trainers in Madison?
~May Blunder
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