My father graduated from the Michigan College of Mining and Technology in the spring of 1942 with a BSEE degree and immediately entered WWII with the Corp of Engineers, serving in both north Africa and Italy, and of all things, building wharfs and bridges. After the war, I was born in February of 1946, becoming one of the first baby boomers. By the time I was 14 I knew that I wanted to be an electrical engineer, just like dad. Back then, you were required to take a foreign language in high school in order to get into most colleges. Tech did not share this requirement, thus I was able to skip Latin (the only foreign language offered at our school) and take a couple of mechanical drafting courses instead. We did take a road trip to Houghton one summer, while I was in high school. I still remember that the last portion of highway 141, just south of Covington, was unpaved gravel. Kind of like the end of the world.

I graduated with my BSEE degree in 1968 and my sister Sally (Werner-Lemmers) followed suit shortly thereafter. Her claim to fame was switching her major from mechanical to electrical her freshman year. How often has that happened? With two sons bent on following in their father’s footsteps, we started taking our family up to Tech each winter, to take in a hockey game with the hope of a third generation of “toot’ EE’s to follow. Unfortunately, shortly before our oldest son was about to enter college, we took them to see a football game at Camp Randall on the University of Wisconsin campus. Having experiencing nothing but snow and cold weather at Houghton over the years, the bright lights and big city of Madison prevailed and Steve opted for UWM. The dream died. Matt followed and they both graduated with electrical engineering degrees as well.

Post script: My dad’s parents immigrated from Finland around the turn of the century and Jed was the only child to attend college. With two children and two grandsons, all EE’s, not a bad legacy at that.

Michael Werner “68