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Dennis Rauscher

In the late fifties and early sixties Dennis attended college at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. 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 like to say about the 1960s 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 60s?
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 dont really know whats going on or the problems they had. You read about them and hear about
them, but you dont 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 didnt 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 didnt 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,
Hubert 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 wasnt in it; I was just
doing it to help them out. Thats 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
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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 wasnt
that much because he didnt 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.

Because of his
age and the fact
that he was an
excellent speaker,
he had enthusiasm,
he looked like he
could do things.

What did you think of the Kennedy assassination? Do you agree

with the governments 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 heres 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 Kennedys

presidency, do you remember that?
Yes, I remember the Bay of Pigs. Again, the only thing that you
see is whats 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 youre disappointed that they werent
able to overthrow Castro, and that all these people were hurt, but again it doesnt affect you individually.
It doesnt impact you because nothing has happened to you personally. Its like watching the war in Iraq;
it has not impacted me personally, because I dont know anybody there. After a while you come to expect
that things are going to happen. Youre always being surprised, and the world is never going to be a
totally safe place. Who knows the stuff thats happening now? How will you know how its going to
affect you twenty years from now? Somebody could say that this is going to happen, or thats 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 60s? Was it easy going, or were there a lot of hard times?
From a personal standpoint, I had just gotten married in 1960, so youre just starting out in life. I made
four hundred 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. Youd pay five, six hundred
dollars for a used car. You could live on that, you didnt 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 didnt have the welfare systems that they have today.

Did the women in the 1960s just keep mostly to their housework?
No, you have the womens movement even then, but then again theres always been some womens
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movement. Trying to get better jobs and equal pay.

Did it seem like the womens movement had taken a step up in the 60s?
Yes, you always have to have a base to start from, you dont 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 womens movement, or was
it not that big of an issue to you?
No, it wasnt because I never felt that a womans 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?
Id say it is tougher now, especially history, because theres 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 werent 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. Im sure it went on, but I wasnt
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 werent a part of it, so we werent 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 werent involved
in it.

Thats 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 didnt 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 dont 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 t-shirt shops.
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So what would you say is one big difference between the people and the lifestyle from then to now?
Theres 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 60s. Did the Beatles
have an impact on you?
Its 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.

Rock n Roll
was said to be
the end of
society.

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 didnt 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. Youd 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 arent 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?
Its hard to place into a specific time period. Lawrence 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 wasnt as popular as it is now, and I didnt 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.
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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 didnt know a lot about the city. We got the
newspaper, we looked through the prices, and we dont know
He said, Well this is
the addresses, so we called. The man said it was in such and
on the north side. I
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.
said that didnt make a
I said that didnt make a difference to me. He asked if I was
difference to me. He
white; I said yes and he said you dont want to live here.
That just shows you how the black and whites were. We did
asked if I was white; I
end up living on the north side, but it was the far north side,
said yes and he said
past where the black area was.
So it was basically like the town was segregated?
Definitely yes, its 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 1960s?
It didnt bother me.

you dont want to live

here.

Do you remember anything about Martin Luther King, Jr.?

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 werent 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 dont think that affected the space race. The space race was all about how much they wanted to put into
it. At that time they didnt 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 dont 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
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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 wasnt involved. The civilian idea didnt work because they werent
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 its happening as youre watching it. Its 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,
thats super.

Do you think the space race was worth it?

Yes, I think it was. If nothing else, its important for you to know whats 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,
thats 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.

After college Dennis was employed by Goodyear Tire

Company, his employment there enabled him to work
in many various places around Wisconsin. He was
employed by Goodyear for a total of nineteen years,
and is currently working at Mills Fleet Farm.
Dennis loves his collection of antique radios.

Rauscher, Dennis

2007 D.C. Everest Area Schools Publications