Obit: Fischer, Beaulah Mae (1925 - 2010)

Contact: Robert Lipprandt

Email: bob@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Aune, Cypher, Damm, Dassow, Fischer, Goessl, Hundrieser, Jensen, Meyer, Rusch-Fischer, Sittner, Stelzel, Thorson, Ulrich, Younker, Ziarnik    

----Source: The Tribune - Phonograph (Abbotsford, Clark Co., Wisconsin) Wednesday, June 9, 2010, online edition

Fischer, Beaulah Mae (Jensen) (20 August, 1925 - 15 June, 2010)

Beaulah Mae Jensen Fischer, born 20 Aug 1925, was the first child of Arthur Oscar Jensen & Margaret Lydia Ruth Ulrich of the Town of Mayville, Clark County, WI to survive past infancy.

Her elder siblings: Valgene Arthur, aged 28 days; Lydia Ruth, stillborn; and Marvin Bruce, aged 3 months and 3 days; are interred at Pine Hill Cemetery, Curtiss, WI.

She attended grade school at the Hilltop School in the Town of Mayville and graduated from Abbotsford High School in 1943. In that same year she relocated to Chicago to work as a keypunch operator for the US Treasury Department in the Merchandise Mart, the largest office building in the world at the time. She lived and worked in Chicago for a little over 4 years. Near the end of that time, her sister Charlene had joined her. They shared an apartment, and eventually Charlene met and married Frank Hundrieser.

Beaulah returned to the Mayville area, and on 26 Jun 1948, she married Melvin Leroy Fischer, son of William A. Fischer and Anna P. Damm of Taylor County, at the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Medford, Taylor County, WI.

The couple traveled the western US towing an AirStream trailer for living quarters and worked odd jobs in almost every state west of the Mississippi. In 1950, they were living in a trailer court in Scottsdale, AZ. Melvin was working installing ductwork for heating & air conditioning in new homes. At Christmas that year, Beaulah was diagnosed with cancer and underwent a hysterectomy.

Shortly afterward, they moved back to Dorchester, WI where Melvin worked first at the Dorchester Furniture Factory, where he lost a finger in a bandsaw, and then as a welder/sheet metal worker for Wally Zuber’s Metal Shop. Beaulah and Melvin bought out Mr. Zuber’s interest and equipment for the manufacture of television towers and founded the Dorchester Tower Company with Beaulah taking care of the business’s bookkeeping.

They bought the home on the corner of Linden Street and 3rd Avenue in Dorchester. In September 1953, they adopted their two sons, Daniel and David.

Later they bought the Laab’s Cheese Factory one mile south of Dorchester on the corner of Hiline Avenue and Center Road, converting it to the manufacture of television towers. They also built a home on the one acre parcel.

Beaulah had always been interested in writing and had a few items published including an article in the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1956. Wanting to learn more about the craft, she took college night courses on the subject at the UW Extension. Her writing interests were primarily in the area of local history. In 1973, she chaired the Dorchester Centennial Committee, editing and writing much of "Historical Sketches of Dorchester, Wisconsin 1873 - 1973", in 1984 she wrote, "Arthur & Margaret Jensen, a Family History", a narrative and genealogy of the Jensens. In 1980, she co-authored "St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church, Dorchester, WI 1880 - 1980", a centennial history. In 1989 she wrote "God’s Acres, a History of the Cemeteries of Dorchester, WI" relating the history of interments in the area from a lost Indian cemetery, to home farm burials, the then abandoned Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery, and on to the cemeteries known today. The Fischer’s were avid snowmobilers and founding members of the Midnight Riders snowmobile club; naturally, Beaulah, after many years with the organization, wrote a "History of the Midnight Riders".

The Fischer’s were very active civically with Melvin serving on the St. Peter’s Lutheran Church Board of Trustees many years, as a volunteer fire fighter, on the Dorchester Days Committee. Beaulah was a member of the St. Peter’s Lutheran Lady’s Aid Society for most of her adult life, served the Dorchester Memorial Cemetery Association, was on the Colby PTA board, was secretary of the Midnight Riders snowmobile club, and was designated the Dorchester Town Historian for her work in documenting so many areas of local history. They donated the funds to purchase the St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church’s organ, as well as for the steeple refurbishment and lighting.

In 1970 and 1971, the Fischer’s participated in "Operation Friendship" taking in two 11-year-old black girls from Chicago for a week of sharing the rural Wisconsin experience.

The Fischer home and part of the family business, Dorchester Towers’ metal fabrication shop, were destroyed by a tornado 28 Sep 1971, while Beaulah, the only person at home, clung to a water pipe in a corner of the basement. As a child, she had also survived a tornado in the Jensen farmstead only a few miles away; both homes lay on what is known locally as ‘tornado alley’ owing to their frequent occurrence along this path.

In 2003 following the death of her husband, she moved into an apartment at the Angelus Center for assisted living in Colby, WI. She later moved to the Colonial Center, also in Colby, where she passed away at 6:15 AM on 15 Jun 2010.

Beaulah is survived by four brothers; Bruce, Glen, Gene, and Jack, five sisters; Vera Sittner Younker Thorson, Donna Goessl, Marilyn Meyer, Audrey Cypher, and Sandra Stelzel Dassow, two sons; Daniel Rusch-Fischer of Payson, Arizona, and David Fischer of Pierson Florida, by two granddaughters; Tamara Ziarnik,  and Tabetha Aune, a grandson; David A. Fischer Jr., and 17 great grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her parents, two sisters and a brother mentioned above, two additional sisters, Charlene (Frank Hundrieser) and Verna (Paul Meyer), and a great grandson Jason A. Rusch-Fischer.

There was a viewing Friday, June 18, and funeral services were held Saturday, with burial in the Fischer Family plot in the Dorchester Memorial Cemetery.