midwest refugee

It’s been a year since prominent Milwaukee Economic Development Specialist Michael J. Wisniewski died of mesothelioma.

You’ve all heard of mesothelioma. You see it on TV commercials all the time:

“If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, or any disease caused by prolonged exposure to asbestos, call the law offices of—

You get the picture.

You know this disease, this cancer. It comes from inhaling lots and lots of asbestos particles. You know this cancer — we all learned about it in school. A disease so bad you were likely tested on it at some point in history class. Yeah, that one. The one that’s so bad you wouldn’t even wish upon your worst enemy. That cancer. The one that’s right up there with pancreatic. Yep, that’s the one.

That’s the cancer that Milwaukee Department of City Development’s Michael Wisniewski AKA “Wiz” AKA “Wizzy” died from a full year ago today.

For those of you who can’t place the name, it’s probably because there are about four trillion Wisniewskis on the south side of Milwaukee. For the rest of you, Mike Wisniewski was the lead on the Milwaukee development project we now refer to as the Milwaukee RiverWalk.

“Michael’s home-grown Milwaukee,” said his wife in his Journal-Sentinel obituary last year. “Born in Milwaukee, raised in Milwaukee.”

…died in Milwaukee.

Mike graduated from the old Don Bosco High School, then earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in urban affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

“Mike was a very strong believer in the city,” said Gary Grunau, a past chairman of the Milwaukee RiverWalk District. [Former Mayor] Norquist wanted to see the RiverWalk project happen, but Wisniewski was the one who made it happen.

So, from one strong believer in Milwaukee to another, many thanks to the Wiz for helping revitalize Milwaukee’s downtown by giving the people access to one of their most fundamental recreational resources: THE RIVER.

Roots.

Dwight Armstrong has died of lung cancer at the age of 58.

To jog your memory, Armstrong was the guy who bombed Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970 to protest the Vietnam War, killing physicist researcher Robert Fassnacht, and managed to stay on the lam for seven years after that before he was apprehended.

Today Dwight’s brother Karl, who was also party to the same crime and released from prison in 1980, owns a juice cart in Madison. In the warmer months, as he has for nearly three decades, the cart is on a pedestrian mall at the edge of the campus, a few blocks from the rebuilt Sterling Hall, where a plaque honors Mr. Fassnacht’s memory.