Posted 8:51 p.m. Thursday, March 8, 2012
Gov. Walter Goodland was the oldest man ever to be elected governor at 80 years of age. Gov. William Hoard made big strides in the preservation of dairy products in the late 1800s. Louis Harvey was governor during the Civil War, but he drowned while traveling to the South to visit Wisconsin troops.
The history behind Wisconsin’s governors is rich and Ralph L. Whiting, ’69, is sharing it with the entire state.
In 2008, Whiting, of La Crosse, received a $2,000 grant from Wisconsin Educational Media Association Permanent Endowment Trust to create and publish 5,000 posters featuring Wisconsin’s 51 governors through 2010. He collaborated with Jason Herman of JKHerman Design, LLC., in La Crosse.
Over the last several years, Whiting distributed the posters to every public school in Wisconsin, as well as many public libraries and historical societies. He says one of the most rewarding parts of the project was personally delivering posters to six of the living, former governors, including Governor Patrick Lucey who is now 94. “He just beamed,” says Whiting. The poster he gave to Gov. Jim Doyle hung in the entrance of the governor’s residence and another was placed in the state capitol.
Whiting earned a master’s from UW-L in audio visual administration and also worked was an adjunct staff member on a special projects through CESA from 1968-78. After a career in teaching and administration, he retired and continued to teach summer school for teachers at Viterbo University. But while teaching Wisconsin history, Whiting realized there was no single source with information on all of Wisconsin’s governors. It inspired him to apply for the grant.
[caption id="attachment_1726" align="alignright" width="288" caption="Ralph L. Whiting earned a master's degree from UW-L in 1969."]
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Whiting said he has always felt the need to provide resources to educators. When “microcomputers” were becoming popular in schools, he won a national award for a technology academy he started for teachers, which was replicated in several other states. He later worked with Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to offer the first computer training session for library media specialists in 1979.
Today, as Whiting looks over the black and white pictures of governors, he says he hopes the poster will be a resource for teachers and will help spread his fascination with Wisconsin history. Studying the governors helps people understand history by looking through the lens of people who played a significant role in it, he says.
“It’s important for Wisconsin citizens and others to relate in some way with our past because we learn from our past and we need to appreciate our past because it comes up so often,” he says