Christmas window displays remain one of the most talked about and fondly remembered aspects of a great department store. In the late fall, stores with big first floor windows would be covered to conceal the work going on behind them. The beautiful windows would be unveiled on Thanksgiving morning at many department stores, including some of the iconic spots in Manitowoc County’s downtown areas. Entire families would come to see the Christmas magic that would unfold behind the window glass.

Anything could be bought from a Sears catalog. Kitchen tables, lamps, clothes, dishes, stoves, mantels – everything you could ever need. You could even buy your house from Sears.

Imagine paging through the Sears Modern Home catalog and deciding on a home. You decide on all the options and place your order. Soon your home arrives, box by box. The needed lumber is cut and ready to create your home. The doors, windows, trim and everything you need to build your home has arrived – all 12,000 pieces in one box car. Now the work begins to put the house together.

It was the end of an ‘elegant era’ when Fehr Jewelry Store closed in downtown Manitowoc. The store, considered Wisconsin’s oldest jewelry store at the time, began in 1855 and closed its doors in 1988.

Gustave Karl Fehrs was born in the Prussian Province of Saxony in 1829. It was there that he learned the watchmaker profession and became quite talented in his field. Gustave and his wife, Emma, immigrated to the United States in the 1850s and settled in New York for a year before coming to Manitowoc around 1855. When the Fehrs family settled here, the community had only 1,900 citizens and G.K. Fehrs was the first to create a watch and jewelry store.

The story of the Rouse Simmons, also known as the Christmas Tree Ship, has been told countless times over the last century. It’s a tale of working on a Great Lakes Schooner, bringing holiday cheer, and most importantly family. On November 23, 1912 the schooner carrying Christmas trees vanished off the coast of Two Rivers. Captain Herman Schuenemann and his 17 man crew were making their yearly voyage to Chicago to deliver the trees when the harsh November waters proved to be too much for the schooner and crew.

Knowing well the story of Baron Georg and Baroness Maria von Trapp and their children who fled Austria to escape Nazism in 1938 (the inspiration for the musical play and film The Sound of Music), I was quite surprised to learn of the family’s evening performance on Monday, November 30, 1953 in Manitowoc.

According to Roy Valitchka of the Manitowoc Herald-Times on December 1, 1953, “an evening of joyous song was the reward” for those who crowded Lincoln High School auditorium to hear the Trapp Family Singers, America’s favorite musical family. The 90-minute performance was described as “flawless” with “voices that were fresh and true.”

The unique style of this filling station was somewhat of a trend during the 1920’s. As the automobile became more widely used, crudely constructed filling stations quickly began springing up in residential areas. There was a public backlash against the influx of commercial buildings. The result was often a compromise, with filling stations being designed to look like residences- some with a little more character than others.

In 1938, a joint committee of county board members, city officials, and National Guard officers looked over architects’ plans of a proposed new Armory building in Manitowoc. The Exhibition Hall and Armory building, located at 930 North 18th Street in Manitowoc on the Manitowoc County Fair Grounds, would provide for general county use and exhibit space for the fair, as well as offices, storage and drill space for the local National Guard, Company E 127th Infantry. The new structure would replace 3 wooden fair exhibition buildings and be of “new modern constructing.”

Staff of the Rivoli Theater portrayed ghosts for the Municipal Recreation Department’s Halloween Saturday afternoon show. The Manitowoc Herald Times featured the event with an article on October 30, 1953 saying, “Eight young misses will portray the roles of ghosts in serving as ushers at the event for the kiddies. Their adopted theme song will be ‘A-Haunting We Will Go’.” The ushers for the evening included Natalie (Spooks) Lueck, Betty (Spirits) Fronk, Nancy (Shadow) Henrickson, Dorothy (Goblin) Shavlik, Shirley (Screams) Richard, Shirley (Shreaks) Beth, and Lou Ann (Groans) Prausa.

As the Manitowoc Herald described the details of Waldo’s funeral, it went on to state what one speaker said: “‘a man hath but a short time to live. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower. He fleeth as it were a shadow.’ No truer words were spoken as Manitowoc’s first son was laid to rest.”

Upon the completion of construction on August 4, 1960, the Edward L. Ryerson set out from Manitowoc for Escanaba, Michigan, where it loaded ore and embarked on its maiden voyage to Indiana Harbor, Indiana.

In Wisconsin, some people say we have two seasons: winter and road construction. Considering that the majority of our interstates were paved under Eisenhower in the 1950’s, it is about time they were updated. Although we complain about the potholes that seemingly form overnight, our roads are nowhere as bumpy and uneven as those of a century ago. Just as the interstate system aimed to connect states and commerce, roads in the 1850s sought to connect communities and commerce. Manitowoc businesses had experienced rapid growth and sought to continue that trend. The next logical step was to draw in additional customers and profit. Building roads that connected customers to the products would ensure continued growth.

We reached a place where we thought we would stay overnight. There was an American living here, who owned an inn and was the postal agent. There was a sign over the door indicating lodging and postal agent … But we could not stay there, the man said, as he had no lanterns. We told him that was not a problem, to which he responded that he also did not have any tea or coffee …

“On August 10, 1855, I came to Manitowoc County with my parents, John Zander and his wife, my brothers, Helmuth and Fred, and my sisters Marie and Caroline, to the town of Gibson, where another brother, Edward, and William Buelkow had already erected a little log cabin on land taken up for us, the only one north of the Green Bay Railroad. Then life in the wilderness began for us.”

“They were out to get us at all costs. From my post in the wheelhouse, there were many close calls form Jap bombs that came hurling down on the carrier from the Jap planes. Two of three times it seemed as if I could almost reach out and touch some of the bombs as they dropped past our station”, recalled Manitowoc’s Edward Aschenbrenner of the sinking of the USS Lexington during World War II. Edward was 24 years old when he was a wheelmen on the U.S. aircraft carrier Lexington when it sank during Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942.

When one thinks of an alligator, you probably picture the Everglades in Florida or an alligator encaged at a zoo. You probably wouldn’t think of coming across an alligator in the wild in Wisconsin. In 1966 however, residents of Clarks Mills were convinced an alligator was among them and just a year later that fear would resurface with reports of another in Door County.

On June 9, 1900, a statue of a soldier standing silently with his gun was placed in the middle of Washington Street in Two Rivers. The day it was positioned there, swarms of people turned out to see it. The complete monument being twenty-one and a half feet high, and the silent metal soldier on top, standing eight feet high, looked southward down Washington Street after being erected.

“Sorry I missed you yesterday. I was busy. Say I’ve been told it’s a good idea to number yours and mine letters so that if one gets lost in the mail we’ll know it. I’ll call this #1. …”

That began the first letter Lieutenant Barry C. Kellenbenz wrote to his wife Karen while serving in Vietnam on January 18, 1969.

“Want to know how we live here – well … if you have time you build a hooch [thatched hut]of ponchos, put your air mattress on the ground and wrap up in your poncho liner (like a thick quilt – pretty warm), put plastic on one end to keep the rain out. And you might carry a light nylon hammock or you wrap up in your poncho liner and poncho and just lie down on the ground…”

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in service of the United States of America. As towns and villages throughout the country join together to remember and honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, constant reminders and memorials can be found throughout our area.

The Reedsville Area Veterans Memorial Park brings together the Reedsville AMVETS Post 1032 and the American Legion Gosz-Novak Post 199 to pay tribute to those who have served in the area. A main feature of the park is a T-33A United States Air Force military aircraft.

Construction on the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company’s first World War II submarine, USS Peto, had gone well except for a snag it hit in the latter part of 1942.  In October 1942, a Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company employee was accused of wartime sabotage acts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a defect that was found on the USS Peto.

Education has always been an important focus in our county. It was only a year after the first permanent settlers came to Manitowoc from Chicago that our county’s early pioneers began to establish schools for their children. The first school in Manitowoc County was a room in a warehouse on the corner of 6th and Commercial Streets in Manitowoc, owned by Benjamin Jones, a prominent citizen. Soon schools began popping up across townships and by the end of 1850 schools were located in Centerville, Cato, Newton, Rockland, Meeme, Mishicot, and Liberty.