By Wayne Youngquist

Do you remember the old television shows "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley"? They aired in the late ’70s and early ’80s but were set in 1950s Milwaukee. In the 1950s, UWM was a "Happy Days" kind of place.

The students and adults looked, talked and acted just like people did in those television shows. Students dressed inexpensively but male faculty members wore sport coats or suits and female faculty wore dresses. People were respectful of each other and foul language was rare. There were no drugs. Beer yes, but drugs no.

It was a place for the children of the working class with a few North Shore types thrown in for good measure.

There were some minority students, but not many. After all, the city of Milwaukee was only about 3 percent black at the time. And what is now called the "inner city" was then mostly German and Jewish.

And yes, unfortunately, there was racial discrimination. A black philosophy professor, for example, had great difficulty finding a place to live — but then he went on to be elected to the school board.

UWM was the child of a shotgun wedding between the Milwaukee State College and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee extension. This was a marriage only somewhat wanted by the participants and definitely not wanted by the UW Board of Regents or Madison (which was the U of Wisconsin then).

Over the years, UWM has had a variety of leaders, most of them more or less hard to remember. But the man who arranged the wedding — Joseph Martin Klotsche — was a giant.

It was often said then that the "Cement never sets on Klotsche's empire." Klotsche developed a vision of an urban university and developed the political connections to bring it about. With the help of then State Sen. Henry Maier — the man who would go on to be Milwaukee's longest-serving mayor — Klotsche got the state Legislature to force the creation of UWM upon a kicking and screaming Board of Regents.

At first, UWM was simply a branch of Madison. There was even a big debate about the hyphen in the name. Diplomas read, "University of Wisconsin" with no indication of a separate identity. The school colors were red and white, like Madison, and the school songs were the same. However, the school mascot/symbol was a cardinal, not a badger.

That was an improvement over the Green Gulls, the former football team of the Milwaukee State College days. The teams still practiced in green, even if they played in red and white.

When those of us in student government suggested changing all this and establishing a separate identity, we were flooded with hate mail by the fans of Madison and Bucky Badger. Those really were happy days if this was our most volatile issue!

(Some years later, by the way, there was a Wisconsin State University. It was a short-lived way station when all the other state colleges were upgraded to a university system before they were all merged into the UW System.)

For many years, the new university consisted of two campuses — one on Kenwood Boulevard from the old Milwaukee State College and one downtown from the UW-Extension — with buildings at Sixth and Kilbourn and many classes in the Wisconsin Tower office building at Sixth and Wisconsin.

Most students and many faculty members ended up with classes on both campuses — often with only 10 minutes between classes. (It took the administration some time before they figured out that this defied the laws of physics, or at least the speed and parking laws of Milwaukee.) The Kenwood campus consisted of Mitchell, Mellencamp, Baker Field House, the campus Elementary School, some WWII barracks and the Union (which consisted basically of the Fireside Lounge and a first floor cafeteria). Side note: the old student government office is now a closet.

From the beginning, the UWM Post was a crucial part of the university, with offices in Mitchell Hall, typewriters, copy set in lead and a running battle with the administration over what could be printed. Many very good journalists cut their teeth with the UWM Post. It was a key part their education — and a key part of establishing the identity of UWM as something other than just a teachers school for people who couldn't afford to go away for college.

But as much as the university has changed since the at least somewhat happy days of yore, when UWM became a Wisconsin university, its identity became tied to the core mission of a university, as perhaps best expressed by the plaque on Mitchell Hall (a copy of the famous plaque on Bascom Hall): the great state university of Wisconsin must ever encourage the continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth may be found.

That core mission, whether of students, faculty or newspaper, gives the university its reason for being and is unchanged even today.

Wayne Youngquist is an alumnus who served as a reporter for the UWM Post in 1961 and was Student Body President 1960-’61. He graduated with a bachelor’s of science in philosophy in 1961 and served as a Senior Political Analyst (retired) for WISN-TV (Channel 12).

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