Tales from the old-timer

Old Friend Fred Kaatz - One in a Million

An old friend from my Social Worker days and long afterward, Fred Kaatz, died on July 7, 2005, nearly seven years ago. He had been living in Sand Point, Idaho, where fate led him. Fred was raised in Athelstane, and always loved the outdoors and its freedom. He was born in Athelstane on Nov. 7, 1922.

I knew Fred as a fellow caseworker for the old Marinette County Public Welfare Department back in 1957 or so. He was a man who held fiercely to his convictions about honor, integrity, ethics and fair dealings.

After graduating from Oshkosh State Teachers College, Fred taught one year at the rural school in Athelstane, then launched himself on a variety of careers, including what he called “Steamboatin” on the Great Lakes before signing on as a caseworker in Marinette, where I came to know him.

He had a disagreement with Augie Jenkins of Pembine on the Welfare Board, who, Fred said, had promised him a $15 raise in six months if he signed on. After six months went by, Fred asked for his raise, but it didn’t happen. Fred could not understand a broken promise, so he resigned and went and got his Masters Degree in Social Work at Oshkosh and took a job as Director of the Regional Office for the Division for Children and Youth in Green Bay.

He moved up to be Deputy Director of the State of Indiana then took that same position in the State of Idaho.

He eventually retired to a lake home in the Idaho wilderness with his good wife, Jean, his lifetime hunting and fishing partner, in a location closer to what he grew up with in Athelstane than anywhere else. He was a genuine outdoorsman and a superb marksman. I was with him once when he picked off several crows on the wing at maybe 200 yards with a rifle.

Fred did a lot of writing after retirement and denounced several categories of people with great disgust. Politicians headed the list and with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, he felt all of them, Democrats and Republicans had ethics riddled with holes, who were up for sale for the next election. He had no use for medical doctors, all of them incompetent bunglers, he said. As to the entire public school system, he was sure it had deteriorated from the days of his youth so badly that you had to finish high school to get what the old one room school gave you by 8th grade and you had to get a college degree to match the old high school he went to.

He also denounced organized religion, and yet he expressed reverence for God’s Creation in the words of a poem he wrote called “Yukon Lights,” inspired by some journeys to the Canadian far north.

Yukon Lights

I know a stream bed

Painted full with stones,

More profound in color each

Than elsewhere in eternity:

Whence how they came

And how assembled

Clearly could be but one -

A Master Molder, with workshop here

In the Yukon.

I know a painting in the sky

That changes faster

Than my eye can follow,

Streaks of glory

Over long Yukon nights,

No critic, from his concrete tent,

Might better spend his time

In study of technique

Of this artist, whose show

Can only be compared to itself

In the Yukon.

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