I was definitely not the typical Engineering student. I dropped out of high school after my second year in Chippewa Falls, to help my folks on their large farm in Northwestern Wisconsin, about 82 miles east of Minneapolis.

In the first year of farming, I again damaged my heart. After spending 12 months in bed followed by a slow recovery, I was able to finish high school in one year in the spring of 1936. This all clearly showed that farming was not for me, and that I would have to figure out some other way to earn a living. [Otherwise, I would now be a farmer in Wisconsin and would not be writing to you!]

I entered the UW in Engineering in the fall of 1936. So I was already 5 years older than most. I wanted to learn something about engineering and get out and get going as quickly as possible. I suppose I had some of the regular "school spirit," but I had other things on my mind, mostly working, so I could stay in school there. It was hard going, then.

I was a member of the UW Rifle Team and earned two of the three Wisconsin sweaters I was eligible for. [They gave out 5 each year.]

Of crucial help in getting jobs were Professor Arno T. Lenz in Civil and Professor D. W. Nelson in Mechanical. Without their help in getting work, I could not have continued there.

I thought I should see a football game while I was there, so I got a job as an usher for one game, and saw that game for free. While there, I met my future wife. We will soon have been happily married 59 years and we have 5 wonderful children, 10 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.

I graduated with a BSME from the UW in 1940, about sixth or seventh in a class of about 135. I then worked in engineering in industry for 7 manufacturing outfits until 1974, being Chief Engineer for several consumer products companies, where we manufactured products such as lawn mowers, snow blowers, outboard motors, pressure cookers and chain saws, etc. Generally my jobs were fun, at work I liked to do. And they paid me for it! I was concerned about the user safety of the products we were producing, and headed some safety committees, including two American National Standards Institute committees dealing with the safety of lawn mowers and chain saws. I thought this needed doing and thought I could help do it, so I did. My name then happened to appear on those product safety standards, but that was not the point. It was an all volunteer effort, and was a lot of added work. Little did I know that it would lead to a very interesting and financially rewarding consulting engineering practice later.

In 1974 I set up a successful consulting engineering practice here in Stamford, Connecticut, which I operated until I was 80 in 1993. I testified as a technical expert, mostly for the defense, in many product liability court trials in most of our 50 states and in Canada.

Wanting to help the UW back some, my wife and I set up a Fund there in Engineering in 1984, which we are very pleased with. I wonder if many of your graduates realize how easy it is to set up a such a Fund there, and how rewarding it will be, and how efficiently it will be handled by the UW.

Mr. Buske also provided these memories of the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade:

As I understood it at the time, St. Patrick was considered to be the patron saint of the Engineers, and there was, and had been, considerable rivalry between the Engineering school and the Law school.

Traditionally, the Engineering school had a parade on St. Patrick's Day, up State Street, around Capital Square, and back down State. Because of the rivalry with the Law school, the students of that school had interfered in the past in that parade, I understood, and many rotten eggs and rotten vegetables had been thrown.

In the spring of 1937, my first year there, it was rumored that the football people, as well as the Law school students, would try to disrupt or stop the coming Engineer's St. Patrick's Day Parade, and preparation was made for such an event. I recall that wooden shillelaghs, about a foot long, were turned out by Engineering students on the lathes in the shop, and sold for 25 cents.

I felt that the football team members had no business interfering with our parade, and afterwards resented that they had.

The parade was quite a violent event. Many rotten eggs and other garbage was thrown at us by people on the tops of buildings along State Street. I recall seeing one shillelagh broken, after a heavy swing, on contact with the head of another in a hand-to-hand scuffle on the ground. I was told that Dean of Engineering Millar had suffered a broken ankle during it. In any event, I understand that no more St. Patrick's Day parades by the Engineers were held.

From the UW Engineering Timeline on the Internet, I now understand that St. Patrick was considered by the law students to be their patron saint, too, and that the Engineering students first inaugurated their annual parade in honor of him in 1912. That "the spirited rivalry between the two groups grew in intensity and that many parades involved egg tossing from both sides". Anyhow, in 1940 the "college sponsored the first Engineering EXPO as a replacement to the St. Patrick's Day parade which had grown increasingly hostile." I attended that, also.

Gil Buske, (BSME '40)
Stamford, CT