FAMILY HAS DONE WELL

Friday, January 7, 2005 11:08 PM CST

We received a note the other day from a friend of ours who brought up a well-known Watertown name and how this family is now doing in various interesting pursuits.

Many of our readers will remember Ambrose and Gen Krier. Ambrose and his son-in-law, Dick Peterson, for many years operated Krier's Store for Men. Gen still lives in Watertown out at the Marquardt complex and Dick is married to Gen's daughter, Kathy.

The Kriers also have a son, Jim, who has quite a background. Jim and his wife, Wendy, live in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is a professor at the University of Michigan.

Jim is a Watertown High School graduate and also holds a law degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison. After graduating with his law degree, Jim became a clerk for one of the justices on the California Supreme Court. He later began teaching at University of California-Los Angeles. From there he became a member of the staff of Stanford University and then returned to UCLA before being recruited to teach at Michigan.

Along the way Jim has written a number of texts which are used in environmental law curricula and when he's not busy with law work, he finds time for some painting.

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Jim has four children, Jennifer and Amy from a first marriage and Andrew and Patrick from his marriage to Wendy.

Andrew has excelled in the world of music. He is known as Andrew WK and is making quite a career and a worldwide reputation as a rock star. He has performed at Summerfest in Milwaukee and we're told he puts on quite a dynamic show.

Patrick is an accomplished golfer and is attending college on a golf scholarship. We wouldn't doubt it if he makes it as a professional golfer in a few years.

Daughter Jennifer has co-authored a play which is presently running in New York City. By virtue of the play she was a featured guest on NBC's morning show with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer.

STATE WON'T PAY FOR ROUTE

A couple of weeks ago we talked a bit about the possibility of a new route to the north side of Milwaukee, one that would bypass that long section of road from Hartford east which is highly developed and which is now 45 miles per hour.

We found that kind of interesting because it would shorten a trip to the north side by probably 10-15 minutes.

Well, there was a little surprise from the state in recent days. The project involved either dramatically improving and widening an existing county road or constructing a new one and that had an estimated cost of about $13 million.

The folks over in Washington County thought this was the kind of project that would demand an 80 percent payment by the state, leaving a relatively small 20 percent for the county. But, that's not quite the case.

The state told the county this week that a project of this type is really a total obligation of the county. We doubt anything will happen soon if Washington County has to come up with the full $13 million. Still, maybe legislators from that area could put some pressure on the transportation department and the situation could change. Who knows?

We found that concept rather interesting because there is a lot of construction going on over in Washington County and increasingly that is making travel to the north side of Milwaukee slower. A new road as they were discussing has some potential.

SOME GOOD DEEDS

It's not often, but occasionally we have an emergency situation in Watertown that demands some long hours of work by volunteers and our professionals at the police and/or fire department.

A recent example would be the chemical spill at Reiss Industries.

Well, when that happens, there's a couple "unsung" heroes that do some nice things and we thought they deserve a brief mention here.

If people like police and firefighters are on the scene of an incident for any length of time they get a little "pick-me-up" from the good folks at George Webb's Watertown restaurant. They make hamburgers, cheeseburgers and coffee for all the workers and it's at no cost. That's pretty nice, and our guess is a burger would be pretty welcome after some hours of hard work in less than ideal conditions.

The other group is the local people with the American Red Cross. They are often called to action behind the scenes and provide such services as contacting George Webb to give the workers there an idea as to how many burgers and how much coffee is needed. They are also often called to provide temporary housing for people who may be homeless because of a fire or just temporarily removed from their home because of potential danger. The latter was the case with the chemical spill.

In the instance of the chemical spill, the Red Cross found temporary housing for a family for five nights at a local hotel. In addition, the Red Cross offers these displaced people vouchers for food.

Sometimes there are other needs. For example, if a fire destroys all of a family's personal belongings, the Red Cross gets right to work with not only food and shelter but also clothing and other needs.

So, these are some special people. They often get overlooked but they are there when you need them.

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