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Thursday, January 30, 2020 • Vol. 138, No. 28 • Stoughton, WI • ConnectStoughton.com • $1.25
Citizen of the Year
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Looking at the big picture Board retreat focuses on changes on governance, responsibilities SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
The Stoughton Area school board is planning some big changes in how it operates, even if they might go largely unnoticed. At the group’s recent board retreat Saturday, Jan. 11, members discussed
Photo by Mackenzie Krumme
Mary Lou Fendrick is at her dining room table with her awards spread out before her. She almost didn’t accept the Citizen of the Year Award because of her modest personality.
‘The original social warrior’
MACKENZIE KRUMME Unified Newspaper Group
In the kitchen of Mary Lou Fendrick’s home, she keeps a porcelain jar of sugar on a shelf where she stores $100 cash – for any person in need. And every night, she goes to her front door and turns the porch light on – so people always know they are welcome in. As the 2019 Citizen of The Year, Fendrick is being recognized for her lifetime of service to those people in need. Beyond simple gestures like the ones she does at home, she’s also helped found longstanding charity and community organizations, volunteered her time
with kids, fought for the disabled and worked with the local food pantry. “Imagine with me being generous, selfless with no sense of giving or making a personal sacrifice… a grand, grand lady, true goodness, that’s my mother, Mary Lou Fendrick,” her son Tom wrote about his mother in 2010. More than 40 years ago, she started as a reading program volunteer in Stoughton schools, reading to young children and encouraging their families to do the same. And that is what propelled her to help others. From there, as the director of Stoughton Head Start, she went on to fundraise for a building to call its own, when it was previously a transient organization. She was one of the founding members of the Stoughton Area Resource Team, known as START
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which filled the large gap in services for people under 55 years old. She submitted the first ad for the Stoughton Village Players Theater in the Hub 50 years ago, calling for local actors to come together and create a theater group. While she was a teacher’s aide, Fendrick walked from business to business in Stoughton asking owners to employ people with disabilities, outlining the exceptional abilities of people with autism, cognitive and physical disabilities, she said. She remembers sitting in different homes and business, sipping coffee with strangers. “For the longest time we just ignored them – for so many years – and now all this potential is sitting there waiting for us to tap into it,” Fendrick remembers telling the business owners.
Saga Furs steps in to save business Finnish fur auction house moved in after Thanksgiving RENEE HICKMAN Unified Newspaper Group
In 2019, she retired from a 20-year volunteer position at the Stoughton Food Pantry, and she sometimes questions that decision, saying sitting around the house at age 82 is not for her. Fendrick, has children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but she often refers to other people around her as her kids – including her her doctor, neighbors and clients. And although Fendrick has a reputation for being a pleasant caretaker, she is fierce when it comes to amplifying the voices of the underdog, whether it is serving on the Stoughton Ethics Board or advocating for the families in Head Start. “When you talk to her, you start to understand that it didn’t matter what she was doing as an occupation
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A Finnish fur auction house has purchased North American Fur Auctions according to reporti n g b y t h e Wi s c o n s i n State Journal. T h e U . S . h e a d q u a rters of Toronto, Canada-based NAFA, which auctioned pelts from both large fur producers and trappers, were located in Stoughton. The company declared bankruptcy Oct. 31, according to court documents. It then entered into creditor protection, and the company’s website was still indicating that situation existed Jan. 27, 2019.
The State Journal reported that Saga moved into the Stoughton warehouse after Thanksgiving and hired 40 workers, many of whom were former NAFA employees. A Nov. 22 posting on the Saga Furs website stated the company would be taking care of the business of NAFA customers, including farmer relations and collections. When the City of Stoughton agreed to help finance the expansion of the NAFA warehouse in 2016, the company reported having 35 full time and 235 part time employees. Wisconsin is the largest producer of mink pelts in the country. In court documents, NAFA CEO Doug Lawson blamed an overall contraction of the fur industry in recent years for the previous owner’s bankruptcy filing.
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Mary Lou Fendrick wins Citizen of the Year 2019
policies for leading community discussion on important issues like enrollment Sullivan decline, new committee structures and how to get board members working together more efficiently after elections. The retreat was one of four or five the board has held since Frank Sullivan