On the night of Oct. 27, 1958, Robert Letsch walked into the front door of his Green Street home feeling a pull of emotions. The 37-year-old father of three, a furniture salesman for Goldblatt’s Department Store, had been offered a management position that day, but he arrived home feeling troubled, not elated.
Robert Letsch already had carved out his little corner in this world. All he wanted out of life was to put in an honest day’s work as a salesman, treat sons Bob and Randy to an occasional Milwaukee Braves game and simply be a good father and husband.
“I like what I’m doing,” Robert Letsch lamented that night as he sat at the kitchen table near midnight with his wife, Ann, and son, Bob.
It was a decision he never got the chance to make.
At 5:30 the next morning, Robert Letsch fell dead to the floor as he got out of bed. Bob, then a 15-year-old sophomore at St. Catherine’s High School, frantically ran in and tried to resuscitate his father, but there was nothing he could do.
Nearly a half century has passed, Robert Letsch’s eldest son is pushing 65 and still gets up every morning to go to St. Catherine’s. Could it be that Robert Letsch’s provincial spirit has been alive within his son for all these years?
For 47 of the last 51 years, Letsch has been at St. Catherine’s, as a student from 1957-61 and as a faculty member since he graduated from college in 1965. Since first becoming a varsity coach in 1970, Letsch has coached 1,026 games in football, basketball and baseball and has won 727 of them. That’s a Lombardi-esque winning percentage of 70.8.
He’s won 12 state championships, six in basketball and six in baseball. And the man who dared to follow John McGuire as coach of the school’s storied basketball program in 1979 passed his mentor’s 487 victories at St. Catherine’s this season and went on to become the first coach in Racine County history to win 500 games in one sport at one school.
Harris Connect, Inc. is currently contacting SCHS alumni to gather information for the 2008 SCHS Alumni Directory. The project is being done in cooperation with St. Catherine's High School.
Alumni are being asked through postcards and emails to contact Harris Connect and provide their updated information for inclusion in the 2008 SCHS Alumni Directory.
If you have any questions, please contact SCHS Development Director Celeste Henken '70 at 262-632-2785 x414 or email at chenken@saintcats.org.
The St. Catherine’s High School boys’ basketball coach became the winningest coach in school and Racine County history Tuesday, January 22, passing his mentor John F. McGuire for career victory No. 488 as the Angels beat Wilmot 67-44 at St. Catherine’s.
The Lakeshore Conference game was fittingly played in the gymnasium named for McGuire.
You don’t have to see Krystal Ellis in action to realize how valuable she is to the Marquette University women’s basketball program.
And you don’t have to talk to Ellis’ coaches or teammates, all of whom would rave about her importance to the team.
No, all you have to do is pick up a copy of the Marquette women’s media guide. Prominently displayed on its cover is a superimposed picture of Ellis in her Golden Eagles’ uniform, sporting a gold-colored headband and a look of determination while driving to the basket.
But the cover is just the start of the media exposure the university media relations department has afforded Ellis. Inside this guide is a mountain of information about the former St. Catherine’s High School star. There are reams of statistics from her already two-plus productive seasons at Marquette, along with more pictures and personal tidbits.
Even the inside back cover is devoted to Ellis. The full-page spread consists of a combination of color photos, one of her smiling while extending a basketball in front of her and another of her flying gracefully through the air.
At the top of the page, in big, bold capital letters, are the words:
Your SCHS Alumni Association has some exciting events in the next few months that we hope you will enjoy...
Thursday, March 27 - SCHS Alumni Tailgate in Arizona for Milwaukee Brewers Spring Training
Join fellow alumni as the Milwaukee Brewers take on the Chicago Cubs. Milwaukee Brewer (and SCHS alum) Vinnie Rottino '98 will be joining us!
(RSVP by February 15)
Friday, February 22 - SCHS Parents Night
Watch the Lady Angels take on Lake Geneva Badger. For only $1.00 recieve a ticket to the game and enjoy refreshments after in Alumni Hall.
Looking back over his years as a priest, Uhen is modest about his accomplishments.
“My life in the priesthood can be subdivided in this manner; A. Parish pastor — 28 years; B. Parish assistant or retired helper — 23 years; C. Full-time high school teacher and athletic director — 14 years. It is my hope that both the Lord and His people I served can give me at least a passing grade on my efforts. It’s been my duty and my joy to devote 65 years to them,” Uhen said.
Chuck Wood, a former student, remembers some of Uhen’s years. Wood met Father Cletus, as Uhen is affectionately known, in 1956.
“My first encounter was as a freshman in 1956,” Wood said. “He was hired in 1945 as a religion teacher — teaching five classes five days a week. Then he became athletic director and was told to develop a winning tradition.”
Please consider contributing or attending an upcoming event to benefit SCHS alum Carrie Seitz '74.
Unforseen medical expenses and a lengthy battle with colon cancer have left the Seitz family with staggering medical bills. Even with husband Mike ('73) working two jobs, the family is still overwhelmed.
To help out, friends and family set up a website to help raise money to offset their medical expenses.
If you would like to help out please go to www.seitzbenefit.com for more information or to contribute online.
Carrie '74, Mike '73 and their five children are all proud graduates of SCHS.
When Tom Scheller was asked to leave the Wisconsin Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame Committee meeting this past summer — “I was kicked out of the room,” he said — he knew something was up.
What was up was his own election to the WCCCA Hall.
Scheller, 56, the head cross country coach at St. Catherine’s High School since 1974, is one of three inductees in this year’s Hall. Also being inducted are former state champions John Polzin of St. Catherine’s and Lee Zubrod of Burlington.
The induction ceremonies will be held Friday, Jan. 11 at the Best Western Midway Hotel in Brookfield.
The Class of '65 has created a website to highlight pictures of past gatherings and recollect on memories of their time at St. Catherine's High School. This includes photos from a party to celebrate their 60th birthdays together in July 2007 at Henry and Wanda's in Racine.
Be sure check out their website for classmate updates, old photos and other memories of St. Catherine's.
A statue of Christ stands over the crumbling beige walls of this nation's largest prison, a jarring symbol of divine protection for a place that has earned notoriety as a hell on earth.
Inside the gates of La Victoria penitentiary, 4,000 inmates live packed into a space built to punish 1,000. The stench of pit toilets fills dark, barely vented cells. Concrete slabs and floors serve as beds. Meals are scooped from a dirty plastic barrel.
Two hours from U.S. shores, recognition of the most basic human rights is still a work in progress here.
Efforts to control the spread of infectious diseases lag even further behind.
The rate of drug-resistant tuberculosis is known to be one of the highest in the world here, where prisoners jam together against the bars of narrow cell doorways for air. Twice as many people are infected with HIV in the Caribbean each year than in all of North America, but doctors at La Victoria don't have any idea how many prisoners have the virus.
And the consequences of this prison's failings aren't contained within its walls.
Wednesdays and Sundays every week are visiting days, when in a respite of the misery here, the gates of this prison are opened to 2,000 visitors: wives, girlfriends and hundreds of prostitutes who serve a dozen men or more each during a visit. The supply of condoms at the prison ran out five months ago.
Still, as of Labor Day weekend, prison officials said not a single prisoner was known to be infected with the virus that leads to AIDS.
That is when an American doctor named John May paid another one of his visits, bringing support and supplies, including rapid HIV testing kits.
May is chief medical officer for South Florida-based Armor Correctional Health Services, which provides medical care to inmates at six institutions in Florida, including Palm Beach and Broward county jails, and he has been serving prisoners in the United States the last 14 years.
He also is the medical director of Health Through Walls, a nonprofit organization he founded last year to bring donated supplies and expertise to prisons in the Caribbean and Africa. In that capacity, and for five years before that on his own, he has visited some of the most miserable penal institutions in the world.
They are humanitarian missions, but, he points out, they also bolster the cause of public health in the United States.
