Campus retirees gather under watchful presence of former housing worker

Drop by Lums Family Restaurant on the fourth Wednesday of any month at about 8:30 in the morning, and you’ll see a group of 20 or 30 happy-looking people in the sunporch room. They’re chatting amiably as they sip their coffee and eat their eggs. And they just keep doing it as time ticks on, with no speaker rising portentously to address some momentous issue.

In fact, this group has no formal name, no officers and no agenda whatsoever except the enjoyment of – and support for – each other. But these folks do have a common bond: Nearly all of them once worked for University Housing at UW–Madison and are now retired.

And they do have a common – oh, what should we call her? – organizing force and curator of caring: Rosemary Temple.

She’s the woman at the end of the table, chatting with her neighbors about something unofficial, no doubt, given the informal character of this whatchamacallit group. She’s definitely an organizer, everyone says, and she’s patently a positive force in this group. In a word, she makes things hum in a very humane way.

Temple has quietly flown the flag of positive thinking throughout her career. “At the end of each day,” she says, “I would ask myself not how much money I had earned, but what I had put into the world that made people happy.”

She worked hard to make others happy while working at the Holt Desk in Lakeshore housing from 1977 until retirement in 1991 and at the Middleton Medical Library six years before that.

“I tried to be a buddy for students who were homesick or had other troubles,” says Temple. “I made them feel welcome and showed that I cared for them. Some of the students would even drop by my house, and if I happened to be gone, my husband, Roy, would play a game of cribbage with them.”

The cribbage and the caring must have made a difference. Today there are people scattered around the country who can call themselves alumni of UW–Madison because Temple talked them out of quitting school. And they show their thanks: She receives flowers on Mother’s Day, for instance, and fresh fruit from Florida during the holidays, all from former students.

Temple also was a confidante and social hub for full-time employees at University Housing. So it’s no surprise that she was the person who in 1992 resurrected Winterfest, a traditional annual get-together of Housing employees that had been discontinued.

In 1996 she turned Winterfest into a monthly breakfast, since annual socializing is, well, just once a year. “So many people get closed in after they retire,” she says. “I wanted to get them out more often.”

Once out, it wasn’t hard for them to interact with ease. “We had a very close group in Housing,” says Newell Smith, former director of University Housing and regular participant in the monthly breakfasts.

“These people were my friends at work, so it’s just a continuation of that,” says Dorothy Brewer, who worked in personnel for Housing.

Lyle Frank, for example, still remembers the day Brewer called in 1963 to offer him a position as custodian. Frank attends the breakfasts and is proud to be the group’s oldest member at 87. (There’s an age spread of more than 20 years.)

It’s clear from the breakfasts and from the two or three luncheons the group holds each year that past job hierarchy holds no meaning. “Nothing snobby here,” as Brewer says. That informality puts everyone at ease to simply have fun, be themselves and, in the process, enrich their network of social support.

“We previously developed a respect and concern for each other in housing, regardless of work status,” says Fritz Lutze, who managed family housing for the university, “and that carries through.”

The group is animated by not only mutual respect, but also the watchful presence of Temple. Caring, after all, travels on the back of watchfulness. If you don’t notice someone’s sorrows or joys, how can you care?

Temple calls everyone before the monthly breakfast, but not to tell them when and where, which they already know.

“It’s just to check on how they’re doing,” she says. “I listen for depressed comments, and if I hear any, I keep in contact with them and alert others in the group.” She also sends cards from the group to individuals for birthdays, illness or loss of loved ones.

All this caring is consistent with what Temple experienced growing up in Mineral Point as the ninth of 10 children. “We had a happy family,” she says. “We were there for each other, even after we got married.”

She was married for 52 years to Roy Temple, who worked at the University Square post office and died in 1996. She has four children – each with a college education – and seven grandchildren, including Rob Vitense, who graduated from UW–Madison last spring.

Temple takes delight in hitting the road for family visits. This spring, for instance, she often drove to Iowa City to watch her grandson, Kurt Vitense, win MVP honors as shortstop on the University of Iowa baseball team.

Her familial embrace is not confined to family, of course. As the Housing retirees will testify, Temple tries to meet the needs people have to count as human beings, to find companionship in a lonely world. And what does she get out of it all?

“Thank-yous,” she says with a smile. “I get lots of thank-yous.” n