In Memory

Wayne E. Wipert, Jr



 
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06/07/13 06:02 PM #1    

Mark Wieting

So here are a few things to know about our friend Wayne. His family called him Skip because he shared his father’s name, but he was always Wayne to me.

In high school he was active in stuff, from golf [he was the best player, consistently, on our team] to basketball and clubs and business manager of the Aries. He was a member of what we called the “Keystones” in basketball, along with Bill Brynjolfsson, John Vance and a couple of other teammates, helping to write the basketball history of Glenbard East.

He went to Penn with Bill Heller, where they roomed together and I remember some well-lubricated visits to the boys during our college years. Wayne was president of his fraternity, which, as you will find out later, remains a close-knit group. He met Denise Smith at a mixer, I think, and they married a couple of years after graduation. He continued for an M.S. at the Wharton School of Business at Penn. He spent two years in the Army, as a first lieutenant in the finance corps, and he told me one of his other duties was to go to people’s houses during the Vietnam War and tell parents that their son or daughter had been killed in action. Of course this was very tough duty, but he did it.

He worked for many years for Arthur Young & Co., one of the largest accounting firms, rising to director of finance and administration. He did a lot of traveling as the lead recruiter for the firm, visiting Big Ten and Ivy League schools for recruits. He liked meeting and talking with young about-to-be graduates, and he told me at one point after about 15 years with the firm that he had hired the vast majority of the people then working for AY, as he called it. He worked there for about 30 years, until his health prevented him from working.

Wayne had three children, daughters Alexandra and Lindsay, and son Kristopher.

Most of you recall that he was a fine golfer. He played for Penn and recalled fondly that Merion Country Club [where this year’s US Open will be held] was their home course. It is a shame he didn’t live to see this year’s tournament. Back in the Midwest, he played regularly at the Village Links of Glen Ellyn, and, when I came back to the area in 1974, we began playing together again. For years, he always won. When I finally began to draw even with him, it was because of his health. He had developed Parkinson’s Disease, diagnosed at a young age [like Michael J. Fox], at 47. He soldiered on, in golf and in business, despite increasingly difficult symptoms. There were manifestations of the disease and the drugs he was taking that led to some atypical behaviors and as the Parkinson’s progressed he became less able to live a “normal” life.

I found it remarkable that despite having to spend three years in a nursing home, his outlook was positive. Although he indicated that “the disease” [he always called it that] was difficult, I didn’t ever hear him say something that showed he felt sorry for himself beyond his bad luck of having the condition. I worked a few miles away from the nursing home and we had lunch together about once a week. He preferred my bringing in McDonald’s to going out to a restaurant because eating, and walking to the restaurant from the car, were difficult. He avidly followed golf during these years and once I told him that I had bought a nifty new driver. “Oh, lemme see it!” was his reply. So we went out into the parking lot where my clubs were in the car. I pulled out the driver and handed it to him. He could barely walk, but I could tell he really wanted to swing it. Given what I had paid for the driver, I went gulp as I handed it over and watched him swing it. Would he take a nice divot out of the asphalt? Nope. He swung it nearly as well as he had in his youth. It was amazing. Perhaps even more amazing was when I finally convinced him to play the Village Links one last time, and, lo and behold, although he ran out of gas after about 16 holes, if I gave him bogeys on 17 and 18, he shot 96. Guys I play with on a regular basis would love to shoot 96, and Wayne had end-stage Parkinson’s. 

One time in the nursing home he was having trouble connecting to his account at AOL. I offered to help him and was attempting to sign in as him so I needed his password.
   "What's your password, Wayne?"  
   "Shithead."
   "Shithead?"
   "Yah, it's the password for all of my accounts."
What a guy.

He also loved to fish and to bowl, and spent two weeks every summer in St. Germain, Wisconsin.

The last years of his life were spent in Colorado. His circle of friends from the fraternity at Penn had kept in touch and someone had reported that Wayne was struggling and in a nursing home. One of the fraternity brothers and his wife, Doug and Sue Dumm, lived in Boulder and offered to Wayne to come and stay with them for as long as he wanted to. He went for a trial two-week visit and never came back. The two years he spent with them were nurturing, comforting and family oriented [Sue and Doug had five kids, who, although grown, often visited]. His last year was spent in an assisted living facility in Boulder, where he died in October 2009.

Perhaps the hardest part of his disease was that it robbed him of his ability to speak clearly and distinctly. He loved to tell stories and jokes [good ones and bad ones, but he always had a joke]. Perhaps more, even, than his having to give up golf, this part of Parkinson’s was very tough. He was smart and accomplished and enjoyed giving presentations and having in-depth conversations with candidates for the firm. Oftentimes he and I found it easier to communicate with each other by setting up a private chat room on AOL and typing it all out. He typed terribly, but he was fast and I could always tell what he was saying. 

He loved his years at Glenbard East, took accelerated classes and was a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist. He loved being on the basketball team and, especially, the golf team. The attached photo shows four of us from that team—Bill Brynjolfsson, Billy Smith, Wayne and me—and the bond that we had from sharing our high school years together. Bob Pederson wasn’t there that night but he was part of that very tight group, too.

Wayne was a remarkable guy, and through the years he was my closest friend.                               MWW

 


07/08/13 09:32 AM #2    

Camilla Ray (Farley)

Remember his great Bumble Boogie? 


07/09/13 07:46 PM #3    

William Watson

Mark, your tribute was very moving and Skip would be proud to have such a friend as you.

I remember his extreme focus during poker along with his competitive spirit. See you soon.

07/11/13 10:08 AM #4    

Susan Ann Harrington (Hauke)

Yes, his Bumble Boogie always amazed me.  And Mark, your tribute to Wayne is beautiful!  I do remember him well!


08/01/13 07:44 PM #5    

William Gibson Heller

It is long past time for me to post something about Wayne.  We both went to U. Penn, although neither us really knew that we'd end up there together while doing college research at GE nor were we particularly close friends in H.S.  The photo here is our graduation day at Penn in May 1967, as three fraternity brothers marched in the Parade of Classes, Wayne is respendent in his madras jacket.  The photo isn't sharp as it was copied from my dad's home movies.

We took a Greyhound Bus to Philadelphia for the start of school and this 15 hour ride was our normal approach to travel, except when we smooched a ride with Hardy Wieting (Mark's older brother who was at Princeton as I recall) to come home for the first Thanksgiving we were away. That was also our last time to return as we became highly independent of the home front and preferred staying in Philly for that time as there was important mischief to attend to.  We became fast friends at Penn.  Though living on different floors of the same dorm, we pursued our own paths which often crossed....such as pledging Phi Delta Theta, then rooming together for 3 years. That is almost as long as Wayne and Denise were married!  Wayne was always focused on getting his degree from the Wharton School, while I went the artsy craftsy direction in Political Science.

We even worked one summer while in college at Zenith Radio and drove Wayne's car (his parent's actually) back and forth.  One memorable work day a huge storm dropped so much water that the North Ave. underpass at Lake Ave. was flooded. We attempted to drive thru anyway and the car stalled as our lunch bags began to float off the floor boards as water entered the passenger compartment.  That car never ran well after that.

Wayne was a demon Bridge player while in the Phi Delt house, often staying up all night playing.  We had a grand piano in the house and he loved pounding on that thing and having the brothers gather around to egg him on and even sing off key ("That Lucky Old Sun" was a favorite).  Wayne was a frequent pool player as well in our basement version of a campus bar.  He eventually became house president and guided us thru some financial difficulty as well as campus scrapes with other fraternities.  Together we undertook some great trips to other schools to test their liquor laws and tolerance for antics....Princeton, Columbia, Cornell and U. Illinois and Indiana U. come to mind as fun experiences that we survived.  NYC also beckoned and was just a Penn Central train ride away.  Somehow we graduated (this recounting of events doesn't seem to mention going to class), and Wayne stayed on to get his Masters at Penn while I wandered off to Indiana U. for an MBA.  Fortunately for my brother, Bob, Wayne was around to show him the ropes at Penn and to provide a golf partner.

Marriages and careers limited our contacts over the next 25 years, though we'd look one another up when in Chicago or Bloomington, IN (Wayne was a personnel recruiter for Arthur Young & Co, as I was for Coopers & Lybrand but Indiana was the only school where our paths would cross).

We enjoyed our 25th class reunion with the fratty lodge brothers in Philly as well, and even gathered once in Phoenix after that.  But by then the Parkinson's had really taken hold and Wayne was losing his independence.  Fortunately that reunion set up a situation that led to a standing invite from Doug and Sue Dumm to join them in Colorado, and eventually Wayne took them up on that and they cared for him in his final two years.

My lunchbox name may have been Biller Hell, but Wayne was a hellion all on his own.  And we had a fine old time in our college days....Glory Days as The Boss calls 'em.

 

 

 


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