Roscoe Churchill at Home at 89
Roscoe "Grandfather of the Anti-Metallic Sulfide Mining Movement In Wisconsin"
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Eighty nine year old Roscoe Churchill from Ladysmith enjoys splitting wood with his old buddies because he’s still in pretty good shape and he uses the wood to keep himself cozy all winter long in his farm kitchen.
Roscoe Churchill from Ladysmith is almost ninety years old, but he still enjoys splitting wood with his buddies. Sitting in Churchill’s cozy farm kitchen, next to a wood burning cook stove, Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network admires Churchill’s winter wood supply stacked up outside. |
Churchill is the beloved "grandfather" of the mining moratorium in Wisconsin
Roscoe Churchill says the splitin’ is going real good. Earlier this fall his son George cut down a bunch of trees on the wild forty. White oak, red maple, and some ash. Trees like that.
“When he cut down the trees for the logs he cut up all the tops for wood. So my friend Louie Jurgens came over. So we took the tractor and the trailer and we went down to the woods and hauled out wood.”
Roscoe needs the smaller wood for his wood burning cook stove. Louie uses the larger chunks for his outdoor wood furnace.
“But the problem was we didn’t have a wood splitter, but our friend up the road did have one. But he’s eighty three years old and he hadn’t used it for quite a few years. He’d built it himself. So Louie and I nagged on him and talked to him about bringing it out behind his garage and working on it.”
When you’re eighty three you’re not as nimble with tools as when you’re young. But their friend Dennis got into the project.
“But he managed to hold those little screwdrivers and wrenches. He took that electric engine, motor apart and managed to replace those parts and fooled around with it for several days and then called Louie and said. Let’s see if we can get it started.”
The day came to test the machine. The three old guys were pretty excited.
The machine started almost at once.
“It just started right off. Well, Dennis let us take it down here. And we used it to split all of our wood. It sure is a lot easier than hammering it with a big maul. As we found out because Louie and I are handicapped just a little because he’s got two artificial hips, and he’s had open heart surgery,
He’s only seventy-five, he’s kind of young yet, but I’m eighty nine and have got prostate cancer and a little asthma, so I don’t swing a wedge very fast, so the wood splitter was a real boon to us.”
The coffee pot simmers on the woodstove. Roscoe pours us another cup and passes a sweet roll.
“Well the comfort of it in the morning when I get up. I have an oil furnace.
And with the high price of oil I’m a little stingy, so it isn’t quite as warm if the oil were thirty-five cents a gallon. Now it’s close to two forty five. So the woodstove is a blessing in several ways. I start it in the morning with kindling and some dry wood, get it going pretty good, I set the water on to boil, to make tea or coffee, whatever I want to make, I can fry my egg on it, set my back to it, and can warm it up while I eat my breakfast.”
We bask in the warmth from the nineteen thirties era wood cook stove.
I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network
Roscoe Churchill passed away after 90 years of a full life. He and his wife Evelyn stood strong against the mining companies who intended to mine metallic sulfide ores in Wisconsin (a type of ore that always creates acid mine drainage, which is like adding battery acid to our waters of the state). Over the years they had thousands of people who loved them and followed their lead. They were like two huge oak trees that sent thousands of acorns scattering to the earth. Those "acorns" have now taken root and the largest, longest lasting, and most sincere "grassroots" environmental movement continues to this day and will and into the future generations. They were truly the "grandparents of the anti-metallic sulfide mining movement in Wisconsin", and now their followers have spread to other states.
Someday, due to their loving diligence mining companies will have to do what they hate to do.....clean up their mess and listen to the local communities.
For more about Roscoe and Evelyn visit this web site.
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