5 files on the desk from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. 5 carry a net-worth figure.
Profile · Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Psychiatrist and savant-syndrome researcher; lifelong Fond du Lac
$2 million
Darold A. Treffert, M.D., was the Fond du Lac psychiatrist who spent fifty years studying savant syndrome and served as a script consultant on Rain Man. He liked to say he was born at St. Agnes Hospital—the same campus that later put his name on the Treffert Center.
Born at St. Agnes on March 12, 1933, he took a University of Wisconsin medical degree in 1958 and in 1962 built the child-adolescent unit at Winnebago Mental Health Institute, just up the lake. He was superintendent there from 1964 to 1979. That is where he met his first savants—islands of genius beside severe disability—and did not let go. He returned home to private practice, the county health-care center, and the alcoholism unit at St. Agnes, and he ran the State Medical Society and then its board.
In 1988 he consulted on Rain Man; Dustin Hoffman’s Raymond Babbitt is the popular memory, Kim Peek the friend Treffert actually studied. Extraordinary People (1989) went into ten languages; Islands of Genius (2010) took up acquired savant syndrome. Agnesian opened the Treffert Center on the St. Agnes campus in 2016. He died unexpectedly at eighty-seven on December 14, 2020, at home in Fond du Lac—the town he never really left.
Profile · Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Born Mequon, June 4, 1906; Cedarburg High; moved Mercury works to Fond du Lac Feb. 1946; died Fond du Lac, Oct. 5, 1983
$34 million
Elmer Carl Kiekhaefer was the Mequon-born engineer who dragged Mercury outboards to Fond du Lac and made the city live on them. Born in Mequon on June 4, 1906, and a Cedarburg High graduate, he was fired by Evinrude for arguing about design, then bought a bankrupt Cedarburg outboard plant in 1939 for $25,000 plus a pile of Thor motors a mail-order house had rejected. He rebuilt them, named the good ones Mercury, and spent the war stuffing drone engines into a plant with no room left for boats. When aluminum restrictions lifted, Western Auto doubled an order to 33,000 civilian motors; that backlog, not a civic love letter, is why he left Cedarburg.
In February 1946 Fond du Lac offered the old Corium Dairy Farm for $25,000: thirty-eight acres, a five-story barn, four silos, and ninety tons of hay. He pitched the hay himself. Silos became paint booths. Local businessmen tried to keep him out, fearing he would steal the labor pool. He stayed. Chrysler 300s won him NASCAR owner titles in 1955 and 1956; he folded the team when crowds started to hate how often he won. A 1957 endurance run put two Mark 75 six-cylinder sixty-horsepower motors through thirty-four days, eleven hours, and forty-seven minutes nonstop—more than 25,000 miles, refueled on the fly, at a 30.3 mph average. Brunswick bought the company in 1961 for a stock deal the New York Times put near $34 million. He fought the new owners, quit in 1969, and started Aeromarine down the road.
He died in Fond du Lac on October 5, 1983, at seventy-seven. Mercury Marine is still there and remains the city’s largest private payroll. Birth is Mequon, high school is Cedarburg, and the industrial life from 1946 to 1983 is Fond du Lac: a real stretch, not a suburban mailing address.
Profile · Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Fond du Lac–born 82nd Airborne officer; Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Stars; city council president; died Colleyville, Texas, 2020, at 103
$2,000
James “Maggie” Megellas was a Fond du Lac–born officer of the 82nd Airborne Division, widely remembered as that division’s most decorated officer, who later led his hometown city council and saw the local post office named for him. Born March 11, 1917, to Greek immigrant parents in a house of seven children, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression to put money in the family. Pearl Harbor fell in the middle of his senior year at Ripon College. He took a commission through ROTC in May 1942, volunteered for the new airborne, and spent twenty-nine months in Europe with H Company, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment—Anzio, the Waal crossing, and the Battle of the Bulge.
On January 28, 1945, after a ten-mile march through two-foot snow, a Mark V Panther tank swung on his platoon outside Herresbach, Belgium. Megellas ran at it, jammed one grenade to stop the tank, climbed on, and dropped a second inside. None of his men died. His commander recommended him for the Medal of Honor but omitted the tank action; he received a Silver Star instead, adding to a Distinguished Service Cross, another Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with V device, and two Purple Hearts. General James Gavin later chose him to accept the Netherlands’ Military Order of William Orange Lanyard for the whole division. In a letter to his sister after Herresbach he wrote that he had killed twenty-eight Germans that night—his own voice, later printed in the Journal Sentinel.
He came home, served as president of the Fond du Lac city council, lost two races for Congress, befriended John F. Kennedy, and spent State Department years as a USAID mission director. He married Carole Laehn of Fond du Lac, Miss Ripon 1960, on May 9, 1962. Congress named the Fond du Lac post office for him. A Bridge Too Far killed a character based on him; he outlived the scene by seventy-five years. He died in Colleyville, Texas, on April 2, 2020, at 103.
Profile · Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Born John Francis Brandmeier in Fond du Lac, July 15, 1956
$1 million
Jonathon "Johnny B" Brandmeier is the Fond du Lac-born radio host who became Chicago's morning-drive king and entered the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2018. He was born John Francis Brandmeier in Fond du Lac on July 15, 1956, to a German father and a Lebanese mother, and was on the air at hometown WFON-FM at fifteen after asking the boss what to do and being told to "just keep it on the air." Every morning his mother left Reader's Digest jokes beside the cereal with a note that said "Have fun, John"—a line he quoted in his Hall of Fame speech.
At eighteen he moved through Oshkosh, Appleton, San Jose, Rockford, and Milwaukee's WOKY, where a Los Angeles talent hunt put him in a top-five group that also included Howard Stern. At Phoenix's KZZP he tripled the morning numbers in six months. In 1983 Chicago's The Loop won a national bidding war and made him the city's morning star, complete with a bar band called the Leisure Suits and parody singles that still turn up at weddings. He won a Marconi Award in 1995; Illinois declared a Johnny B Day in 2013. Later stops included WGN and national syndication.
The professional peak belongs to Phoenix and Chicago. The origin story is a Fond du Lac FM stick and a kitchen table.
Profile · Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Basketball player; Fond du Lac native, Marquette and NBA guard
$6 million
Travis Lyle Diener is the Fond du Lac guard who carried a family basketball name from Goodrich High to Marquette, the NBA, and a retired jersey in Italy. The hometown clip is still the kid in a Cardinals uniform.
Born in Fond du Lac on March 1, 1982, he played for his uncle Dick Diener at Goodrich High School (now Fond du Lac High), class of 2001. Over four seasons the Cardinals went 78–14 and won three Fox Valley Association titles; Diener left as Gatorade Wisconsin Player of the Year, with 1,515 career points plus school assists and three-point records. He also pitched a perfect game against Appleton East in 2001 and helped win a state baseball title in 2000, earning seven letters in basketball and baseball. The school inducted him into its hall of fame in 2011.
At Marquette the six-foot-one guard was a sophomore on the 2003 Final Four team with Dwyane Wade and finished near the top of the school’s scoring, three-point, and assist lists. Orlando drafted him thirty-eighth overall in 2005. After five NBA seasons he starred in Italy, where Dinamo Sassari retired his No. 12; he took Italian citizenship and played EuroBasket. In 2014 he returned to Marquette as director of player personnel.