5 files on the desk from New Berlin, Wisconsin. 5 carry a net-worth figure.
Profile · New Berlin, Wisconsin
Comedian behind the Manitowoc Minute; born Oconomowoc April 27, 1987; raised in New Berlin and Elm Grove; Marquette University High and UW–Madison journalism
$5 million+
Charlie Berens is the Manitowoc Minute guy who is not from Manitowoc—a New Berlin and Elm Grove kid who turned Grandpa Bob’s “Cripes Alfrighty,” a fishing-buddy accent, and a fake newscast in camo over a tie into Wisconsin’s loudest comedy export. The character hunts and says ope because the childhood did; the bit is performance built on a real dual-suburb upbringing.
He was born in Oconomowoc on April 27, 1987, the second of twelve Catholic kids, a mimic who used to clap half a foam donut over his head and jog behind his anesthesiologist father. New Berlin and Elm Grove share the childhood; Elm Grove often gets the caption because that is where the parents later lived. Marquette University High gave him the paper—he inherited the editor’s chair from an older brother—and garage bands. UW–Madison gave him a journalism degree he spent on performance. He was an MTV Street Team ’08 correspondent and spent a night in jail after an arrest with protesters outside the St. Paul RNC. A Dallas CW comedy-news gig earned a local Emmy in 2013 for a segment on drought water prices; co-anchor Zuri Hall later joined Access Hollywood. Los Angeles almost ate him: he bought out his own standup rooms and still played to empty seats, slept in a car outside a Sleep Inn while producing for CCTV America, which killed his voiceovers for being too Wisconsin. A 2016 Funny or Die Titanic dub—“If Jack Dawson Was Really From Wisconsin”—went huge. In June 2017 a Manitowoc heckler at The Comedy Store handed him the bit; the next day’s ninety-five-second fake newscast became the job.
He moved the operation home and sold out rooms he once could not give away. As of a Milwaukee Magazine profile he was living in Milwaukee’s Washington Heights. Birth is Oconomowoc; the place claim for this page is the New Berlin–Elm Grove childhood that actually shaped the accent.
Profile · New Berlin, Wisconsin
Short-track speed skater; 2002 Salt Lake City Olympian (3,000m relay); New Berlin family with brother Tony (Eisenhower / 1994 Olympian)
$1 million
Julie Marie Goskowicz Koons raced short-track speed skating for the United States at the highest level, including a Winter Olympics berth and World Championship bronze while still a teenager. She nearly made the 1994 Olympic team at thirteen, qualified as a relay alternate for Nagano in 1998, and raced the women’s 3,000-meter relay at Salt Lake City in 2002, where the U.S. finished seventh. In 1996 she took World Championship bronze in the relay and the team event; she also earned bronze at the 1997 World Junior Championships. Her Olympic affiliation was Midway Speedskating Club in Saint Paul, the training base many Wisconsin short-track athletes have long needed once local timing runs out.
Olympedia lists her birth as March 2, 1980, in Aurora, Illinois, while Wikipedia and New Berlin’s notable-people list call her New Berlin-born—the familiar hospital-versus-hometown split. Her brother Tony, a New Berlin Eisenhower graduate, was the 1995 World Junior 500-meter champion and a 1994 Lillehammer teammate who did not get into a race. Two Olympic berths from one Waukesha County household is the suburb’s rare short-track story.
She later completed a part-time MBA, highlighted in a 2006 student-spotlight profile. New Berlin claims the family on its notable list; Saint Paul was where the Olympic clock ran.
Profile · New Berlin, Wisconsin
30th governor of Wisconsin (1939–1943); childhood farm at Prospect Hill, New Berlin; Milwaukee manufacturer (Heil Company)
$5 million+ (1949$)
Julius Peter Heil was Wisconsin’s thirtieth governor and the industrialist behind the Heil Company, a Milwaukee maker of dump bodies, tanks, and road machines whose name outlived his two terms in Madison. He came as a boy from Düssmund on the Mosel around 1881–82 to a farm at the bottom of Prospect Hill in what is now New Berlin. He attended Mill Valley School, clerked at Winton’s general store on Prospect Hill, and helped gather the fieldstone that still forms the core of the childhood house later marked at 19890 West Julius Heil Drive.
Orphaned on Milwaukee streets by fourteen, he worked as a newsboy, streetcar conductor, and Falk shop hand. In 1899 he was in Buenos Aires installing welded streetcar rail. In 1901 he opened the Heil Rail Joint Welding Company, which grew into a major dump-truck and tank manufacturer that still trades under the Heil name. In 1938 the Republican who had already run Roosevelt’s state NRA board beat Progressive incumbent Philip La Follette. Time put him on its January 16, 1939 cover under the headline “Heil Heil.” In his first week he banned smoking at his first press conference, puzzled reporters who wanted a legislative message, and hand-signed thousands of certificates in green ink.
Two terms from 1939 to 1943 brought an employment peace act, a securities department, and a dairy-promotion tour long credited with popularizing “America’s Dairyland.” He lost a bid for a third term, returned as Heil Company chairman, and died in Milwaukee in 1949. Milwaukee got the factory; New Berlin kept the boyhood farm, the street name, and the industrial surname.
Profile · New Berlin, Wisconsin
Suffrage leader and Waukesha Freeman editor; childhood at Prospect Hill (now New Berlin); adult career and death in Waukesha
$5,000
Theodora Winton Youmans was the Wisconsin suffrage organizer and newspaperwoman who helped push the Nineteenth Amendment across the finish line in 1919, then became the first president of the state League of Women Voters. Career geography was Waukesha; childhood belonged to Prospect Hill—the crossroads New Berlin later annexed.
She was born in Ashippun, in Dodge County, and grew up at her father’s store and post office in Prospect Hill. Her mother had been a schoolteacher; Theodora and her brothers walked to District No. 3 Prospect School. At seventeen she was valedictorian of Carroll Academy—still remembered locally as the only New Berlinite known to have finished there in the nineteenth century—then joined the Waukesha Freeman as a reporter who traveled the Northwoods alone and invented a “Women’s World” column. She married the paper’s editor, Henry Mott Youmans, in 1889 and became assistant editor. In 1886 the Freeman had already run her series on traveling the Northwoods alone, a credential for a woman reporter of the era. She founded the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association in 1908, years before taking the suffrage presidency in 1913.
As president of the Wisconsin Woman Suffrage Association she followed Carrie Chapman Catt’s advice and pressed a federal amendment after state referenda failed in 1912 and 1917. When Wisconsin’s ratification papers reached Washington first on June 10, 1919, she announced the “first honors” in her column. She later ran for the state senate as a Republican and lost, and died at home in Waukesha in 1932. The girlhood house sits on New Berlin Historical Society grounds; Youmans Park is in Waukesha. New Berlin keeps the store and the school story.
Profile · New Berlin, Wisconsin
Princeton point guard and European pro; born and raised New Berlin; Wisconsin Mr. Basketball 2010 at Catholic Memorial
$1 million
T. J. Bray is the New Berlin point guard who skipped the scholarship power conferences for Princeton, then spent seven seasons in Europe before retiring at twenty-nine. Born in New Berlin on June 14, 1992, he grew up in the suburb and starred at Catholic Memorial in neighboring Waukesha. As a senior he averaged 17.9 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 6.6 assists, won Wisconsin Mr. Basketball in 2010, and posted a 20-12-5-6 line in the Division 2 state-title game.
Princeton beat out North Dakota and Florida Gulf Coast. He left as first-team All-Ivy with 374 career assists—third in program history since the school began counting them—and a still-standing 13-assist game against Penn State. He is the only Princeton player with three seasons of 100-plus assists since tracking began in 1974–75. Undrafted in 2014, he played in Italy, Belgium, Greece, Germany, and Spain. Bayern Munich put him in the EuroLeague; after missing the first three months of that season with a foot-tendon injury he made the 2019 All-Bundesliga First Team and led the German league in assists. Panathinaikos gave him a Greek League title and a Greek Cup in 2021.
Then he walked away for personal reasons, with reporting of a roughly $100,000 clause if he returned to play in Europe that season, and a public thank-you to his fiancée and the FaceTimes from home. The New Berlin claim is childhood and the Mr. Basketball year; Catholic Memorial supplied the high-school stage next door.