Fred Foster

He is not the Nashville record producer of the same name who also died in 2019. Memorial High and two years at Wisconsin under Gilbert Hemsley launched him; the adult stretch that puts Middleton on the lighting map is the plant.

On Christmas Eve 1975, at Hemsley’s party, Foster and three other UW kids — brother Bill, Gary Bewick, and James Bradley — decided to build a digital lighting console. Parents’ basement, then a garage. Mega Cue followed. Disney’s Epcot bought credibility. By 1983 the company sold consoles under its own name. The Source Four ellipsoidals that began shipping in 1992 eventually numbered about three million. In 2004 he consolidated headquarters and manufacturing on Pleasant View Road: more than seven acres, a lobby dressed as 1940s Manhattan, and some three hundred of his own fixtures in the ceiling. He refused to ship the work to China so a twenty-five-unit order could still be painted and leave the same afternoon. An ESOP later parked about a third of the company with employees.

Cancer arrived in 2015. He died on February 8, 2019, at sixty-one. Wife Susan, daughter Kate, and son James all worked on the payroll. A memorial was held at Madison’s Overture Center. Birth and raise are Madison; Middleton is the factory and the career address.