John Joseph Maurer Jr.

flew B-24s for the Fifteenth Air Force in World War II, then spent decades in commercial cockpits and Wisconsin public office. He chaired the town of Pleasant Prairie, served three terms in the state Senate, and ran the Department of Veterans Affairs under two governors.

Born in Kenosha on July 11, 1922, he graduated from Bradford High School (then Kenosha High) in 1940, the same building that later produced Alan Ameche. After the war he studied at Marquette and flew for Capital Airlines and United, retiring as a DC-10 captain. Local politics began on the Pleasant Prairie town board in 1961; he was town chairman from 1969 to 1975, while the place was still a town, before the 1989 village incorporation.

He lost a 1972 Senate primary to Doug La Follette, then won the 1975 special election after La Follette left for secretary of state. Three Senate terms followed, including majority caucus chair from 1981 to 1985. A run for the new Kenosha County executive post in 1982 failed. Tony Earl appointed him secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1985; Republican Tommy Thompson kept him until January 1992. The Wisconsin Veterans Museum on Capitol Square grew during that tour, and the department later named Maurer Hall in Union Grove for him. He married Arlene Kulin on Christmas 1977. He died at 96 in his Pleasant Prairie home on March 31, 2019. Kenosha was the childhood; Pleasant Prairie was the adult stretch.