Leinenkugel displayed kindness to young reporter

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By MARK BAKER
mark.baker@lee.net
Friday, September 26, 2008 9:05 PM CDT

The first time I met Bill Leinenkugel, back in the spring of 1988, he gave me a knowing wink and a nod.

Mike Wilder, then the general manager of the Chippewa Herald-Telegram, had come back from his noon civic club meeting, all excited. Word was circulating that the Leinenkukgel Brewery Company had been sold, said Wilder.

That day’s front page had already been put together. The production department was shooting it to film, and preparing to burn plates to hang on the press. It was nearly 1 p.m., our deadline.

With the biggest news to hit town in a decade, we told the prepress workers to stand down for half an hour while we tried to confirm the rumor.

Sure enough, with a phone call or two, we were able to contact a spokesman for Leinenkugel’s, who confirmed it. We ripped apart the top of page one, I pounded out a story, and before long, the whole community knew that the family-owned brewery — the oldest continuous business in Chippewa Falls — was soon to become part of Miller Brewing Company.

“Miller Brewing Co. spills as much beer in a day as Leinie’s produces in a year,” one observer noted at the time about the difference in size between the two operations.

Later that afternoon, after the Herald-Telegram hit the streets and the word got out on the Associated Press wire, Leinie’s was inundated by calls from area, state and national news media.

Knowing it was a big deal, members of the Leinenkugel family called a press conference so that everyone could find out more information at the same time.

I drove down to the original Leinie’s Gift Shop on Jefferson Avenue for the press conference, and found myself elbow-to-elbow with print, radio and TV journalists. Everyone wanted to know how this happened, and what it would mean for the second-most favorite natural Wisconsin product (after the Green Bay Packers, of course.)

Feeling overwhelmed by the crush of reporters, I went up to Bill Leinenkugel, identified myself as being with the Herald-Telegram, and asked if he would give me a few minutes after the others had left for a more in-depth discussion on the sale. After all, I offered, the Herald-Telegram is the only local news organization here — it’s nearly as old as Leinie’s itself — and our readers were more important than anyone else!

That’s when Bill gave me a nod and a wink.

“Stick around, Mark,” he said in a whisper with his distinctive voice. “We’ll work something out.”

And so I stuck around. It seemed like an eternity, but eventually, the TV lights went out, the radio reporters wrapped up their microphone cords, and only a few hangers-on milled about the gift shop.

Bill ambled up and said in a soft voice, “Meet us in the old brewery office in 10 minutes.”

With time to kill, I looked at gift shop merchandise, from Leinie’s shirts to cribbage boards to wall posters. Five minutes. Eight minutes. Finally, 10 minutes.

I nonchalantly made my way out of the gift shop, and headed toward the parking lot that was still filled with vehicles. I kept going, past the chain link fence that held empty kegs; past the semi trailers lined up at the warehouse, waiting to be filled; and into what looked like a 1930s-style office, small and cramped, but clean as a whistle.

Inside were Bill Leinenkugel, Bill Casper and Paul Mayer, along with some of the younger members of the Leinenkugel clan. For the next hour or more, I’d ask a question, and one of the family members would fill in the blanks. Then another question, and a new flood of memories and explanations of how things worked.

I tapped into a flow of stories that provided a rich and wonderful background for a story in the next day’s newspaper, of good times and of hard times, of times when beer was a staple of life to the era when all forms of alcohol were banned by Prohibition.

Family members told how the brewery came to be, of the proud and strong relationships it had with local farmers who provided much of the raw material that went into making beer. They told of parents who would send their kids down to the saloon with a picnic pail with orders to fill it up, to be enjoyed as a reward after a hard day of work.

There were stories of Bill’s life on the road, going out to meet the bar owners who carried Leinen-kugel’s, of the family-like connection between the makers and sellers of Leinenkugel’s. They remembered times when it looked like the brewery might not make it, even to that present day, when many small family-owned breweries had simply ceased to exist.

Members of the Leinenkugel family were passionate about avoiding that particular fate.

What impressed me most about that day is that Bill Leinenkugel, Bill Casper and Paul Mayer could have told a young journalist to take a hike, that they’d already told their story at the press conference, and that was good enough. But they didn’t, because that’s not the way they did business. Each was a gentleman, who believed in the goodness of their company, and the special nature of this community.

In subsequent years, whenever I’d run into Bill — at the Elks golf course (where he loved to play cards each Wednesday with his cronies), at Notre Dame Church (which he attended each Sunday), at the dedication of the new and beautiful Leinie Lodge, or at the celebration for the newly renovated Dorais Field — he always took time to smile and greet me, and ask me in his booming voice how things were going in the newspaper business.

Bill Leinenkugel may have been from a small town, but he was a big man who exhibited class in everything he did. The ever-present sparkle in his eye and gentleness of his spirit will be missed.