Speaker: Patrick Phair
Patrick Phair is a retired educator with a master's degree in English and a minor in History. He is the author of three novels, several plays and many articles. His interest in the Aleutian Campaign was spurred on by his father, Lieutenant Commander Alfred Phair, who spent nearly twelve months in 1942-43 in the Aleutians. Few Americans understand the cost of victory over the Japanese Imperial Army in 1943 on Attu Island or know the debacle of the invasion by American troops on Kiska Island several months later. The battle of Attu Island was the first major victory by American ground troops in the Second World War, causing the Japanese to rethink and eventually call off a land invasion of Australia. This presentation will examine the good, the bad, and the ugly components of a military campaign fought on one of the most desolate and inhospitable locations on earth.

Speaker: Larry Thomas
Larry Thomas

Speaker: Inga Witscher-Orth

nga Witscher-Orth has been farming in Wisconsin for nearly two decades. She is a dairy farmer, award-winning cheesemaker, and the creator and host of PBS’s Around the Farm Table. After years of caregiving, overwork, and emotional strain, Inga hit a level of burnout that forced her to reimagine her life from the ground up.

This talk is an honest look at what happens when you hit burnout—and what it really takes to rebuild. Inga Witscher-Orth shares the breaking points that pushed her to finally set boundaries, untangle old family patterns, and create a life rooted in clarity and self-trust. With a mix of personal story, humor, and practical insights, she offers a grounded path forward for anyone ready to heal and come back to themselves.

Speaker: Katie Montag

Katie Montag has been working with OBVI since 2022. Prior to working with OBVI, she worked for a retinal surgeon at the Marshfield Clinic for 10 years. Katie is passionate about eye care and making sure that every person has access to adequate care in both a medical setting and home setting.

Katie will discuss services that are available to blind and visually impaired persons in the state of Wisconsin. The OBVI services are free of charge, done in the setting of your own home, and a one on one professional service. The goal of services is to help maintain or gain independence with the vision loss. This is achieved by the use of adaptive aids, daily living skills training, optical aids, and community resources. OBVI can help individuals gain access to equipment and other resources offered in the community and the state. OBVI can help individuals understand their vision loss and learn more about their vision and their eye disease, connect with others like persons by joining low vision support groups, and demo eye equipment that might be needed.

Katie will discuss OBVI and services, then discuss some different eye diseases and what people might experience, how to get around safely with vision loss, and other resources available to blind individuals.

Speaker: Lindsay Hall

Lindsay Hall

Speaker: Bill Volkert

Bill Volkert worked as the naturalist and wildlife educator for Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources at Horicon Marsh for 27 years, where he conducted more than 3,700 education programs for over 220,000 people. His broad audiences included professional training for 66 delegations of scientists from 43 countries. He has worked professionally in 5 foreign countries and throughout his career has presented well over 4,000 public programs.

Speaker: Matthew Wallrath

Matthew Wallrath 

Speaker: Christy Clark-Pujara

Christy Clark-Pujara is a historian of colonial North America and the early American Republic. Her research focuses on the experiences of Black people in French and British North America in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. She is particularly interested in retrieving the hidden and unexplored histories of African Americans in areas that historians have not sufficiently examined—small towns and cities in the North and Midwest. Clark-Pujara contends that the full dimensions of the African American and the American experience cannot be appreciated without reference to how Black people managed their lives in places where they were few. Her current book project, Black on the Midwestern Frontier: From Slavery to Suffrage in the Wisconsin Territory, 1725—1868, examines how the practice of race-based slavery, black settlement, and debates over abolition and black rights shaped white-Black race relations in the Midwest.

Free and enslaved Black people lived, labored, and raised families on the Wisconsin frontier; they called the towns and cities of Prairie du Chien, Racine, Green Bay, Lancaster, Milwaukee, and Menominee home. Yet their stories remain largely untold. Black people resisted bondage and political marginalization, creating places and spaces where they could be free and thrive. Black Americans were a tiny minority in Wisconsin territory and later the state; nevertheless, the practice of race-based slavery and anxieties about Black migrants led white Wisconsinites to dispute abolition and the rights of Black residents.