William Maertz:
CLASS OF 1966
Sycamore High SchoolClass of 1966
Sycamore, IL
Iowa Wesleyan CollegeClass of 1970
Mt. pleasant, IA
William's Story
ALL ABOUT ME (and my "clan"!)
Greetings! A "Bio 'bout Bill"? Sounds good to me. Here we go. I went to Iowa Wesleyan College after graduating SHS. I graduated from I.W.C. in 1970 with a B.A. degree in Art, along with minors in History and English. I next went to work at Anaconda in August, 1970, in the General Die Department. I dated and played the field until November, 1973 when I met my future "WIFER", Julie K. O'Connell. After seeing each other EVERY SINGLE DAY from that point in time on, we got engaged on July 8th, 1974 and were married on July the 5th, 1975 ("7/5/75"). Many of my former girlfriends threw themselves under trains and other large vehicles on that day.
We "Honeymooned" at my parent's summer home in far Northwestern Wisconsin. I managed to break my right arm and dislocate my elbow, but learned very quickly that when Julie says "NO", she means "NO"! Other than that minor setback, we had a GREAT TIME, and all of our "Wisconsin Gang" was there to keep things even MORE EXCITING! My right arm, being in a cast, proved to be just the right height for grabbing female boobs when it came time for pictures! Lottsa booze and "other" stuff made for "fun" photo sessions! I wouldn't have traded this Honeymoon for ANY OTHER! WOO-HOO! And, "YES", Julie had a GREAT TIME TOO! Hell, we're still married after 36 years!
1975 was also the year that I began "Iron Dog Enterprises" as a "hobby/business". I would design, and then have built, "Off Road" products for 4x4 rigs of other fellow members of the two FOUR-WHEEL-DRIVE clubs that Julie and I belonged to. Julie was "famous" (or "INFAMOUS") for wearing a tiny bikini when competing in the "Sand Drags", while behind the steering wheel of her "tricked-up" red and white Dodge Ramcharger! Me, due to "popular request", wore far more clothing.
But all good things have to come to an end. I managed to get Julie "preggers" in the fall of 1980 and our son, Erik, was born on June 23rd, 1981. BIG CHANGE OF "LIFE STYLE"! We were now actually "PARENTS"! YIKES! We "messed-up" again while "messin' around" in the fall of 1983 and our daughter, Wendi, "popped-out" on June 26, 1984! Hey, that was "German Efficiency"! The kids were THREE YEARS and THREE DAYS apart, but BOTH were born on a TUESDAY! KOOL, huh?!
Iron Dog Enterprises had made a BIG CHANGE of DIRECTION during this time and now I was performing "Museum Quality Restorations" on WWII German helmets. YUP! GERMAN HELMETS! To date, I have restored just over 43,000 of the little buggers (Yes, that is FORTY-THREE THOUSAND, not a "typo"!). I do these worldwide for collectors, dealers, reenactment groups, museums, TV and movie productions. I have met a few of the "biggies" in the movie field, as a result!
In the summer of 1990, I designed and built our "DREAM MANSION" right here in little old Sycamore. Well, actually, just outside of Sycamore, in the rolling green hills on the far Northwest side of the town, out in the country, on a slight bluff overlooking one of the many branches of the "Mighty" Kishwaukee River. It's an all brick, two story (including a FULLY FINISHED ten foot deep basement that incorporates true eight foot solid drywall ceilings) Georgian style house, 3,640 square feet, with three large bed rooms, two and a half baths, a VERY LARGE kitchen, family room, living room, "SUN" room, rec room, two large display rooms, a German helmet repair room, a FIVE car heated garage, tornado brackets securing the roofs, armored plating in many of the outside walls and clear fields of fire from the various gun ports. Gotta have those gun ports these days! We moved in during a blizzard in March of 1991. Some of those who helped us move are still "missing" today, but I think I "found" one of them when we dug for our pool in the summer of '93. As we dug for the pool, it struck us that we now needed a "poolhouse" (auf Deutsch: "Pfuhlhaus")!! So I designed and built one which is all brick like "da BIGHAUS" and contains an insulated hottub room/sauna in one half and a small insulated garage in the other half. It's wired for phones and cable TV.
After Anaconda folded in 1981, I took a "few years off" and we spent all of our summers in Northwestern Wisconsin at our summer home, tanning, drinking, water skiing, more drinking, swimming, even more drinking, skinny-dip partying, taking PIX and trying to remember what happened the next day! The PIX helped quite a bit in bringing back the "lost time" episodes! GREAT FUN with our friends!
I decided to take a job offer at General Electric in February, 1988. Julie then decided to get back into the work force and started at the Hauser-Ross Eye Institute here in Sycamore in early 1991, to help pay for the new "HAUS"! We never had a mortgage, just a "bridge loan" for a few months to cover the costs until we sold our old home. Basically we just paid CASH for it (we SAVED for 15 friggin' years to do this!).
Our son Erik, who is 30, is married and he, and his wife Vicki,...Expand for more
bought a BIG NEW HOME in DeKalb in January, 2008! Our daughter Wendi, who is 27, is still "single", but she is into a serious relationship. She had a place here in Sycamore, but after seven years of being on her own, she has moved back to save on expenses. It's GREAT having her back! At her last apartment, Chuck B. (from our class) and his wife Diane, used to be her landlords!
We have a blue-eyed Siberian Husky named Meija and now just FOUR "attack" cats (Mitzi, Nala, Leo and Callie - Bonze, Junior and Butters all went to the "Great Beyond" in 2010) to protect her. Our first first pet out here in the country was Max ("MAD MAX SCHMELLING VON MAERTZ"), a VERY LARGE white German Shepherd with golden eyes. We got him in the spring of 1992 to protect the kids after they got home from school on the bus, since both Julie and I were at work at that time. Some stranger walked in on them through the patio door when they were getting snacks! Fortunately he then ran-off when he saw them in the kitchen. That would never happen again with Max around! He grew to be a VERY LARGE DOG! He was a GREAT guard dog! The kids taught him how to open the garage car doors by using his paw on the button. They also taught him how to turn a doorknob so he could come into the house from the garage. AND, as a final trick, they showed him how to open the fridge! I built him an eight foot by eight foot latrine in the back corner of our acre plus lot and he learned to use only that to relieve himself! He loved to ride in the back of my truck. He would stand on the toolbox and lean over the cab, holding onto the drip rail over the windshield. Unfortunately that pressed his "JUNK" right up against the back window! YUK! Women would actually follow me home when they saw Max in the truck to meet him and play with him! WOW! I coulda been a "serial killer" and murdered these unsuspecting beauties with boxes of "Sugar Pops" and "Wheaties"!! Max could actually "talk" and his favorite word was "YARM". He would always say it three times in a row in a VERY DEEP voice: "YARM, YARM, YARM"! That meant, "Let's play". He liked all of our cats, and our oldest one, Bonze, liked to feed hot dog pieces to Max! Junior, another of our cats, always slept with Max in his dog haus! Sadly, Max died of liver cancer at age nine in 2001. He was playing in the yard with me in the morning as I mowed on the tractor and then died at the vet's late that afternoon. It was Mother's Day Sunday and both doctors from Prairie View Animal Hospital came in from what they were doing to try to save Max, but it was just too late.
In 1996 we got another German Shepherd, a female, who we named Maggie, so Max would have a playmate. She was nothing like Max! Not even close! She went to that "GREAT FIRE HYDRANT IN THE SKY back in the spring of 2008 . Meija and the "killer katzen" still miss her. I don't. Well, okay, just a little. Maggie was a GREAT guard dog! NO ONE ever entered our lands without her sounding the ALARM and lunging on her chain, which always gave me time to slam a loaded 30 round mag into one of our AK-47's! She loved to fight fang and claw with the coyotes, just like Max did, when they came too close to our cats! To her, the six cats (at that time) were her "puppies" and nobody messed with them! Yet, she was a very "nice" dog, in general, when she wasn't "on duty". But she was a total IDIOT! Yup! With Meija, you can look into her big blue eyes and see her "soul". With Maggie, once you stared into her blank looking brown eyes, all you could see were the pinwheels inside her skull, just spinning in the winds that blew in through her ears. She had "rooms to rent" up there, but no one was ever at "home"! "Maggot" was the only dog that I have ever known who would grab onto a MOVING car or truck tire with her teeth, get her thick skull run-over in the process and be willing to do it over and over again! She NEVER LEARNED from the experiences! I ALWAYS had to hold Mags back on her heavy log chain when a vehicle passed us on our walks through the countryside. I am surprised that she lived to be TWELVE!! GOOD GIRL, MAGGIE! Ya beat the odds!
UPDATE!! UPDATE!! Julie and I are now PROUD GRANDPARENTS!! On the late night of January 18th, 2011, little Derik Anthony Maertz arrived on scene! He was born at the new Kishwaukee Hospital at 11:06 P.M. He weighed 8 pounds and 6 ounces, measuring in at 21 inches in length. He and his momma, Vicki, along with our son Erik, are all back home and doin' just FINE! The kids had just celebrated their fourth wedding anniversity on December 6th, 2010. So far, everything is "KOOL" with Derik. Let's see what the next 21 years bring!!! I warned Erik that it would be "PAY BACK TIME" for HIM after what he put us through!! His answer to my statement was, "Sorry 'bout dat!" Gotta go now to post some phone/camera pix of Derik on this site. They'll be in the "William's Photo Album" at the top of the photos page.
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