Carol Stafford:  

Unsure of where I fit in after high school, I went to MBTI Business College for court reporting. After graduation, I worked as a free-lance and official verbatim court reporter for the next 25 years. I mainly worked in a four county radius; Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee & Washington Counties and at times traveled throughout the State of Wisconsin and to Washington D.C. to help out in backlogged areas. I met and worked for many of the county and circuit court judges preparing Jury Charges, Decisions, personal and private correspondence, swearing in witnesses, marking exhibits, to name a few of the many duties of a court reporter along with taking the verbatim testimony and motions that came into the courtroom and transcribing same. It was an exciting and fast-moving daily array of work. My favorite courts were generally the Circuit Court criminal verses the Civil Courts. Criminal court was generally faster moving, more interesting, chaotic, high energy, high stress, filled with unique people and situations versus the civil courts which were more orderly and could often be filled with hours and hours of dull, uninteresting motions. As a free lance reporter, I traveled to depositions generally at an attorney's office but sometimes on site to a factory, a home, an office and even to a prison cell, took testimony and transcribed those depositions, which are generally exploratory fact finding and information gathering depositions before court trials take place. While working as a court reporter and raising our girls, I spent many years volunteering at church and school working on many committees and fund raising events & galas. I created, organized & chaired a ballet-tumbling group for children, and created, organized and chaired the annual Fireman's fund raising dance to help raise funds for the Merton Athletic Association and our local volunteer firemen. I am amazed and humbled that those programs remain in existence now 40 plus years later. The Fireman's Annual fundraising Dance has raised considerable amounts of money for the much needed equipment and vehicles that the fire/ambulance department uses along with providing much needed athletic equipment and supplies for the Merton Athletic Association activities, their families and children. After retiring from court reporting, and our girls now grown and gone from home, I opened a gift and home decor boutique in Oconomowoc which was the joy of my life. It was beautiful, fun, exciting, unique, with wonderful gals that worked for me... but over time I also developed a very painful, chronic spinal injury that made it impossible for me to continue. Regretfully I closed my business and ended up with a botched back surgery that ruined nine years of my life ..... m...Expand for more