Daniel Kortenkamp:
CLASS OF 1955
Sacred Heart High SchoolClass of 1955
Oelwein, IA
Daniel's Story
I was born in the dining room of a farmhouse to kerosene light near Aurora, Iowa. During WWII my family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where my father worked at the Bomber Modification Center # 12, Holman Airfield. He installed escape hatches for tail and waist gunners, windows, Plexiglas gunnery ports, and radar domes on B-24 bombers. After the war we moved to Oelwein, Iowa, where my father worked as an auto mechanic; his longest tenure was at the Packard dealership. (Incidentally, Walter P. Chrysler built his first car in 1908 while living in Oelwein.) I graduated from Sacred Heart High School in 1955 . I worked as a receptionist-bookkeeper at Radio Station KOEL.
This was an exciting time to work in a radio station. In 1955 the first rock & roll records began reaching the top of the pop charts -- Little Richard’s “Tuttie Fruttie”, Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline”, Bill Haley and the Comets “Rock Around the Clock” (the first rock ‘n roll record to reach # 1on the pop charts, and arguably the most popular rock ‘n roll record in history). In about January 1956, I was answering the radio station phone, when a lady called asking for the disk jockey to play “I Forgot to Remember to Forget” by Elvis Presley. I had never heard of him, and couldn’t remember his name or the name of the record, so I switched her to the disk jockey. The song reached #1 on the Billboard country music chart by February 1956, and remained there for 39 weeks, longer than any other Presley recording. It was the first recording to make Elvis Presley a nationally known country music star. Elvis Presley had his first #1 on the Billboard pop music chart in early 1956 – “Heartbreak Hotel” (released January 27, 1956).
When I turned 18, I went to work as a time-and-motion study inspector at Donaldson’s Mfg. Oelwein plant (manufacturing air cleaners and mufflers); later as a machine operator (“gear hobber set-up operator”) machining helical teeth in gears at John Deere Tractor Factory, Waterloo, Iowa; and finally as a postal worker at the Oelwein Post Office.
I quit the Post Office in 1957 and en...Expand for more
rolled at Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa, majoring in physics as a freshman, pre-med as a sophomore, general science and education as a junior, and psychology as a senior (B.S. degree).
During vacations I enjoyed hitchhiking around the U.S. and in Mexico (over 20,000 miles border-to-border and coast-to-coast). In 1959, while hitching through Georgia, I was picked up by rock and roll legend Little Richard – “the originator, the emancipator, the architect of rock and roll.”
After college I attended the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and received my M.A. in counseling psychology. I worked several years as a counselor and college professor, before returning to graduate school to obtain my Ph.D. in clinical psychology from St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri. I interned in the Mental Hygiene Unit of the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center, Des Moines, Iowa. My dissertation involved the psychophysical scaling of metaphorical dimensions to measure subjective states of consciousness.
Before coming to UW-Stevens Point in 1966, I taught at the University of St. Francis,Fort Wayne, Indiana; where I also worked in the Counseling Center. I have also worked as a clinical psychologist at the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Hospital in Tomah, Wisconsin – the largest (600+ beds) psychiatric hospital in the VA system. I retired in 2002 from university teaching. My teaching areas of specialization were -- Consciousness, Altered States of Consciousness, Transpersonal Psychology, Parapsychology, and Asian Psychology. I enjoy working on my house, traveling, genealogy, and distance running (marathon PR: 3:17, Oktoberfest Maple Leaf Marathon, La Crosse, WI). My wife retired 2003, as Director of Religious Education, at St. Stephen Parish, Stevens Point. We have 9 children -- 5 daughters, 4 sons. Six have doctorates (astronomy, astrophysics, robotics/artificial intelligence, clinical neuropsychology, experimental psychology, corporate tax law), 3 have master's (audiology, French horn performance, science education). All have run marathons; 3 finished full Ironman Triathlons.
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