Mostly pictures of Gerry as an adult. For more pictures of him as a child see Mom’s Photo Album. For all of Gerry’s pictures, use the search bar.
Life
Gerry was born on April 9, 1926.
He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps in August 1944, a few months after he turned eighteen. The enlistment form contains a couple of surprises. It tells us that Gerry had completed only two years of high school and, secondly, his civilian job was categorized as “Semiskilled chauffeurs and drivers, bus, taxi, truck, and tractor.” If we were to venture a guess, Gerry may have decided he was going to enlist as soon as he was able and chose to drop out of high school and get a job until he reached the minimum enlistment age of eighteen.
The chronology of his later schooling fits this timeline. He graduated from the Wisconsin State College of Milwaukee, the predecessor of UWM, in 1951 with a degree in History. He then immediately entered law school at the Madison campus, graduating in 1954. If he spent 1946 finishing high school, with a generous awarding of credits for life experience, something typical for service members returning from war, he would have been eligible for college in 1947. No documentary evidence confirms this conjectural reconstruction, but it does align with the documentation we do have.
He married Madonna (‘Donna’) Remick Kortsch (1924-2022) in 1952. Donna was born in Madison and it’s in Madison where they probably met.
They had two sons: Kevin (b. 1954) and Patrick (‘Topper’) (b. 1956).
Gerry worked for many years in the City of Milwaukee attorney’s office and later as an administrative law judge for the Department of Health and Human Services, ruling on disability claims for Social Security benefits.
Gerry’s obituary and that of Donna, who lived to 98, appear at the end of the pictures.
His Sons
Kevin is a musician who has been in a number of local bands and a big rig truck driver. He married Theresa Marie Knoche (b. 1963) in 1987. They divorced in 1990.
Patrick, following the example of his father, enlisted in the US Air Force and served from 1980 to 2013, rising to First Sergeant. That rank acts as liaison between the enlisted airmen in his unit and the unit commander, mentoring and advocating for the airmen and ensuring the commander’s decisions are effectively implemented.
He married Diane Popper in 1979. He and Diane (b. 1956) had two children, Aaron and Sarah, before divorcing in an unknown year. Diane died in 2013 at the young age of 57. She can be seen in several of the later pictures below.
Patrick subsequently married Barbara Cushing Guise Potash in 2005.
‘Bobbi’ Cushing Guise (b. 1955) married Mark Potash in 1979 and they had one child together, a daughter, Robin (b. 1981) before divorcing, also in an unknown year.
Picture Gallery
