UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1415
LEFEBVRE, MARK

LEFEBVRE, MARK (1948-)
Undergraduate; graduate student; University of Wisconsin Foundation 
At UW: [as student] 1966-72; [at UW Foundation] 1994-2013

Interviewed: 	March 24, 2015
Interviewer: 	Harv Thompson, Maryo Gard Ewell, Anne Pryor
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	2 hours, 27 minutes

Abstract: In his March 2015 interview with Harv Thompson et al, Mark Lefebvre reflects on his long involvement with the arts in Wisconsin, and specifically Robert Gard’s contribution to his development and Wisconsin rural arts.  He discussed his youth in northeastern Wisconsin and the influence UW-Extension and his undergraduate career at UW-Madison had in his development as an author and publisher.  He related his work with Gard and shared reminiscences about a number of major figures in UW’s arts heritage. Finally, he discussed his more recent work with medical education.  This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program and the Gard Foundation’s UW-Madison and WI Community Arts History Project.

Key Words: DePere, WI; University of Wisconsin-Madison; 1960s; student protest; Robert E. Gard; Rhinelander School for the Arts; Wisconsin House (publisher); Aaron Bohrod; August Derleth; Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters; We Were Children Then (1976); Stanton and Lee; John Muir; Muir Knoll.

First Interview Session (March 25, 2015): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:01:28	Question [HT]: Talk about your early life. Answer: Growing up in De Pere, WI, the oldest town in WI, he grew up with a profound sense of WI history. His father was a doctor, but died young, and his mother, grieving his father, wasn’t an engaged parent.

00:03:15	[no question] He related that his maternal grandparents immigrated to Rockland WI from Ireland, and began a long tradition of his family going to the UW-Madison. His grandfather was very prominent in WI, getting a law degree, becoming a WI supreme court justice, and chairing the WI and national Democratic party.

00:04:57	[no question] His mother and aunts were all college educated (in the 1920s) and very bright, having no interest in parenting, but in careers.

00:06:14	[no question] He considered himself a bit unusual in that he venerated his Catholic teachers, “amazing nuns who were dedicated, bright, engaging.” His Catholic HS was similarly “extraordinary,” though language was supreme and math and science absent.

00:07:45	Question [HT]: Siblings? Answer: Yes; but they were much older than him—his brother and sister were married and in careers by the time he was 8. He talked about how his mother was highly respected (almost feared) in the community, but as highly educated widow, still was paid much less than her male peers. His mother’s situation led her to disdain the clergy in a strongly Catholic community; and he discussed his grandmother’s talent and self-isolation, as well as his aunts’ fierce independence.

00:11:45	[no question] In 1966, after graduating from HS, he sought a secular education at UW. During his time on campus, many of the tumultuous events of the 1960s occurred, but he still considered his undergraduate career an “amazing” time.

00:14:50	Question [ME]: Did your mother want you to go to St. Norbert? Answer: No; she was indifferent to what he wanted to do, though his siblings thought he’d go to St. Norbert

00:15:23	Question [HT]: Had you been to Madison before? Answer: He recalled a tradition of academic excellence at his school, which brought him to Madison with the school’s debate team. He also liked Madison for his grandfather’s history there, the pursuit of ideas, and he reflected on how naïve he was about the eminence of the faculty he worked with, only to be able to work with them again through the agency of R. Gard.

00:20:34	Question [HT]: Where did the intellectual curiosity come from? Answer: First from his mother and aunts, who read a book a day; then from the nuns at Catholic school, who not only had them read, but also improvise stories; and also from the town of DePere, inhabited by articulate, creative people. He told some stories about townspeople.

00:26:24	Question [ME]: School of the Air? Answer: Lefebvre recalled Jim Schwalbach coming to his grade-school and commenting on every piece of art students had drawn. He thought that this kind of trip developed an extraordinary bond between the university and the state. Chapter-a-day was also something school children looked forward to. He suggested that one reason for declining state support for UW was the way the Madison campus had failed to maintain a conversation with Wisconsinites.

00:29:23	[no question] He related that he “was waiting for the day when I would meet Robert Gard” because of the magical influence of his aunts, community and school. He told the story of how he’d worked in the saw-mill during summers in college, but in the summer of 1970, he applied at the work-study office on campus, which directed him to Gard, who needed an assistant for writing a history of the university. He related the effect of meeting Gard in his office and how Gard hired him on the spot.

00:34:38	[no question] He talked more about working with Bob Gard—with whom he inter-viewed a number of eminent people from UW-Madison. He talked about Gard’s (almost disingenuous) strategy of interviewing, and the respect Gard accorded him from the very beginning. That summer’s work generated the book University Madison USA, which created a university professor character that was completely fictional (and generated some controversy).

00:39:38	[no question] He talked about how Gard would throw people into experiences so that they could “swim”; for him it was teaching at the School of the Arts, but he also recollected a drama class in which he asked a student act out “coming out” about being a homosexual, and then managed the acting in an astonishingly skillful way.

00:43:40	[no question] He talked about the “internal order” Gard had to everything, despite the “utter and absolute chaos” that seemed to exist around him.

00:44:44	Question [HT]: Your specific role in the project? Answer: He edited and transcribed the interviews, and then Ann Beckman acted as the editor for the whole book. Gard also gave him the role of the “patter-writer,” of polishing the final text—a role he’d have for the rest of his life.

00:46:21	Question [HT]: So you filled a void in his writing? Answer: Lefebvre responded by saying that Gard actually filled the father role in his life.

00:47:44	Question [ME]: Talk about the University itself.  Answer: He reflected on the notion of the University as “that golden city,” but at the same time small-town WI was some-what unnerved by the openness of Madison to free inquiry and liberalism.  UW, he noted, was “omnipresent” at the time throughout the state and everyone knew what it could do.

00:52:22	[no question] He traced the decline of the WI Idea to the early 1960s, when state support of Madison began to decline and the “covenant” broke down.

00:54:13	[no question] He recalled the extensive traveling he and Gard did during the 1970s under a federal grant “to promote indigenous art” (he described it as “to awaken people to the potential of themselves”). He gave a poignant example of how people in a community sometimes don’t know the powerful stories their own neighbors have. Sometimes Gard doubted his impact, but Lefebvre didn’t.

00:59:25	Question [AP]: Details—your parish and your major? Answer: The parish was St. Francis, and he told some stories about the rich history of the parish and its founder. He’d majored in English—there’d been an expectation that he go into law, but the first lecture by Walter Rideout had captivated him.

01:02:43	Question [HT]: Early 1970s? Answer: He continued by talking about his graduate study in the English department, which he didn’t enjoy, for as much as he’d loved his undergraduate work. What troubled him about it was that the critical response to literature was valorized over the personal response. This faculty emphasis grated against his deeply personal response to literature.

01:06:51	[no question] Juxtaposed with the frustrations of his graduate work was the rewarding interaction he had with Gard, which turned more toward Gard’s personal writing than his work with the state. One of the most popular works they did during this time was Gard’s Wild Goose Marsh: Horicon Stopover.

01:09:05	[no question] At this time, after finishing his MA, he was offered positions at UW-Extension Arts and an editorship at Wisconsin House. He decided to go to work for Wisconsin House, where he was able to collaborate with Gard and Aaron Bohrod on Wisconsin Sketches, a study in two artists separate visions of Wisconsin, and with Vince Lombardi on the first authorized biography of him. He marveled at the kind of experiences he’d been able to have in his early 20s.

01:14:01	[no question] He discussed how he met August Derleth at Place of Hawks (his Sauk City home, which Lefebvre described) with Gard—Derleth was Gard’s mentor and became Lefebvre’s mentor. He described Derleth’s unusual personality.

01:17:21	[no question] Continuing to talk about Derleth, he explained how the unusual writer was also entrepreneurial in establishing his own publishing house, Stanton and Lee, which became very successful. He published some important authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury. When Derleth died, the opportunity presented itself to Lefebvre and Gard to purchase Stanton and Lee and merge it with Wisconsin House. 

01:20:09	[no question] During the years when Lefebvre was in publishing, Gard’s work became more literary, but their relationship became progressively more “episodically close” rather than very close. Toward the end of his life, however, Gard renewed his relationship with Lefebvre during a time of introspection and physical illness.

01:23:51	[no question] Continuing to talk about his relationship with Gard, he emphasized that it was always built on creativity and their participation in the “literary wars,’ but not so much on their separate involvement in the arts community. Despite the individual nature of their relationship, though, Gard always included Lefebvre in every organization he’d ever belonged to.

01:27:24	Question [HT]: You were with Stanton and Lee until? Answer: 1994. When he announced his retirement due to his wife’s battle with cancer, the company folded. He talked about his wife’s illness, his volunteer work with UW’s cancer institute during this period, and his work with the UW Foundation bringing “the Medical School into the 21st century,” raising a billion dollars for the university.

01:30:48	Question [HT]: Gard retired in 1990? Answer: Lefebvre, Thompson, and Gard Ewell discussed the unusual salary arrangements between UW and Gard.

01:32:36	Question [ME]: Being retired was hard on him? Answer: Profoundly; in a strange way, Gard felt like he’d lost his home base.

01:33:28	Question [ME]: His work with the Wisconsin Academy? Answer: Lefebvre marveled at the work Gard had done at the Academy, taking the job as the successor to Dale O’Brien. He started the Poets in the Schools program, a summer writing program, and generally brought more structure and professionalism to the Academy, something that Lefebvre found ironic. He also nurtured relationships that secured the endowment for the Academy.

01:37:46	Question [HT]: Did he get more involved in publishing after his retirement? Answer: Yes; he emphasized the importance of Coming Home to Wisconsin, which meditated on Gard’s youth and the meaning of his mother. This caused Lefebvre to muse on the impact of Gard’s youth in Kansas on his artistic trajectory and how, while Gard was very sophisticated, he was still very humble.

01:42:17	Question [HT]: Jerry Apps? Answer: He credited Apps with being as close as one could come to being Gard’s successor from a literary standpoint—Gard would say that Apps did what Gard always wanted to do.  

01:44:40	[no question] He talked about Gard’s evolution in literature—starting in folklore, migrating toward history, then the natural world, then to more serious fiction. He talked about how Bruce Allison helped Gard to create a number of meditative works that helped Gard work through his relationship with God and religion, suffering, etc.

01:48:38	Question [HT]: The We Were Children Then project? Answer: Lefebvre helped publish the first volume of this oral history project, which was extremely popular when it came out, received national attention, and was described as “Wisconsin’s Foxfire.” His wife Marion illustrated the works.

01:52:36	Follow up [HT]: How was it collected? Answer: He answered this and also men-tioned that in the first volume, Gard and Lefebvre edited the stories very carefully to not disturb the vernacular vocabulary and cadence. The success of the first volume, however, made competition to have stories in the second book stronger and therefore the second volume was more heavily edited.

01:54:48	Follow up [HT]: Meeting demand? Answer: Lefebvre explained how they met demand through the extraordinary work of Wisconsin manufacturers and printers. He discussed Gard’s legacy to the printing industry. He talked about Gard’s understand-ding of the publishing industry and his incredible work ethic selling books.

01:58:17	Question [HT]: School of the Arts? Answer: He related how special School of the Arts was to Gard, thinking it was the single closest thing to Gard’s heart. This was an extension of how Gard made friends for UW everywhere he went.

02:01:00	Question [ME]: Gard Foundation? Answer: Lefebvre wasn’t there for the beginnings of the Foundation, and thought that while it had some great events in the early years, it had “refracted the goals of the foundation through their own [the founders’] needs.” Follow up [ME]: What had he meant for it to be? Answer: He thought the founda-tion’s current iteration was close to Gard’s original intent—a catalyst, both for rural and urban art, a way of encouraging a new generation. He, Gard Ewell, and Thompson discussed how Gard used the Foundation as a home for his work after he’d been released by the university.

02:06:23	Question [HT]: Had you thought of being a publisher before you came to Stanton and Lee? Answer: It just evolved—he always loved books, so when graduate school wasn’t nurturing his personal relationship with literature, at Gard’s prompting he got into publishing.

02:08:19	[no question] He chronicled how he moved from publishing to “do something more meaningful,” partly due to the needs of his wife’s illness, partly due to the memory of his father.  He talked about the incredible advances they’d made at the UW Foundation, raising over $1 billion dollars and building Rennebohm Hall, the Health Sciences Learning Center, the Institute for Research, the Children’s Hospital and the Nursing School. 

02:12:34	Question [HT]: What year did you retire from the Foundation? Answer: 2013.  He explained that he’d been blessed to be “left alone” for 18 years, and that after spending 2 years under the new Foundation administration, he was ready for change. 

02:14:01	[no question] While he planned to be a caregiver to his wife after retirement, he was approached 8 months later to help out a fledgling educational institution. Working pro bono, he felt that this college would be able to make a difference in medical education in Wisconsin, suggesting that despite great advances in medical science at the major schools of medicine, in rural and urban areas access to medical care had significant room for improvement.

02:17:11	Question [HT]: How would you like to be remembered? Answer: Quoting poet W. D. Snodgrass, he remarked that he wanted to be known as a gentle, humble person who, when called, came to people’s aid.  Having known some “major players” in his career at UW, he emphasized the need to continue to “speak their names” so that one could remember not necessarily the great things they did, but their essential kindness.

02:23:06	Question [HT]: Talk about the dedication of Muir Knoll. Answer: Lefebvre began by explaining the history of Muir Knoll—a place on campus used (and misused) by many of the legendary figures who passed through UW’s campus.  He then explained how, concerned that the “glacial pace” of project approvals at UW would not allow Gard’s wife to live to see the Gard Storyteller’s Circle on Muir Knoll dedicated. When they planned an informal dedication ceremony, he continued, a red-tailed hawk emerged from the woods, caught a thermal, and glided motionless over the Knoll—it was a powerful moment.

02:27:39	End of First Interview Session

End of Oral History #1415