LEGISLATORS FIND SHORTCUT TO HISTORY

The Wisconsin Dictionary of History contains 8,000 terms about "people, places and things" related to Wisconsin history. This offering of the Wisconsin Historical Society invites readers to submit their terms for review of the historical society staff, which appears to be long overdue, as an examination of the lexicon shows.
Apparently the easiest way to get your name on the list of Wisconsin's immortals is to become a member of the legislature.
There, you will find the names of Vrakas, Vrubink and Vukmir arrayed with such names of actual distinction as Van Dyke, Veblen, Vieau, Vogel and Vollrath.
August Krug, the founder of the Schlitz Brewing Company, is missing, but Shirley Krug is right there at the bar.
You will find John O. Norquist, but no mention of his accession to the mayoralty of the state's principal city -- or of his departure. You will find Tom Barrett, too, but only learn that he has made it to Congress. Marvin Pratt, our other recent mayor, never served in the legislature, and he is ignored, but Morris Pratt, a spiritualist, is listed.
In our dictionary, Gary George still has an e-mail address at the state capitol, and Chuck Chvala has a "voting address." Not until you're off paper, dude!
Perhaps the researchers at the Wisconsin Historical Society are overwhelmed by their tight budgets and other responsibilities, but an element of sloppiness does seem apparent here, especially downloading biographical entries of legislators wholesale, and then not bothering to update them.
Or, if not sloppy, is this instead suck-uppy? After all, the legislature does control the purse strings, and legislators are vain. (See Lasse, Frank; Darling, Alberta, et al.)
The best thing we can do is to submit names of individuals of actual distinction to the library, using the link above, and let us hope they meet the apparently not-very-exacting review of the staff. We can start with T. A. Chapman, Emily Groom, Carl Holty and George F. Kennan, for example.--Michael Horne