The Performing Wollenbergs

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William F. Wollenberg, Jr., as a high-school senior in 1917.

By the end of his sophomore year at Hobart High School, Will Wollenberg, Jr. began to show an inclination for public performance. On May 18, 1915, high school students put on a performance of skits and a play, the latter being Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (which gave us the word "malapropism"). Our own Will Jr. played the part of Sir Anthony Absolute.


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The Class Night Programme, containing the casts of characters and synopses.

Half a year later Will Jr. showed that his talents extended to music as well: in the Hobart High Christmas Program, he performed a clarinet solo in what I'm guessing was Richard Strauss' Wiegenlied with the vocal part set for clarinet.



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The next month Will Sr. had his own opportunity for a public performance, and although less artistic than his son's, it concerned a weightier matter. Appearing before the Hobart Town Board at a meeting in mid-January 1916, Will Sr. presented a petition signed by numerous residents along the Hobart-Ainsworth Road (State Road 51), from William Bracken's land just above the Hobart-Ross township line down to and including Ainsworth. The petitioners asked Hobart to extend its light and power service to them.

Will Sr. told the board that all the signers of the petition, as well as some residents who hadn't signed, intended to become Hobart's power customers. The board took the matter under advisement, instructing Oscar Shore, superintendent of the power plant, to furnish a report on the cost of the project and establishing a committee to study the matter.

After a month's study, the committee reported that the project was "impracticable" for reasons not specified in the newspapers' accounts. The town board accepted the committee's report and the matter was closed, thus leaving Ainsworth unelectrified, except perhaps by Will Jr.'s clarinet-playing.


Sources:
♦ "Class Night Programme." Hobart Gazette 14 May 1915.
♦ "Students' Christmas Program." Hobart Gazette 24 Dec. 1915.
♦ "Town Board Doings." Hobart Gazette 28 Jan. 1916; 18 Feb. 1916.
♦ "Town Board Doings." Hobart News 27 Jan. 1916; 17 Feb. 1916.