O'Hern and Milverstedt
Isthmus co-founders Vince O'Hern, left, and Fred Milverstedt. 'I started getting this idea about a local publication but I didn’t feel I had the contacts or the right amount of penetration into the city,' recalls O’Hern. 'I asked Fred if he wanted to go into it with me.'
Legendary Madison journalist Fred Milverstedt, who co-founded Isthmus in 1976 with Vince O’Hern, has died. Mike Baron, a comic book author and former Isthmus writer, reported the news Monday on his Substack.
Milverstedt was a Madison native, graduating from West High School in 1960. He reported for the Associated Press before joining The Capital Times to write a sports column, writes Doug Moe, “like none the city has seen before or since.” Cap Times editor emeritus Dave Zweifel has called Milverstedt “probably the best writer to ever come out of this fair city.”
Milverstedt met O’Hern at the Dangle Lounge, where O’Hern was a bartender, and the two conspired to start Isthmus.
“I started getting this idea about a local publication but I didn’t feel I had the contacts or the right amount of penetration into the city,” recalls O’Hern. “I asked Fred if he wanted to go into it with me.”
“He was a good writer,” adds O’Hern, “he knew the city and he had deep roots here.”
O’Hern says the two pitched in $1,000 each to start the paper, which didn’t make much money in the early days. During that time, both O’Hern and Milverstedt left at times for side gigs — O’Hern toured with Ben Sidran’s band as the road manager and Milverstedt worked in politics as a press secretary.
Milverstedt tapped Marc Eisen to write for the paper in 1977 or 1978. Eisen recalls the first offer was $50 a week and he left his job at the Janesville Gazette to do it. “I had that much faith in the paper and the vision that Fred and Vince had,” says Eisen, who went on to become the paper’s longtime editor.
Eisen says Milverstedt’s eye for talent grounded the paper. “Fred pulled in a lot of the early writers and that was really the key.”
But Milverstedt left for New York just a few years later, returning to Madison after a year or so to freelance at Isthmus (O’Hern had bought him out by then). In a 2022 email Milverstedt recalled how, while working on the paper’s calendar, he had “caused a ruckus on April Fool’s Day” by entering a phony notice about an eccentric millionaire planning to give away money from the steps of the Madison Club. “After the tumult subsided,” Milverstedt wrote, “Vince reminded me he never liked surprises.”
Fred Milverstedt
Fred Milverstedt died in late April. Cap Times editor emeritus Dave Zweifel has called him 'probably the best writer to ever come out of this fair city.'
Milverstedt ultimately moved to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area where he lived for many years. An avid motorcyclist, in 2013 he published a collection of stories from the road, One More Ride: Fred and the Craft of Motorcyle Meditations. He continued to reach out to Isthmus editors to pitch stories and chronicled the various career changes of former Mayor Paul Soglin in several stories. His email tagline provides a window into his worldview: “As a species, we are not highly evolved.”
Here are five Isthmus pieces written by Milverstedt:
Mayor Paul Soglin becomes 'acceptable' in his run for reelection
Jan. 14, 1977
If not an endearing man (his colossal ego and built-in arrogance are sometimes overbearing even to those who attempt to embrace him), Soglin is no longer a threat. Ever since the early months of his first administration, when there was no mass machine-gunning of capitalists and other enemies in the basement of the City County Building, he has cut an attractive figure. This is hardly by accident. It is pragmatism par excellence.
Citizen Soglin: There is life after City Hall
April 10, 1981
There are also the times he plays disc jockey, often at a benefit for some progressively slanted political group. One week it was a gig at Merlyn's, a fund-raiser for the Common Sense Coalition. Soglin, sitting in the booth with headphones on, laid down three and a half hours of rhythm and blues. It cost two bucks at the door.
It was '60s stuff, mostly, his staple: Aretha Franklin, the Miracles, Temptations, Four Tops. None of it was very political; it is the kind of music that reaches out quickly from somewhere back in time and grabs them all by the seat of their souls, those rock 'n' roll children who are dancing, these days, down the far side of 30.
Tedd O'Connell: Out with a Bang
Feb. 3, 1989
Now, as he originally intended before Tommy Thompson came along unexpectedly with his $42,000 "drug czar" position a few weeks ago, Teddy Ball Game — "ol' Double-D" — will conclude his career at WISC in a few days, then ride off into the sunset with his wife, Rosanne, "to escape the public eye" and find "a little adventure in life." It may be to Arizona, or possibly Florida, whichever way they point their car first. But wherever it is, he won't go out slinking, tail between his legs.
Paul Soglin talks about Madison's grip on him
Nov. 20, 2002
When I first laid eyes on Paul Soglin, in the spring of 1969, he was living on West Washington Avenue, not far from the old Milwaukee Road depot and where the Kohl Center stands today. As an alderman and student activist in the '60s, his picture — long hair, mustache, denim shirts and blue jeans — had been in the papers. But on this particular day, the same week in which he had been arrested and jailed during the height of the first Miffland "riot," he was walking east on Bassett as I was heading west in a car.
It had to be Soglin, I thought, but what was notably missing was most of his hair. The gendarmerie had shaved it to a nub during his brief incarceration, probably just for yucks, which did strike me as a bit harsh for an elected official who was just carrying out his responsibilities.
After all, regardless of politics or ideological drift, Soglin at least had the guts to stand up for the rabble, even if scores of them were throwing bottles and rocks, setting fire to trash heaps and peeing in the streets.
I leaned out the window and yelled, "Hey! Are you Soglin?" He regarded me with suspicion for a moment, then confirmed his identity. "Well, I'm not exactly sure what you people are up to," I said, "but hey, good for you." He nodded in affirmation, and we went our separate ways.
Dec. 28, 2012
In the late '60s, Marsh bought Glen and Ann's, the old neighborhood bar at the corner of West Johnson and Frances, and renamed it the Nitty Gritty. Still holding on to his day job, he would switch as darkness fell from the gaudy sportscoats favored then by TV sports personalities (often plaids) into a more appropriate uniform, Levis and a blue jean jacket. Like most of us, he had sideburns, and to this he added a bushy mustache. If the dim light and shadows hit him a certain way, he invariably reminded me of a muskrat.
In my mind, Marsh was a good egg, although he did have his critics. He sometimes got the rap at the Gritty for, in effect, being a businessman — and imagine what that had to be like, trying to maintain order in a nuthouse like the Gritty. They said he underpaid the bands, but who didn't? He had a lot more serious problems to contend with, like the time some jamoke in the men's room blasted a hole through the ceiling with a shotgun.
We always got along well. He always seemed genuinely happy to see me, even decades later.
"Freddie the Mil," he'd say. "How ya been?"
