3 inducted to Wall of Fame

On Sept. 19, the Oconto Falls School District inducted the 52nd, 53rd and 54th members of the Oconto Falls Wall of Fame: Ron Leja, Jack Magnin and Diane Kay Messmann. The Wall of Fame honors alumni members and serves as an inspiration for today’s students. For each member inducted, a plaque is hung in the 500 hallway of the high school. Ron Leja Leja was born in Abrams, grew up on a farm a few miles outside of the community and attended Abrams Elementary School. At Oconto Falls High School, he participated in football, wrestling and baseball, National Honor Society, FFA and Chess Club. He is proud to have been a catcher during his senior year on the 1973 OFHS state championship baseball team. In 1977 he earned a degree in agricultural engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He worked as a design engineer at Allis Chalmers in West Allis, and after two years, returned to Abrams to the family dairy farm. He has been involved in a variety of agricultural ventures and served as president of the Abrams Livestock Shipping Association for 33 years, director of the Pulaski-Chase Co-op for five years and board member of the Farm Service Agency for three years. His lifelong love of athletics continues. He was involved with the Oconto Falls/Abrams Youth Wrestling Club for over 30 years and served as president the past seven years. Leja’s served on the Oconto Fall School Board for 27 years, with 22 years as president. He also served on the Town of Abrams Planning Commission and Oconto County Board of Canvassers. Leja and his wife, Cathy, a 1975 graduate of OFHS, have been married 39 years. Their four children, Ryan, Renee, Rory and Riley, all graduated from OFHS. Jack Magnin Magnin grew up on his parents’ dairy farm. His dad, Elmer, also worked construction and his mother, Ruth, was the head cook for the school district for over 30 years. Magnin’s attended Busy Nook School, a one-room country school, and Washington Junior High. He graduated from OFHS in 1957. In high school he participated in football, basketball, and both track and baseball in the spring. Oconto Falls didn’t start a wrestling program until 1959. He graduated from UW-Oshkosh in 1963 with a history major and math and physical education minors. That fall Magnin began his teaching and coaching career at Wautoma. He taught junior high math, history and first- through eighth-grade physical education, and coached football, basketball, baseball and track. In 1970, he returned to Oconto Falls as a kindergarten to grade eight physical education teacher and continued coaching football, basketball and track. That same year he and his wife, Marilyn, purchased a 200-acre dairy farm. That experience proved valuable when he filled in one year as a middle school agriculture teacher. Magnin has completed 58 years as an educator. In 1975, Magnin started the junior high wrestling program. In 1980, he moved to head varsity coach and has continued as a head coach or co-head coach to this day. He has coached 12 state champions, 13 state runners-up, over 50 individual state qualifiers and the Division 2 team state champion in 2010. Magnin was selected Valley 8 Conference Coach of the Year in 2007 and Green Bay Press Gazette Coach of the Year in 2009. He was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, the Wisconsin Wrestling Coaches George Martin Hall of Fame and the Panther Wrestling Hall of Fame. He served as middle school athletic director for 15 years and has worked the WIAA State Track Meet for 21 years. He is a WIAA football, track and cross-country official. The Magnins have three sons, Troy, Mitchell and Paul. Magnin said one of his greatest pleasures was coaching his sons in cross-country, wrestling and track. Diane Kay Messmann Messmann was born in Poynette and came to Oconto Falls with her parents, Norman and Lucille, when her dad accepted a position as a teacher and coach at the high school. She attended St. Anthony Grade School and graduated as OFHS valedictorian in 1958. She studied at UW-Madison for five semesters, majoring in archaeology. On Feb. 11, 1961, she married Professor C. John Mann. The couple moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where Messmann earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Millsaps College. Diane and John lived in Palo Alto, California, Champaign, Illinois and Urbana, Illinois. Once their four children, Christian, Anna, Vaughn and Katrina, were in school, Messmann earned a master’s degree and doctorate in anthropology from the University of Illinois. She accepted a position at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Lab (CERL) in Champaign as a researcher and principal investigator, with the responsibility of ensuring environmental quality at Army bases and installations. In connection with those professional activities, she became an adjunct professor in two University of Illinois departments, anthropology and public health. This work included extensive travel in the United States and overseas. Eventually, Messmann concentrated on her lifelong interest in and concern for Native Americans. In particular, she enjoyed a long relationship with the Haskell Indian Nations University at Lawrence, Kansas, employing their students in her work at both CERL and at Haskell. Messmann passed away in 2007. Her brothers, Ron and Douglas Messmann, and her sister, Marilyn Borlee, attended the induction ceremony on her behalf.