A life well-lived -- for 101 years

By Janine Anderson

Friday, February 2, 2007 2:13 AM CST

Journal Times

WATERFORD - When Paul Klepp first started dating his future wife, her father wasn't too impressed.

Otto Fiehweg Jr. didn't think much about the 27-year-old Klepp, or the Harley-Davidson motorcycles he drove. But six months later, Klepp and Fiehweg's daughter Diane were married. Klepp gave up the motorcycles, but kept the daughter, and over the next 47 years developed a deep and rich friendship with his father-in-law, who died Monday at the age of 101.

"We used to go to Hayward to fish," Paul Klepp said. "We'd get a cabin and stay for the weekend.

"He was my friend. Me and him hit it off just perfect."

As Fiehweg got older, they took shorter trips: To favorite restaurants for breakfast. The last time they went out together was in December, Paul Klepp said. They went to Market Square in Mukwonago.

"He loved his eggs and sausage and potatoes," Paul Klepp said. "He could polish away what I could. He liked his coffee, too."

Shortly after that trip, on Dec. 17, Fiehweg fell and broke his arm. That injury forced him to move from his apartment to Mount Carmel Medical and Rehabilitation Center in Burlington, where he died.

Fiehweg was born and raised in Racine and had a meat market on Taylor Avenue in the 1920s. He sold the store after the Great Depression and took a job at Racine Screw Works.

In 1941, he and his family moved from the city to a three-room cottage near the Fox River in Waterford. There, Fiehweg fished for blue gills, tended the plants in his garden and raised his family.

"He added on and added on till it was a home," said Diane Klepp. Her brother, Jerry, was born a few years after the family moved to Waterford, and one of his sons now lives in the family home.

"I've been helping my son remodel it," Jerry Fiehweg said. "That was one of my father's enjoyments, to see what the progress on the house was. It was a nice place to have a childhood."

After a few years commuting from Waterford to the factory in Racine, Fiehweg went back to the meat cutting business, working for several Waterford grocers.

"He knew a lot of people that way," Diane Klepp said.

Jerry Fiehweg said when people hear his last name they often ask about his father.

"They say 'Your dad would really take care of me,' " he said. "They loved the service he gave as a meat cutter or butcher. I can't remember him ever missing a day of work."

Fiehweg's funeral services will be held at Norway Hill Lutheran Church, 6321 Heg Park Road, Wind Lake, at 11 a.m. Friday, Feb. 2. Visitation will be in the church from 9:30 until 11 a.m.

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