Honor among Environmentalists

JOHN ZENNER, 55, of East Troy, Wisconsin, is a big man of sunny disposition with an easy, bubbling laugh. He has needed his good humor much these past seven years. Though he was recently vindicated by the State Supreme Court, which has ordered the state’s charges against him quashed, he has been ruined financially and forced to sell everything—his business, his investments, his house, even his car. His crime? He tried to help clean up the pollution left behind when a local electroplating firm went broke.

Son of the inventor of tickertape machines and telex printers, Zenner was steeped in engineering and became successful in business in Chicago. In the early 1980s he came home to the Milwaukee area intending to retire from engineering and do some property development. He loves the lakes and rugged little hills of the glacier-scoured landscape west of Lake Michigan, and he was a leading figure on a local panel to extend the Kettle Moraine state park, involving preservation of 4,415 acres of forests, lake, and wetland. A cordial letter to Zenner from the district director of the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) calls the park’s master plan “the fruit of your labors.” Zenner says: “These people were my friends.”

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Peter Samuel

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JOHN ZENNER, 55, of East Troy, Wisconsin, is a big man of sunny disposition with an easy, bubbling laugh. He has needed his good humor much these past seven years. Though he was recently vindicated by the State Supreme Court, which has ordered the state’s charges against him quashed, he has been ruined financially and forced to sell everything—his business, his investments, his house, even his car. His crime? He tried to help clean up the pollution left behind when a local electroplating firm went broke.

Son of the inventor of tickertape machines and telex printers, Zenner was steeped in engineering and became successful in business in Chicago. In the early 1980s he came home to the Milwaukee area intending to retire from engineering and do some property development. He loves the lakes and rugged little hills of the glacier-scoured landscape west of Lake Michigan, and he was a leading figure on a local panel to extend the Kettle Moraine state park, involving preservation of 4,415 acres of forests, lake, and wetland. A cordial letter to Zenner from the district director of the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) calls the park’s master plan “the fruit of your labors.” Zenner says: “These people were my friends.”