Lorraine Blemke This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. Untitled Document

   www.ballroomfairbanks.org/blem - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/14/2001   Last Visited: 1/26/2008

   On Oct. 2, 1955, Blemke was born, the middle child of nine brothers and sisters to Leo and Lorraine Blemke.
   ...
   Growing up on a 500-acre farm in Wisconsin, Blemke learned early the importance of discipline. By the time he was 10, Blemke would wake around 4 in the morning and help milk the 60 cows and plow the fields as part of his 16-hour day.
   
   "Mom would show up with sandwiches and you didn't even have to stop the tractor," he said with a laugh. "She'd just throw the bag at you."
   
   While his brothers and sisters worked the farm only because they were told by their mom and dad they wouldn't get dinner without it, Blemke worked hard because he wanted to and was rewarded when he took over the farm at the tender age of 15.
   
   Even though health problems forced his father to give up working on the farm, Blemke said he was honored by the offer from his father to take control of the farm and seized the opportunity.
   
   "It was a big high for me that he trusted me to be able to do such a thing," he said.
   
   As a junior in high school, Blemke decided he wanted to experience life outside the confines of a farm and enlisted in the Navy. "I grew up on this farm," he said. "This is all I ever knew."
   
   The family sold the farm in October 1972 and he was off to see the world immediately after his senior year. While he was excited, Blemke sadly remembers the sale of the family farm.
   
   "It was a day I'll never forget because there was a big positive and a huge negative too," he said. "I mean it's all you ever knew in your whole life and then all of a sudden in the morning you wake up and it's bare. There's no cows, there's no equipment, it was really, really scary."
   
   Gearing up for his new life, Blemke was buoyed by the support of his parents, particularly his father, who was a World War II veteran.
   
   "I let him know that I was thinking about joining the military," he said. "He was just as proud that I do that as take over the farm."
   
   Blemke then took a brief job with a construction company and enrolled in radio broadcasting school before going off to boot camp outside of Chicago. The hard work and discipline Blemke learned on the farm helped him get through basic training.
   
   "When I went to boot camp I realized why these people had no direction," he said. "I was way ahead and I was lucky because I already came from that kind of chain of command."
   
   After boot camp, Blemke found himself headed for the south pacific helping to evacuate refugees toward the end of the Vietnam War. Blemke was "volunteered" to go on shore and served as a radio man on a boat that was used to transport refugees in 1974 and 1975.
   
   "I carried the radio, everybody else was lucky enough to have guns," he said with a chuckle. "All I got was a radio."
   
   But Blemke had enough of life in the Navy and was looking for another adventure. Blemke, who's interest in dance was sparked by a shipmate with smooth dance moves, left the Navy in 1976 to pursue his two loves: music and dance.
   
   "I really liked joining the Navy," he said. "I think it's a great stepping stone. I just wanted to see the world and I saw a lot and I saw that there was a lot of opportunity."
   
   Blemke, who had to leave radio broadcasting school in 1974 to fulfill his military commitment, signed up again to study telecommunications at a junior college in Long Beach.
   
   Blemke and friend ran a college radio station. It was a good experience for Blemke, who thought he wanted to continue working in radio when he enrolled at California State University Long Beach.
   
   But things changed faster than the Texas Two-Step for Blemke, when he saw an ad in a local newspaper searching for people interested in becoming dance teachers for Fred Astaire Dance Studios.
   
   "I saw everybody out having a good time doing things and I'm always sitting at the side warming the chairs," he said. "And I didn't like that."
   
   Blemke signed up and spent three weeks learning the two basic steps of the East Coast Swing. "I got very sick of the song Kansas City by ABBA," he said with a smile. "But it taught me a lot of patience."
   
   His interest in college declining, Blemke left the school and focused on teaching dance and professional dance competitions.
   
   "I've had this thing that either I do it and I do it right or I'm not going to do it all and when I decided to go for dance I dropped everything and did it," he said.
   
   Although it was a little nerve-wracking at first, Blemke blossomed as a teacher and professional dancer he went on to manage one of the dance studios.
   
   His professional career as a dancer reached its peak in 1979 when he and his ballroom partner Audrey Alvo, won first place in the California statewide Latin dance competition. Blemke tired of competition and decided to move on.
   
   In 1980, the decision to move on was made easier for Blemke after studio executives told him he needed to make his dance studio more financially successful.
   
   Burned out on dancing, Blemke bounced around taking odd jobs for the next year or so before visiting friends who lived in the Golden Heart City in the summer of 1982.
   
   Blemke fell in love with the Interior but returned to California in August of that year determined to come back. He worked three jobs, sold his car, and saved up enough money to buy an old truck with a camper for his trip north in 1984.
   
   After taking a wrong turn and ending up in North Pole, Blemke found a cabin near Mile 14 Chena Hot Springs Road for $125 a month.
   
   He got a job with BagBoy--a convenience store--then took a job with OK Lumber a month later. He got a job with the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the warehouse. Although he was later laid-off, he eventually got another job at the university's power plant and has been there ever since.
   
   Time has a tendency to heal many wounds and Blemke found that saying applied to him as well. After about a five year hiatus from dancing, Blemke decided to resume his teaching career. He became the primary ballroom and swing dance instructor for the Ballroom Dance Club of Fairbanks in 1993.