Jim Pope
Conjurer of 1950s farm nostalgia

Speaker, Saturday, Oct. 4, Edgerton Public Library reading room
"Adventures of Being a Kid on a Small Family Farm Half-a-Century Ago"
This presentation is designed to entertain and charm young children.

A former school administrator from Plover, Wisconsin, Pope fondly remembers his Waupaca County boyhood in his memoir, “Everyday Adventures of a Farm Boy in the ’50s.” He happily shares this “better era” with today’s elementary school children throughout central Wisconsin. The 60-year-old Pope spent his early years on a 160-acre farm, playing in nearby fields, creeks and woods. His grade school education, acquired in a one-room, central Wisconsin school house, eventually paved the way toward Pope’s University of Chicago degree and his career in education. Pope and his wife raised two daughters. Pope’s passion for rural nostalgia has taken root in his Rural Heritage Reading Project, in which he attempts to instill an understanding for 1950s-era farm values in the hearts and minds of today’s central Wisconsin elementary students.