Recipient Biography

Bronze Medal- Jerome C Dretzka


 

Jerome C. Dretzka (1881-1963) received the Pugsley Bronze Medal in 1952. He served the Milwaukee County Parks Commission for 43 years, from 1920 to 1963. For 26 of these years (1926-1952) he was the executive secretary of the Commission. This was a period of rapid expansion for the Commission, and under his leadership the Commission grew from owning 680 acres to over 7,000 acres of parks.Dretzka was born on December 5, 1881, in Pozen, Poland, then a part of Germany. When he was almost five years old his family migrated to America. They settled on Milwaukee’s south side, where he attended parochial schools. He was associated with his father and his brothers in the operation of Dretzka’s real estate department of Cudahy Brothers Company. Later he established his own real estate business, which he operated with his son Hubert. The knowledge he acquired about land acquisition in these real estate businesses served him well in his later work with the Milwaukee County Parks Commission.

His real estate associate, Patrick Cudahy, was influential in Dretzka being appointed to the Park Commission in 1920. In 1926 Dretzka was named executive secretary of the Commission, succeeding Charles B. Whitnall, who was known as the "father of the Milwaukee County Park System." He first served as secretary and in time, as his responsibilities developed so rapidly that he soon assumed a full-time salaried position. In 1913, the secretarial duties became a full-time job, and this consolidation of communities, which became a county-wide basis in 1932. In 1946 he was involved in the transfer of city parks on a county parks to the county, thus he was also given the additional title of Milwaukee parks director because of the recognition. Dretzka was president of the Park Section of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities in 1933, was instrumental in organizing the Wisconsin Park and Recreation Society, served as its chapter president in 1963 and was awarded life membership in it in 1953. He served on the board of the American Institute of Park Executives for five years from 1939 to 1943 and was elected its president in both 1944 and 1945. He served as secretary of the Park Commissioners’ Section of the Institute in 1949-50, and became chairman of the section in 1951.