Gene Drecktrah and Anne Drecktrah

Gene and Anne are siblings who grew up in West Salem.

Harold “Gene” Drecktrah graduated from La Crosse State Teachers College in 1962, earning a degree in biology. He continued his education at Iowa State University, earning a Master’s and PhD in entomology. In 1966, he began teaching at UW-Oshkosh. At UW-O, he was known as the campus bug expert and he was used to fielding all sorts of questions about insects. Show him a bug — living or dead — and he is likely to rattle off its name immediately. If he doesn’t know, he will ask for a specimen, examine it under a microscope and reveal the creature’s identity.

Drecktrah also spent nine years (1985-1994) as associate dean in the College of Letters and Science and served as co-chair of the biology/microbiology department from 1997 until his retirement in 2002. He taught his last class at UW-O in 2007 but continued carefully tending the University’s considerable insect collection of more than 50,000 specimens — the great majority of which he and his students collected.

Gene’s wife, Mary, also graduated from UWL earning an education degree in 1960. She continued her education earning a PhD in education administration. She also had an outstanding career at UW-O. Sadly, Mary passed away in 2002 after a 5-year battle with cancer.

Elizabeth “Anne” Drecktrah graduated from UWL in 1971 with a degree in theatre. She spent nearly 24 years in Los Angeles as a production assistant and then as a producer, mostly in television documentaries. Anne has worked for the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, among others. She produced three episodes for the PBS series Nova, and worked on three versions of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos.” Anne directed at least one play a year in Los Angeles, and while studying at Penn State and Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Aegean Institute in Greece. She also directed at High Mowing, New Hampshire, Albuquerque Civic Light Opera, and locally in Winona, Minnesota, and UMass-Amherst. She expanded her directing resume at the renowned Spoleto.

Anne returned to the La Crosse area and is active in local Arts both as an actor and director. In 2022, she was honored by the Pump House as the recipient of the Patron Recognition Award.