Barbola Funeral Chapel

Loren W. "Bill" Jensen

Loren William “Bill” Jensen, 81, passed away peacefully on November 7, 2020 in Berlin, Wisconsin, following a short illness. Bill was born in Berlin, Wisconsin, on February 12, 1939 to Loren and Edna Braun Jensen. He graduated from Berlin High School in 1957, where he played basketball, baseball, and golf. He then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where he studied education, and he also earned a varsity letter in golf. He was later awarded his Master’s Degree at UW-O.

On October 24, 1959, Bill married Brenda Thalheim, of Fond du Lac, in Berlin. The couple met at UW-O. Three children were born to the family, Jeffrey (Mary), Thomas (Jill) and Andrea. Bill and Brenda also have seven grandchildren, Jeffrey Jr., Elizabeth, Catherine, twins, Patrick and Brigid, Thomas and George; and two great-grandchildren, William and Ben. Bill is further survived by his older sister, Judy Donaldson.

Shortly before Bill’s recent illness, he and Brenda happily celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary with family. For all those years, Bill and Brenda were the very definition of love and devotion to one another. Theirs was a shining example of a beautiful marriage.

Following his graduation from college, Bill took a teaching position in the West Bend School System. Although he taught at McLane Grade School, and also at Silverbrook Middle School, for the vast majority of his thirty-three year career, he was a reading specialist at West Bend West High School. He retired in 1996. Among the students at West High, he was affectionately known as “Dollar Bill.”

Bill’s passion, though, was coaching. He coached freshman football at West Bend High School in the late Sixties and early Seventies. He coached basketball at Silverbrook Middle School, and he also was the freshman boy’s basketball coach at West Bend West for a number of years. He later served as an assistant boy’s varsity basketball coach under Jon Kaiser at West Bend West in the Seventies.

He is, perhaps, best known as the boy’s varsity golf coach at West High. He held that position for over thirty years. During that time, he coached both of his sons in golf; and, as they would both attest, the “coaching” never stopped, especially not on the ride home from a meet. During his tenure, though, Bill took several teams, and many individuals, to the WIAA State Golf Meet, including his son, Tom. Both Tom and Jeff later played varsity golf at Beloit College.

Bill was a WIAA certified referee for football and basketball, and over his career he officiated hundreds of varsity football and basketball games. Perhaps his most memorable moment as a referee came in the Seventies while officiating a charity basketball game being played in West Bend by the Green Bay Packers. Packers quarterback Scott Hunter melodramatically contested a call and playfully pushed Bill, who went tumbling. By no measure was Bill the size of an NFL player. The crowd booed, prompting Hunter to apologize effusively.

Bill also worked as an official at high school track meets, where he was proud to be able to watch his daughter, Andrea, who excelled in Track and Field.

In the Seventies, Bill was the club professional at Tuscumbia Country Club in Green Lake. He was a long-time member at Hon-E-Kor Country Club in Kewaskum, and then later at West Bend Lakes. He continued to golf regularly every summer until recently.

For many years, Bill complained that, in all of his rounds of golf, he had never scored a hole-in-one. That dry-spell ended, though, on September 26, 2006, on the second hole at Camelot Country Club. He was sixty-six years old at the time.

Bill and Brenda lived in West Bend for 57 years, only recently moving back to Berlin. They were members of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in West Bend.

Private family services will be held at Barbola Funeral Chapel in Berlin, Deacon Sherie Kruse officiating. Interment will be in Oakwood Cemetery in Berlin. Anyone wishing to send a sympathy card to the family, please mail card to Barbola Funeral Chapel, c/o Loren “Bill” Jensen, PO Box 201, Berlin, WI 54923.