AimeeSchattner is spending her second consecutive Christmas in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer
Schattners are good shepherds to both lambs, children
By TOM HEINEN
theinen@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Dec. 23, 2003
Yorkville - There are plenty of baas, but no humbug, at Helen and Gerhardt Schattner's home.
For years, the former dairy farmers have raised a small flock of sheep on their remaining land on Spring St., within sight of I-94 and Racine County's office complex and Sheriff's Department substation on Highway 20.
The statue of the Virgin Mary outside near the front door gives a hint that these are good shepherds.
Two generations of Schattners, first four of their six children and now three of their grandchildren, have learned about life and morals while raising lambs as 4-H projects to show at the Racine County Fair.
Other lambs have been sold to children throughout the area for their 4-H projects. And Gerhardt Schattner, 70, who farmed for 20 years and then drove trucks for 30 years before retiring, has been superintendent of the sheep barn at the County Fair for at least two decades.
Their daughter, Aimee, 25 - who lived with them as a foster child from the age of nine months until they adopted her at age 41/2 - is spending her second consecutive Christmas in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer. Assigned to a Land O'Lakes dairy development project that is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, she is using her business degree from St. Norbert's College and skills she learned raising sheep and a heifer at home to help people in two villages with their dairy co-ops.
A granddaughter, Nathalie, 12 - who lives next door and whose two black-faced Suffolks won Grand Champion Pen Market Lambs at this year's fair - is miffed that she's seen only one nativity scene among the Christmas lights and Santa Clauses in a nearby subdivision. She and her brother, Evan, 10, recently started serving Masses at St. Robert Bellarmine Church in Union Grove, where their grandmother is a lector.
