Rally

The Kaukauna Alumni Foundation’s annual rally occurs on the Saturday of Father’s Day weekend. The alumni rally provides recognizes the alumni members marking milestone years, like 10, 25, or 50 years since graduation. The sense of community and school spirit is overwhelming. Join us at our next rally and experience the Galloping Ghost School Spirit once again!

2025 Rally Mistress

Linda (Kaminski) Felten from the Kaukauna High School Class of 1975 will serve as the rallymaster at the Kaukauna Alumni Foundation rally.

Held Saturday, June 21, the rally was originally scheduled for the traditional Father’s Day weekend, June 14, but was moved to June 21 due to scheduling conflicts.

While Felten wasn’t extremely active at Kaukauna High School, she’s been plenty active following high school, mostly known for cantoring in church and performing on the stage.

Her parents, Carl and Jan, were born and raised in Manitowoc. She spent her early years in Little Chute before moving to Kaukauna for third grade. 

“Music has always been in our family,” she said. “Our family did Christmas Mass at St. Al’s for over 40 years,” she said.

Her mother played organ and piano and taught piano, and her grandfather was in the Green Bay Packers Band and had his own orchestra.

When she received a call from Kristine Landreman, the chairman of the board for the Kaukauna Alumni Foundation, Felten had the “why me” question that most people ask themselves.

“I wasn’t popular in high school, I didn’t have a lot of friends, I was in choir and band, I didn’t do theatre until after high school,” she said.

Felten was a member of the Sole Singers starting when she was a teenager, performed in the Kaukauna Catholic School System “Bravo” production for 10 years, Christmas Stars for 10 years, and Kaukauna Community Players for more than 25 years in addition to being a longtime cantor with her mother at St. Aloysius Catholic Parish.

While in high school, she was shy and quiet, something people now would be surprised by because she’s most at home performing in front of people.

“Jim Romenesko actually kind of gave me my start,” she said. “He was a year behind me in high school.”

She started singing with him in Sole Singers then he asked her to be in Classic Arts, a dinner theatre, in Appleton. 

“He knew I could sing and he was looking for ladies to be the wives in ‘Joseph,’ so I said I would try it and I got paid for doing it, and then I thought, this was kind of fun. I also did a Christmas show with him there too.”

When her two daughters got a little older, she saw her brother Brian in a show in Kaukauna where her mother also played piano.

“It seemed like, ‘I could do this,’ and it was something I could do with my girls,” she said. “Music Man in 1998 was the first one we did. From there, I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Her oldest daughter, Melissa Brandom, has stuck it out with her through it all. 

Her other daughter, Vanessa, has a 15-year-old son Camdon, who’s Linda’s only grandson, but also has 7 additional grandkids with her husband Scott.

She met her current husband, Scott, on an online dating website in 2005, and he’s also heavily involved in music and theatre. Three months later, he proposed.

Scott said, “When you know, you know.”

“Both of our moms played for our wedding,” she said.

They met in person for the first time at Sergio’s in Appleton, where they went for karaoke. He admits to being too chicken to sing that night. She got him singing a later time and he was hooked.

Although he had done some acting, she also got him involved in Kaukauna Community Players for his first musical.

Felten was also involved in Girl Scouts for 25 years. “I started in Brownies with my mom being the troop leader for most of my years, then I became a leader for my girls along with her mom and a few others,” she said. “I was also a counselor at Camp Winnecomac in Kaukauna, as well as the Camp Director for a few years.”

She always enjoyed working with the girls, teaching them camp songs and outdoor skills.

When she thought about all the kids who have been touched through KCP in the 26 years she’s been   involved, she realized how music has touched people.

“There was a guy who came to Music Man the second time we did it and he came up to us afterward and said, ‘my wife has dementia, I brought her to the show, and as soon as the music started, she kind of came alive and was singing along. He said, ‘you brought my wife back.’”

Scott’s mother also had dementia, and the family sang and Linda played guitar at a place she was at. She was trying to play the piano on the table and starting to sing along. They were playing Christmas songs where she also came out of the dementia for a short time.

“It’s just amazing how powerful music can be, and all the kids that have come through,” Linda said.

She noted KCP alumnus Ben Kern is involved in shows out east, the Murphy family started with KCP and family members are all over the United States doing music.

Many kids get involved with organized sports as soon as they’re old enough but some don’t have the talent or desire to continue. The arts is a spot they can find their “place in life.”

“A lot of these kids we see when they come to KCP, they’re very shy and introverted kind of people and have anxiety but you get them on the stage and they turn into a whole different person,” she said.

They find a family within the arts community that can be as close as any sports team.

It’s not unusual for a person to post on social media they miss their “family” from a show they had performed together because they spend so much time together for a few months, then the show is over.

Scott noted people who’ve been on Broadway say community theatre is harder than Broadway because they practice for months and only perform a few shows and it’s over.

“It’s so challenging but yet so rewarding,” he said.

Linda has an older brother, Gary, who lives in Oregon; a sister, Kathy, who lives in Tuscon; and a sister, Tracy, who lives in Denver. Her brother Brian passed away in 2013.

Her biggest memories of high school were Robert Lamont telling the class, “Don’t slide,” into the note and her band teacher, Vern Lorbeicki, who famously didn’t like marching band.

She grew up as a southsider who remembers walking to high school past Hilltop Bakery and down the hill. The Kaminski kids played with the Rennicke family next door on Kenneth Avenue and loved to climb trees.

Behind them was a farm owned by the Thelen family. Over on Glenview St. thru the houses were twins Connie and Keith Kuehl.  

She was an at-home mother until she divorced in 1992 and worked in several office jobs over the years, including Madsen Marketing, and she retired three years ago from Time Warner Cable/Spectrum, where she pointed out she had nothing to do with customer service but worked as an admin in the Construction/Engineering Dept.

Despite her years on the stage, Felten admits to being terrified of speaking at the rally.

“I can get up on a stage because I have memorized lines but for me to make a speech, it’s like ‘why did I say yes,’” she said.

However, she thinks it’s a great way to bring increased awareness to music and theatre.