Jerry Apps, a prolific storyteller who chronicled rural Wisconsin life, died Dec. 23 after a short illness.
His family announced his passing on Facebook Dec. 26. He was 91.
Apps was the author of more than 50 books on quintessentially Wisconsin topics like beer, cheese, fishing and farm life. His titles included both fiction and nonfiction, stories for children and adults, memoirs, writing guides, and even a cookbook. One of his most recent works, published in July, is titled, “Lessons from 90 Years of Living.”
Apps was born July 25, 1934, on a dairy farm in Wild Rose in Waushara County. He worked as a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a county extension agent for the University of Wisconsin-Extension and served as a writing instructor and editor of several journals.
According to his website, Apps wrote more than 1,000 columns for Wisconsin newspapers and magazines, beginning in 1957 and setting the practice aside in 2022 to focus on book writing. He also produced documentaries for Wisconsin Public Television and appeared frequently on television and the radio.
Apps’ work racked up numerous accolades, including a Regional Emmy Award in 2014 for the documentary “A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps.” That same year, he was inducted into the Wisconsin 4-H Hall of Fame.
In 2024, Gov. Tony Evers issued a proclamation honoring Apps on his 90th birthday.
“Jerry embodies the Wisconsin values of kindness, creativity, and selflessness,” Evers wrote in the proclamation.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway of Madison, where Apps was a longtime resident, also celebrated his milestone birthday by proclaiming it “Jerry Apps Day.”
In a foreword to Apps’ first book, “The Land Still Lives,” published in 1970, former Wisconsin governor and crusading environmentalist Gaylord Nelson wrote, “Apps is a man of ideas who is sensitive to the touch, the smells, and the feel of doing things by hand, today and a hundred years ago.”
Apps would often sign off his columns with a final punch of wisdom set up by the phrase, “The Old Timer Says.”
“The Old Timer Says,” he wrote in his last piece appearing in the Wisconsin State Farmer in 2022, “Without readers, where would writers be?”
An obituary will be shared on the Cress Funeral and Cremation Services website, according to Apps’ family, and a celebration of life will be held in the spring. He and his wife, Ruth, had three children, seven grandchildren and three great-grandsons.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Jerry Apps, Wisconsin’s great rural storyteller, dies at 91
Reporting by Madeline Heim, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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