Josef “Joe” Lauper
On June 22, 1939, the world was about to become a much livelier place. Josef Lauper was born in St. Sylvester, Switzerland, to Emma (Aeby) and Johann Lauper.
The son of a construction worker and farmer, Joe was the oldest of seven siblings: Otto, Emily, Berthold, Robert, Tony and Marie. At age 10, he was sent off to work for neighboring farmers, coming home only for Sunday lunch, leaving his wages with his family to help them survive post-depression poverty and the loss of much land wealth. He often dreamed of land he would own someday by reversing his binoculars and looking through the wrong side, imagining a land stretching as far as he could see. He put “horse apples” in his pockets walking home from school, dreaming of the beautiful horse he would someday own. In the meantime, he would enjoy his employer’s horses by standing on their backs while delivering milk to the creamery, and other such stunts.
As a young man, he would graduate from the Fribourg School of Agriculture and entered compulsory military service in the Swiss army, where he also worked with horses. In the mid-1960s, he answered a job ad by Paul Bachman of Waumandee, and bought a plane ticket to the United States of America, arriving with only $50 in his pocket. At Bachman’s, he met a good friend Rudy, and the two adventured to California, where they worked as dairymen in Santa Isabel and in the mountains of Colorado, a job he loved.
His first (of many) brushes with death was in Santa Isabel, where he nearly drowned in a deep mountain reservoir, swimming his horse on a hot July day. Joe couldn’t swim, but his horse did – he loved to tell the story of how he grasped the horse’s tail underwater “just in time” for the horse to pull him from the water to safety.
Joe wandered back to Wisconsin, working as a dairyman in Waumandee for Connie and Esther Florin. Soon after, during a return trip to Switzerland, he married Martha Neuhaus and moved to Stillwater, MN, where he worked as a hunter-jumper horse trainer under Hans Senn. This is where his first three children were born, watched over by his beloved German Shepherd dog, Riga. He gathered every nickel they had and moved the family back to Switzerland for a year or two and then back again to the Waumandee area and finally purchased the land of his dreams in Independence, where his fourth child was born. The beauty of the land and the seven springs were magnetic to him. In the late 70s and 80s he would often declare that the water on his land was like no other and that he should bottle it and make his millions. We rolled our eyes. He was ahead of his time in that one thing. He milked a 60-cow herd and raised his famous Thoroughbred-Welsh “Swissconsin” ponies led by his wonder stallion “Medallion”. Many people will remember the gentle music of 60 Swiss cowbells in the hills on still summer evenings…calming the soul. In his “retirement” years, Joe enjoyed many Sunday drives and coffee with Dougie Back.
Joe is survived by his daughters: Linda Lauper-Polk (Michael), Anita Wood, Frances Lauper (Hans-Jürg Schaller), and Christine Lee (Sheldon); grandchildren: Josef Polk, Gabriel Wood, and Fiona Wood; brother, Otto; sister, Marie; many special nieces and nephews and their families.
On Saturday, December 31, 2022, he died as he lived — chasing his beautiful wild horses on his beautiful land, as far as his eye could see. There will be a Celebration of Life at the farm during the summer.
