SOMERS — Frances Jaeschke remembers the comments of a local official back in the 1960s, when she was part of a core group angling to build a four-year University of Wisconsin campus in the Kenosha area.

“‘We’re just a lunch-bucket community; what are you trying to sell us Cadillac stuff for?’” Jaeschke recalled an alderman asking.

Speaking nearly a half century later to a gymnasium full of new graduates and their families, Jaeschke noted the error of that unnamed politician’s ways.

“Obviously the need was greater than he thought,” Jaeschke said.

Jaeschke was the keynote speaker Sunday at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside’s winter commencement — an occasion that saw the 41-year-old campus issue degrees to 272 graduates.

Such a scene was but a dream for Jaeschke and other boosters when they worked to develop the campus on what had been a strawberry farm just east of Petrifying Springs Park.

During her speech on Sunday, Jaeschke acknowledged Kenosha News President Howard J. Brown and “crackerjack investigative reporter” Harlan Draeger, fellow members of the committee who advocated for Parkside’s formation.

“We’re the three people that are really left from that core of people that worked so hard,” Jaeschke said.

Jaeschke became a student of the university she championed, walking across the stage at age 52, as a member of Parkside’s 1971 graduating class. Her late husband, a renowned authority on industrial power transmission, is now the namesake of the Ralph Jaeschke Solutions for Economic Growth Center in Parkside’s School of Business and Technology.

In the four decades since the university’s development, Jaeschke said she believes Kenosha has come to respect itself more while it has attracted new industries, due in part to the pool of educated people produced at Parkside and other institutions.

Deborah Ford, recently seated as Parkside’s sixth chancellor, described Jaeschke as “an indispensable person in the history of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and a woman I am very proud to know.”

As for Sunday’s newly minted graduates, Ford told them they are the architects and the leaders of the future.

UW System Regent Michael Falbo, a Parkside graduate, said he was confident the class was ready to go forth, in spite of the rocky economy and other challenges of the day.

“Your university has prepared you as well as any institution of higher education in the country,” Falbo said, “and you will succeed.”

Tanesha Norris is one of those who hopes to succeed.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in molecular biology Sunday, she’s pursuing a career as a research scientist. She aims to study AIDS or cancer — once she finds a job.

“I put out 52 applications,” Norris said. “So I’m hoping to hear something.”