Constance Threinen

MIDDLETON - Constance “Connie” Threinen (nee Fuller) passed away on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022, at the age of 96. She was born to George Minot Fuller and Emilie Allstead Fuller in Belmont, Mass., on Dec. 10, 1925, as the first-born of two sisters whose family history in the area began in 1642 when Lt. Thomas Fuller emigrated from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Connie’s youth was spent in Lexington, Mass., when the family moved to an elegant Tudor house designed by her namesake aunt, Constance Fuller, one of the first women architects to graduate from MIT. Connie and her sister Ellen spent their summers swimming and later teaching swimming at the local pool, and skiing at nearby hills in the winter. One of the family’s most memorable events was a depression era driving trip from Massachusetts to California in 1939. Connie spoke fondly of the adventure throughout her life. The family still has Navaho rugs purchased during that trip.

After completing high school in Lexington, Connie attended Mt. Holyoke College in Hadley, Mass., from 1942 to 1944, then transferred to the University of Wisconsin, where she earned a degree in economics in 1946. While attending the University in Madison, she met and later, in 1948, married Bill Threinen of Kenosha Wis., a NROTC program naval officer returning to the University on a GI bill.  As a young reserve lieutenant, he commanded a landing craft in the Pacific Theater until VJ day of WWII in August of 1945.

Connie and Bill moved to Minocqua, Wis., for Bill’s job in fisheries management with the Wisconsin Conservation Department, now called the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). After a job promotion for Bill, the couple moved back to the Madison area and purchased a house in Middleton, where they soon began a family with birth of Ellen in 1951 and Charles “Chip” in 1953. In 1955, with Bill’s Ford Foundation grant for a master’s degree in Public Administration at Harvard, the family moved temporarily to the Boston area, and for a few months they lived with Connie’s parents in Lexington-Thomas, the third child in the family, was added there in 1956.

The family moved back to their Middleton house later in 1956 where the neighborhood abounded with baby boom kids and young parents, many of whom became life-long friends. In 1958, Connie and Bill moved the family into a self-designed new house on Gateway Street in Middleton, a few blocks from Lake Mendota. Connie and Bill worked to improve the house with built-in closets and desks and later, dug a pond and planted the side and back yards of the ¾ acre lot with native prairie plants that continue to prosper along with walnut trees that have since grown to considerable size. In 1960, after Connie’s mother died, her father and uncle visited from the east coast. Connie convinced her uncle Arthur D. Fuller, a renowned wildlife artist, to paint a mural on the living room wall. It was a dynamic depiction of ducks in a marshy lake area that gave the house a special flavor that was appreciated by all.  

During the time in the first Middleton house, Bill purchased a Grumman canoe that was a key component of the family’s outdoor and aquatic recreation. Connie, as an economist, was concerned that the canoe purchase exceeded the family budget but came to love paddling and canoe-camping trips on the Wisconsin River and elsewhere.  Wintertime activities included ice skating on Lake Mendota and the city rinks as well as hiking up and skiing down the hill on the Black Hawk Country Club golf course. Ski lifts later became a family demand that required epic two or three-hour weekend drives to the least expensive option for five skiers. An area frequented was Skyline in Adams County where one rope tow provided the lifting power. The family later graduated to bigger and better slopes with trips to Northern Wisconsin, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and ultimately the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Connie and Bill continued to enjoy canoe excursions, skiing, and other recreational activities long after the children had moved on. The couple’s adventures included river trips and visits to National Parks in the Southwest and visits to their son, Chip, and his family in Alaska. Connie cared diligently for Bill in later life due to his affliction with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy until his death in 1997.

Throughout her life, Connie was politically active and as a child often spoke of depression-era discussions with her father, a staunch New England Republican. With FDR as president and seeing the suffering around Lexington during the Depression and on their 1939 driving trip to California, Connie found progressivism and Democratic politics to be more appropriate for her tastes. Connie was a founding member of the Middleton League of Women Voters and recalled the fear of some neighbors as she solicited signatures calling for censure of Wisconsin’s red-baiting senator Joe McCarthy.  She was elected to the Middleton School Board for a term and among other things, worked hard to include women’s sports in the schools - prior to 1972 when Title IX came into effect. She even set up an award for girls at the junior high level to encourage sports participation. Her school board career ended when some of the more conservative elements of the community rallied against her.

Connie nonetheless continued her activism and promoted progressive causes through the League of Women Voters, her work in continuing education for women at the University of Wisconsin Extension, other activities supporting women’s issues, founding member of the Madison Institute, and participation many other community organizations.  

Connie is predeceased by her sister, Ellen Fuller; and her husband, Bill Threinen. She is survived by her three children and their respective spouses, Ellen and Lane Ittelson, Charles “Chip” T(h)reinen and Jenissa Budd-Amick, and Thomas and Sharon Threinen; four grandchildren, Margaret Ittelson, and Max Treinen, Lex Treinen, and Nick Treinen (m. Zoe Fuller); and great-granddaughter, born 9/18, referred to as "Baby Fuller."

Private services will be held at Natural Path Sanctuary. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Connie’s name to League of Women Voters of Dane County, https://www.lwvdanecounty.org/donate. Online condolences may be made at www.gundersonfh.com.

“We would like to thank the caregivers from Seasons of Life, UW Hospital and Agrace HospiceCare, for their wonderful care for Connie”

Gunderson West

Funeral & Cremation Care

7435 University Avenue

(608) 831-6761