Jim Te Selle

Jim Te Selle grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. His grandparents owned a cottage at a perfect place still called TeRonde Beach, in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. Jim spent his summers with them and was forever influenced not only by the lake but the values of the people who lived on its shores. He also saw how those values were reflected in the way we all used the lake and were in turn affected by it. Eventually of course, Jim became a “grown up”, but never quite left the lakeshore. He travelled the world, dealt with governments and regulatory agencies, built  factories, handled sales and marketing programs, and did all this on four continents and in several languages. He spent almost three years living in China. He’s seen the effects of conservation or the lack of it in many places, and learned what a tremendously valuable gift we have in the lakes – a gift too many of us take for granted. Now retired, he’s president of an organization of shoreline property owners on Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, and is active in efforts to restore the lakes, both environmentally and economically. The cottage his grandmother and grandfather owned now belongs to his family. There have been many changes not only in the cottage, but in the lake too, not all for the better. Some we should have seen coming, others we couldn’t have predicted. But the value of the lake is still there, perhaps greater now than it was then because our need is greater. What’s important is not what happened to the lakes or didn’t, but what we do about it now.