Helen Finkelstein Bruner was born in 1922 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. She came to Madison
in 1941 as a University of Wisconsin student. She received her BA in Economics in 1943. She
married Ervin Bruner. She worked at the School for Workers from 1943 until the mid 1950s,
the UW School of Home Economics from 1960-1961, the UW Economics Department from 1961-1966,
and at the UW Extension Center for Community Leadership Development from 1966-1976, where
she served as a specialist on Latin American migrants. She was active in Democratic
politics, the League of Women Voters, and the Dane County Latin American Project, among
other organizations. She served on the Governor's Committee on Migratory Labor and as a
conflict mediator between Black and White students at Whitewater State University (now
UW-Whitewater.) She died in 2014.
Ervin M. Bruner was born on November 12, 1915 in Lenoir, North Carolina. He was a member of
the Boy Scouts of America Troop 1B S.A in High School, and later became Scoutmaster of Troop
100. He attended the Milwaukee State Teachers College, the University of Wisconsin–Madison,
and the University of Wisconsin Law School. During World War II, he served as a Second
Lieutenant in the United States Army in Germany and France. He founded two cooperatives as a
student: the Circle Pines Cooperative and the Rochdale Men's Housing Cooperative, which were
respectively the first student-run cooperative and one of the first interracial rooming
houses at UW-Madison. Ervin Bruner practiced law under Al Lawton. Bruner was also elected to
the Wisconsin State Assembly and served as a Dane County Family and Juvenile Court Judge. He
emphasized rehabilitation over incarceration. He and Helen moved to a farm between Mount
Horeb and Verona, WI in 1953, where he raised sheep and cattle. He died on November 24,
2008.
