Donald Wallace `Don` Strohbeen

Trumpeter, resort owner, band director and storyteller Don Strohbeen dies at age 95

Donald Wallace Strohbeen
May 22, 1930 to April 21, 2026

With loved ones at his bedside, Donald Wallace Strohbeen died Tuesday, April 21, in his bed at Oak Park Place in Baraboo, one month short of his 96^th birthday.

One caretaker described Don waving his arms in the air in his last days, as if he were directing a high school marching band. Don was a band director for more than two decades at schools across Wisconsin from the 1950s to the 1970s. In his last days, Don also reminisced about the work he did at Nordic Pines Resort & Campground, his family’s resort from 1978-2004. He complained to his caregivers about the tourists. In his mind, some campers had been partying all night long. Don had tried to keep them quiet. The group left a mess. Don and his family had to clean it up. His memories were close to the surface and he turned them into more legendary stories.

If a person visited with Don for even a few minutes, they’d hear stories about him playing gigs with his band as a young man, teaching high school music, raising three children, feeling pride in his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and hosting hundreds of tourists every weekend who’d come to recreate at Devil’s Lake State Park.

Don Strohbeen was born May 22, 1930, in New Richmond, Wisconsin, at the start of the Great Depression, to tire shop owner Noble Strohbeen and Rose Cote, a French Canadian who loved to dance. Don was the youngest of three. His older siblings were Norman and Betty. He was photographed as a toddler playing a small banjo, which set the stage for his life in song. By the time he was a teenager, he was blasting out beautiful big band tunes on his trumpet for audiences in all kinds of late-night venues.

Don loved the brilliant, beautiful Dolores Baum from the first time she invited him to her Girl Scout event, as the story goes. They were young, maybe 12. He was the cute boy in the band with wild curls. Dolores was the stellar student in the front row of the class with her hand up. She graduated at the top of her class and went away to Marquette University. Don was accepted as a music major at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. The long-distance relationship didn’t work for Donnie and Dollie. One hot night in August 1950, the two drove across the state line to Iowa to get hitched. Don played a gig the night after they eloped.

The new couple moved into student housing at UW Eau Claire. In 1951, David Thomas was born, keeping Don from being drafted into the military and going to Korea. Deborah Ann came along two years later in 1953. Don graduated and took a series of music teaching jobs in rural Wisconsin towns like Almond, Oxford, and White Lake. Daughter Deidre Marie was born in Antigo, outside White Lake, in 1965. That year, Don got a high school music teaching job in Phillips, Wisconsin, and also taught at nearby rural schools in Kennan and Catawba. The family moved into a three-story French Colonial home facing Highway 13. Dolores turned the house into a palace for Phillips high school faculty parties.

Don’s son David formed a band in Phillips, the Neon Rainbow. Youngest daughter Deidre remembers how her dad read to her every night, teaching the toddler to recognize words in books. He nurtured her love of reading by bringing home books for his daughter whenever he traveled.

Don led the Phillips marching band to glorious awards in regional and state competitions. He raised funds to buy the band spiffy new uniforms, orange and black, for the Phillips Loggers. Don dove into musical theater, as well. He directed musicals like “Finian’s Rainbow” and “George M.” Don directed choir at Trinity Lutheran Church for a decade. On Easter morning every year, he would get out his trumpet to start the service with a grand flourish to kick off the hymn, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.”

Don retired from teaching and bought Out of This World Resort in Southern Wisconsin in 1978. The family took over the resort in the rain on the busiest weekend of the summer – the Fourth of July. Within weeks, the resort rebranded as Nordic Pines.

More stories were born. Don sold firewood for $3 per load or three for $10. He got a kick out of the number of people who took that deal. On a busy summer weekend, 140 campsites and 12 cottages filled and the family worked round the clock to keep the bathrooms clean and the campground relatively quiet after 10 p.m. By the time the end of the season rolled around, exhaustion set in. On the last Sunday in October, Don wore a t-shirt made by family that said: “Are they gone yet?”

Don’s niece Kirsten Baum says she’s thankful to Don and Dolores for their resort in the forest and how it exposed her to nature at a young age.

“I thank them for their gift of woods and pine, bluffs and lake, snow and sky,” Kirsten says. “Such big and infinite gifts they gave to me.”

Granddaughter Tabitha describes her grandfather’s early morning feline care at the resort.

“Many mornings I would wake up to him warming some milk and getting a can of cat food,” Tabitha says. “We would walk out across the property to feed Mama Kitty and the other barn cats.” Grandpa wrote her a personal song: "Tabitha Rose, everyone knows, she is Tabitha Rose.”

“He would boop my nose when he said knows,” Tabitha says.

On Saturday nights, Don would build a fire in front of the resort office. Grandson Dan remembers his grandfather cooking bacon on the grill in the evenings, feeding it to his grandsons who delivered firewood to campers in a little red wagon. Granddaughter Tabitha remembers Don sending his grandchildren to look for four-leaf clovers on the campground. A four-leaf clover was worth one shiny quarter to Grandpa Don, and a quarter bought a can of Sprite from the pop machine.

“Any time we went down to the campground, it felt like our own private Devil’s Lake experience,” Grandson Ben recalls. “Grandpa always seemed to know everybody. It seemed like he always knew what was going on around Baraboo, Devil’s Lake, and Wisconsin Dells.”

His grandchildren also credit Grandpa Don as the root of their musical interests. Grandson Patrick remembers bringing his instruments to Baraboo at Christmas time and playing holiday music with Don and Dolores. Don visited his grandchildren living in Nevada, buying them used instruments at pawnshops, violins for Dan and Stephanie, clarinet for Tabitha, saxophone for Eric, and flute for Jesse.

“To me, he represented a very different age of musicians,” Ben says. “It always seemed so cool that he was touring around and playing shows so young but seemingly was a lot more responsible/straight laced about it. He would usually talk about the rowdiness they were trying to calm down as opposed to rock and roll musicians now talking about starting the party.”

Don and Dolores sold the campground in March 2004 and traveled overseas to Israel, Italy, Hawaii, and London. Photos show them dancing on a boat on the Thames, dressed for a lau, posing in front of Stonehenge, and riding a gondola on a Venetian canal.  As Dolores’ mind fought the impact of Alzheimer’s, Don cared for her selflessly. On the long evenings when Dolores insisted that she needed to go home, Don loaded her into their Ford Taurus and drove her slowly through Baraboo, pausing to look at houses and see if she recognized them as her home. The optimal time this took, he calculated, was 45 minutes. By then, her mind had reset and she could be convinced to go back to the family’s home. He was so patient with Dolores, the love of his life. They were married 67 years.

Dolores died in 2017. Don and his daughter drove up to Phillips the next summer. Former student Paula Houdek arranged a breakfast with several former band members from Phillips High. They told stories of the impact that their experience in Don’s marching band had on their lives. A Phillips High alumna reflects: “Some of my best memories were of us watching him rehearse with the pit orchestra for the play "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" in 1972 or so, and of hanging out with him in the band room at the ‘new’ high school in the mid-1970s. He was a good teacher and a good man. He will be missed.”

Don stayed in his home for as long as possible thanks to the loving attention of a battalion of caregivers. Michelle Hamilton proved her devotion by staying with Don around the clock when he had Covid. When he moved into Oak Park Place assisted living, Michelle and two more caretakers continued to care for Don. Jessica Abbeduto stopped by to clean, make beds and listen to dad’s stories about Devil’s Lake, where she had also grown up. In fact, Don and Dolores had purchased the resort from Jessica’s dad Tony Abbeduto. Melissa Kallenbach adopted Don as a father, getting him to doctor, dentist, and hearing aid appointments, and welcoming him into her family for holidays.

His son David Strohbeen and Don’s caretakers were with him at the end, Jessica and Michelle holding his hand and stroking his arms. Melissa talked him into eating a piece of cherry pie two days before he died. A fitting final meal for the lover of sweets.

In his daughter Deidre’s last call with her dad, he assured her he was on his way.

“I’m coming,” he said. “I just need someone to give me a push.”

His daughter told him he should just stay put. She had a plane ticket to see him in just a few days.

“No, I’ll be there,” he replied. “I’m on my way and I’ll meet you there. I’ll meet you right there.” They hung up. Later, Deidre realized that he might not have been talking to her.

Donald is survived by children, David and Irene Strohbeen, and David and Deidre Pike; grandchildren, Benjamin and Ginny Strohbeen, Patrick Strohbeen, Terina and Walter Namiotka, Daniel and Hannah Pike, Tabitha and Paul Gibson, Stephanie and Eric Moore, and Jesse Pike; and great-grandchildren Valentine and Lathan Pike, Coralee Miller, Jasper Gibson, Isaac and Violet Moore, Shema, Emmaus and Silas Pike.

Don was preceded in death by his wife, Dolores; daughter, Deborah Ann Ball; grandsons, David Eric Pike; and his siblings, Norman Strohbeen and Betty Irle.