Richard C. Wareham, two months shy of 78, retirement is not a time to putter. Too many poor people in the world without clean water to drink or clean air to breathe. The average retiree might be thinking more along the lines of golf, travel and the grandchildren. Now settled with his wife, Rita, in the Congregational Apartments in Brookfield, he's devoting his efforts to global worries.
Oil is a financial problem, but water is life and death.
They make the rest of the sicknesses in the world look like nothin'. He doesn't golf. Educated as an engineer and the owner of a half-dozen businesses in his lifetime, he's already seen the world. His focus on clean air and water for the world's poor began about 20 years ago while he still operated businesses in South Africa, where the Iowa native and longtime Milwaukee-area resident lived part time. He saw a television report about a South African who gave away his farm and started a mission that, among other things, built simple gravity water filtration systems for the local people.