On May 2, Marinette/Menominee EagleHerald sports writer Tom Kaiser will take his place as a Forever Maroon when he is inducted into the Menominee High School Athletic Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2026. The induction ceremony takes place at the Pullman House in Menominee.
A story about the induction appeared in the EagleHerald’s Feb. 2, 2026 issue. According to the article:
Born on March 24, 1949, in Appleton, Wisconsin, Kaeser was a sports fan from the moment he could open eyes. From imagining catching the final out of the World Series while bouncing a ball off his childhood home to providing his own commentary to whatever game happened to be on television that day, sports were a prevalent part of Kaeser’s life.
Kaeser graduated from UW-Milwaukee and worked several odd jobs before landing in Menominee, becoming sports editor of the Eagle-Star newspaper in the late 1980s. Immediately adopting the Bay Cities as his new home, Kaeser began covering Maroon sports with a reverence that had previously been unseen.
Every sport mattered. Menominee is a football-first, basketball-second town, but the cross country, baseball, track and field, and girls volleyball teams were just as important to Kaeser.
The Eagle-Star merged with the Marinette Herald-Leader, becoming the Marinette/Menominee EagleHerald in 1995. It was at this point that Kaeser went from sports editor to associate sports editor. Their partnership continued until Kaeser’s retirement in 2014. He returned to Appleton and became active in community service and was a community columnist for the Appleton Post Crescent.
On May 29, 2018, after less than four years of retirement, Kaeser passed away at the age of 69 in his home, but he continues to live on through the incalculable number of stories he wrote over his 20 year-plus career — stories that remain in the scrapbooks of generations of Maroons.
Note: The 2026 Menominee High School Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony takes place May 2 at the Pullman House in Menominee. Tickets are $30 and available for purchase at both the Menominee High School office and the Superintendent’s office, located at the Menominee Elementary school.
