A longtime resident of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, passed away peacefully on January 20, 2022 at the age of 83 after a brief illness. He was born on July 9, 1938 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Katherine Kletzsch Hazelwood and Clark John Adam Hazelwood. Beloved husband of Anne Messinger Hazelwood for 59 years. Loving father of Katherine Anne Hazelwood of Hobe Sound, FL, Sara Messinger Hazelwood (Raul Yanes) of New York City and Robin Barbara Hazelwood of Darien, CT. Devoted grandfather of 7 wonderful grandchildren, Isabelle Kaplan Sharma (Himanshu Sharma), Jack and Nate Kaplan, William, Peter and Grace Yanes and Oliver Hazelwood. Dear brother of Nick Hazelwood and Barbara Taylor, who predeceased him. Further survived by other loving relatives and dear friends.
A graduate of the Milwaukee Country Day School, Yale University, University of Michigan Law School and New York University, from which he received his Masters in tax law, he was a partner at Quarles & Brady, a Milwaukee law firm, where he spent an active and eventful career advising businesses across the state of Wisconsin, with a particular focus on and interest in the cheese industry. He was a versatile lawyer who could give counsel on almost any business topic and would occasionally try cases. A history major in college, he adored his classes at Yale and continued to read and learn about history his whole life. The great love of his childhood was football; he was the center on the Country Day football team and kept in close touch with his teammates throughout his life.
He was an active board member at the Zoological Society of Milwaukee and a volunteer at Channel 10, the Milwaukee PBS Station. Following the interests of his daughters, he worked tirelessly to bring elite swimming to the Milwaukee area with the development of the Walter Schroeder Aquatic Center, a state-of-the-art indoor 50 meter pool which hosted several national swimming and diving championships. He also served on the Ozaukee County Board of Supervisors for many years, where among other things he oversaw the development of a new curling facility at the Ozaukee County Fairgrounds.
After spending his childhood on the east side of Milwaukee, he moved to a farm in Cedarburg in the late 1960s, where he discovered a love of the land, and to the delight of his children, a love of all animals, including chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, dogs and cats. Particularly notable was his devotion to a series of English Setters and, finally, his cat, Mickey. He filled his barn with tractors and worked with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources over many years to transform the fallow farmland surrounding his house into a prairie filled with native grasses and wildflowers, beehives and numerous bird houses and bird feeders. He planted hundreds of trees and daffodils. He loved a good burn pile, cutting invasive species and building new paths. We would particularly like to thank Mark Alberg, Peter Merritt and Ryan Post, who helped him with many projects and provided great friendship and counsel along the way.
In addition we would like to thank the staff at St. John’s for their thoughtful and devoted care. A memorial service will be held at a later date.
Posted online on January 21, 2022 in Journal Sentinel