About The Authors

          Lola has won numerous awards as a creative writer and is a self-taught artist.  She lives with her husband on their farm in East central Wisconsin; and has driven a school bus in the Winneconne school district for 25 years.  The cover of the book is from an oil painting she did of “The Old Shanty” in 1977 for her father. 

           Bill is a retired university professor.  In 1989 he received the UW Oshkosh Distinguished Teaching Award; and has received two J. William Fulbright Scholar awards, one to teach in Hungary in 1992 and the other to teach in Iceland in 1996.  In all, he has lived and taught in 10 different countries and has many interesting stories to tell. 

From:  John Brooks, Professor Emeritus, UW-Oshkosh

          “A SPECK IN GOD’S EYE, co-authored by the brother/sister team of Bill Bollom and Lola Bollom Schroeder is a vivid slice of Americana.  If you want to know how our country got to be what it is today, skip Oprah’s angst-and-anomie loaded memoirs and read this one.  The authors describe the experiences of two members of the ‘greatest generation’ in peacetime and, in the process, echo the development of a whole society, from post-pioneering days to our high tech, suburban present.  Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is the main setting for Lola and Bill’s reminiscences, and they are both skilled writers.  The differences involve their divergent life stories, with Lola the stay-at-home and Bill the far-wanderer who traveled to many foreign countries during the course of his career as a professor of accounting.  Again, America’s change from an insular, predominantly rural pre-WW11 society to an urbanized, internationalist world power is mirrored in the contrast between the early descriptions of life in Oshkosh in the 1930’s, ‘40’s and 50’s, and later travel pieces on India, Bangladesh, Singapore, China, South Africa, Europe, Iceland, and Russia.  As a bonus, in this double memoir, the reader gets two distinct points of view, often on the same people and events.”

From:  Margo Daws Pontius, Instructor, Life Story Writing, LIR-UWO

          “Bill illustrates his memories in such descriptive phrases in his stories that we the reader can envision the relatives, friends and places he taught at all over the world.

          “Lola writes from her perspective on being the only girl, with three older mischievous brothers; and not only how she copes, but emerges into a lovely talented woman with and in spite of them.”

          “Thought provoking to read.”

 From:  Steve Deger, co-creator of the bestselling POSITIVE QUOTATION series

          “All of us should document our stories, the way that Lola and William have done in A SPECK IN GOD’S EYE.  Such memoirs are important legacies for our descendants---lasting record of who we were, what we accomplished, and what we valued during our lifetime.”