Bill Yazbec

After finishing school in 1970, I worked for a small paint manufacturing company, and a school supply company in Madison. I've also worked for Green Giant in Minnesota, and Lafayette, Indiana. I lived in Lafayette from 1976-2000. While in Indiana I worked in Finance for Green Giant, a small pharmaceutical company, 3 different software companies, and a building supply company. I also was City Controller for the City of Lafayette, Indiana until 2000. I was a senior accountant for a company in Delavan called Synerject until I retired in 2014.

I moved back to Delavan in 2007. Upon returning to Delavan, my sister Shelley put me in touch with Lissie Lefel. The irony of this story is that we dated in high school when I was a senior. She went her way, and I went my way for a lifetime. We met at Lake Lawn on a snowy night in February 2007, and we have been together since. A year later we tied the knot. I retired in March 2014 and Lissie retired in December 2014. I have 3 wonderful grandchildren, and Lissie has 7 grandchildren. We moved from Delavan to Sun City West AZ in 2018.
We have had a wonderful life living in the “Valley of the Sun”. I have been able to play golf all year round and have enjoyed every minute of it. When Covid hit a few years ago, the wheels seemed to fall off for everyone. My sister Shelley’s partner passed away of Covid in 2022. At the end of that year, my youngest sister Robin was critically ill and hospitalized in ICU for several weeks with pneumonia. She recovered, but faced another health scare in early 2023. She was diagnosed with cancer, and was in the hospital for surgery and treatment of the cancer. So far, she is doing well. In April 2023, my sister Shelley passed away unexpectedly. That hit LIssie and I hard because Shelley was a big part of our lives in AZ.
That wasn’t the end of bad stuff for us. In July 2023, I had to have triple bypass surgery and my aortic valve replaced. I have recovered from that and I am feeling much better.
This summer (2024), we decided to get some relief from the blistering Arizona summer heat, so we decided to take a nice long trip to see friends in Canada, and to visit a few of the states that I hadn’t visited before. We enjoyed spending time in Galcier National Park, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Park. We traveled east and spent time at Mt Rushmore. We stopped to see the Corn Museum in Mitchell SD, and Wall Drug. From there we drove to Wisconsin to see friends and family in Delavan. It was a great visit back ‘home’. We realized how much we enjoyed Wisconsin and the Midwest. It was a trip of a lifetime for us, and we had a wonderful time and saw so many great parts of our country and enjoyed our time in Delavan and Wisconsin.
We decided to move back to Wisconsin to be closer to family in early 2025. Our home in AZ sold quickly, and we were on our way back to Wisconsin at the end of 2024. we found a condo in Lake Geneva, and moved in January 2025. We are now settled in our new home in Lake Geneva. I can say that our life has taken many interesting turns, and has been filled with new memories and new experiences. It is good to be back in Wisconsin (in spite of the frigid winter temperatures), and we will enjoy the changing seasons and being close to family and friends.