One of Jamroz’s 911 stories describes the roles and responsibilities of a police dispatcher. Images courtesy of Steve Jamroz

Jamroz looks back on his days working in a paper mill.

Gum balls (from left) Purple Grape, Larry Canary, Little Red Cherry Berry, Bubblegum Blue and Gene Green Watermelon meet at the bus stop on their way to school.

Jamroz draws on experience

Once upon a time, there was a little gum ball named Bubblegum Blue.

He had a lot of gum ball friends, and they all liked to meet at the bus stop before going to school. But their favorite part of the day was when their teacher, Mr. Peel, told them stories about how and when to call 911.

Many of the stories Bubblegum hears are tied to the bedtime tales Steve Jamroz has told his 8-year-old son, Jonah, for the last five years. It’s a variation of the bedtime stories parents around the world tell their children, but Jamroz, a partner with Hortonville-based Blue Design Group LLC, turned them into cartoons and the basis for a series of children’s books called “911 Stories.”

“911 is nothing more than the result of when my son was younger, we wanted to teach him about safety,” said Jamroz, 41.

And it wasn’t a random decision to make all the characters gum balls. That idea goes back to 2001 when Jamroz heard some bad news while working for Hoffman LLC, Appleton, on the Waupaca Middle School project.

“The superintendent told me about how his daughter, who was about my age, was diagnosed with cancer, and it didn’t look good,” Jamroz said. “A few days later, I decided that maybe I could do something to make a difference, so I started sending her gum balls every week to let her know someone was thinking about her.

“It sounds like it did its job in terms of cheering her up in some fashion.”

The superintendent’s daughter died in 2003, and that’s when Jamroz’s son suggested Jamroz start writing stories.

But it wasn’t the first time he took an idea and turned it into a cartoon. He drew cartoons based on life in a paper mill when he worked in one during summers after high school, and he kept at it when he worked in the site planning and engineering department for Sentry Foods in the early 1990s.

“I started using things that happened and incorporating them into cartoons,” Jamroz said. “After three years, I accumulated so much material that I started putting out Christmas books with cartoons from the last year.”

He did the same thing at Hoffman. But now, with only his partner with him at Blue Design, Jamroz reduced his cartoon drawing to “Place,” a cartoon that appears in the American Institute of Architects Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Architect magazine.

“It’s a process of thinking through what you want to convey,” he said. “It’s the same process as in architecture. You try not to overembellish what you draw or build.”

— Chris Thompson