OBITUARY
Dress was a big man with a big heart and a big intellect, so he's getting a big obit. With love, Les
Some people live their lives saying, “I wish I would have…” But not Kris Dressler. From the day of his birth on July 5, 1973, he lived by the credo, “I’m going to do that!”
Whether it was lingering in his undergraduate studies (“6 years, 3 varsity letters, 2 degrees, two internships and a patent”), leaving a high paying job to become a poor but happy teacher and coach, starting a beer tap company that was featured in the Wall Street Journal, kayaking around an island in Alaska, teaching thousands of students math and science, or bringing two beautiful children into the world with his amazing wife Leslie, Dressler never shied away from living the life he thought had meaning and purpose and value.
And he succeeded.
That life was brought to a tragically short end on December 1, 2022 at his home in Madison, Wisconsin by the insidious brain cancer known as glioblastoma. It is not a cancer one fights to win. But in true Dressler fashion he also didn’t “lose.” Instead he chose to live his final year in much the same way he had the previous 48—with strength, logic, laughter, and surrounded by the love of family and friends.
While it's impossible to encapsulate a life as extraordinary as Dressler’s, he was known by all to be exceptionally curious and magnetic. His sense of adventure and ability to weave those adventures (and sometimes misadventures) into captivating stories inspired us. He valued kindness, loyalty, respect, and honesty. Dressler was many things to many people: coach, professor, student, teammate, son, husband, and perhaps most importantly, father.
Chapter 1: Childhood
Dress was born in the beautiful Driftless region of Black River Falls, Wisconsin to Axel and Kathy. He had one younger brother, Eryn, who Dressler enjoyed “involving” in his experiments. Like the time Dressler and a friend built a pulley system in the woods and hoisted Eryn up. The ride up was controlled and smooth. The descent was not. Or the time Dressler rigged an old rotary phone to deliver a number of shocks based on the number dialed (1 for a single shock and zero for 10 shocks). He slipped a couple of electrodes into Eryn’s socks while he slept and whenever Eryn started snoring, Kris dialed up a shock and Eryn stopped snoring.
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As the son of two music teachers and the grandson of a talented concert pianist, Dressler developed a lifelong love and appreciation for playing and listening to music. When he and his fellow bassists encountered the ppp music dynamic (playing very softly), they restyled it as the “Performance Power Pluck.”
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Growing up a musician in the 80’s meant one thing: big hair metal bands! This love coincided with D’s high school job at Little Caesars Pizza. He loved that job and always said he learned more about work from Little Caesars than anywhere else. In fact, he included that job on all his future resumes. One night, when Poison was playing in the area, D and his fellow pizza conspirators called up the venue and offered to deliver free pizza to the band if they could get backstage passes after the concert. Even rock stars love pizza, so a deal was made and teenage Dressler ended up spending an evening with his musical idols.
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One other thing Little Caesars gifted Dresser: an apron that hangs in his kitchen to this day. That apron has made an appearance at many a pizza party, holiday coffee & scones, and there is even a rumor of him jumping off a couch playing air guitar to “Juke Box Hero” in nothing but that apron.
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Dress attended and graduated from LaCrosse Central High School (class of 1991). It was there that he met one of his most influential teachers—someone who encouraged Dress to go to UW-Madison to study math, science, and engineering so that he could better understand how to make America’s Cup sailboats faster. Dressler not only followed that advice, but that same high school educator joined Dress in 2018 for his PhD defense and celebration.
Chapter 2: UW-Madison
When Dress showed up in line for registration for classes, he was singled out for his height and encouraged to head over to the UW rowing boathouse. There, he sat on a bench with his legs shaved for cycling next to another young man whose legs had been shaved for cycling and that was that. Dress joined the rowing team. Dress cherished every moment of his Badger Sweepswinger career: long, early Saturday morning training rows on Lake Mendota to the cabanas and back, mid-winter “hours of power,” running up and down Camp Randall stadium stairs, jogs to the “End of the World” and back—all in preparation for highly competitive collegiate regattas on both coasts and at home in the Midwest. Rewards included medals and the shirts from competitors, but none as sweet as downing a boot at the Essen Haus with his fellow rowers.
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D’s academic career in engineering got off to a very Dressler start when he failed a Statics class his freshman year because he had a rowing regatta at the same time as the final exam. The professor wouldn’t let him reschedule. Never one to let teammates or friends down, he skipped the final and took the F. He retook the class the next semester and got a B despite his belief that he knew the material better than any of his classmates. With something to prove, he took the class a third time and, of course, got the A he was after.
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As further evidence that a GPA was a poor metric for Dressler’s engineering prowess, he and a few friends entered the Schoofs Prize for Creativity (a contest for undergraduate engineers) with an invention of a “fast tap apparatus for the pouring of carbonated beverages” (a beer tap). This invention not only won them first place, but also led to an appearance on the Jay Leno Show, a feature in the Wall Street Journal, and eventually a new business. Not bad for someone who took Statics three times.
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Dressler eventually received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin with the coursework completed in 1997 and the actual paperwork completed in 2003.
Chapter 3: After College
After undergrad, D set out to put his degree to good use by following a traditional engineering path and taking a job at the Trane Company. He remained long enough to earn a real salary which he used to buy cocktails for his friends and a fancy BMW for himself. Dress loved German automobiles and had a number of Bugs, Beetles, a Golf and a Vanagon or two. As one story goes, the engine of one of those vehicles which was left in D's bedroom closet on Mound Street when he moved out was never recovered before the house was demolished to make way for new construction. But back to Trane. Dress left the Trane Company to coach high school rowing at the Mendota Rowing Club. Alongside some of his former UW teammates, he led the team to national success, inspired countless rowers to go on to have successful college rowing careers, and made connections with parents who then founded Camp Randall Rowing Club with Dress. After three years coaching junior rowers, Dress took an assistant coaching job at the UW and formed deep connections with another era of Wisconsin rowers. In the spring of 2022, it was these athletes who organized an event honoring Dress with the christening of the preeminent racing shell the “Doctor Dressler,” raced that spring by the UW varsity men. Dressler’s time coaching at the UW also led him to a coaching job in the summer of 2001 in Philadelphia, coaching the U.S. Junior National Team which would later compete representing the U.S. in Duisburg, Germany.
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During these years, Dress’s booming voice could be heard echoing across the water at the Memorial Union Hoofer Sailing Club. He would regale youth sailors with club rules at the start of each session. He’d admonish them to always wear a life jacket and stay with their group. And then came rule #3—always check in with instructors at arrival and departure. To drive this point home, he would tell the story of a child-who-shall-remain-unnamed, who forgot to check out at the end of the day. As the story went, the Madison Fire Department was consulted, the SCUBA rescue team was called, and finally the U.S. Coast Guard got involved. It turned out the kid was at home playing video games the whole time. Every child and instructor hung on D’s every word as he told the story, which grew bigger and more extravagant with each telling. And you know what? They followed the rules—even rule #9 which stipulated, “No nuts in the brownies on party day at the end of the session.”
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While at Hoofers and coaching rowing, Dress spent months trying to sell that infamous BMW to the sailing instructor team at Hoofers. While that sale was unsuccessful, he did make the most incredible lifelong friends (many of whom asked him to be an officiant or a speaker at their weddings). Later, D raced with friends on the J35 “Noble Buffalo”—gaining both epic sailing success and lifelong memories of winning by legs, spinnakers going up sideways, crew members falling overboard, and other adventures perhaps fueled by the flowing Mt. Gay rum.
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In 2002 Dress formally founded KMD Academics, his tutoring firm which had been in gradual evolution over his years with kids in rowing, sailing, and other venues. He prided himself on mentoring kids and teaching science and math. Word spread fast of D's exceptional capacity with kids, and his tutoring firm became his full time position for a number of years. Dress had high expectations for kids and they knew it. He forged these relationships based on those expectations, on respect, honoring individuals, and humor, and the kids loved him for it. As is thematic in D’s life, these individuals never went away. For example, while in the hospital awaiting surgery in 2022, Dress got a visit from a nurse who had been one of Dressler’s former tutoring students. She said if it had not been for him, she wouldn’t have been a nurse and she wouldn’t have been there that day to see and help him. He had inspired her, like so many others, to do more and be better. There was no shortage of D’s students who shared this sentiment. He had a special gift to connect to people.
Chapter 4: Professional Life
Around 2004, things also began to heat back up at Turbo Tap, that fast tap apparatus for the pouring of carbonated beverages. Dress moved to Chicago to work at the company he and friends had begun initial work on years before. He worked alongside old friends and new ones, enjoyed the fast-paced startup world, took multiple prototyping and manufacturing trips abroad to China where he indulged in hot milk and rose petal massages, was repeatedly told he was tall like “Shaq,” ate local cuisine, and got a lot of “solicitations.”
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In 2006 Dressler again returned to follow his passion for fluid dynamics and studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology College in Chicago. Time there was spent with international friends and colleagues, attending conferences around the country, and enjoying life in the city. Dress took numerous icy 10-mile bike rides in winter along the Lake Shore Drive bike trail and nearly slid into Lake Michigan. He enjoyed being in a city with functional public transit and incredible food, but ultimately there was far too much concrete.
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In 2010, Dress completed his Masters and applied to grad school at UW to pursue his PhD. In the first couple of years of PhD study at UW, Dress took a teaching job in the math department at Madison College. He worked with an extraordinary community of educators and students. He loved the commitment to education that Madison College exemplified. However, in order to more easily finish his PhD, he returned to the UW Department of M.E.
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He completed his PHD in 2018 with the publication of “Experimental Determination of Heat Transfer Coefficients in Two-phase Annular Flow.” Dress worked in the Multiphase Flow Visualization and Analysis Lab on campus and helped to oversee graduate students’ work there. Dress taught numerous undergrad courses, one of which was the first class every freshman engineering undergrad takes. His teaching philosophy was to “comfort the uncomfortable and make the comfortable uncomfortable.” In six years at UW, Dress received five distinguished teaching awards, voted on by the students. He was fundamental to the establishment of Friday morning department coffee hours for socializing, conferring, debating, and connecting. D valued his work with a world-class team of educators and researchers. His work in his final years combined so much of what D loved: people and science, intensity, excellence, passion, mentoring, and teamwork.
A week after Dressler’s death, Leslie stopped in on that M.E. Dept. Friday coffee. When visiting his office afterwards, she discovered a Memorial Union pitcher with red and white flowers with the following message that exemplified the effects Dress had on countless students: “You got me my first two jobs and inspired me to follow new paths in my career. I am where I am because of you. [...] I hope your kids grow up to be like you.”
Chapter 5: Family
In August of 1997, Dressler’s life would be forever changed when he began a friendship with Leslie Rattan. They spent mornings coaching at MRC, days teaching at Hoofers Sailing Club, evenings on the terrace, and nights out with friends. This friendship would continue and grow even as Leslie left Madison to row at the University of Washington in Seattle. In August of 2004, their relationship would sail into new waters as Dressler proposed in Michigan on the beaches of Lake Michigan.
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They married in 2005 on another Lake Michigan beach in Kenosha, Wisconsin. After the ceremony, a couple hundred close friends and family went to the home of Leslie’s grandparents to eat, laugh, dance to the music of Copper Box, and then go camping at the Bong Recreational Campsite.
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It should be noted that the night before the wedding, Leslie’s dad, Eric, cooked up chicken for the wedding crew on a grill that Dressler, with the help of friends, made out of a 50 gallon drum. Welding was involved in the construction and a highway fire in transport but it was all good—better than good actually. It was exactly what you’d expect from a Dressler wedding.
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Not long after their marriage, Dress and Les found themselves living in Chicago’s Wrigleyville. They enjoyed hearing the roaring, summer crowds of Cubs fans but needed a quiet retreat from the hustle and bustle of the city. So they took up kayaking on Lake Michigan and cross country skiing. Their kayaks eventually took them on fabulous adventures down the Colorado River and on a month-long circumnavigation of a remote, Southeast Alaska island. As for cross country skiing, Dress would complete three American Birkebeiners.
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In 2010 the Dresslers left Chicago and moved to Madison. Eventually they would find themselves in Leslie’s childhood home with her mom, Lindsay Rattan, and their two wonderful children, Walter and Celia. Wally & Cece would attend the same school Leslie did as a child.
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Dressler loved to share his passions with his children but also took time to indulge in their passions. He could be found having nightly science chats with Cece, YouTubing the creation of a perfect ballet bun, enjoying her creative passion for art and architecture, or even getting a pedicure with her. With Wally, Dress could be found at the baseball diamond, ski slopes, mountain biking trails, or at home building generators, wind turbines, and Arduinos. Wally and Cece have an engineering vocabulary unique to the children of engineers, or perhaps to the children of a Papa like Kris Dressler.
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Every summer the entire family would take a month-long vacation to Bailey Island, Maine to enjoy the ocean, fresh lobster, family, and friends. In the winter they would road-trip to Colorado for skiing, hiking, and, again, spending time with friends. Dressler loved these excursions.
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And he loved Cece and Wally. Their loss was his number one concern this past year, but, in true Dressler fashion, he didn’t spend a lot of time sitting around thinking about it. Instead, he lived that last year, like all of his life before, to the fullest extent possible and created even more great memories for Cece and Wally to remember him by.
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He leaves behind wife Leslie Dressler; son Walter Dressler and daughter Celia Dressler; father Axel Dressler and stepmother Joanne Dressler; mother Kathryn Dressler; brother Eryn Dressler and sister-in-law Stephanie Dressler; nephew Elliott Dressler; grandfather Richard Larabell; mother-in-law Lindsay Rattan; sister-in-law Lisa Rattan; grandmother-in-law Joanne Rattan; as well as many other relatives and dear friends.
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He is preceded in death by Großvater Horst Dressler and Großmutter Christiane Dressler; grandmother Josephine Larabell; grandfather-in-law Walter Rattan; and father-in-law Eric Rattan.
Chapter 6: Community
Dress and Les are profoundly grateful for the immense outpouring of love and support in the past year. The world can be a cruel and harsh place (gut-wrenchingly so), while being simultaneously beautifully unified and connected all at once. People are good. Dressler’s community was unquestionably one of a kind and he loved and treasured his people.
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The Dresslers are grateful for the extraordinary care of the UWHealth Carbone Cancer Team of Ankush Bhatia, Steve Howard, and Scott Vandenberg; and the UW Neurosurgical Team of Lettie Gannon and Mustafa Baskaya. Devastating as the meetings with these individuals in the past year were, Dress truly enjoyed meeting with his care team. He admired their expertise, scientific background, depth of knowledge regarding brains and cancer, humor, willingness to be endlessly peppered with D’s questions and curiosities, and their open, honest and straightforward approach to their practice. In their first meeting with oncologists, the Dresslers learned that there are “curable” cancers and then there are those like Dress had that are always terminal. As D did throughout his life, he fought through his terminal diagnosis to really live, not just to be alive.
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Dress lived with joy, honesty, passion, sincerity, kindness, generosity, selflessness, grace, dignity, positivity, and curiosity that he will leave forever with us. We learned in that first meeting that any notion of a “battle with cancer” was a horribly false analogy. Glioblastoma wins every time. Dress fought to live. And he fought hard. For himself, his wife, his friends and family, and most of all his children.
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A note about D’s life would not be complete without an acknowledgement of the exceptional care from Agrace Hospice. They are brilliant in their work helping people achieve living the best they can to the end of their time.
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Dress was most fundamentally concerned for the well being of his treasured and beloved children, Wally and Cece. In lieu of flowers, please see Stories and Donations for ways to help support the family.