Back when Jeanette Bossingham was teaching fifth-graders at Madison's Glendale Elementary School, she had a student named Pete Mueller.

"He was a small, curly haired, freckled face cute boy who had an interest in skating and proudly showed us his brand new very long $90 skates," she remembered in a letter she sent me last week.

That year -- 1965 -- Jeanette got pregnant and quit teaching for a few years before coming back to the classroom, but this time in the Oregon School District, where she taught elementary school until retiring a few years ago.

She had lost track of young Pete until a few years later when she kept hearing about a good speed skater named Pete Mueller who was continuously winning world-class medals.

There was the Olympic gold medal at the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, in the first-ever 1,000 meter race; World Sprint championship medals in 1976 and 1977; and a 1980 Lake Placid Olympics finish just 1.93 seconds behind that other speed skater from Madison, none other than five gold medal winner Eric Heiden.

Soon there were stories about Peter Mueller, the coach of skater Bonnie Blair who won two golds at the 1992 Olympics, Dan Jansen when he won gold at the '94 Winter Olympics, Jan Bos, a silver medalist in '98 and Gianni Romme, who took the silver in '02.

"Now comes the really wonderful part of this story because it's so amazing," Jeannette wrote. "While visiting family and friends in Gjovik, Norway, last March, my friend was watching the Norwegian news, which I do not understand, but on the screen was a picture of a man with the name Peter Mueller under it.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing and asked why Peter was in the news," she continued. "My friend said he is the Norwegian speed-skating coach and has been for six years. It seems everyone in Norway knows who Peter Mueller is."

She contacted several people and finally got Mueller's cell phone number. He answered and remembered his fifth-grade teacher, but as luck would have it, he was in the United States on a visit.

"He told me if I were to get back to Norway I should give him a call, which I did this October and we met at the skating hall in Hamar," she said. "After 44 years we had pictures taken together, talked lots and had dinner with his skating team, for which he has high hopes in the next Olympics."

Many people in the area know Jeannette for her singing. For years she performed at the old Leske's Supper Club in Monona and still does some gigs in Stoughton, where she now lives.

Nothing compares, though, with reuniting after 44 years strictly by chance with a former student who grew up to be a world-class star.

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com

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