Dean Karau was born in Kewanee, Illinois, in 1949. In 1960, his family moved to the Chicago suburbs, and he seldom returned to his hometown. In 1975, Dean moved to northern Minnesota where he built cabinetry and fine furniture. After working in early childhood and family education and briefly teaching high school mathematics, Dean attended law school and practiced for 25 years in Minneapolis in the field of intellectual property, first as a litigator and then as a transactional attorney focusing on trademarks and international brand protection.

After retiring in 2016, Dean became immersed in genealogy. He has written stories on all lines of his family, and he has created videos about their lives.

As a by-product of his genealogy work, Dean began learning about Kewanee’s history. He now travels back to Kewanee to research and speak on his hometown’s history. For over four years, Dean has written a weekly history column for Kewanee’s newspapers. He has created numerous videos on aspects of the history of his hometown, hosts Dusty Roads,® a Facebook page devoted to Kewanee history, and has written three books on the history of aspects of Kewanee. Dean has also been published a number of times in historical magazines and has spoken at conferences on a variety of topics.

Dean has five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He and Molly, also an attorney, live in suburban Minneapolis adjacent to the Minnesota River Valley National Wildlife Refuge. They enjoy traveling and active adventures such as completing the Tour du Mont Blanc trek and trekking to Manchu Picchu.

Dr. Kwesi Daniels

Kwesi Daniels is the Head of the Architecture Department at Tuskegee University. His professional experience ranges across various disciplines, including historic preservation, architecture, sustainability management, and urban geography. Over his twenty-year career he has worked for architecture firms and government agencies on public and private sector building projects around the country. He has also played an active role in the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), the Alabama Black Heritage Council, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. However, his greatest honor has been to teaching students at  Tuskegee, Temple, NYU, and Columbia University in the City of New York, in addition to lecturing nationally.

In 2018 he began developing a historic preservation program at Tuskegee University, which has resulted in the documentation of civil rights sites in Selma, Montgomery, and Tuskegee, Ala. Professor Daniels earned a BArch and MArch in architecture from Tuskegee University and the University of Illinois at Chicago and a MS in sustainability management from Columbia University. In 2020 he earned a Ph.D. in urban geography from Temple University. His doctoral research focused on studentification and its social impact on West Philadelphia neighborhoods. In his spare time, he enjoys playing billiards, cane twirlin’ and spending time with his family.