Three years ago, Dee Manzenberger owned a cleaning business. It’s what she did to raise her two daughters, but it wasn’t what she loved.
“I thought, ‘I hate this. I don’t want to do it anymore, and I’d like to spend the next 20 years of my life doing what I want to do.’ So, I decided to go to college,” she said.
Manzenberger is set to graduate in December from Ivy Tech in Columbus. She’ll receive an associate degree in visual communications with concentrations in graphic design and photography.
She wouldn’t have made it that far without the Brown County Career Resource Center, she said.
To say thanks, she’s put some of her newfound skills to work to create a mural for the CRC.
“I did it because I really appreciated what they did for me,” she said.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]“If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t even be in school. … They led me by the nose to get me started, told me who to talk to and where to sign up for financial aid, just everything, literally everything.”
About two summers ago, Manzenberger was in a workshop with other students who were tasked with coming up with mural concepts for a space in Columbus to celebrate the city’s bicentennial.
Manzenberger painted hers using pastels. She took it to the CRC. “I said, ‘Come back here; I want to show you why you sent me to art school and this is what I have been up to.’ I rolled it out and Dave (Bartlett) was like, ‘Oh my gosh. We have to have one,’” Manzenberger said.
The staff asked if Manzenberger would consider doing a mural for the CRC. She took an independent study, and the end result was her mural, which meant she received college credit for it, too.
She made the CRC mural using Adobe Illustrator, one of the programs learned in her graphic design courses. Brown County High School’s new Eagle Manufacturing business will be making a frame for it so it can be displayed, she said.
Manzenberger has always been artistic, but she never had time to pursue her talent.
She moved to Brown County in 1991 after starting work at the Brown County Inn.
A few years later, her commercial property cleaning business took off. She estimates this summer, she’ll clean 250 apartments.
“I never did anything with my art. I just had this cleaning business and was just living raising two kids by myself,” she said.
“Life gets in the way of life. I tell everybody, ‘This is what I want to do with my life, but in order to live my life, I have to do this stuff to get by.’ I never got to do anything I wanted to do for years.”
She said some health issues forced her to change career paths since she is no longer supposed to do the cleaning job. She called it “a blessing in disguise.”
When she first started college, she was studying information technology. “My way of thinking was there’s three fields these days that are secure: Medical, dental or computers. I have no tolerance for bodily fluids, so medical and dental were automatically out,” she said.
She was at Ivy Tech for less than a semester when her adviser called her in. “She said, ‘Dee, you hate computers. Why are you doing this?’ … You are so artistic and creative. Why don’t you switch to graphic design?’”
She had wanted to work in graphic design 30 years ago, but she didn’t think jobs were available in that field. Her adviser’s sister was also working in graphic design, from home.
“I want to work out of my home, be able to travel and do some things. I said, ‘Sure I’ll switch.’ I did and I love it. Love it,” she said.
Before starting college, Manzenberger would go to the CRC to use their computers since she couldn’t get internet at her home in Helmsburg. She said she couldn’t have gone to or made it through college without the CRC. Bartlett even helped her get scholarships from the Brown County Community Foundation.
“I’ll be honest with you, I could barely send an email when I started college. I would just go in there (to the CRC) and cry. … I’m like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’” she said.
She ended up taking online courses and making the dean’s list every semester.
She said she’s heard people come in to ask questions about the CRC when she’s been there. “They say, ‘My friend is curious about this or that.’ You know they are really asking for themselves and they are just kind of embarrassed. There’s no reason for that,” she said.
“(CRC staff) are so nice there and they are so helpful. If anybody needed something they can just come in and ask. They don’t have to be intimidated. … They’ve just been very pivotal in making all of this happen.”
