This fall will be a little different for John Armbruster after retiring as a 30-year middle and high school social studies teacher.

His educational path began at the University of Wisconsin, where he majored in journalism and later secondary education. After working as a journalist for two years, he realized his true passions were teaching and history.

Armbruster earned a Master of Arts in Education degree in 2008 from Viterbo and credits the university for reminding teachers how important their profession is in the lives of students and their families. Viterbo’s values and mission “reawakened” the purpose and passion of his career. He has fond memories of Tom Thibodeau, John Schroeder, and Rick Kyte’s classes. The small and beautiful campus atmosphere set the tone and created a whole new perspective, respect, and understanding of being an educator.

Taking pride in having diligently planned and created engaging lesson plans his students enjoyed, Armbruster’s advice to teachers is to “love your discipline, be passionate about students, and create a lesson plan as if it was a theatre production.” He emphasizes that the lesson plans are key to teacher and student success.

Armbruster’s love of history took a unique twist in 1994 when he heard about World War II veteran Gene Moran. Moran didn’t talk about his war experiences with his wife and nine children. Over time, Armbruster and Moran developed a unique relationship. Moran had a change of heart and indicated that he would only tell his story to Armbruster. The pair met on Thursday evenings, and Moran slowly opened up about his experiences.

The result was the publication of his book, Tailspin, in 2022. The book recounts the true story of a poor farm boy from Wisconsin who enlisted to serve his country in World War II. Moran survived an unimaginable ordeal—he fell four miles to the ground in the tail of a plane without a parachute, became a prisoner of war, and was forced to take part in a 600-mile death march.

Moran died in 2014, but Armbruster had recorded their conversations. Writing was difficult, and Armbruster had to write chapters over as many as four to five times to make them perfect. While writing the book, Armbruster suffered his own personal tragedy when his wife lost her 10-year battle to cancer. He and his two sons were devastated. However, his editor urged him to keep going, and even include his wife’s battle and his friendship with Moran in the book.

Armbruster currently travels around the Midwest sharing his wife’s and Moran’s stories at various speaking engagements. He has found that people find both very touching. There have been instances of people in line to purchase his book who are crying, hugging, and grateful for hearing the stories as many of them relate their own family’s experiences of war and cancer to the stories in the book.

In retirement, Armbruster is looking forward to working on his farm and visiting his sons in Madison, where Matthew is a police officer and John is a senior in college. He also has 15 speaking engagements scheduled this fall and next spring. Armbruster’s significant other, Kris, enjoys acting and sang to open his book launch event. She also creates drawings and promotional videos to showcase his work.