Episode 8: Key No. 214

Episode summary

The fall 2026 issue of Porter Falls Magazine, mailed September 22, includes Rachel Thorsgaard’s “The Keys to Everything.” Within a week, more mail had come in about one key than about the cover story. So the hosts asked Duane Kolsrud to bring the ring — three rings, actually, on one carabiner, 214 keys, 2 pounds 13 ounces on the Founders Union mailroom scale — and set it on the table in the booth. You can hear it.

Kolsrud walks through the color-coded caps he inherited in 1998: red for the 14 building grand masters, yellow for mechanical and elevator rooms, blue for roof hatches, green for the University Farm, black for the steam tunnels, and 68 uncapped brass keys for everything else, from trophy cases to the Millrace sluice-gate padlock he shares with the city. Two loose keys belong to buildings that are gone: the 1947 Quonset Annex, demolished in 2004, and the 1926 Heating Plant, taken down in 2013. He explains why he keeps them, which involves a locked cabinet at a 2016 estate sale in Tamarack, a set of 1950s kiln logs now in University Archives, and a sandwich.

Thorsgaard covers the reporting: the February 2019 ice storm, when a substation failure took the card readers down for 31 hours and Kolsrud and locksmith Ruth Engebretson opened 40 doors by hand; the two vice-chancellor jobs he turned down; and the six-hour walking tour that showed Chancellor Vandehey a staircase she had walked past for twenty years. Most outside doors now open with a Porter Card (about 92 percent), and access requests go through the key and card access process, not Kolsrud’s pocket.

The last ten minutes are about Key No. 214: brass, about two inches long, stamped “WPI 41.” WPI is almost certainly Wesconsin Polytechnic Institute, the name from 1937 to 1971. Nobody knows what 41 is. If you do, write to magazine@uwporterfalls.edu.

Chapters

Selected transcript

An excerpt, lightly edited for reading. The full speaker-labeled transcript is in your podcast app’s transcript view, or email podcast@uwporterfalls.edu for an accessible document.

Corinne Lacasse: Duane, you just put 214 keys on the table and the microphone clipped. How often do they come off your belt?

Duane Kolsrud: Twice a day. Once at night, once when somebody from the magazine asks. The left pocket on every pair of work pants I’ve owned since 1998 wears out first. That’s the one maintenance problem on campus I’ve never fixed.

Abe Tollefsrud: Rachel, you spent a month on this story. What surprised you?

Rachel Thorsgaard: That he’s in favor of the card readers. I went in expecting a man who loved his keys and resented the technology. He talked for twenty minutes about how much better the card system is.

Duane Kolsrud: It is better. A lost card gets turned off in thirty seconds. A lost key means re-coring a building. The keys are for when the power goes out, and for the doors nobody should be using.

Corinne Lacasse: Like the Millwright Hall roof hatch.

Duane Kolsrud: Nobody should be using it. I know who is. They know I know. We have an understanding.

Abe Tollefsrud: Tell us about number 214.

Duane Kolsrud: Brass, about two inches, worn smooth. Stamped W-P-I, four-one. It was on the ring when I got the ring. I’ve tried it in every lock on campus old enough to matter. The cornerstone vault plate, the bell cabinet in the depot, every desk in Millwright Hall built before 1971. Nothing.

Rachel Thorsgaard: We’ve had about forty letters so far. One reader is sure it’s a 1941 time capsule.

Duane Kolsrud: Then somebody buried it without telling Facilities, which would be the most Porter thing that ever happened. Send me the theories. I’ll try every one. I’m not retiring soon, but I would like to know before I do.

Links mentioned

• “The Keys to Everything” (Porter Falls Magazine, fall 2026)
• Duane Kolsrud, director of Facilities
• Facilities Management
• Key and card access requests
• University Archives
• The 1994 ballot boxes and the Ironclads oral history (magazine)
• Fall 2026 issue
• Millrace Week 2026 schedule (news)