Nancy Fogelberg seems a bit taken aback when people credit her with turning around what was once a prodigal company, New Ulm’s American Artstone, now a $4.5 million, 50-employee, Midwest leader in architectural pre-cast concrete. She gives all the credit for the turnaround to her employees.
Bernie Koenigs began his haircutting career in a drafty supply room at a U.S. Army base in Ankara, Turkey, where he pruned soldier’s hair for a few extra bucks. He had no training. The year was 1958, at the peak of the Cold War.
Z. Sam Gault doesn’t own the biggest or by any means the most powerful bank in southern Minnesota, but his family has owned one in St. Peter, Minn., since the days of U.S. President Chester Arthur in the White House. He owns Nicollet County Bank, which in 2000 had nearly $100 million in assets. And Gault tenders an excellent interview: often his answers are sharper than Lizzie Borden’s axe.
For a businessman trapped in a shrinking market, Gary Andersen remains remarkably optimistic.
Andersen is publisher of the Sentinel, a daily newspaper that’s been serving Fairmont and its surrounding trade area in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa since 1874. Fairmont, long regarded as one of Minnesota’s most attractive little cities, lost some of its shine in recent years. In many ways the booming ’90s skipped most rural areas, where population shriveled, retail stores closed and farm families left the land.
Earlier this morning I’d eaten but one lone bagel, flavored with Smart Balance margarine that contains no sugar and only five fat grams per single serving. I’d purposely starved myself. Two hours later, and now, on the road to my next assignment, I am nearly drooling from being tempted with thought after delicious thought of making taste bud love to a glazed doughnut.
I am motoring towards Sugar Mountain.
He is on the wildest ride of his life, having recently burst through the turbulent stratosphere on his way up, up and away towards the outer reaches of the ionosphere. But don’t worry: it’s a self-imposed ride, and Dennis Miller has a wireless telephone in his rocket for emergencies to summon help if things really get out of hand.
Even though 2000 revenues for the business he pilots, Midwest Wireless L.L.C., officially won’t become known until mid-March, preliminary figures suggest the company — owned by a private group of nearly 50 independent telephone companies — has passed the $100 million mark for the first time. That’s quite an updraft for a business that didn’t officially begin until 1996, and had 1998 revenues of only $43 million. In contrast, it took North Mankato’s Carlson Craft nearly 50 years to pass $100 million.
Every summer, a seasonal suburb blossoms across from Clear Lake, just east of the Waseca city limits on U.S. Hwy. 14.
Residents begin moving in around mid-April with the population peaking at about 1,300 in mid-summer. As in most suburbs, nearly everyone is from somewhere else. Half come from the Twin Cities, 30 percent from Southern Minnesota and the balance from other regions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and the remaining states. And, like typical suburbanites, most go to the nearest Big City (Waseca) to shop.
Ralph Call, 55, runs all his southern Minnesota business ventures out of his comfy home, snug up against the snow-capped Rockies in scenic Providence, Utah. He stays connected to Minnesota via a computer, fax, telephone and a 300 m.p.h. turbocharged Piper Malibu Mirage that flies back and forth monthly. It’s one heck of a commute.
Madison Lake-native William J. Bresnan, as much as any other American, made the cable TV industry into what it is today. During cable’s adolescent growth spurt, 1965-1984, he was a top executive, usually a CEO, at either the nation’s No. 1 or No. 2 cable TV company. From 1984 on he would raise up his own sizeable cable TV enterprise, Bresnan Communications – and also spearhead ventures that would thread cable TV throughout Poland and Chile. He never was as flashy as Ted Turner or Jack Kent Cooke, his former boss, but his contributions to the cable industry have been just as substantial.
