Business Person of the Year 2011 – Runner Up
Imagine 63-year-old Warren P. Smith right now as a household appliance plugged into a home electrical outlet. His talkative mouth whirrs like a Sunbeam Blender set on “puree” and his leg and arm appendages gyrate with nervous energy not unlike a Maytag clothes washer on spin cycle.
Business Person of the Year 2010 – Winner
Tourists enjoying kitschy oddities often travel to Minnesota’s Lac qui Parle County and its 1,200-population county seat, Madison, known as the “Lutefisk Capital of the United States.”
Greg Stevens grew up in Amboy helping his father farm and manage Stevens Seed Farm, which began operations in 1965.
Both Long Island, New York, and Waseca, Minnesota, share the heart of 46-year-old Justine Meyer.
City Grille officially opened November 24 in the former Country Kitchen Restaurant, but the impetus for starting this new restaurant came about due to an accumulation of experiences.
While growing up on a farm near Harmony, Arvin Vander Plas was driving tractors at age 6 and rebuilding a John Deere 40 at age 10.
Jon Bregel first became interested in locksmithing while growing up in Fairmont. “My friend’s father owned a lock and key business.”
When age 12, Margo Weyhe was telling people she wanted to grow up to be an interior decorator. “I was always the one decorating the Christmas tree, rearranging furniture, moving knick-knacks, and drawing.”
Fairmont resident Wes Clerc (pronounced Clair) serves up more than French fries and Angus Deluxe burgers.
Yes, he and son Rick own and operate five thriving McDonald’s franchises in Fairmont, Blue Earth, St. James, Windom, and Marshall. And yes, 60-year-old Clerc over the last 44 years has been thoroughly batter-dipped and deep-fried in McDonald’s elbow grease, having worked his way up Ronald McDonald’s corporate ladder from being a 16-year-old crew worker to senior business consultant to franchisee.
At this reading, the Editor could still be pumping water out his basement sump pump from the late September aqua deluge. It was Noah’s Ark in Vernon Center—along with everywhere else. As for this election: Be sure to vote your conscience and become part of a human deluge at the November polls.
80-employee St. Peter solid waste and recycling services company offers profitable alternatives to landfill dumping.
In writing To A Mouse, eighteenth century Scots poet Robert Burns penned, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” Perhaps a modern version of expressing this oft-quoted line: A person’s best plans often become fouled up.
And such was Larry Biederman in 1974.
Southern Minnesota Skydiving opened for business at Le Sueur Municipal Airport on May 15, 2010.
Dr. William Lee of Blue Earth began seeing potential in developing a niche market in southern Minnesota: Lap-Band surgery for weight loss.
The Picker-Uppers owner, Justin Keech, learned a lot from his mother, Sue Rothmeier, a New Ulm RE/MAX real estate broker.
Forget nine, Curt Fisher has nine hundred lives.
He has badly wrecked a BSA motorcycle, lost altitude and crashed a power parachute onto a Blue Earth County park pavilion, navigated the dangerously rocky Blue Earth River perhaps hundreds of times on a jet ski, sailed across the rough Atlantic Ocean in a sailboat, and barely survived his antique steam engine flipping over before a North Mankato parade. And we’re just getting started.
