Most people scrapbook memories.
Roxie Mell-Brandts of Garden City, Connect Business Magazine Business Person of the Year 2007, preserves hers by restoring a Minnesota town.
Bob Wallace says this isn’t about Bob Wallace.
And it really isn’t. It’s more about Fairmont, this gleaming city of five lakes learning to walk on water.
First, meet Kevin Santos.
Over the years some of his favorite wrestlers have been The Undertaker, Sergeant Slaughter and Rowdy Roddy Piper. And he likes watching the Minnesota Twins hammer away at the Metrodome.
Up North, amid emerald-green Norwegian pine forests that overlook crystalline walleye lakes and throngs of moose and bear and wolves, grew Dr. Bill Rupp, president and chief executive officer of 2,100-employee, $200 million ISJ-Mayo Health System.
He spent his first 18 years of life in 5,290-population Chisholm, a boom-and-bust mining outpost that straddled U.S. 169 seven miles north of Hibbing. There, Rupp’s father Clarence and uncle Glenn co-owned two businesses, Rupp Furniture and Rupp Funeral Home.
The world loves a big-screen pig.
Over the years, moviegoers have bonded with Porky Pig (“Th-th-that’s all folks!”), Piglet (Winnie-the-Pooh’s sidekick), the Muppet Show’s Miss Piggy, Arnold Ziffel (remember the wacky TV show Green Acres?) and most recently, the kindhearted movie pig Babe.
The erudite and delightful woman helping transform southern Minnesotans into global adventurers has fixed her heart on other worthy causes that facilitate communication and relationships.
She is Dr. Yvonne Cariveau, but she grimaces as if stabbed when you call her that. Just plain “Yvonne” would be satisfactory, thank you.
In Bob Weerts exist all the trappings of a folk legend.
Like Minnesota’s homegrown Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunyan, Weerts at times seems much larger than real-life. In a regional business climate often preferring quiet parentheses, he’s an entrepreneur with an exclamation point after his name.
One frosty morning soon in Winnebago, Minn.—perhaps near the blazing-white welcome sign promoting the town’s annual celebration, Motofest—you might catch a local or two stretching a colorful vinyl banner above U.S. 169.
Perhaps it will say: Welcome to Winnebago. Home of Corn Plus. In 2005, first in the world to make ethanol production truly energy efficient.
A Menard’s employee seven years ago sold Glen Taylor a lawn mower.
An elderly man saw Glen Taylor purchasing flowers at Hilltop Florist.
A married couple saw him eating lunch at The Peddler.
A hunter saw him bringing a deer into Vernon Center Market.
