Forget your negative notions about the Defense Industry for a moment, especially your perceptions of fat contracts and shoddy quality.
Set aside your irritation at $650 toilet seats, backroom deals on supertankers, late deliveries and cost overruns. Instead, take a look at the industry from the perspective of Aerospace Systems in Fairmont and its general manager, Mike Wasmund.
The tour begins at the front desk. Bryan Paulsen points out the limestone laid into the wall, the brick columns stretching from floor to ceiling, the exposed concrete unearthed from layers of acoustic tile. He notes the lack of sheetrock, the minimal use of paint, the high efficiency lighting. He leads the way along a long, rounded corridor, bordered on one side by windows and on the other by handsome wood and glass walls. There, he says, is the main conference room. Here, he says, are the workstations.
Galen Maki’s refrigerator has bacteria that can kill you.
He and wife Sharon Maki (pronounced Macky) co-own MAK-BEA Laboratory Inc., an outpost of death and hope in Blue Earth. It’s potential death to anyone mishandling samples of Listeria Monocytogenes, Salmonella, and E. coli 0157:H7; and hope for supermarkets, food processors, and restaurants who rely on MAK-BEA to keep millions of customers safe.
Linda Kluender really gets into learning, teaching and business and the three mesh well to make her Minnesota Lake consulting business. But she doesn’t teach the finer points of business buying and selling. And she doesn’t wave a magic wand over an accounting hat and out pops a rabbit of cost-cutting measures to keep your company afloat. Her business consulting solutions are more in the interpersonal realm.
Five years ago, Dr. Corey Welchlin faced an uncertain future as the only orthopedic surgeon in Fairmont.
He loved orthopedics and wanted to keep practicing in the town where he was born. But he suspected that the Mayo Health System planned to eventually import its own orthopedic specialists after buying the Fairmont Medical Clinic in 1996 and acquiring the Fairmont Community Hospital in 2000.
Son of world’s greatest singer attends Gustavus Adolphus College, marries soft-hearted Iowan and moves to Sweden, later begins long career at Gustavus Adolphus and opens gift shop in St. Peter garage. It’s tough to pick which story to write.
So let’s begin with Jussi, the great Jussi Bjorling, who from 1938-1959 sang tenor at the Metropolitan Opera. Nearly all top-hat music critics utter Bjorling’s name in the same breath as Domingo, Pavarotti and Caruso—and more than a few claim Jussi Bjorling was the world’s greatest singer of all time, of any genre.
Lora Rahe is barefoot, her blue jeans rolled an inch above her ankles. A trail of wet footprints follows her from the side door of her New Ulm business to the spot where she now stands, talking happily with one of her favorite customers.
Ron Wenger generally launches his workday at 6 A.M., sometimes grabbing a shovel and clearing snow off sidewalks around his physical therapy clinic in North Mankato.
Even if you know zero about Wenger, his early morning shoveling helps you make a number of reasonable assumptions: He’s one of those “morning people” who can’t wait to get out of bed.
The Kenya Airways pilot dips his left wing as if to prod Timothy Tulloch into appreciating the vast plains of Tsavo, and beyond, the snow-clad Mt. Kilimanjaro. Nairobi is fifteen minutes yet. The earth below is a lush paradise of cheetah, Maasai villages and elephant herds. The seat belt light above him flashes. Mt. Kilimanjaro appears out his window.
