Overlooking Loon Lake from the three-season sun porch of her rural Lake Crystal home, Dr. Linda Nussbaumer gestures toward the dock and points out that the lawn leading down to it is not weed free. It’s obvious the grass has been mowed, making the weeds less noticeable, but Nussbaumer says there’s a good reason for their presence.
One day, Minnesota author Garrison Keillor might write St. Clair native Mike Drummer into one of his folksy, best-selling novels. Baseball cap covering his head, summer open-toe sandals and winter flannel, a love affair with growling earth-moving equipment, one of ten children, his dad serenading the milk cows with polka music – 45-year-old Drummer at times seems more from Lake Wobegon than a Greater Mankato land developer and small business owner.
It took him every bit of six years to finish a teaching degree because he had to pay his own bill. By his own admission, he grew up “damn poor.” While attending Minnesota State University, he milked the family cows, cared for the neighbors’ hogs, coached high school basketball, and in the spring worked for landscaping and garden center businesses. After beginning a small business with wife Julie in 1991, Drummer earned extra money as a substitute teacher, basketball coach, and Tires Plus employee.
Some people say Juba’s Super Valu is the last of a dying breed, like a Triceratops or a Tyrannosaurus rex before their untimely demise. Juba’s is a fiercely independent, friendly small-town grocery outlet, now butting heads against a gargantuan new Wal-Mart and several aggressive grocery chains.
Five years after founding Professional Cleaning Services, president Sherry Johnson still works from an office in her Le Sueur home. She not only appreciated being able to start up in February 2002 without going into debt, she also likes having less overhead cost than a storefront would require. Her real payoff, though, is, “being able to do invoices and paychecks in my jammies,” she says.
Photojournalist Flip Schulke caught the eye of America more than any person ever calling southern Minnesota home. Through his curious camera, he captured the drum beat of a generation by bringing to life legends like Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jacques Cousteau, Fidel Castro, and eight U.S. presidents, scores of astronauts, sports heroes, and politicians. He photographed the Berlin Wall over a thirty-five year period and for better than a decade was the world’s leading expert on underwater photography. He was one of the first photographers inside the Texas School Book Depository after President Kennedy’s assassination.
Working as a self-employed, freelance magazine photojournalist, his work included choice assignments from the mid-1950s to 1980s for Life, Ebony, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Time, National Geographic, and Look. His University of Texas archives contain more than 600,000 negatives, slides and prints.
Many business executives dream of retiring early at fifty-five, perhaps of tapping Titleist balls over neatly trimmed Bermuda grass in south Florida, paddling the soothing surf and tickling toes in warm white sand near Naples, or bouncing happy grandchildren on their knees.
Undercurrents of emotion bubbled up from within 52-year-old Glenn Miller (photo left), as he tried explaining the unyielding pressure he and his partners had felt over the course of Dayport’s chaotic history, of their Herculean efforts trying to stay afloat, of contrite promises to investors, of risking their personal fortunes.
Surrounded by a Dr. Pepper memorabilia collection on the shelves and walls of her office in Fairmont, Lisa Dahl explains how she had her ducks in a row that day in September 1983 when she approached her local banker for a loan to start up a business.
Consider: Art Olsen was the fifth child of the county courthouse custodian in Estherville, Iowa.
He was the president of Advertising Unlimited in Sleepy Eye, an R.L. Polk division in Detroit, R.L. Polk itself in Detroit, and Norwood Promotional Products in Austin, Texas. These businesses ranged in size from $60 million to $450 million in revenue. Since 2003, he has been president and co-founder of New Ulm-based start-up Beacon Promotions Inc. His most recent company custom prints and supplies promotional products to 4,500 distributors—and is growing rapidly.
