Profiles

He lifts a fifty pound bag of dog food from one wooden pallet and slides it over to another. He wears a flannel shirt and jeans, and his blond hair is slightly tousled. Here at Equity Supply in Mankato he seems just like any other worker as he unloads semis, helps customers and fills orders. But like so many other influential people here in southern MN, appearances can be deceiving.

Starr Kirklin’s Mankato roots run deep. His sphere of influence spread through his seventeen years as First Bank president in Mankato and touched such local institutions as Mankato Civic Center, Mankato State University, Immanuel St. Joseph’s Hospital, Valley Industrial Development Corp. and Hickory Tech Corp. His resume’ in Mankato community involvement is very impressive.

Step into Glen Taylor’s corporate world and it’s nothing quite like you’d expect. Taylor Corporation is a huge, multi-national business and yet noticeably absent from its main lobby are what you’d expect from huge, multi-national corporations: trappings like fine Italian sculpture, rich oak furniture, luxurious leather chairs that swallow you when you sit in them ­ and armed guards. None of that here. Instead, this lobby has simple accoutrements. Taylor Corp’s building is just two stories high. There’s only one receptionist. No valet parking. Instead of a multi-national corporation, this headquarters building has the down-to-earth feel of a downtown Mankato real estate office.