Premier Partners
Late one evening in 1975, 28-year-old Jerry Clark had his moneybag in hand and was last to leave his business near Ceylon, Minn., C’s Gay Paree Ballroom. Two men wearing ski masks suddenly approached him in the dimly lit parking lot.
“Give me your money!” the taller one shouted, elbowing forward, a barrel-like bulge protruding from his coat pocket.
There have been offers—several in fact, including offers from big companies with big budgets. And although each offer has been seriously contemplated by the board of directors, the Madelia Community Hospital has resolutely remained independent.
Remember these educators. Fifty years from now their photos may appear in history books as distant reminders of a radical revolution, one proving for all-time that teachers, parents and students rather than state and federal bureaucracies can and should own public education.
Of course, it helps greatly that the generous hand of Microsoft’s Bill Gates has been assisting. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has granted these educators nearly $10 million since 2001 to replicate their EdVisions Cooperative education model throughout the United States. So far 23 public high schools have signed on and many more will follow. What this group has been doing can only be described as fomenting a radical revolution in public education—with the words “radical revolution” not a bit overstated.
Think back to breakfast.
Did you spoon up crispy flakes or crunchy O’s? Did you slurp down light little puffs or listen to the happy melody of crackling crisps? Did you enjoy a mouthful of sweetened oats or savor the texture of a healthy breakfast bar? And as you were eating them, did you think at all about what went into the way those bites tasted, the way they crunched, crackled, or melted in your mouth?
Business partners and opposites Mark Smith and Wayne Andersen don’t get on each other’s nerves the way Oscar Madison and Felix Unger did in the ’70s television series The Odd Couple. But they do have their differences. For one, Smith prefers flying a Falcon 50 and Andersen a Hawker 800.
In the mid-’70s, young Chad Surprenant’s chin is barely above the kitchen table and almost every evening at dinner he’s engaged in conversational repartee with his parents and three older siblings. They discuss and debate politics, current events, and aspects of their family business. Quite an introduction to the world of ideas. Chad grows up being heard and treated as an equal at home though he’s the baby, eight years younger than his closest sibling. In other words, he is being nurtured by a rock-solid phalanx of maturity.
Today, Surprenant is trying to recreate at I&S Engineers & Architects this same “kitchen table” atmosphere. To a great extent he’s succeeding.
Lori Wightman had no intention of staying in New Ulm.
When she accepted an assignment from Allina Health Systems in July 2002 to serve as interim president of New Ulm Medical Center, she intended to keep it exactly that. “I figured I’d be here six months, that I’d just keep things held together until a new president could be found,” Wightman says. “I didn’t necessarily want to stay in New Ulm.”
Pull up your chair. It’s just you and Milt.
Only reluctantly does he tell of An Khe Pass.
It was the firefight of his life. Hold tight.
Pat Johnson and Peggy Grey, two vivacious sisters who own a pair of southern Minnesota’s oldest family businesses, are day-brighteners.
If your mood’s been slightly skewed by corporate and stock market scandals, a snail’s pace economic recovery, pink slips, job outsourcing, bickering politicians, a couple of nasty wars and color-coded terrorism alerts, an hour with Johnson and Grey is an upbeat, uplifting 60 minutes. Two hours is even better.
