Exactly 165 years ago in March 1847, the last survivors of the Donner Party reached safety after spending a cataclysmal winter caught in the snowy clutches of Hastings Cutoff, a dead-end pass through the Sierra Nevada in California.
Read MoreI hope you all have been surviving March Madness. At this writing, I’m pretty sure my college team, the Dayton
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The years 1987-88 weren’t particularly rosy for Newt Gingrich look-alike Paul A. DeBriyn, then chief executive officer at the rural cooperative that would become AgStar Financial Services. Nationally in those years, many rural financial institutions like his—and many family farms—were becoming unhinged as a barn door kicked in by petulant cows.
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Tammy Spence was raised on a Good Thunder farm that instilled a “strong work ethic,” said Spence in a telephone interview. “There was no getting out of responsibility.”
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The example set for Brooke Linder while growing up in Cleveland, Minnesota, was a mother who worked five jobs. “She sacrificed everything she had for us kids,” said 26-year-old Linder in a telephone interview.
Read MoreAs a child in a major Midwestern city, I watched Green Acres. Bumbling Eb, channel-surfing Arnold Ziffel, greenhorn Oliver Wendell Douglas (Fresh air!), and screw loose Lisa Douglas (Times Square!) were all half-brained Hooterville hoots…
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The new owner of Jiffy Lube franchises in Mankato and Rochester, Tony Chahine (pronounced Shuh-HEE-nee), was raised in a close-knit, middle-class family in Los Angeles where dad had a security-related job and mom stayed at home.
Read MoreSeveral Connect Business Magazine readers have inquired about sursum ad summum, the phrase I have been placing atop my signature below. Translated, this Latin means, “Rise to the Highest,” and was the official motto of my Ohio high school, Walnut Hills.
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