Ideas flow from Mary and Wayne Dankert like newsprint off a high-speed printing press. Watch them go. The ideas flow because the two have so many percolating about in their constantly churning minds—so many ideas printing and collating, printing and collating, so many, one, two, three, four. And the ideas leaving make room for more.
Read MoreA Menard’s employee seven years ago sold Glen Taylor a lawn mower.
An elderly man saw Glen Taylor purchasing flowers at Hilltop Florist.
A married couple saw him eating lunch at The Peddler.
A hunter saw him bringing a deer into Vernon Center Market.
Read MoreOn the surface it seems she should be. She is Vice President and General Counsel of Boston Scientific’s cardiovascular division, and as such works inside the pulsating heart of a $5.6 billion publicly traded corporation (NYSE: BSX). Boston Scientific has 16,000 employees worldwide—with a hearty 3,000 in Plymouth and Maple Grove, Minn., including Lance, helping manufacture, develop and market lifesaving medical devices.
Primarily, she serves as an in-house attorney. The medical device she personally helped launch in 2004, the complicated sounding TAXUS® Express2™ Paclitaxel-Eluting Coronary Stent System, has been offering genuine hope for millions of Americans with blocked heart arteries. Earlier this year, Boston Scientific announced the millionth sale and implantation of that particular stent, nearly doubling the corporation’s revenue.
Read MoreLester Zwach, whose name rhymes with hawk, has razor-sharp vision like one.
Though not Minnesota’s best sporting clay shooter, Zwach can in ten squeezes of a 12-gauge shotgun obliterate from fifty yards out nine out of ten sporting clays—very good by any definition. Besides shooting sporting clays, he enjoys guiding Midwest hunting enthusiasts in search of pheasants over the ridges and through the woods of 800 scenic acres near New Ulm.
Read More“Mamma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get,” drawled Forrest Gump in the movie bearing his name. If so, life has been a box of chocolates for Orthopaedic & Fracture Clinic senior partner Dr. R. Wynn Kearney, Jr.
For one, not all his surgeries are alike. Some especially require his crystal-clear vision—like the wrist operation at right—to check detail. Others need his vise-like grip for handling an orthopedic saw. Wynn Kearney can perform any number of orthopedic surgeries.
Read MoreLate 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.
Read MoreThere 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.
Read MoreRemember 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.
Read MoreBusiness 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.
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