Author: Daniel Vance

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Daniel Vance

Ground Zero Services

At night when most southern Minnesota businessmen are snoring loudly and dreaming of sugar plum profits, New Ulm native Jon Gasner is roaring his machine across a Wal-Mart parking lot, gulping hot java, and trying to stay awake by shoulder shimmying to Alabama and Alan Jackson. Other than being a fastidious neatnik, buying a $35,000 vacuum sweeper in 1998 to begin a new business with no customers, purchasing the old UPS facility with no renters, and circumnavigating a messy divorce in 2001, Gasner’s story has little shine.

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Daniel Vance

Deb Flemming

No political organization could be more crooked than New York City’s “Tweed Ring” in 1868-71. “Boss” Tweed and his Democratic henchmen “Slippery Dick” Connolly, “Brains” Sweeney and “The Elegant One” Hall looted the City treasury of more than $45 million, primarily through shady deals involving unscrupulous contractors. Tweed himself amassed $12 million.

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Daniel Vance

Shuffle Rhythm.com (Henry Busse Jr.)

The life of Henry Busse Jr. has been a rollercoaster ride, with more twists and turns and thrills than most people experience in ten lifetimes. He began his wild ride at 3, when his famous father divorced his mom. Reconstructing a relationship with his absent father has been a lifelong avocation — and now it’s also his business.

His dad is a mostly forgotten man, dead 46 years, remembered only by the scattered enthusiasts who cherish big band 78s, black & white ’30s show posters and yellowing sheet music. But hot trumpeter Henry Busse Sr. truly is a legend. Al Hirt and Herb Alpert say they were inspired by Busse Sr.’s trumpet solos, particularly his rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue.” He and singer Bing Crosby invented the mute for trumpet.

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Daniel Vance

Sharron Moss-Higham

Forty-year-old Sharron Moss-Higham manages Kraft Foods’ largest North American process cheese plant — and perhaps the world’s largest. It is 350,000 sq. ft. of aged cheddar cheese and 950 employees wearing hair nets. All those 22-ton trailers rumbling out of New Ulm to distribution points all over are trying to satisfy America’s long-standing hunger for Kraft process (or “processed”) cheese, the nation’s fourth bestselling product line in grocery stores. This year Kraft-New Ulm alone will manufacture and ship billions of Kraft process cheese slices, all of America’s Handi-Snacks, and nearly all the nation’s Velveeta, the kitschy cheese loaf adored by millions.

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Daniel Vance

Bob Alton

The photo on Bob Alton’s wall for all eternity shows No. 9 Bill Mazeroski smacking a fastball off Yankee Bill Terry towards the cheap seats in the 1960 World Series. Maz’s homer will be enough for the Pittsburgh Pirates to win Game Seven 10-9.

Also hanging from Alton’s office wall are sketches from 1960s golf history: a hard-charging Arnold Palmer pumping his fist after draining a putt; a 54-year-old Ben Hogan launching a 3-wood on a Par 5 at Augusta National; a thin Jack Nicklaus walking up No. 18. Go Jack!

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Daniel Vance

Braun & Borth

He’d roll up his sleeves if he had any.

Mike Braun, who often goes sleeveless in summer, and his partner Brian Borth both work shifts hauling garbage and “recyclables” over the streets of Sleepy Eye and Springfield. It’s not a job for pansies. The intense heat off fresh tar can almost melt shoe soles, a whiff of rotting fish can be “most interesting,” says Braun, and the only air conditioning in either of their two facilities is an open window in the break room of their recycling center.

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Daniel Vance

Fred Lutz

North Mankato’s Fred Lutz likes flyin’ high in the western sky in his Beechcraft 33 Bonanza, tail flaps up, headset on, sippin’ straight 7UP through a cocktail straw. It’s another ideal Saturday afternoon for a businessman who still has Uncola coursing through his veins. His 7UP-green Lincoln LS parked next to the green hangar at Mankato Airport has “UNCOLA” plates; and his Beechcraft 33 the registration number “N77UP.” Old allegiances die hard.

Lutz was a high-profile, national figure in the soft drink industry in the ’70s and early ’80s. He served as national president of the 7UP Bottlers Association and also the Dr Pepper Bottlers Association, and as state president of the Minn. Soft Drink Association. And he lobbied Capitol Hill as a board member of the National Soft Drink Association.

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Daniel Vance

American Artstone

Nancy Fogelberg seems a bit taken aback when people credit her with turning around what was once a prodigal company, New Ulm’s American Artstone, now a $4.5 million, 50-employee, Midwest leader in architectural pre-cast concrete. She gives all the credit for the turnaround to her employees.

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