Author: Roger Matz

Forget your negative notions about the Defense Industry for a moment, especially your perceptions of fat contracts and shoddy quality.

Set aside your irritation at $650 toilet seats, backroom deals on supertankers, late deliveries and cost overruns. Instead, take a look at the industry from the perspective of Aerospace Systems in Fairmont and its general manager, Mike Wasmund.

Ron Wenger generally launches his workday at 6 A.M., sometimes grabbing a shovel and clearing snow off sidewalks around his physical therapy clinic in North Mankato.

Even if you know zero about Wenger, his early morning shoveling helps you make a number of reasonable assumptions: He’s one of those “morning people” who can’t wait to get out of bed.

Despite his training as an aeronautical engineer, Lyle Jacobson never designed soaring rockets or jet aircraft for a living. Instead, he discovered life (and opportunities) outside the realm of space.

For 24 years, he’s helped provide peace of mind to people whose feet are rooted firmly on earth, not in the stratosphere. Jacobson heads Mankato’s Katolight Corp., which supplies emergency power generation systems to customers who must continue operating despite rolling blackouts or ice storms.

When Kathie Davis left her job with the Region 9 Development Commission in 1996, co-workers said “bon voyage” with a gold watch and an office chair.

Those were useful and appreciated gifts, but Davis left with something of far greater value: Her thick Rolodex, brimming with the names and telephone numbers of people she knows can make things happen in southern Minnesota and beyond. It’s the chief asset of “Resource Connections,” the company she formed after serving Region 9 from 1973-79 and 1985-96 as public information coordinator and marketing director.