The Kenya Airways pilot dips his left wing as if to prod Timothy Tulloch into appreciating the vast plains of Tsavo, and beyond, the snow-clad Mt. Kilimanjaro. Nairobi is fifteen minutes yet. The earth below is a lush paradise of cheetah, Maasai villages and elephant herds. The seat belt light above him flashes. Mt. Kilimanjaro appears out his window.
Read MoreOnly four persons from the nine-county area around Greater Mankato have been inducted into the Minnesota Museum of Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Of the four, three are Linders. Our cover story, John Linder, isn’t in the MMB Hall of Fame—yet, but he is creating lots of radio waves in our state’s broadcasting industry.
His waves aren’t tsunamis: they’re more a never-ending, behind-the-scenes ripple.
Read MoreDan Gislason digs the Icelandic countryside. It’s a winter wonderland of crystal-clean waterfalls and gargantuan glaciers, an arctic canvas of white and lipstick red homes nestled against pastel-green Ansel Adams ridges. Iceland is a cornucopia of mentally stimulating sights and refreshing sounds—the rushing waterfall, the flapping gull, the gentle spring wind melting ice. Rural Iceland would have been a natural fit for Dan today if his ancestors hadn’t left there in the late 1800s.
Read MoreDespite 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.
Read MoreYou can hear his high-tech tank approaching now: an Everest & Jennings electric wheelchair on commercial carpet emits a distinctive, high-pitched whirr, signalling “General” Al Fallenstein’s double-time advance to the front lines. While surveying the foxholes at 1725 Roe Crest Drive through powered-up binoculars, he really does seem like a field general leading troops into battle. And in response, the troops stiffen their resolve upon seeing his courage. All that’s missing is a tattered American war flag and a bugler’s charge.
It’s likely Al Fallenstein has never thought of himself as a corporate leader, or an inspiration, but nonetheless he is both and more. If what Napoleon said is true, namely, that “in war, the morale is to the material as three is to one,” then it’s no wonder the 85-division Taylor Corp. army has won so many corporate battles.
Read MoreWhen 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.
Read MoreA simple sandwich launched Najwa Massad’s career.
She operates Najwa’s Catering in Mankato, providing everything from box lunches to sit-down dinners, serving as few as five and as many as 2,500. She caters weddings, funerals, anniversaries and company events ranging from in-office lunches to picnics and parties. Massad has been the exclusive caterer for all events at the Midwest Wireless Civic Center since it opened in 1995.
Read MoreLowell Andreas helped cultivate Archer Daniels Midland Company into a $22 billion corporate wonder, and he did it by using the ol’ bean.
At 80, he’s an American business icon. In 1947, he and brother Dwayne purchased a little soybean processing plant in Mankato, renamed it Honeymead, and rehabbed it into the nation’s largest soybean plant of its type before selling out in the 1960s. Their success story could have ended there, with Lowell basking on a Florida beach, sipping iced tea through a bent straw, and playing endless rounds of golf on Bermuda grass. But it didn’t: he and Dwayne would invest their cash to reinvent American agriculture.
Read MoreCapstone Press keeps exploding, Mankato may someday be known as the “Book Publishing” Capital of the Upper Midwest.”
You’re excused if you’ve never heard of Capstone Press. New owners coaxed it out of financially troubled obscurity in 1990, re-starting it with two employees and a vision.
Read More