They finish each other’s sentences. They answer personal questions the same way, even when one hasn’t heard the other’s answers. They’ve been making music together since they were 11 and 13—for 46 years now. They farm together and operate a tour business together. They’re Peter and Paul Wendinger, founders of the Wendinger Band and Wendinger Travel.
Read MoreNew Ulm: Edelweiss – What used to be Edelweiss Flower Haus, is now Edelweiss, Inc., and has a new owner, location, expanded sales floor, and scads of energy.
Vernon Center: Minnesota’s Highway 169 Antiques And Collectibles – For 23 years, Sandy Oppegard was executive director of the South Central Workforce Council, administering employment and training programs in a nine-county area. She retired last August.
Fairmont: HR Advisors – Since beginning HR Advisors in March 2007, Wes Pruett has developed accounts in Minneapolis, Mankato, Fergus Falls, Rochester, Fairmont, Slayton, and other cities.
Read MorePhotojournalist Flip Schulke caught the eye of America more than any person ever calling southern Minnesota home. Through his curious camera, he captured the drum beat of a generation by bringing to life legends like Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jacques Cousteau, Fidel Castro, and eight U.S. presidents, scores of astronauts, sports heroes, and politicians. He photographed the Berlin Wall over a thirty-five year period and for better than a decade was the world’s leading expert on underwater photography. He was one of the first photographers inside the Texas School Book Depository after President Kennedy’s assassination.
Working as a self-employed, freelance magazine photojournalist, his work included choice assignments from the mid-1950s to 1980s for Life, Ebony, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Time, National Geographic, and Look. His University of Texas archives contain more than 600,000 negatives, slides and prints.
Read MoreConsider: Art Olsen was the fifth child of the county courthouse custodian in Estherville, Iowa.
He was the president of Advertising Unlimited in Sleepy Eye, an R.L. Polk division in Detroit, R.L. Polk itself in Detroit, and Norwood Promotional Products in Austin, Texas. These businesses ranged in size from $60 million to $450 million in revenue. Since 2003, he has been president and co-founder of New Ulm-based start-up Beacon Promotions Inc. His most recent company custom prints and supplies promotional products to 4,500 distributors—and is growing rapidly.
Read MoreIt’s a blazing hot summer afternoon. Not a single cloud in the sky and not even the tiniest hint of relief in the thick breeze moving through the air. Outside the door of a pole barn on the shadeless side of Valley Street in New Ulm, temperatures are soaring above 90 degrees. But inside the barn, which serves as Jeremy Drexler’s shop, it is comfortably cool.
Read MoreIt’s easy to understand why Barb Haroldson regrets being confined to her office on the second level of 16 North Minnesota Street in New Ulm.
Downstairs, the rich aroma of hot coffee lingers in the air; the warmth of hot ovens filters through the space, mingling with the pleasant chitchat stretching from one end of the building to the next. Soft chairs and sturdy tables encourage friendly conversations over a wasabi chicken salad or a cup of Hungarian mushroom soup. The European street scenes painted along the walls provide a brief interlude from a gray winter day in southern Minnesota. And the customers come and go with cheerful greetings for the familiar faces behind the counters.
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 MoreLori Wightman had no intention of staying in New Ulm.
When she accepted an assignment from Allina Health Systems in July 2002 to serve as interim president of New Ulm Medical Center, she intended to keep it exactly that. “I figured I’d be here six months, that I’d just keep things held together until a new president could be found,” Wightman says. “I didn’t necessarily want to stay in New Ulm.”
Read MoreMore than a decade after Jamie Cimino and his wife began Canyon Outback Leather Goods, he no longer notices the rich, heady aroma of leather permeating every inch of the 15,000 sq. ft. building he built in New Ulm two years ago.
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