State Rep. Rod Roberts, R-Carroll (file photo)

Roberts said an interview that he was officially out of the race for the House District 51 seat he’s held a stranglehold on for a decade. He’s now completely focused on the Republican primary for governor and a series of debates set to begin April 7 in Sioux City. Roberts is also scheduled to be the guest on public television’s “Iowa Press” on April 16.

“I’m all in,” Roberts said. “The risk is well worth the taking.”

Roberts is the least known of the three candidates now seeking the Republican nomination for a run at Democratic Gov. Chet Culver.

Former Gov. Terry Branstad served in that capacity for four terms, and Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats is a leading conservative and was the party’s 2006 candidate for lieutenant governor. Roberts also has the smallest geographic base from which to launch his campaign, and he trails Branstad and Vander Plaats in fundraising.

All of that said, Roberts, who has been traveling the state since last summer, said there’s a hungering among GOP primary voters for a third option, a new voice.

“You’re 52 years old and the opportunity comes along,” Roberts said. “There are just too many interesting dynamics among the electorate to rule out a surprise candidate doing well.”

With Roberts out the big local political question remains: Who will run to succeed Roberts, a highly popular legislator?

One Republican, 41-year-old Joel Pawletzki of Carroll, an employee at Graddy’s tomato operation and a hospital dietician worker, has indicated an intention to run as a Republican for the House seat. But local Republican leaders say they are talking to possible other candidates as well.

“We’ve been meeting with them for the last several nights,” said Craig Williams of Manning, the Carroll County Republican Party’s chairman.

Williams, an ag-businessman who has long been active in GOP politics, has considered running himself but ruled it out.

“The timing is not right,” he said, citing business commitments.

Williams sees 2010 as a big year for Republicans, and wants to make sure a Republican is along for the ride in House District 51 which includes all of Carroll County and parts of Crawford County and Sac County.

“It’s a Republican season,” Williams said. “I think the momentum is on our side at the moment.”

At the same time, registered Democratic voters far out-number Republicans in Carroll County — the dominant geography in the district.

“Do I think it’s a safe Republican seat? Of course not,” Williams said.

As of March 1, there were 5,114 Democrats and 3,092 Republicans. Independents accounted for 6,608 registered voters in the county.

“I know the state Democratic Party is calling around,” said Carroll County Auditor Joan Schettler, a Democrat.

She added, speaking of both parties, “If someone’s interested in that seat, boy, this is the year to go after it.”

Time is running short for those who may want to make the move.

The filing deadline for state candidates is this Friday with the Secretary of State’s Office.

Candidates for a House seat need 50 signatures.

If no one emerges on the ballot the GOP could convene a convention and nominate a candidate there to run in November.

Theoretically, if the GOP could keep other candidates off the Republican ballot, and Roberts loses his gubernatorial primary bid, the party could appoint him for a House re-election bid after the June 8 primary.

“They would have to make sure there was no Republican candidate,” Schettler said.

But Roberts said he has no interest in such maneuvering on his behalf.

“I can’t do both,” Roberts said. “I’ve got to choose one or the other.”

Roberts has talked to potential candidates for the House seat as well. He didn’t reveal the identities of those people in the interview.

One local Republican, Carroll County Supervisor Mark Beardmore, has said he will not be a candidate for the seat.

“It’s humbling and pleasing to be thought of even in the same breath and same sentence as Rod Roberts,” Beardmore said.

But Beardmore said he made a commitment to do the job of supervisor and won’t seek the House seat now.

“I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” Beardmore said.

Carroll Daily Times Herald reporter and Iowa Indy alum Douglas Burns interviewed Nissen after seeing an ad she placed in his paper telling readers she’s selling two television sets because of “Obama on every channel and station.”

“I just got tired of watching him on every channel,” Nissen said. “I thought, my gosh, does he ever stay at the White House?”

Nissen, who voted for U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential election, said she could live with seeing Obama come on television to make serious announcements. But he seems to be on all the time, Nissen said.

When the president does appear on a channel she happens to be watching, Nissen said, she quickly turns.

“I have the remote real handy,” Nissen said. “I have the batteries. I’m ready for him.”

Despite her annoyance, Nissen is keeping her flat-screen television.

As Palin, the GOP vice presidential candidate, addressed a crowd estimated at 10,000 at Hy-Vee Hall a week ago, Sinnard was standing behind the Alaska governor — seeing the event in the same way Palin did.

Sarah Palin signs an autograph in Sioux City last Saturday. Later that day, she appeared at HyVee Hall in Des Moines.

“Everybody was just enamored and excited, hanging on her words,” Sinnard said. “Since I was behind her, I could see the reaction of those who were watching her and, wow, is she good. She drew a huge crowd that was energized and ready to get out the vote.”

Sinnard said there is substance behind the media caricature of Palin. “She got to where she was on her own,” she said. “She didn’t have a man to get there like Hillary [Clinton].”

What’s more, Sinnard said, Palin’s message will resonate with Iowans.

“I thought her speech was very good,” Sinnard said.  “She referenced Joe the farmer and that drew a lot of applause.  I catch a lot of everyone’s — Obama, (Sen. Joe) Biden, McCain — speeches via cable TV as I work from home.  So, some of the aspects of her speech weren’t new to me, but to those who aren’t as obsessed as I can be with politics, it was very good. She attacked Obama on taxes, spreading the wealth.”

Most independent analysts say Obama’s economic plan would only raise taxes on the relatively small percentage of American families earning more than $250,000 per year.

Sinnard she said was thrilled that Arizonan McCain selected Palin as his running mate.

“I think she has a ton of experience and I think she deserves to be where she is,” Sinnard said, adding, “What has (Barack) Obama run?”

Sinnard, 41, a mother of three children who works for a New York information technology firm virtually from a computer in her Carroll home, said that in spite of recent polls showing Democrat Obama ahead, she senses a tightening race.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Sinnard said. “The polls are getting closer.”

That said, Sinnard is frustrated with the popular image that has been created of Palin. She thinks not-so-thinly veiled sexism is very much at work in the media and Democrats’ portrayal of Palin.

“I think a white female is at the bottom of the totem pole these days,” Sinnard said.

She added, “I don’t even think they would have treated Condoleezza Rice like that.”

Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, was mentioned as both a presidential and vice presidential candidate for the Republicans, but she expressed no interest in those positions this cycle.

If McCain should lose on Tuesday, Sinnard expects Palin to be the immediate front-runner for the Republicans in the 2012 Iowa caucuses.

Ron Olson, who grew up in rural western Iowa, now leads a firm of 180 lawyers in Los Angeles.

One of the more powerful men in the history of Hollywood, studio boss Lew Wasserman, had some advice for a Manilla, Iowa-kid-turned Los Angeles lawyer.

“Ron,” said Wasserman. “You stay out of the limelight because it will only fade your suit.”

But one can only keep spectacular success under wraps for so long.

Ron Olson, 67, born in Carroll and raised in Manilla, a son of an insurance salesman-broker, is a primary lawyer at Munger, Tolles & Olson, the firm that American Lawyer magazine just named No. 1 in the nation. It is the first time the magazine has ranked a Los Angeles firm at the top.

Olson, a close, lifelong friend of the late Kenneth Macke, the former Target CEO from Carroll, is featured on the front cover of that leading legal publication looking very much like a man who belongs there.

It would be an understatement to say he comes highly recommended.

One of the more high-profile American financiers in history, Warren E. Buffett, has relied on Olson as friend and counsel for years.

“I could go on for pages about Ron — all very favorable — but there is a lot going on here so I will keep it short,” Buffett wrote in an e-mail. “Ron is a great friend and a great adviser. My wife and I made him a trustee under our will. That’s about as good an endorsement as anyone could have.”

In a phone interview from California, Olson said Buffett knows how to bring out the best in people.

“He makes friends that are very close,” Olson said.

A former Drake University halfback (when they played Division I schools), Olson projects the physical confidence of someone who even in his 60s might just believe he could still gain 10 yards if the linemen could find him a glimmer of light.

With a confident countenance, the twinkle of an office oracle, he has the commanding presence of someone able to provoke a settlement or plea bargain by just opening the door.

He has more than enough resume to back up the magazine-cover image.

Munger has represented Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in recent deals.

“They’re very responsive,” Buffett tells American Lawyer. “They get results, and they get them fast. You are dealing with extraordinarily high-quality people.”

Warren Buffett (right) and Ron Olson at Fenway Park on Sept. 9. Buffett threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Red Sox game that night.

Olson himself represented the Yahoo! Inc. board of directors in its recent merger with Microsoft.

He has represented Paramount’s chairman and the Spanish-language television Goliath Univision.

“I have a foot in Hollywood and a foot in what I would call the more traditional corporate practice,” Olson said.

Earlier in his career Olson battled in the courts for some of the men who shaped television and film — such as Norman Lear, the trailblazing creator of “All in the Family,” featuring the iconic Archie Bunker and dealing in such a raw, honest way with race and class that the show retains a relevance even in reruns today.

“These were probably the greatest television writers of all time,” Olson said.

Olson counseled Lear and other members of the creative community against Family Viewing Time in the 1970s, a period early in the evening that the Federal Communications Commission exercised tight control over — to the famous suffering of “All in the Family” and other cutting-edge programs.

“(President) Nixon and his people got it in their head that television had gotten too violent and there were too many sexual innuendos,” Olson said. “They wanted to clean up television.”

A U.S. District judge eventually ruled that the government had coerced the networks. Olson’s legal arguments literally affected the way tens of millions of Americans would spend their evenings. They could watch what they wanted.

“As a result of the case, the family hour ended,” Olson said.

If Olson had success navigating the intersections of law and Hollywood, it is in part because he excelled at choosing mentors, like Wasserman, the late Universal Studios titan, who in cutting a deal for actor Jimmy Stewart that involved a percentage of the profits in “Winchester ’73” changed the balance of power in movies to the big stars and directors.

“He was the giant,” Olson said. “There was no one bigger.”

In decades of high-profile legal work, Olson also earned an international reputation.

He represented the Republic of the Philippines against the family of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, who left with a treasure trove of cash and other riches when they sought exile in Hawaii.

Olson helped trace the Marcoses’ ill-gotten gains. So what about the 2,700 pairs of shoes Imelda Marcos famously left behind in just one palace?

“We didn’t take those away from her,” Olson deadpanned.

Olson has a lengthy record of pro-bono work on behalf of disabled clients and Native Americans and other parties.

His firm, as the Los Angeles Times notes, also does quite well with keeping an eye on the bottom line. The firm’s revenue per lawyer increased 11 percent to $1.14 million last year, The Times reported. The firm’s total revenue was more than $200 million with 180 lawyers.

The man on the cover of American Lawyer at the top of this organization in one the nation’s largest metropolitan areas is still very much connected to the rural Iowa of his youth.

Olson not only has a 4-month-old Black Labrador, for pheasant hunting, of course, but a farm between Audubon and Kimballton, where corn and soybeans grow and cattle are raised. He returns for planting and fall hunting and on some other occasions.

Olson’s parents, Clyde “Blue” and Delpha (Boyens) Olson, were living in Aspinwall at the time of his birth, but he grew up in Manilla.

His father was a successful general broker and insurance salesman.

“My father had an especially strong presence in Manning, selling insurance to most of the major farm-to-market truckers and used Herb Kuel’s tavern as a place for receiving messages from farmers who wanted to see him,” Olson said.

Delpha Olson worked as a teacher, starting in the Great Depression, during which time she cut wood to heat the school and scooped sidewalks.

She grew up on a farm east of Irwin and for her junior and senior years of high school went to Harlan so that she could obtain “normal training.”

“That was, in those days, a way to get a teacher’s certificate without going to college,” Olson said. “There was no way for her to get back and forth between Irwin and Harlan on a daily basis for high school. Therefore, she moved into a little room above the nickel and dime store.”

Olson’s mother started teaching at the grade school then based in Aspinwall.

“She and another woman, Lucille Rowan, whose husband operated the barber chair in my grandpa’s tavern, taught all eight grades, acted as the janitors, shoveled the snow in the winter, and built the fires,” Olson said. “For all of that they were being paid $40 a month and, because this was in the midst of the Depression, mom was unable to cash the first four or five checks because the local bank holding the school district’s money had closed.

“Based on the many former students who have been part of my life, I think mom was a much beloved teacher. Later in life, she continued to teach Sunday school at the local Lutheran Church in Manilla and piano lessons. At her funeral, I took note of the fact that her piano students may not have progressed as far in their piano studies with my mom as they might have with others, but I was sure that nobody could have taught them more about love. She was special.”

The family lived in Manilla among a number of relatives. For his part, Olson graduated from Manilla High School in 1959.

“I did all the things you do in small-town schools — played all the sports, band, chorus, and even an opera, ” Olson said. “It was a great opportunity. It was like having the whole town rooting for you. I know Ken Macke felt the same way, and ever since I’ve had the same feeling — a feeling that the whole town has continued to root for me.”

Through the years, Olson with Manilla ties, and Macke, a Carroll native, shared western Iowa roots with success on larger professional stages.

“I think there’s a lot of what we grew up with in western Iowa,” Olson said. “Part of it is just as simple as you learn how to work. That’s an important aspect of anyone’s career. You learn how to work and you learn how to respect people. Growing up as he and I did you really didn’t have a sense of anyone being rich or poor. You didn’t have to have someone validated by some fancy credential. It’s a place of very few excesses. I think that’s wonderful.”

It’s an experience he shares with his wife.

Olson and his wife of 44 years, Jane (Tenhulzen) of Denison, have three children: Kritstin McKissick of Denver, a graduate of Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University with experience at the World Bank for which she was, among other things, the country officer for Nicaragua; Steven Olson, a Stanford University and University of Michigan Law School graduate who is in private practice in Los Angeles; and Amy Duerk of Missoula, Mont., a graduate of Carlton College (where she was captain of the soccer team) and the University of Michigan Law School. She has worked for the Environmental Protection Agency as well as a law firm in San Francisco. She now practices law in Missoula.

American Lawyer recently featured the father-son tandem of Ron Olson and Steven Olson among its “paternal powerhouses” along with such notable figures as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his son Eugene, and former Secretary of State James Baker III and his son.

Olson’s wife, a University of Nebraska graduate, started a journalism career in Denison. Olson recalls many instances in which his courted gal ran off to cover stories, leaving his plans changed for the evening.
“She was a committed journalist,” Olson said. “You know the type.”

While he was in law school she worked as a writer for the Ypsilanti Press in Michigan and, later, during his time in England she was a journalist in Oxford, England.

Ron Olson has a younger brother, Dr. James Olson, now living in Seattle, Wash.

Following high school Olson headed to Drake University — although he had an opportunity to go to the Ivy League.

“I was really the first in my family to go to college,” Olson said. “Today, I recognize the difference between Drake and Dartmouth, but in those days it looked an awful long ways away.”

At Drake, Olson played halfback and was involved with student government and debate.

Olson recalled the old-school practices of the 1950s in which two players competing for a starting job would be thrown into a pit, with the one emerging getting the spot.

“That was pretty tough going,” said Olson, who played halfback.

Members of the Drake University backfield in the early 1960s are pictured. From feft are Paul Kassulke, who played for 10 years with the Minnesota Vikings, achieving All Pro status several years; Terry Zang, who went on to play back-up quarterback to Bart Starr with the Green Bay Packers; Jim Evangelista, who became a high school coach in Chicago; and Ron Olson, a Manilla native who now leads a top national law firm.

He remembers a strategy the two Drake friends employed to surreptitiously hydrate themselves at practice as coaches wouldn’t let players drink water in an effort to toughen them.

Olson and Macke would bury lemons in the field the night before, dig them out when coaches weren’t looking the next day and chomp on the fruit for the fluids.

Excelling at Drake, Olson was accepted at the prestigious University of Michigan Law School. He did well there and earned a Ford Foundation fellowship. Studying in Oxford, England, in 1967, Olson started a lifelong friendship with former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., a candidate for the presidency in 2000.

Olson played on an American basketball squad with Bradley, a Rhodes Scholar.

“My job was to feed Bradley,” Olson said. “I was point guard, but I wanted to be sure he did the shooting.”
It’s a strategy that’s worked well at Munger, Tolles & Olson, where Ron Olson for 30 years has worked to find the nation’s top legal talent — and get them the ball, so to speak.

His endgame: develop young lawyers into great lawyers.

“Focusing on dollars and cents wasn’t enough,” Olson said.

Photo: Carroll Daily Times Herald

Community bankers in the rural city of Carroll unanimously agree that their local economy is stronger than the national one, and that capital will be available to support the farm economy in 2009.

“The ag economy is in great shape,” says Scott Steffen, vice president at United Bank of Iowa in Carroll. “The money’s going to be there.”

Added Tom Loeck, vice president at Commercial Savings Bank in Carroll, “I think it’s safe to say there is money available for farmers.”

Iowa’s state banking superintendent Tom Gronstal, formerly an executive with his family’s Carroll County State Bank, says Iowa’s 323 state-chartered banks are in solid shape as there is “very little” exposure to the sub-prime mortgage issue — a major problem in the economy stemming from lenders reaching out to homebuyers with enticing interest rates for properties they ultimately couldn’t afford.

“All we can do out here is rejoice in the fact that the events that are taking place will have at most a trickle-down effect,” Gronstal said.

At Iowa Savings Bank in Carroll, vice president Michel Nelson says the tumultuous times offer opportunities for the wise and prudent.

“Western Iowa is a good place to be right now and we will do better than the country as a whole,” Nelson said. “Local housing prices have remained rational; our agricultural assets are a bedrock; strong community banks providing local credit are in place — and, this area’s economic drivers are not over-leveraged.”

Carroll County State Bank vice president and chief loan officer Jeff Scharfenkamp said the one-on-one, old-fashioned approach taken by community banks pays off over time — a fact that is highlighted by the meltdown of larger financial entities in New York that were too cute for their own good with the handling of a basic American deal: the home mortgage.

“We’re not making sub-prime loans,” Scharfenkamp said. “We’re not buying pools of sub-prime loans.”
Scharfenkamp, who is the chief loan officer for CCSB overseeing agriculture and commercial business, said much of the current mess has been driven by mortgage brokers who don’t approach loans the same way as community banks. Banks rely on cash flow and collateral, not making deals as quickly as possible to collect commissions.

“Community banks in this area just didn’t do stuff like that,” Steffen said.

He said the lesson of the last few weeks is this: deal with your community banks.

“We know farming,” Steffen said. “We understand it and we want to pass it along. That’s why we’re so successful at what we do.”

Scharfenkamp said high land prices and the troubled credit market are far from setting up a situation similar to the farm crisis of the 1980s because for the most part the people picking up land can afford it and aren’t overleveraged.

“A lot of the people buying the ground today are in pretty strong hands,” Scharfenkamp said.

This doesn’t mean the farm economy is immune from national economic trends.

As oil prices have fallen so have those for corn and beans.

Some local bankers say they think that commodities have dropped because of links to other troubled bundled investments.

The bankers say the times are no doubt anxious, and they are fielding calls and questions from apprehensive customers.

But the bankers talked of only one Depression-era scenario in which a depositor came into a bank and demanded all of his money in $100 bills.

That’s why the recent increase of the FDIC ceiling on protection of deposits at banks from $100,000 to $250,000 has been so important for Carroll, Scharfenkamp said.

“I’ve gotten more of those questions over the last 30 days than I have over the last 17 years,” he said.
There are no reports of increased defaults on loans, large or small, in Carroll.

“We really haven’t seen an increase in past-dues,” said Tom Laing, vice president at Commercial Savings Bank in Carroll.

Laing said he is guardedly optimistic about farm prices and expects Carroll to emerge from the national crisis in better-than-average shape.

He’s battled Wal-Mart for years and is particularly disturbed with the vacant stores the chain leaves in its wake when its Supercenters replace their smaller forerunners.

In Carroll, Iowa, the city is dealing with just that. One of the more compelling continuing stories in Carroll is the impact of  the Supercenter on the community.

While there are encouraging signs, it’s far too early for a verdict.

“You really want to look out a year and a half later,” Norman said in a phone interview from Massachusetts. “You can’t really tell anything after a few months.”

With the announcement last month by Badding Construction that it had plans for a dramatic redevelopment of the former Wal-Mart property in the central business district, the case can be made that Carroll (population 10,000 but a retail trade center for west-central Iowa) is adapting to the Supercenter as well as any small city in the United States.

“I think local developers who support local merchants are critical,” Norman said.

Many other communities are stuck with empty Wal-Marts and must work with developers with no local ties, Norman said.

Badding Construction officially took ownership of the former Wal-Mart property in June and has unveiled an ambitious plan for reshaping the 11-acre tract in the heart of Carroll’s commercial district.

The veteran construction firm negotiated the purchase of the land and building – which is now being called The Depot Business Center – prior to the retail Goliath’s March Supercenter opening in a recently annexed area of western Carroll.

“Our vision five years from now is that this is a development we’ll be just as proud of as one of the other facilities and projects we’ve been involved with in western Iowa,” said Badding Construction President Nick Badding.

Working with Urbandale-based architects, Badding has planned a remodeling of the 72,000-square-foot former Wal-Mart and the addition of three separate buildings – 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 square feet – geared for retail, office and restaurant occupants.

“You’re fortunate that its 72,000 square feet because the very big stores are hard to move,” Norman said. “A 120,000-square-foot store, as you can imagine, is harder to fill.”

Ryan Horn, a spokesman for Wal-Mart in the Iowa region, says the company is making inroads on moving old property.

“We’re really making a lot of progress in terms of getting these buildings sold or sublet,” Horn said.

Wal-Mart owned the former Carroll site and was able to move it relatively quickly into Badding’s hands, Horn noted.

“I think that is a reflection of the fact that Carroll is a very vibrant business community,” Horn said.

One of the sites at the former Wal-Mart property, east of North West Street on a now grassy area between the former Wal-Mart lot and Westgate Mall parking, already is purchased by an undisclosed buyer.

Another lot, to the west of North West and south of Quiznos, is best suited for a restaurant because of the prime windshield spot, the high visibility right off U.S. 30. The firm has been in discussions with several restaurants about locating there.
Badding said his family’s business has been working with local, regional and national businesses for potential sitings in The Depot Center.

“We’ve been working very well with the chamber,” Badding said.

The final look of the facilities will depend on the occupants, as some chains have standard storefronts and signage, but the main building is laid out with an eye for five spaces for businesses or organizations, all of them having frontage.

Badding sees the development as a two- to five-year project.

He said marketing is “going well” and first tenants could be inked for the main building within a matter of months.

The western development, planned at 15,000 square feet, is set up for office space.
In terms of the broad-sweeping effects of the Supercenter development in Carroll, it is, as Norman said, too early too tell.

But at the Carroll Hy-Vee, Manager Randy Kruse is confident with his company’s approach to competing with Wal-Mart.

“We have felt the effects of it, but I think we have come through it so far well,” Kruse said. “Having said that, the battle is far from over. I think we’re putting up a great fight, and this is something we’ve been planning for two years.”

Kruse said he’s seeing weekend traffic at Hy-Vee increase as the newness factor, the pull of curiosity, wears off, and the Wal-Mart folds into the Carroll retail mix.

“We see our weekends getting stronger – and we see some new faces,” Kruse said.

One major advantage Carroll has over other cities with Wal-Marts is that the initial store was placed in the central business community – not on the outskirts of town where Wal-Mart is famous for siting new facilities.

“We still get calls, particularly from college students doing research, asking how we did that,” said Jim Gossett, executive director of the Carroll Area Development Corp.

Additionally, in the years before the Supercenter opening, Carroll worked aggressively on a Corridor of Commerce project to assist small businesses by providing more inviting atmospheres for customers in hopes of helping merchants lure people from Wal-Mart.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t serve everybody,” Horn said. “Wal-Mart doesn’t even serve a majority of people.”

Norman, who thinks Carroll should have fought the siting of Wal-Mart and sought to keep it from going to the edge of the community, acknowledges that the city has coped with Wal-Mart as well as any he’s encountered since he took on Wal-Mart in Greenfield, Mass., in 1993.

“Those two mistakes aside, yes, I think you’re right,” Norman said. “I wouldn’t be overjoyed that a Supercenter located on the edge of town, but I wouldn’t despair.”

When Macke retired in 1994, Dayton Hudson, the parent company of Target, had annual revenue of more than $19 billion.Accolades for Macke, who died at age 69 last weekend from complications associated with Parkinson’s disease, poured in from around the nation — from friends with Carroll ties to leading lights in business, such as Warren Buffett’s attorney, Ron Olson, the cable business news channel CNBC, to a in a feature obituary in Tuesday’s New York Times – which had front-page display on the newspaper’s Web site.

Bill Evans, the longtime Carroll educator now retired in Phoenix, Ariz., said in a phone interview that he’s known many accomplished Carroll natives.

“Macke was on the top of that pyramid, wasn’t he,” Evans said.

Macke’s brother, Jim Macke of Carroll, 11 years younger, said Kenneth serves as a role model for the extended Macke family — that his drive and success were contagious.

“He had that personality, an exceptional personality, that just radiated,” Evans said.

That factored into Jim Macke’s first mental image of his brother after hearing of the death.

“There was a major magazine with his picture on the cover,” Jim Macke said. “I saw that. He has pictures with the presidents and Buffett. He ran in a pretty unique circle.”

Kenneth Anthony Macke was born in Carroll on Dec. 16, 1938, a son of Leonard and Carol Macke. His father worked for years for wholesale distributor Farner-Bocken, and his mother, a homemaker, died at age 36 when Macke was a junior in high school.

A multi-sport star in the 1950s at Carroll High School, Macke was one of the best athletes to hail from the city, according to Evans. He earned a scholarship to Drake University where he cut an unusual figure for quarterback in that period: 6-1 and 230 pounds.

That made him probably the largest quarterback in Division 1 football then, said Evans. At the time, Drake played schools like Iowa State and Colorado and Oklahoma State.

“He played linebacker on defense,” said college roommate and lifelong friend Ron Olson, a Manilla, Iowa, native now living in Pasadena, Calif. “There weren’t too many quarterbacks who played linebackers.”

Evans, a Drake basketball star who went on to mentor generations of kids in Carroll, recalled talking to the Drake coaches about Macke.

“He’s not going to run 100 yards in the fastest time or make open-field plays,” Evans said. “But I guarantee once you have him on your team, he’s going to be a leader.”

Olson recalled the old-school practices of the 1950s in which two players competing for a starting job would be thrown into a pit, with the one emerging getting the spot.

“That was pretty tough going,” said Olson, who played halfback.

He remembers a strategy the two Drake friends employed to surreptitiously hydrate themselves at practice as coaches wouldn’t let players drink water in an effort to toughen them.

Olson and Macke would bury lemons in the field the night before, dig them out when coaches weren’t looking the next day and chomp on the fruit for the fluids.

Evans and Jim Macke said Kenneth Macke had an opportunity to play in the Canadian Football League but opted for the world of business.

Macke joined Dayton’s in 1961 as a merchandise trainee and began a 33-year career in retailing, rising through the ranks to head merchant positions at Dayton’s and Target. In 1976, he was named president and CEO of Target and in 1977 was named chairman and CEO. During his tenure, Target grew from 49 stores in nine states to 137 stores in 16 states and became the corporation’s top profit-maker.

In 1981, he was elected president of Dayton Hudson Corporation and in 1983 became its CEO.

Macke’s first job was as a 15-year-old shoe salesman in Carroll, working for the late Max Reed at Anderson’s Shoes.

“Max Reed had a tremendous influence,” said Jim Macke. “[Kenneth] learned how to deal with customers.”

During the decade he was chairman and CEO of Dayton Hudson, the company grew from 350 stores to 909 stores in 33 states and revenues more than doubled to over $19 billion. Macke was instrumental in the major acquisitions of Ayr-Way, FedMart, Gemco and Gold Circle/Richway; and in the consolidation of the department stores.

Ann Barkelew, a Macke friend and the vice president of corporate communications for Dayton Hudson for more than a decade, said Macke was proudest of helping shape strategies for the company’s three largest divisions: Target’s growth and move into California, the Northwest and the southeastern United States; the acquisition of Marshall Field’s; the successful defeat of an attempted takeover of Dayton Hudson, and working with and mentoring employees. During that time, the company was named “America’s Best Managed Company” by Forbes magazine.

“He was always very sensitive to being sure that everyone got taken care of,” Barkelew said. “Whenever I would go shopping at one Macy’s, the suit guys would come up and say, `How is Ken?’”

Barkelew said she staffed Macke for analyst speeches in New York City and helped coordinate his popular appearances on “The Today Show” before Christmas to talk about the retail scene and trends for the shopping seasons.

“One of my great challenges was beating him to the local NBC station,” Barkelew said.

Macke’s commitment to provide opportunities for women and minorities brought national recognition to Dayton Hudson as being among the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America, 100 Companies Providing the Most Opportunities for Hispanics and 50 Best Companies for Hispanic Women.

Barkelew said women and minorities thrived under Macke’s leadership, not because he had specific diversity goals in mind, but because he looked to hire the best people without regard for race or gender.

“He just did it,” Barkelew said. “He did not go about it intentionally.”

“The truth of it is he didn’t think about it that way,” said Boake Sells, the president and COO of Dayton Hudson from 1983 to 1987. “He just hired the best people and supported them.”

Added Sells, “He was very down to earth. He never ever was a big shot. He was the kind of guy who people loved.”

Macke was named by many publications and groups as one of America’s best managers.

Olson, the former roommate, went on to be highly successful in his own right, graduating from Michigan Law School, earning a fellowship to Oxford University and working for the U.S. government in civil rights during the heady days of the 1960s. He’s now an attorney in the Los Angeles area with investment icon Warren Buffett as a client. Additionally, Olson serves on the board of directors of specialty regional insurer Berkshire Hathaway.

“People tend to classify people as either heart people or head people,” Olson said. “Well, Kenny was both.”

Through the years, Olson, and Macke shared western Iowa roots with success on larger professional stages.

“I think there’s a lot of what we grew up with in western Iowa,” Olson said. “Part of it is just as simple as you learn how to work. That’s an important aspect of anyone’s career. You learn how to work, and you learn how to respect people. Growing up as he and I did, you really didn’t have a sense of anyone being rich or poor. You didn’t have to have someone validated by some fancy credential. It’s a place of very few excesses. I think that’s wonderful.”

Sells, a Fort Dodge native, recalled playing basketball against Macke and Carroll High School in the 1950s. In one contest, CHS won 62-60 — a score Sells remembered instantly when asked during a phone interview from his home in Naples, Fla., where he remains involved in business through venture capital pursuits.

“The only reason I remember that score is because Macke remembered it,” Sells said. “Macke and I played basketball against each other once. Carroll won, and he never let me forget it.”

Opponents on a high school court for a night, Sells and Macke worked closely during some of Dayton Hudson’s best years.

“One of the most defining parts of Macke is as a merchant,” Sells said. “He could walk into any store and just stand in the front of it and start telling you what was right or wrong with it.”

For his part, Macke served as a trustee of Drake University and was a director of the Walker Art Center and the Urban Coalition of Minneapolis. In 1989, he chaired the United Way annual campaign, breaking all records for annual fund drives and, in 1993, chaired the board of the Greater Minneapolis United Way.

He served as a director of General Mills, Carlson Companies, Unisys, First Bank, The Pillsbury Company, McGlynn Bakeries and Duckwall.

After his retirement, he moved to the Napa Valley in northern California and continued to mentor and invest in retail entrepreneurs.

“My dad was a born merchant” said his son, Jeff. “He was passionate about showing respect for every customer who walked in the door by giving them superior service and a clean place to shop. It sounds simple, but most brilliant ideas in retail are. By running the nicest stores in the discount world, Target clearly defined its niche and became one of the best companies in America. My dad absolutely loved working on Target and walking the aisles `undercover’ at every opportunity. Dad’s influence remains an inescapable part of the Target experience. I feel it especially when I go with my kids and tell them how `Grandpa helped make this place.’”

When he retired in 1994, Kenneth Macke told The New York Times that it was time to get off the corporate treadmill. “I have spent my entire career marching to a calendar,” he said, adding, “My fondest wish is that I will have the willpower to do nothing.”

“I really like this community,” Gehling said. “I pictured myself in an office and this is where I wanted to be.”

With the relatively lower overhead in Carroll based on national standards – and the prestige of an Iowa State University graphic design degree – Gehling is able to offer highly attractive rates with no drop-off in service to customers in larger cities like Chicago and Nashville.

One of the major Web sites she works with is for Nashville Real Estate Authority (www.nashvillerealestateauthority.com). She’s also built Canadian sites.

Gehling brings the experience working with these businesses to her cozy Carroll office on U.S. Highway 30 (211 E. Sixth St.), just a few steps east of Court Street.

Gehling also prides herself on being accessible and easy to talk to for a tech type, or a “nerd”  as she joked.

“A lot of times people are intimidated talking to a Web company or a company that does Web design,” she said. “Building a Web site can be enjoyable, and it can actually not cost a lot of money.”

Gehling stressed that all businesses should have some Web presence, and she encouraged people with home businesses or active hobbies to get on the Internet where revenue awaits the ambitious. She helped one Spirit Lake man take his glass torch-making skills from hobby to Web business.

“For people who have a Web site I’m good at taking a Web site to the next level,” Gehling said. “I deal with all types of people. I like talking about Web sites. I like building them.”

Web Sites to Impress.com, like so many businesses in the Internet age, started as a side venture for Gehling as she worked in Web design and management with ISU and Winning Solutions and the National Pork Board in Clive.

She is now pursuing her master’s degree in human and computer interaction at ISU..
Gehling, 28, and her husband, Nick, live on a farm north of Vail, a livestock-and-grain operation. For her part, Gehling, who hails from Geneseo, Ill., is a daughter of a farmer father, Greg Nelson, and teacher mother, Barb.

“I really like what I do, and I’m thankful I’m able to do this full-time,” Gehling said.

Martin Treu said his book is expected to be published in 2009 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Many U.S. cities are being featured in the book, including all three of the Iowa cities that have had substantial projects in their commercial areas in recent years.

Treu also is focusing on Providence, R.I.; Charleston, S.C.; Sarasota, Fla.; and other much larger, well-known cities in the United States for what is expected to be a 450-page book.

Treu said that through his work in Albia and Grinnell he learned about Carroll’s project.

“It’s addressing the image of the town,” Treu said. “That’s rather unique. I’ve seen some guidelines, but I haven’t seen a vision (like Carroll’s).”

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Treu, who now has joint British and U.S. citizenship, lives in London. He earned his undergraduate degree at Stanford University and did graduate work in architecture and design at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

In the 1990s, Treu said, he developed a love of historic renovation and other city development in the United States. He has more than 10,000 photos of main streets and other architectural points of interest.

“I’ve driven back and forth (the United States) and back and forth and back and forth again,” Treu said.

Treu said he expects the book to have crossover appeal, reaching both professional architects and the general public as Johns Hopkins has a reputation for handling works of that nature.

“They are taken seriously by scholars but at the same time market to the amateur or the person on the street who likes old architecture, design and Americana,” Treu said.

Speaking during a council-staff retreat session at the Carrollton Centre on Saturday, Eifler said Carroll must work aggressively to diversify the workforce by attracting younger people and minorities.

“Let’s face it,” Eifler, who is in his 50s, said. “We’re a white town. We’re getting older. We need more people and they can’t all be white. We’re all guilty, for lack of a better word, of being racist.”

He added, “We need to get some diversity here as far as races, religion.”

According to the Census, Carroll County’s population in 2006 was 98.8 percent white. Nearly 20 percent of the county is 65 years or older – higher than the state average of 15 percent.

The discussion emerged as council members eye possible remedies to Carroll’s workforce shortage – and whether government has a role at all with the process.

For his part, Councilman Bob Eich said he hoped to see at least two members of the council in the next decade come from minority groups.

“I envision having two minorities on the council,” Eich said.

After hearing that Councilman Tom Tait joked, “So we need a black woman.”

Mayor Jim Pedelty, whose daughter-in-law is African-American, said that for most of Carroll’s history there has been little diversity.

Said Councilman Jeff Scharfenkamp, “Carroll is kind of a Mayberry RFD community.”

Pedelty said he is concerned that Carroll’s population has been flat-lining over the last two decades.

“We’ve got the same population of 10,000 people,” Pedelty said.

Rather than looking at the issue through the lens of race, Pedelty suggested that property taxes in the city are too high for some people.

The mayor also said he’s worried that Carroll’s current leadership isn’t cultivating strong “lieutenants” to replace them when the time comes.

Councilwoman Carolyn Siemann said city leaders need to start thinking like young people to keep and attract a workforce. Developing wireless Internet access, something vital for younger people, is on the city’s action plan for 2008.

Eifler said Carroll can diversify without following the lead of other western Iowa cities.

“I’m not talking about meatpacking plants,” Eifler said.

City Manager Gerald Clausen said tolerance in Carroll needed to move beyond just race and religion.

“You can’t say homosexuals are bad people, because they are part of the future,” Clausen said.