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.

But in the movie, Sly Stallone’s iconic character pulls himself from the mat while the audience is still in suspense, waiting to find out what will happen.

With three weeks until the election, this very real American drama is far from over, but both McCain and Sen. Barack Obama showed signs of end-game strategy, with McCain gleefully going for gusto, and Obama comfortable with allowing McCain’s old lines of attack to continue.

Many analysts are surely all over cable and the Net now giving McCain the debate on points. The only trouble with that is this: he lost the forest through the trees. Obama talked past McCain to the American people. McCain seemed more interested in winning a fight with Obama.

The Arizona senator tossed in 1980s-style attacks on Obama that seemed tired (e.g., liberal tax-and-spender) and ridiculous comparisons, such as the one he trotted out seeking to link Obama to Herbert Hoover.

McCain used the debate to continue his backfiring line of attack that Obama started his campaign in the “living room” of a terrorist, William Ayers. But for two years, Obama has appeared in our living rooms, through the TV or, for some Iowans, literally. The suggestion that he’s a stalking horse for dark forces is an eye-roller.

McCain was like the kid who jumps out from behind a bush and yells “boo” to scare you on the way to school — after jumping out from the same bush and yelling “boo” each day for the past two weeks. As Dionne Warwick would say, you just walk on by.

Swinging for Obama with haymakers, McCain made the classic mistake of the barroom brawler who, intoxicated with anger, forgets that such long reaches leave the thrower exposed. McCain’s attempts to hook Obama to certain ghosts of the Vietnam War haven’t worked because people are too busy fighting their own contempotary day-to-day battles. And we don’t care that Obama hasn’t traveled to South America, something for which McCain actually chided the Illinois senator with a snide line that just seemed mean — like something you’d hear from a 9-wood-wielding 72-year-old yelling at the 82-year-old he’s trying to play through on an Arizona golf course.

McCain, so fired up over Ayers, forgot to study his health care plan or develop a clear way to explain it. So on this real-world issue, one that’s scary stuff on Maple Street, the debate left the distinct impression that McCain’s plan could eliminate your employer-based coverage and replace it with a nebulous $5,000 credit — a situation that could leave older workers with a far worse deal.

Obama showed superior command of the details, leaving McCain with a weak retort of seeking to pin the supposed woes of “Joe the plumber” on Obama.

McCain made a miscalculation with his tax-and-spend attacks on Obama as well. Americans aren’t so worried about high taxes right now because the government can’t tax what they don’t have. They want some stability in their lives, someone to take charge and stop the hemorrhaging.

Even McCain’s best line of the night will come back to haunt him. “I’m not President Bush,” McCain said. “If you wanted to run against President Bush you should have run four years ago.” Anytime George W. Bush’s name is mentioned it is a loser for McCain, and it is he, not Obama, in all those pictures hugging and consorting with W.

Here in western Iowa, we were treated to another slap in the face as McCain, with the universe of federal spending to choose from when asked a question about where he may make some cuts, went right for the throat of ethanol. Some Republicans in recent days here in Carroll have told me they don’t like McCain’s position on ethanol but they view his comments as rhetorical. The cuts couldn’t make it through Congress so his statements are irrelevant, they argue. Considering what ethanol has meant to the farm economy of this part of Iowa, that’s a gamble most aren’t willing to take.

What’s more, on the energy front, McCain is proposing the construction of 45 new nuclear plants — not exactly a boon for western Iowa which will benefit if wind, solar and other renewable forms of energy are placed at the top of the nation’s energy strategy — as they are with Obama.

Finally, and perhaps most devastating for McCain, was a comment he made about abortion as he literally poo-poohed the idea of a “health of the mother” exception in a theoretical late term abortion ban. No matter how this spins, it still stings McCain and will be a deal-killer with independent suburban — and even rural — women, not all of whom have picked a candidate yet.

In fact, McCain’s opposition to the health exception was the only major new position to emerge during the course of the debate, and it will weigh heavily on certain undecided voters’ minds. One could make the case that the other 89 minutes and 45 seconds of the debate meant nothing politically for either man.

McCain may find himself playing defense among female voters all the way through Election Day.

In a survey of 600 likely voters who vote regularly in state elections, 53 percent said they would support Obama, and 39 percent said they would support Republican John McCain.

A total of 3 percent in the poll said they would support someone else, and another 5 percent were undecided.

Obama led among both male and female voters and all age groups as well as with independent voters. Of the independents polled, 55 percent support Obama and 37 percent support McCain.

The poll was conducted between Sept. 15-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

“I’m getting on board with Barack Obama. I think he’ll be an excellent president,” said Kathleen Krehbiel, of Solon., who came here as a Clinton delegate. She said she no longer wanted to carry out the “pretense” that Clinton could win.

Krehbiel and Stephanie Imhoff, another Clinton delegate, got up before the delegation this morning and urged people to vote for Obama, even engaging in his signature rallying cry: “Fired up. Ready to go.”

When they walked back to their seats, Obama delegate Sandra Pope of Ottumwa, opened her arms and said, “Welcome girls. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

According to David Burke of the Quad City Times, Borchers chose the Quad Cities after receiving a recommendation from Tom Wheeler, manager of the film office in the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

“My needs are quite simple. I need corn,” Borchers said. “And I understand you have that throughout the state.”

The original film, based on a Stephen King novella, was shot in the Sioux City area. Many who have come to view the film as a cult classic will want to know that Borchers plans to have the remake — especially in terms of the previously watered-down ending — remain more true to King’s writings.

The film will be shot in September and is expected to air on the Sci-Fi Channel next year and in European theaters. Since 1938, more than 100 films have been shot in Iowa.

According to the most recent census data, unmarried women – women who are single, separated, divorced, or widowed – make up a growing percent of the population. More than half of households nationwide are run by an unmarried woman.  There are more than 230,000 unmarried women in Iowa.

In the past, unmarried women in Iowa and nationally have been underrepresented both in terms of registration and in actually showing up to vote. In 2006, 135,084 unmarried women in Iowa were eligible to register but did not; a further 111,288 were registered to vote but did not cast a ballot.

WVWV says it has registered more than 12,000 unmarried Iowa women to vote.

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 just feel very strongly that we need to get the message out that in Iowa we have some of the neatest things to show people in agriculture,” Greteman said.

She said major agricultural facilities, like ethanol plants and working farms in Iowa, are of great interest to foreigners involved in food and energy production.

“What’s really great here is our agriculture and our heritage,” Greteman said.

What’s more, she said, places such as the Templeton Rye whiskey distillery should serve as developing draws for tourism.

“I see it as a way to promote Iowa as well,” Greteman said. “Iowa is really shortchanged on tourism dollars.”

In May, Star Destinations planned the ag tour for more than 30 Germans. In coming months, Star Destinations, located on U.S. Highway 71 North in the same complex with Windstar and Town & Country Travel, will work with Chinese tours.

Star is one of the first travel operators in the United States to be licensed for special arrangements with Chinese tourism. The Carroll company is marketing itself aggressively on the Internet and through other means to attract international clients. Tours from South America and other places around the globe are expected soon.

The tours will involve many potential U.S. points, but Star plans to incorporate Carroll County in as many as possible.

“We want to bring them all through Carroll,” Greteman said. “That’s one of our goals.”

For example, the German tour group, which consisted of working farmers and some government officials, went to the Chicago Board of Trade and John Deere in Moline, Ill., before making its way to Carroll.

Seeing a blend of rural and urban is vital for such tours, Greteman said.

“It’s important that they see a really modern city in the United States,” Greteman said.

In Carroll County, the tour group visited the POET ethanol plant, West Central Cooperative and Schenkelberg Implement.