50 Kansans You Should Know
If we’ve learned one thing from four years of rounding up subjects for our annual 50 Kansans You Should Know feature, it’s that a common virtue of those good people is the quality of determination.
We at Ingram’s can relate to that. After all, we sit just a few hundred yards from the Sunflower State’s eastern border. It rubs off—or maybe it just comes in with the western winds. So when we tallied up the 150 people recognized in the first three years of this feature, we realized something was missing: Blanket coverage of the state.
Kansas being what it is—a state with vast swaths of farmland and prairie only occasionally broken by a stretch of urban development—its limited numbers of population centers can skew one’s perception of the state’s residents. While we’ve been able to introduce our readers to many characters unique in their own ways—yet bound by shared values—those chosen to date represent just 36 of the state’s 105 counties.
Now the combined residency of those 36 counties comes to more than 2.1 million, in a state of 2.8 million. But it’s hard to believe that a state as geographically diverse as Kansas is lacking in subject matter across an expanse of 69 counties with 700,000 other souls.
So, more determined than ever, we dug into additional resources this year to extend our reach across a state of 82,276 square miles. And we indeed moved the needle a bit—adding many more counties in this year’s tally.
Better, but we’re still not satisfied. After all was said and done with the 50 Kansans You Should Know for 2014, a thought occurred to us: It’s easy to identify one-of-a-kind individuals in a city of 385,000, like Wichita, or even 21,000, like Hays. But you can miss out on a lot of interesting and intriguing people in Kansas by dialing into Google alone. You need to do it with determination, networking, and getting behind the wheel to check out those nooks and crannies where unforgettable characters live.
So here’s our promise to you: As Ingram’s continues its march across the state with its Destination Kansas project this year, we’re committed to some serious name-taking. All of you in Wallace County (population 1,517), take note—we plan on being in the neighborhood before long. And we’re all ears.
Gene Camarena
La Raza Pizza, Wichita
Most people who secure a Harvard MBA don’t put it to use at Pizza Hut. But Gene Camarena isn’t most people, and he wasn’t working in the kitchen—the Salina native started working for the parent company founded by two titans of Wichita entrepreneurship, Dan and Frank Carney.
It was, says Camarena, “my first and only job after Harvard.” “I became a franchisee in 1991 with restaurants in the panhandle of Texas,” from that beginning, Camarena has overseen the evolution of La Raza Pizza, one of the 150 largest Hispanic-owned businesses in the nation, now with restaurants in Texas, New Mexico and Indiana. He’s also been involved in business holdings including banking, real estate and hotels, as Marriott Hotel franchisee since 1995.
Despite those far-flung interests, Camarena is firmly rooted in the Air Capital of the World, a city that means much to him for its entrepreneurial culture, and much to his family. “My wife’s family was in Wichita and we made the decision to stay there for family reasons,” Camarena said. “Having the entrepreneurial activity in Wichita as well as a number of quality Pizza Hut franchisees was a positive.”
After high school in Salina, he earned a degree in accounting and business at KU in 1979, then moved to Wichita, where he’s been since, save for two years at Harvard. He has two grown daughters and a wife of 25 years, Yolanda.
An avid KU fan, Camarena is able to enjoy the advantages of executive management, the access afforded by living in the heart of the nation, and a quality of life that encompasses smaller-town feel and big-city amenities. And he’s able to devote time to philanthropic causes.
“I spend a lot of time with my family,” he says, “I do travel for business often as well as for the boards I work on. Our other business holdings are also generally in the Midwest which makes Wichita a great base to travel from.”
One of those is with a middle-school boys’ class at Holy Savior Academy. “Most of these boys are from lower income families and often single-parent households, I work with them on building basic business knowledge and the importance of education for success in life.”
“My hope is these young men will learn that that great things are possible through hard work, discipline and self-confidence.”
Reggie Robinson
Washburn University, Topeka
Military discipline, public policy, higher-education instruction and legal acumen: Reggie Robinson is the complete package. An Army brat who toured outposts around the world before finishing his childhood years in Salina, he’s the director for the Center for Law and Government at Washburn University. There, his passions and expertise combine to influence the next generation of public-sector leaders—among others. “The thing the center can do is connect with those students who may come to law school with a different set of ideas about what it means to lead.” Public-sector leadership, he says, can come in myriad forms once someone has a law degree—with a government agency, in a statehouse or Congress. “There are all kinds of ways to use that degree to engage in public policy.”
Robinson has raised two daughters with his wife Jane, a nursing-school teacher, and has an extensive public-service resume of his own. He was president and CEO of the Kansas Board of Regents from 2002 to 2010; was chief of staff to former KU chancellor Robert Hemenway before that, and taught at KU’s law school. And that was after returning from Washington, where he was a special assistant to Attorney General Janet Reno.
Mollie Carter
Sunflower Bank, Salina
The product of an urban-rural upbringing divided between Salina and Kansas City, Mollie Carter made it to the big-time in financial services, working for John Hancock Financial during most of her 13 years in Boston. But life, as it tends to do, placed a decision in front of her back in 1997. “My first daughter was born in Massachusetts, but we moved here when she was six weeks old,” recalls the CEO of Salina’s Sunflower Bank. “I loved Boston and was having a great time there, but I knew the Midwestern values were something I wanted to instill in my children.”
The pace here suited her, and in ways that go beyond navigating traffic for a day-care pickup run. “Growing up in the Midwest, in a funny way, creates a broader perspective,” Carter says. “Being part of “flyover” country is special because you not only know what others are flying over, but you know a fair amount about where they are flying from and flying to.”
A graduate of Shawnee Mission East, she spent a year in boarding school in Colorado Springs before heading east to earn a bachelor’s in economics at Dartmouth and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 1995, while living in Boston, she joined the board of her family’s bank in Salina, making monthly trips back for board meetings for two years. She was able to serve as bank chairman from Kansas City until 2005, when additional duties as CEO and president compelled the move to Salina. As the top executive of a community bank, she’s twice earned recognition as one of the 10 most influential women in her field from U.S. Banker magazine.
Stephen Anderson
Kansas Policy Institute, Wichita
As a rule, Kansans are up for a challenge, but even for a guy who’d worked with numbers his whole career, Steve Anderson ran into a different sort of beast when Gov. Sam Brownback named him his first budget director in 2011.
“We had very little money in the bank—the prior fiscal year had ended with less than $1,000 in cash on hand—and the Kansas Legislative Research Division had projections that said we were facing a $500 million budget deficit” for the coming year. “My office had to spend a large amount of time dealing with cash flow issues that were ever present those first few months just to ensure that we weren’t bouncing checks.”
Despite an outcry that pro-business tax policies would worsen that dynamic, Brownback pushed them through each successive legislative session since. Result? “The state is now $118.4 million over estimate for FY-2014,” Anderson says, and barring a global economic issue, should bolster a large ending balance for this fiscal year, currently projected at $700 million.
A native of Manhattan, Anderson earned an accounting degree from Fort Hays State University and his MBA from the University of Central Oklahoma. He also earned 19 teaching certifications, including advanced-placement math and physics. He and his wife have a daughter and two grandchildren, and among his business interests, he is still a partner in the accounting firm of Anderson, Reichert and Anderson in Osborne. Before leaving Brownback’s Cabinet last summer and joining the Kansas Policy Institute, a free-market think tank based in Wichita, Anderson was an integral figure in turning around a bleak financial picture.
Russ Meyer
Cessna Corp., Wichita
There’s a good reason they call Wichita the Air Capital of the World. Roughly half the nation’s general-aviation aircraft—and one-third of the world’s—are built there, and that’s after the loss of an anchor like the Boeing Co. There’s almost no good reason why the citizens of Wichita haven’t voted Russ Meyer Jr. king for life: In the 31 years that Meyer served as its chairman, Cessna Corp.’s assembly lines pounded out 67,000 aircraft. more than any other company in the world.
Just a year after joining the company as executive vice president in 1975, he made the leap to chairman and chief executive officer, and held both titles until retiring in 2005 and taking the title chairman emeritus. Meyer has been an outsized influence in the aviation industry overall, including three stints as chairman of the board of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. He has enough industry honors to overload a 747, and has been a powerful advocate for developing incoming generations of pilots through the “Be A Pilot” program, credited for producing tens of thousands of new pilots and generating demand that yielded a $200 million economic impact.
After earning his degree from Yale, the Davenport, Iowa, native, spent three years as a jet pilot in the Air Force and three more in the Marine Corps Reserves, logging more than 17,000 hours of flight time.
Sheahon Zenger
University of Kansas
He grew up wanting to be a coach, and reached that goal early, joining the staff at Drake University after graduating from Kansas State in 1988. Today, Sheahon Zenger is still rubbing elbows with coaches, including a pair of nationally known names working for him in Bill Self and Charlie Weis.
But as athletic director at the University of Kansas, Zenger is charged with overseeing basketball, football and 14 other athletic programs with a combined budget of more than $70 million. He was named to that role in January 2011, with a mission to revive a football program that had slipped back into irrelevance. Zenger’s strategy for doing that was by hiring Weis, the well-traveled veteran of pro stadiums and college campuses who brought instant name recognition to the program. Indeed, after a 1–11 debut, Weis coached the Jayhawks to a 3–8 season last fall, and their first Big XII victory in three years.
A successful program would nicely complement a basketball program that has won at least a share of 10 straight Big XII titles under Self. Zenger’s coaching background includes seven seasons on the staff of Bill Snyder at K-State. After briefs stops at South Florida and Wyoming, he returned to Manhattan and began his career in administration. After four years as an assistant there and five in the AD’s chair at Illinois State, KU came calling.
Sheila Frahm
Former Senator, Colby
In four decades of public service, Sheila Frahm saw it all: from school board to U.S. Senate. “December 31 was the end of 40 years of my public-service career,” Frahm says of her duties with the state Board of Regents’ Post-secondary Education Technical Authority. Hailing from the fourth generation of a Thomas County farm family, she earned her degree from nearby Fort Hays State University, and not long after marrying Kenneth Frahm and becoming a mother, she started scratching a public-service itch by serving on the local school board. “I always served form the very beginning on education committees, starting with local board of education” and continuing through the state board of education, Kansas Senate, the lieutenant governor’s office and as Secretary of Administration.
Her rise through the political hierarchy reached its zenith in 1996, when Bob Dole left the Senate to pursue his presidential hopes. Gov. Bill Graves designated Frahm as his replacement, and for 147 days, she worked side by side with Nancy Kassebaum to represent the state in the Senate before losing a special election to Sam Brownback.
“It was certainly a highlight of my life, no question,” she says. “And it certainly broadened my perspective. Now, when I hear a news report on KANU early in the morning, I have to wonder what the rest of the story is.”
Joe Suhor
Suhor Industries, Overland Park
When Joe Suhor walked across the stage in the ballroom of the Overland Park Sheraton last June to pick up his award as one of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year winners in the Central Midwest region, he was 36 years and nearly 900 miles from his first steps on an entrepreneurial odyssey.
That began in 1977, when the new graduate of Delgado College—with a degree in architectural engineering—signed on with Acme Marble & Granite Co., then moved into sales and engineering roles with LaClede Steele. In 1986, less than a decade after college, he acquired the company he was working for, Sloan Enterprises, which specialized in burial vaults. Thus was born Suhor Industries, where he remains chairman and chief executive officer today.
Shortly after becoming a business owner, he joined the board of another prominent burial-vault maker, Wilbert, Inc., eventually buying Wilbert Funeral Services in 2011. The Ernst & Young honors last year recognized the dramatic growth that has made Suhor Industries one of the Top 100 private companies in Kansas City.
Case Dorman
Fiorella's Jack Stack BBQ, Overland Park
When he became the top executive at Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue, Case Dorman brought a little something extra to the job: A first-hand appreciation for the crew washing dishes and busing tables.
“The Jack Stack in Martin City was my first job at 16 years old,” says Dorman, who was raised there by a single mother of four who showed him a tireless work ethic, perseverance and fortitude. “I got to experience every job in the house,” including working the barbecue pit, he recalls.
In a leadership role, that experience carries over into providing not just jobs, but careers—with benefits like health and dental insurance, dental, retirement plans, life insurance and—yes, even in the restaurant industry, paid vacation time, etc. In the ’80s and ’90s, Dorman notes, the business lacked the glamour of Top Chef celebrity.
He also helped turn barbecue from a blue-collar dining experience into something much more. “We envisioned a barbecue experience where you could have a great craft beer or cocktail to compliment your meal or even a wine paired with dinner,” he says. “The traditional authentic brick oven barbecue was the hook, but the goal was to be a great restaurant.”
Linwood Sexton
Hiland Dairy, Wichita
Kansans are known for their work ethic, but Linwood Sexton is taking that concept to a whole new level. At 87, a full 22 years after most in his age cohort began drawing Social Security, Sexton still shows up for his daily shifts in the sales office of Hiland Dairy.
He’s looking forward to June, when he’ll mark his 60th anniversary with the dairy and its predecessor, Steffen’s Dairy. “I’ve cut back on the hours some,” he quips. “I’m supposed to go home at noon, but don’t always make it” with his roster of clients that includes schools, restaurants and larger institutions.
Speaking of institutions, Sexton qualifies as one in his own right. Fully 10 years before anyone had heard of Brown v. Board of Education, Sexton was shaking up the world of racially divided education in Kansas—in the classroom, and on the playing field.
He helped break the color barrier in Missouri Valley Conference athletics in 1944, an era where he had to make other sleeping arrangements on road trips, when he was barred from staying in the same motels or dining with his Wichita University teammates.
Worse, even though he was one of the nation’s leaders in rushing yardage as a running back, Sexton was denied his true potential because he was forced to sit out games in Tulsa and Texas. Despite that, he was named all-conference three times, and also lettered for WU’s basketball and track teams.
The university retired his number, 66, even before he graduated, and was in the first class inducted to WSU’s Hall of Fame in 1979.
