George Laham
Laham Development, Wichita
Wichita was founded on a pioneer spirit, and a little bit of that was at work in 1988, when a real estate agent looked at a tiny corner of his hometown and saw nothing but possibilities. George Laham and a partner bought a three-acre plot in east Wichita, and started laying the groundwork for a project called Bradley Fair.
Two years later, retailers opened their doors in what eventually would become one of the city’s premier lifestyle centers. The addition of a national retailer, Talbot’s, in 1991, and a five-acre expansion in 1994 touched off a brand-name land rush that brought the first Gap store as well as Eddie Bauer and Banana Republic.
Laham secured the remaining 312 acres and the stage for Wilson Estates, a master-planned development that will include an office park, medical complex, hotel and residences. It’s a 450,000-square-foot jackpot. It also paved the way for Plazzio, a 350,000-square-foot retail and entertainment center and Regency Lakes, at 500,000-foot and the largest shopping center in northeast Wichita.
Steve Hawley
KU, Lawrence
As a kid growing up in Salina, Steve Hawley lived through the Sputnik craze, pondered the stars for a while—and put the dream on a back burner. “All the early astronauts were test pilots,” he remembers, “and I wanted to be scientist.”
But after the test-pilot-turned astronaut model had run its course with the last moonshot, U.S. space research took a new tack. “NASA began looking for scientists and engineers to be astronauts for the space shuttle at the time when I was finishing grad school,” says Hawley.
He made it into the first class of shuttle astronauts in 1978, then labored in training until 1984, when he went up on Discovery. Five flights and more than 770 space hours later, he was the Sunflower State’s most-traveled space cadet. Is there anything that compares with the rare combination of excitement and terror inspired by a shuttle liftoff? “I imagine that there is,” Hawley says, “but I don’t know what good examples might be.” His flights into space came with roughly 40,000 hometown fans pulling for him, and were routinely chronicled by the hometown paper in Salina. “I still feel close to Salina and the people there,” Hawley says. “I get there several times during the year.”
In his current role as a professor of astronomy at KU, Hawley has a unique vantage point on the quality of instruction. “The content of the astronomy classes that I teach is significantly different than it was when I was a student,” he says. “That’s due to the incredible progress we’ve made in understanding the universe.”
Rick Heiniger
AgJunction, Hiawatha
So you’ve never heard of precision agriculture, eh? Meet Rick Heiniger, who’s spent a career turning agriculture from a practice measured in acres to one an inch makes a big difference. He’s president and CEO of AgJunction, the latest branding incarnation in a series of companies that dates to his first venture in 1977.
A native of Bern, Kan.—yes, it’s Swiss—and a K-State grad, Heiniger runs a company that specializes in a unique range of technologies. “They’re used to make farming much more precise in nature,” he says. “Instead of managing by the field, we manage by the square foot, and each piece becomes a separate patient, every plant becomes an individal.”
That precision carries huge implications for farming, because it vastly enhances efficiency, reduces excess fertilizer use and boosts yields in an era where global food demand is surging. “You don’t waste water, you don’t waste inputs, you don’t waste seeds.”
Farming, he said, is unique in that you never get out of it quite as much as you put into it. “And that probably shouldn’t be,” he says, “since you have free solar power, free water with rain. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s why we do things precisely.” Heiniger’s business success demonstrates the potential for tech companies to thrive in rural areas, particularly with work-force considerations. “It’s just part of the DNA,” he says.
Mark Martin
Brookville Hotel, Abilene
By Mark Martin’s count, about 2.6 million chickens have taken a path through the Brookville Hotel’s kitchen on their way to that Great Coop in the Sky since he started washing dishes there in 1963. And more will follow suit before he hangs up the apron as fourth-generation owner of a central Kansas landmark—one that’s so popular, it’s occupied space in two towns.
His great-grandparents purchased the original hotel—yes, in Brookville—in 1895, and succeeding generations perfected the family-style chicken dinner that brought throngs in from nearby I-70. But growth and a faulty wastewater system compelled Martin and his wife, Connie, to relocate in 2000, building a replace of the famed hotel façade in Abilene, 40 miles to the east. It was tough to break with tradition, Martin said, “but I’m not an operator of sewer plants, and we couldn’t the meet requirements of state environmental codes.
Though he hailed originally from Eugene, Ore., Martin became a Kansan when his father came back to take over the family business in 1960. “I grew up around the kitchen,” he remembers. “That was pretty much all I did, washing dishes and stocking shelves.”
The relocation was abetted by a number of economic-development incentives; more than 20 communities were vying for the restaurant when word was out about a relocation.
Hard to imagine, but after working in an environment like that all week, Martin doesn’t eat much chicken outside the restaurant. “I like to fix myself a steak,” he deadpans.
Gary Harshbarger
Kansas Water Authority, Dodge City
Gary Harshberger grew up on a farm 13 miles south of Dodge City, and today, that enterprise covers nearly 20,000 acres. Average annual precipitation in southwest Kansas is about 22 inches—one-third less than the statewide average. So you can bet that water issues have Harshberger’s full attention. So much so that he sits on the Kansas Water Authority, serving as its chairman. Dry as it is historically, “southwest Kansas has been in a severe drought for four years, and dry land crops have either been non-existent or very poor,” he said. Irrigation has made the difference for him and for thousands of other farms in that region and, by extension, the state—nearly two-thirds of the state’s agriculture output comes from land that sits atop the Ogallala aquifer, he says. But Harshberger is just as concerned about surface water and the eastern part of the state, especially after a decline in reservoir levels because of that drought.
Harshberger left the family farm near Minneola to earn an electrical engineering degree at K-State, then took over the farm from a childhood idol: His dad. “I had a passion for the farm, being a caretaker of the land and its resources,” Harshberger says. “I was drawn to an environment where your word was your bond and a handshake sealed the deal; ideals that made this country great and what continues to make this state great. Here, I could build something, create what I wanted and take the farm that had been in my family for three generations to the next level and then, hopefully, pass it on.”
Ron O’Hanlon
Crop Quest, Dodge City
Ron O’Hanlon is a man of principal. When the independent crop consultancy he worked for decided to forsake that independence and align with farm-supply manufacturers, O’Hanlon’s boss chose to retire. O’Hanlon decided he was done, too.
Much to his surprise, the managers reporting to him said that if he went, they were going, too. And so did their direct reports, about 30 in all. When the western office got word of things, the movement’s numbers swelled to 65. That was the spark that eventually led to Crop Quest, the world’s largest employee-owned independent crop consulting firm, where O’Hanlon servres as the chief executive.
He doesn’t have to remember what that display of loyalty looked like—it’s still on the job with him more than 20 years later.
Crop consultants are like physicians who make house calls to farms. “I’m a plant doctor, an agronomist,” says O’Hanlon. “We go out to the fields and look over what’s happening, take soil samples and the such.
That means working with 3,000 farmers across the southern planes and front-range states of the southwest, with 1.4 million acres under contract.
John Meara
Meara Welch Browne, Leawood
To get through college in Illinois, John Meara had work for a CPA firm his senior year. He developed an appreciation for things that add up. After moving to KC in 1969 and spending eight years working for large accounting firms, he decided to see if he could handle a bottom line of his own with John W. Meara & Co. Today, his firm is Meara Welch Browne, a longtime Kansas City fixture now based in Leawood.
Meara’s career as a CPA had a particular concentration on business-valuation cases, and he’s a certified fraud examiner who directs auditing, business valuation and litigation support services for the firm, and provides general business consulting.
In another universe, young John Meara might have finished law school at UMKC, but as things turned out, dealing with tax law and dealing with the accounting consequences dictated by that law are two sides of the same coin. “My favorite course at UMKC Law School,” he says was Legal Bibliography. “Knowing your way around law books was critical if you wanted to be successful in tax accounting and law in 1969” and it’s much the same today. But “after three semesters at UMKC (at night), I knew I was meant for accounting,” Meara said, and a quick review of compensation levels for new accountants and attorneys sealed his decision.
His career has exposed him to legends, names like Crosby and James Kemper, Henry Bloch, Barnett Helzberg and Ewing Kauffman, and he regards them as models he hoped to emulate with his own firm.
Hale Ritchie
Rainbow United, Wichita
For four fruitful generations the Ritchie family built up a construction materials empire. As Hale Ritchie’s career was winding down, a realization set in: Somewhere along the way, the family feeling started to disappear. Hence the sale to LaFarge North America in 2005.
“Our industry is dominated by foreign, mega corporations,” Ritchie says. “It was becoming increasingly less fun. I grew up hanging out at the office; these were like family members to me. As we grew and got to the range of $200 million, it was all bankers, lawyers and bonding people—it wasn’t the same.” After the sale, he tried easing into retirement at his summer home in Minnesota. But they have phones there, too, and his rang. Rainbows United, a deeply cherished personal cause, had run into a crisis: Would he come back to Wichita to help rebuild the finances of a struggling non-profit? There was no way Ritchie could refuse. That was in 2009, and by 2011, the non-profit serving disabled children was back on its feet.
Of his contribution to life in Wichita, Ritchie says: “If somehow, the things I’ve done can make some other business leader more generous or more caring about the community, then I will consider myself successful in what I did.
“As government cuts spending, the needs aren’t going to go away, so the business and religious community have to pick up the slack. When the cuts come, the Rainbows Uniteds will be affected, not Medicare. So it will forever be a challenge for the business community to realize a civic responsibility to put back.”
Danni Boatwright Wiegmann
Sideline Chic, Tonganoxie
She’s a Sunflower State version of Forest Gump with IQ points: Everywhere she goes, it seems, Danni Boatwright Wiegmann is brushing up against fame and success. She earned a considerable portion of both nearly a decade ago by winning $1 million on the “Survivor” television challenge in 2005, besting a field of contestants by taking the measure of the Guatemalan jungle. Before that, she represented her home state in the Miss USA competition, worked as a model and now she’s married to former Chiefs’ offensive lineman Casey Wiegmann, with whom she’s raising two sons in Tonganoxie.
She’s done turns behind the microphone for 610 Sports, co-hosted the weekly “Sports Rap” show, and served as product spokeswoman for Coleman, the outdoor/camping products maker, Trackstick’s GPS tracking devices and Allegra, the allergy medication.
Still not enough packed into 38 years? Boatwright Wiegmann is also a co-founder of Sideline Chic—corporate motto: “Go Cute or Go Home”— which draws on an interest in team sports that dates to her childhood, when her dad was a coach and she and her brothers were growing up engaged in various sports. The on-line company, which she started with friends Jessica Lilja and Julie Zitlow, is head-quartered in nearby western Shawnee and features custom baseball and football team caps, jerseys and other apparel.
John Snyder
Dentons, Leawood
John Snyder finished the Boston Marathon last April, met his wife for lunch back at the hotel, and never heard the explosion that killed three and maimed nearly 300 just two blocks away. “At first, it seemed surreal,” says Snyder, an endurance sports enthusiast. Outside, though, it was plenty real; runners who trailed him by half an hour paid the price with lost legs. But Snyder will be back there again next month, and he anticpates an emotional race for all involved.
The managing partner for the Kansas City office of the global law firm Dentons, Snyder is a native of Wyandotte County. He’s the youngest of four children raised in the Rosedale neighborhood, where his father’s example of 70-hour weeks as a retail store manager conditioned him for the rigors of being a commercial realty lawyer.
After majoring in economics and political science as a scholarship student at Illinois Wesleyan, he earned his law degree at KU and worked in several firms before alighting at what is now Dentons. “I loved the idea of helping shape the Kansas City real estate community and enjoyed the often ‘win-win’ outcome,” Snyder says.
