Posted May 03, 2017in Lunch With...
Wanting to write this column with someone in law and order, I asked several people in the criminal justice system for recommendations. The unanimity amongst their responses amazed me. Waukee Police Chief John Quinn is so well respected among colleagues, and former adversaries, that phrases like “Iowa’s super cop,” “the
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Posted April 05, 2017in Lunch With...
John Ramsey has worked and played in the local automobile game for 50 years, playing a role in car dealerships at various locations bearing his family name. Cityview asked him to lunch recently to talk about a half-century in, perhaps, the most American of all businesses. He chose Trostel’s Greenbriar.
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Posted March 01, 2017in Lunch With...
Kristian Day is the only Des Moines guy I know who has a page on IMDb (Internet Movie Database, the ultimate Who’s Who of Hollywood). It’s most impressive for someone who just turned 30, with credits in 15 different areas. That’s the same number Martin Scorsese has. We asked him
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Posted February 01, 2017in Lunch With...
Frank Cownie has been called “a grown up all American boy,” and it fits. He’s tall, blonde, a champion swimmer and a successful businessman. He’s also become one of the most popular mayors in the city’s history and a surviving face of the Democrat Party of Iowa. He’s currently in
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Posted January 04, 2017in Lunch With...
J Ann Selzer is a prophet of trends in politics and business. She has operated The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll since 1987 and has worked with Bloomberg News and Bloomberg.com for seven years. Her reputation for divining the future has brought her bonafide status as a Washington insider and
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Posted November 30, 2016in Lunch With...
Bill Northey is arguably Iowa’s most popular politician. Certainly the margins of victory in his last two re-elections support that. Blue-eyed and outgoing, he retains a boyish enthusiasm as he approaches age 60. The third-term Secretary of Agriculture and Land Stewardship is himself a third-generation Iowa farmer from Spirit Lake.
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Posted November 02, 2016in Lunch With...
Graham Cook has been Des Moines’ most eccentric corporate leader for decades. Standing more than 6-foot-6-inches tall and skinny, he jokes that he would be typecast to play a mortician in a horror film. Usually dressed more like a 19th-century poet than a president/CEO of a conservative insurance corporation, Cook
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Posted October 05, 2016in Lunch With...
Luigi “Cock-eyed Louie” Fratto took the name Lou Farrell when he moved to Des Moines in 1934. He quickly became Des Moines’ most notorious “mob associate.” Among other things, he used his considerable connections to get a federal permit to distribute Canadian Ace beer. That was after an Alcohol Tax
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Posted August 31, 2016in Lunch With...
Success and notoriety have paced Maggi Moss through several careers that few Iowans have enjoyed even once. She rode out of Madison Square Garden three years in a row as the national equestrian champion, stunning the blue-blooded easterners who doubted civilization existed in Iowa. She was a feared prosecutor and
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Posted August 10, 2016in Lunch With...
Steve Berry is a familiar face around town. He was the on-air face of Fox 17 through most of the 1990s and hosted the “Family Fun Game” from 1993 to 1999. He has been master of ceremonies for the Arthritis Foundation and Variety Children’s Charity telethons for years. His theater
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