Connie Wimer at Bubba

4/5/2023

Connie Wimer has racked up a lifetime of “firsts.” She was the first female owner of a title company in Iowa, the first owner of a computerized title company anywhere, the first female owner of an alternative newspaper and of a business paper in Iowa, and the first Iowan to bring a wine festival and glossy magazines to the state. We asked her to lunch in March, and she selected Bubba, a downtown café specializing in southern cuisine and bourbons. 

Bubba likes Wimer as much she likes them. They have a cocktail named after her. Like its namesake, it is both traditional and specifically unique in details. The “Ms. Wimer” is a classic martini that demands Cocchi Americano aperitif, Tanqueray gin, Vya vermouth and lemon. We ordered crab cakes and chicken sandwiches and talked about her business. (Disclosure — Wimer hired me to write for CITYVIEW’s predecessor, The Skywalker, in 1988. She sold CITYVIEW to Shane Goodman in 2004. I have been contributing regularly to one or another of the publications she founded ever since then.)

Wimer’s late husband, Frank Fogarty, had an incredible resume that included experience all over the world. He spoke several languages. There were rumors that he had been a CIA operative. Was he a spy? 

“I never wanted to put him on the spot about that, so I didn’t ask. But there were interesting encounters I observed in places like Russia with mysterious strangers that he seemed to know.” 

Wimer did not have much support from the local, male-dominated establishment when she determined to buy and remake Iowa Title Company. 

“An attorney who was a friend of Bill’s (Wimer) let me know he did not care for me when I bought it. He said, ‘This time you finally bit off more than you can chew.’ Things like that incentivize me. 

“A few years later, I called a meeting of the Planned Parenthood board to discuss attracting a bigger crowd. He pops up and says, ‘What are you thinking. It’s not like you can get Norman Borlaug to come to Des Moines.’ Borlaug was the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1970 and was living in Mexico City. I went home and got on my rotary phone and dialed the operator. I told her I wanted to make a long distance call to Norman Borlaug in Mexico City. Remember those days? The operator looked up the number and dialed me through. 

“A couple minutes later, Norman answers the phone and says hello. I introduce myself and congratulate him and invite him to come to Des Moines to speak to Planned Parenthood. He immediately said he would love to, but his time was managed then by the Ford Foundation. They called me and said that the date we had discussed wouldn’t work because Borlaug had a conflict. I said we would change the date, they said he had a conflict then, too. We went back and forth on dates. I told them, ‘Look, he wants to do this.’ They finally found a date. When he arrived here, in a big March blizzard, the first thing he said to me was, ‘My staff tells me you are the most persistent person ever.’ ”

Wimer also was advised not to computerize Iowa Title, which quickly took the company from the smallest in Des Moines to the largest in Iowa. 

“Oh, even IBM told me not to, and I was buying from them. I wanted the IBM 34. No one had ever bought one in Iowa at the time, 1978. It was gargantuan. IBM told me it was impossible, but I demanded two weeks of operational training. They finally agreed. I hired two positions just to enter the data, but soon we could deliver a real estate abstract in two days instead of two weeks. Since Realtors don’t get paid till the paperwork is all done, they all pressured their companies to switch to Iowa Title. We became the largest title company quickly, and yet it was 10 more years before any others computerized.” 

It took her longer to make her purchase of Daily Record successful. 

“I knew it was a good fit for the title company because everyone was listing properties there. I had to ask the McIntyre family three times before they agreed to sell to me. It had been in the family 80 years without making any changes. But I had a 20-year loan to pay them off, and it wasn’t making money.

“At that time, I asked to meet with the Register and Tribune brain trust to try to persuade them that covering small business news would be a good plan. They only covered the big four Des Moines companies at the time. They shot me down and changed nothing. So, I decided to turn the Daily Record into the Business Record and cover the community. I had to sell advertising to make money, and that was hard with a circulation of less than 700. Business news grew that, but I wanted to up our game regarding reporters. To attract them, I decided to start The Skywalker, Iowa’s first weekly alternative paper. Of course, I was advised not to. But by merging the papers, I could hire people like Rob Borselino.

“The papers lost money for three years, and I was making mistakes. I heard about a national association of similar publications and petitioned to attend a meeting. They refused me, so I asked them to poll the membership about it, all 35 members. They said OK, and I learned so much. I read all their papers for one thing. Four years later, I was their president, and I still go to all their meetings.”

Wimer was also advised not to start a wine festival in Iowa, or a glossy lifestyle magazine (DSM).  

“People told me that Iowa wines were not that interesting. I don’t know why they thought I would not also bring in top wineries from the West Coast. They also told me that I could not find competent staff. So, I hired Carrie Weinhardt, and the two of us did everything to get it off the ground. Natasha Sayles does a fabulous job running it now. The constant negativity was that Des Moines was too small to need a business paper, an alternative, a lifestyle magazine, or a wine festival. 

“The upside of being inexperienced is that you don’t know what you can’t get done