WIL (WILFRED) REISINGER FAMILY

The original clan into which I was born was from Germany. When they came to America they settled in the St. Cloud, Minnesota area. My sister did some research and discovered they were dairy farmers and had large families — 12 to 16 kids. From St. Cloud they moved south. I have uncles in south Texas, Colorado, and western Iowa but the majority are still in Minnesota. The name has various spellings — some spell it Reis..., some Risi... The local phone book is wrong. Our name is Reisinger. My paternal grandparents had an interesting way of naming their children. My grandmother named all the boys and my grandfather named all the girls. All the boys, my uncles, were named after my grandmother's old boyfriends. I am a Junior.

I was born in Greenville, Wisconsin, as were my older brother and sister. I was the middle child in a family of six. Just out of college, our father worked for Marathon Paper Company as an accountant; then in the early '60s, he went to work for IBM when the company was first being started in Rochester, Minnesota. They were working under a NASA contract. Their first job was to do the programing for what they called Project Mercury. It was the space flight system — the Mercury space capsules, and he worked on the original orbit and trajectory calculations for that program. Being before computers, they set up people at a really long table, started a calculation at one end and passed it down. Each person would do one portion of the calculation, and when it reached the end of the table, they had the complete calculation.

The company transferred him to Washington, D.C. after he went to work for Sperry-Univac. I was in sixth grade, and my early education was in a Catholic elementary school taught by nuns. I went to a Jesuit high school. It was a very disciplined military school, and my wife wishes we had such a school here.

Growing up in Washington was kind of neat because we could see everything that was going on every day. When I graduated from high school, I attended the University of Maryland, and was in a work/study program with the USDA (Department of Agriculture), which is next to the University. I worked for Dr. Thomas E. Devine, who was a geneticist, at the Soybean Genetics Laboratory at Beltsville, Maryland. He is world renowned and when I left there he had more publications than anyone else in the department. He was a really fascinating person. I worked 20 hours a week on a 10,000 acre farm in suburban Maryland, half of it was for raising animals and half was for plants. In the laboratory, we did all kinds of neat stuff, working on things that haven't even been seen yet. He had soy bean plants that grew as tall as corn with stalks as big as cornstalks. He still sends me research every once in awhile, including pictures that haven't yet been released. It was neat to be involved in all that.

One of the projects came about because Dr. Devine wanted to study drugs and addiction, so we had a plot of marijuana that was about four feet square. He would go out every other day and plant another and another and another. At that time satellite news flew over the farm every day to observe what was happening, and then flew over the country to identify growing marijuana. So here we are, 20- year-old college kids going out every day, planting and cultivating marijuana. When it matured, they disposed of it, and we started over again in different spots. There were guards but they didn't bother us. They knew what we were doing.

We worked on that and also on the original Martian Land Rover. We were irradiating bacterium in an attempt to genetically induce a change in its ability to nodulate with selected soybean strains. This was done at the Goddard Space Flight Center in nearby Greenbelt, Maryland. We would take glass flasks of bacterium in a liquid growth culture and expose them to alpha radiation using a radiation source that was resident at the center. This would be used to simulate the sun's irradiation on spacecraft that were moving through space.

In the process of exposing the flasks they would turn from clear glass to various shades of amber, some so dark it was impossible to see through them. This same radiation source could be run in reverse and instead of lowering an object down into it as I was doing, the source could be raised up into the room and expose larger objects. While performing this irradiation I had a chance to see the Viking Space Probe, first hand, as it was sitting in the room waiting to be irradiated. It was one of the most beautiful man made machines I had ever seen. To this day I still wonder what it looks like sitting on Mars. As a young college kid at the time, I had no idea the journey that was ahead for it or myself. As for all the bacteria that I exposed, we never got results that furthered any kind of closer examination. In fact most of the cultures became sterile and were of no value at all.

I have a degree in each business and agronomy, and I went to work for Sperry New Holland, farm machinery manufacturer. They sent me to Montana for about six months and then to south Texas. I was a young single kid, very naive, and south Texas wasn't a good place to be. In those days it was definitely segregated — there was a difference on which side of the tracks people lived. I quit and went to work for International Harvester. I called on customers in northeastern Missouri and part of Kansas City, but only had 68. It was in the old days when we didn't have a lot of dealers. I was living in Kirksville, and when a fellow there wanted to sell his store, I bought it and that was how I met my wife, Carol. I was showing farm machinery to her brother, he introduced us, and we fell in love.

In 1982, the farm economy went bad and the company condensed the stores. In the down-sizing, our store was closed and we moved to Rochester, Minnesota. We lived there until 1989, when I went to work for Ford, calling on dealers in southern Minnesota until they gave me central Iowa and transferred me to Des Moines. I was in the computer services division, which Ford began talking about closing. They wanted me to go back to Detroit, but we didn't want to live in Detroit and I began looking around. I knew Max Oliver was interested in selling the Osceola dealership so we got together with Max. At that time we had a couple minority partners, Marvin Perry and Glenda Miller, from Mid-States Ford. They considered putting another store down this way, and at the last minute decided against it. I told them, "I still want to do it," and they said, "That's fine. You can buy us out." We had them for about two years and have been in this situation ever since.

Carol and I have a daughter, Hannah McKenna Reisinger. She is named after Hannah Wright, the first female test pilot in Nazi Germany, and her name and our Hannah's is pronounced Hah'na, the German pronounciation. I was fascinated by Hannah Wright after reading a book about her, so we named our daughter Hannah. We had planned, if we had a boy, to call him Wolf Harrington, who was ultimately successful. I pictured that sometime in the future, if some fellow came to our door and said, "I'm here to date your daughter, my name is Wolf Harrington," we probably wouldn't let him in.

Coming from the eastern part of the country to the midwest was a remarkable experience, because easterners didn't know there was such a place. They didn't have a clue. The eastern society is very self-focused. It is me and me alone to get ahead at any cost. I never cared for it. My boss at USDA always wanted me to stay on and get a Masters degree but I told him "This isn't my cup of tea. I just want to get out of here." It is a great place to get an education but it is not a good place to live and raise a family. Their values are so different from those in the mid-west. I haven't been to California so I don't know what it is like, but I know what the east coast is like, and very few people I know would be comfortable living there

I have four brothers still living out there and my parents are living in Ructersville, Virginia, which is up in the Blue Ridge mountains. We are back there visiting all the time, but visiting is one thing, living there is something else. My sister lives in Fairbault, Minnesota, and I am perfectly content to be here. When we first came to Osceola, we lived in town on Lake View Drive. Five years ago, we moved to a farm. Carol had come from a large farm, but neither of us intended to make a career of farming. Now, out of the whole family, we are the only ones who farm. I like the privacy of the country, the space, and we like the animals.

Now our main hobby is raising and showing pigs. We've been doing well with it. Hannah shows at the County Fair and last year we competed at Louisville. Hannah got 8th place with each her Chester White and with her Crossbred. This year (2009) we went to Kansas in May and showed at Burlington and Emporia. She got 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th at Burlington, at Emporia 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th. Last weekend, May 30 and 31, 2009, we were in Missouri, at Columbia and Mexico, where we did exactly the same. We never got a lst place, but we got 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th. We go from here to the Expo in Des Moines next week (in June) to show there, then we will come back and do three more shows in Missouri, on to southern Illinois for the summer-type conference. We will show there, then be back for the County Fair, State Fair, and we will be done.

We truly enjoy doing this because in our experience of working with pigs, we notice that they have definite personalities. A barrow is a boar that has been cut. One of our barrows at this time is named Chicks-dig-me. We also have a black and white one that has an extremely well developed muscle and structure. We call him Secret Weapon. This year, though, we are doing mostly purebreds. We specialize in Spots and Berkshires, and we use only our crossbreds for the County Fair. We do a total of 20 events through the show season with our purebreds, and after the State Fair and after either Louisville or Kansas City, the American Royal, we are finished. In January, we start up again.

Our gilts are sold for breeding stock. Our barrows are sold for market. In a normal year we have four or five barrows and the rest are all gilts. The rest are all sold for breeding stock. We do this because of the separation problems we have with getting rid of our animals that become our daughter's pets. We  think selling them as breeding stock works best.

A gilt we got from Texas was a cloned pig. We went in with three other breeders and cloned a pig that had unbelievable genetics and had won all the shows she had ever been in. We had her cloned and got one of the gilts. We clone gilt to get a gilt. We took her and kept her for a year, showed her and did well with her and we have now sent her back down for breeding. That one is called ? (the phone rang) That is kind of neat. We keep the pigs for about a year. They weigh in, about 30 pounds and we raise them from 275 to 320 depending on whether they are barrows for market or ? (another phone ring)

What people don't understand about pigs is, they are smarter than dogs. If we let them out of their pens, which we do all the time, they are wherever we are. They follow us around. If we are sitting outside, they sit with us and climb in our laps. They are also very easy to train and show. We don't really train them. They just learn because they want to do what we want them to do and they like what we like. A good example is last year at the County Fair, Hannah had a pen of five and she spent so much time with them they considered her part of their group. The guy next to us said, "I believe if I got in the pen while she's in there, they would attack me."

It is fun to watch them because they have such distinct personalities. We have one now we call Cleo, and she is like a little kid. She cries if something upsets her. If we put her in the wrong pen, she starts crying. If she wants this or that, and we don't give it to her, she starts crying. They are really amazing animals. Most people don't know about them. They think they are a group of pigs that wallow in mud, but if you give them a little space and care, it is amazing how clean they are! They go outside to "go." They don't "go" in their pens. Our electrician came out to do some electrical work in the barn and he said, 'These pigs don't even stink! You wouldn't even know they were there." They keep us busy all through the summer

Additionally, I enjoy my work and am totally involved in it, as well. But business people must have some kind of distraction or we can get consumed by it. Our business is not labor-intensive but certainly mind-intensive. I need to know everything that is going in all the different departments all the time. Going home from work and playing with the pigs is a good release. I come in at 6:00 in the morning and go home about 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. On Saturday, if we are not showing, I am here from 7:00 to 3:00. Carol comes in and does payroll one day a week full time and spends three or four hours in the office three days a week.

Although our vacations now mostly involve showing pigs, we also have offers of trips from Ford. We like going on cruises and on an average, we go to the Caribbean once every winter. This year we went to St. Thomas for a week in February. We've gone to Disney World quite a bit. We always take Hannah. We realize she will be young only so long and we want to spend as much time with her as we can. We think Hannah has traveled more than most people have in their entire lives. She likes going with us, and if or when the time comes she loses interest, we can do other things. (In 2009) Hannah is 12. She will go into 7th grade, middle school, this year. It is amazing how fast they grow.

At the present time, the state of the economy is causing adjustments, and Chrysler is making a change. It is an unfortunate circumstance but it isn't, that big a deal for us. When we bought this business, it was very small compared to now. Max Oliver had about three cars, two mechanics, and Jean ran the office. Now there are 16 to 19 people involved. Our service department could fund the entire business. In addition we have the body shop, used and new cars — we average about 75 vehicles. We have rentals — we rent to the train station and have about a dozen cars out at any given time. The business is bigger than it has ever been in the past and the portion of it that was Chrysler isn't that great. It would be different if we were to lose Ford.

If I had been asked about the economy three months ago, in December and January, I'd have told you it was really bad. We were sitting around and nobody was coming in to look at cars. Service guys finished their work by 1:00. I kept telling the guys "We'll get througjh it and we'll get through it together." We kept everybody together, paid everybody, and nobody was fired. From our standpoint, we seem to be through the worst of it. Now the shop is running about a week and a half backlog, all the rental cars are out, the body shop is probably about two months behind, and our average sales are three or four cars a day. From my observation, expensive gas prices of $3 or $4 a gallon made a huge impact on us because transportation is a huge factor in everybody's life. That took so much money out of the economy that we really felt it. But today the average kid on the street around here is living no differently now than he was four years ago.

My outside commitments — locally I have a position on the Clarke County Development Board, and for the last six years I have served on a Board for Ford, FDAA (Ford Dealers Advertising Association). This is a group of eight dealers from Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri, and we control about 16-million dollars a year to cover advertising on local TV and radio in those four states. That is very interesting because we are dealing with the national advertising firm, J.Walter Thompson, whom we hire to create our commercials and our ads, and evaluate our sponsorship of things, like the Kansas City Speedway, football games — the Kansas City Chiefs, and all those. They reimburse us by giving us a trip somewhere every year.

They have broadened our view from an advertising standpoint. We look at things in terms of selling vehicles. They do not look from a retail standpoint, and they force us to look at this in terms of marketing and marketing only to a national media through TV, magazines and things like that. They teach us about a diversity we really don't know exists.

This has been a good Board for me, although very time-consuming. We meet monthly for a day in Kansas City, and go over all the TV ads, review and edit commercials, and set up all our advertising for the proceeding month. Few people realize that for every vehicle shipped into the four states a percentage of that vehicle goes into the advertising fund this committee controls.

I had a most interesting experience last year when I had a call from Ford saying they wanted to give money to the US Army, 160th division, which is Special Forces. They asked me if I would go to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to take these guys a check. When I called them and said I was coming, they said, "We don't want somebody to hand us a check. We want you to see what we do."

I went expecting them to give me a tour of the base, but instead we spent the day flying their helicopters, shooting their guns, and doing all their training exercises. It was a fascinating day but by the time it was over, I had shot and consumed over 1.6-million dollars worth of ammunition, all for a $10,000 check. What we were using was ammunition beyond its expiration date. They had to use or dispose of it. They don't send it over to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The aftermath, when I came back all excited, was to have them come, and because we sponsor the Kansas City Speedway, I arranged for them to do a fly-in at the race and make a presentation on national TV. They came with five helicopters and landed in front of the start-finish line. They all jumped off the helicopters and secured it like a little landing area and then brought in a bigger helicopter to deliver the pace car. They landed, rolled out the pace car for the race, then they loaded all the guys back up, all the helicopters took off, and there sat the pace car for the race. The people thought it was fantastic. It was such a big, exciting deal that the 160th won awards because of civilian participation. They won the Kathy Canhan Ross Public Affairs Award of Distinction from the Army. This is a tremendous award they give once a year for one event and everybody tries to get it. They won it for this event.

Two weeks before the race, they came to rehearse and I went. This took place five miles from the track. They borrowed a hay field from a farmer for their staging area. They took the pace car out there, loaded it on a heavy-lift helicopter, and had five gun ships around it. They flew in, circled the track, brought the small helicopters down with the troops on them, let them out, secured the area while the big one circled. Then the bigger one came down, hovered, slowly touched the ground, opened the ramp, unloaded the car and they all took off at once. All that was left was the pace car. It was really spectacular!

It is one of those times when you do something nice and it rolls into something better and bigger. These kinds of things come out of the blue, we do them but don't talk much about them. I enjoy that kind of stuff. My problem with doing more in the community is it takes so much time and it would be easy to become so involved that I could run out of time to take care of my business. That, after all, is and must be my priority.

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Last Revised December 15, 2014