Some of the world’s most successful businesses start on a wing and a prayer. Barbara Grogan’s Western Industrial Contractors began in 1982 when she paid $500 for a 1969 orange pickup truck and set up shop in rented space on an unpaved street in Denver.
She hit the ground running. Within months, her company made a name for itself by winning a sought-after contract to move an entire gasket manufacturing plant from New Jersey to Texas.
And, no, it wasn’t loaded bit by bit into the bed of her trusty truck.
Today, Western Industrial Contractors is one of the nation’s largest industrial construction companies and Grogan is one of the newest members of the Colorado Business Hall of Fame.
Grogan, who also was the first woman to chair the boards of both the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Denver Branch, and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, was inducted into the Colorado Business Hall of Fame at its annual gala, a dinner held at the Hyatt Regency Convention Center. The event raises money for Junior Achievement Rocky Mountain and the Chamber.
Other inductees were Jim Johnson and his father, the late Gil E. Johnson; Bill Pauls; Dick Saunders; the late Philip and Adolph Zang, and the late Joseph Kernan Weckbaugh.
Gil E. Johnson founded G.E. Johnson Construction Co., a firm considered the largest locally owned and operated commercial builder in Colorado Springs, and one of the largest in the Rocky Mountain region. His son, James E. “Jim” Johnson, joined the company in 1976 and was named president and chief executive officer in 1997.
The company has built, expanded or renovated all or portions of the Springs’ best-known structures, including the U.S. Olympic Training Center, the Broadmoor Hotel, Pikes Peak Center, the U.S. Air Force Academy, Pikes Peak Community College and Penrose Hospital.
The Johnson family, said master of ceremonies Gregg Moss, “was born to build.”
Bill Pauls, a native of Canada, graduated college with a chartered accountant designation and eventually became a national partner with Deloitte Haskins and Sells. In 1979, he led an investment group that acquired the Denver Technological Center. The same team went on to develop millions of square feet of office space and hundreds of acres of land in south Denver.
In 1989, he started PAULS, an investment and real estate company with holdings in Denver and 12 other cities in the U.S. and Canada. With Verna, his wife of 52 years, Bill supports numerous worthy causes in Denver, including the Denver Art Museum, Colorado UpLift and Project C.U.R.E.
Dick Saunders left his home on the East Coast to enroll at the University of Denver. “I wasn’t a good student; I didn’t like going to class,” he recalled in his acceptance remarks. Which led to “me getting kicked out in my third year there.”
After working as a construction laborer, carpenter, concrete foreman, painter and finish carpenter for various firms, he joined R.N. Fenton Construction as a trainee. Ten years later, he was promoted to office manager and then vice president.
An entrepreneur at heart, Saunders left Fenton Construction and founded Saunders Construction, a name associated with some of the largest projects in the region. They include schools, hotels, parking structures, mixed-use developments and municipal buildings.
The icing on the cake? “Thirty years after DU kicked me out, they made me an honorary dean.”
Like Pauls and Grogan, Saunders is committed to giving back by serving on boards like ACE Scholarships, the Institute for Children’s Mental Disorders and Colorado Ballet.
Wally Weckbaugh represented his father, inductee Joseph Kernan Weckbaugh, who died in 1988. “He worked so tirelessly for the benefit of others,” Wally said. “He sought out people who needed help and cut more ribbons than we could ever count.”
The elder Weckbaugh had a key role in bringing Braniff Airlines to the Western Mountain District and was the founder of four banks that became First Colorado Bankshares Inc., the first bank holding company in the 10th Federal Reserve District. The grandson of businessman/philanthropist John Kernan Mullen, he also helped start Junior Achievement in Colorado and was appointed a Knight of St. Gregory by Pope John XXIII.
The Zang name is perhaps best associated with beer. Philip Zang was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany; his father, John, was part of an old Bavarian family that took part in the Napoleonic wars and joined Napoleon himself on his march to Moscow.
Philip Zang was 14 when he began working as a brewer in Germany. He came to America in 1853, eventually making his way to Denver, where he purchased Rocky Mountain Brewing Co. and changed its name to Philip Zang & Co., growing it to the largest of its kind west of St. Louis.
Zang’s son, Adolph, who died in 1916, worked alongside his father, expanding their holdings to include gold mining, investments and developing one of the largest financial institutions in the West: the German American Trust Company of Denver. Their Vindicator mine in Cripple Creek was one of the region’s most productive.
Robin Wise, president/CEO of Junior Achievement Rocky Mountain, and her counterpart at the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, Kelly Brough, were pleased to see the Hyatt Regency’s ballroom filled with so many of those previously inducted. Among them: Jake Jabs, Curt Fentress, Sam Gary, Eddie and Dick Robinson, Barry Hirschfeld, Joe Blake, Terry Considine, Don Kortz, Dan Ritchie, Bob Tointon; Cathey Finlon and Bruce Benson.
Other guests included Denise Burgess, chair of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce board; John Freyer, president of Land Title Guarantee Co. and chair of the 2018 selection committee; Buz Koelbel, whose father, the late Walter Koelbel, was inducted in 2001; Tanga Alexander, the regional private wealth manager for event underwriter UMB Bank; Doug Friednash, chair of the national political strategies practice at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; John and Carol Saeman; Paul and MJ Powers; and Angela Lieurance, and Steve Kinsley, president of Kinsley Meetings.
Joanne Davidson: 303-809-1314, partiwriter@hotmail.com and @joannedavidson on Twitter
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