Veterans Home cameto town throughspirit of cooperationThe Minnesota Veterans Home, Luverne, will mark its 10-year anniversary Sunday. Open houses and speeches aren’t all that thrilling, but what is thrilling is to see what can happen when a dedicated group of individuals sets out to make big things happen.I started here at the Star Herald just in time to see the final touches added to the beautiful Veterans Home facility.In researching information for this week’s story on the 10-year anniversary, the bigger story is the spirit of cooperation it took to bring a veterans home to Luverne.The bright spot in the background on the facility is that local government agencies — primarily the city and county — worked together to make it happen.In addition, local Democrats and Republicans lobbied side by side in St. Paul to convince the legislature to locate southwest Minnesota’s veterans home in Luverne.As the story is told to me, everyone rolled up their sleeves and tackled this monumental task without worrying about who did more work or who would get the credit.Ahhh … Those were the days.It might behoove our current government officials to revisit those times … perhaps retrace their roots to the values this community was founded on.Perseverance pays offIn case there was ever doubt about how far a little perseverance will go, consider the following:oIn his first year in the automobile business, Henry Ford went bankrupt. Two years later, his second company also failed. His third corporation has done rather well, however.oApple microcomputer was turned down by both Hewlett-Packard and Atari, but had first-year sales of $2.5 millionoDr. Seuss’s first children’s book was rejected by 23 publishers. The 24th publisher sold 6 million copies of it.oHoward Hughes Sr. was forced to abandon his first oil well because he couldn’t drill through the hard rock. He then founded Hughes Tool Co. and invented a rock drill that became the foundation for the family fortune.oR.H. Macy went broke with his first three dry goods stores.oAfter Paul Gavin’s storage battery business failed for the second time in 1928, he borrowed $750, bought back part of it and went into business again as Motorola.We can learn a number of things from these individuals, but the important thing to know is that they didn’t possess anything that isn’t available to all of us.Our only limitations are the ones we impose on ourselves.
