RIDING THE RIDGE IN VIRGINIA……It’s a late afternoon in December; the sky the color of slate. A man and woman, both in their 70’s are driving home to Minnesota, taking the scenic route through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Although in their seventh decade, the couple wouldn’t entertain of any other means of transportation.

Jim Weinel still drives everywhere he goes.  He’s put 465 miles on the car today. He’s heading home after days on the road; beginning in Atlantic City, for the annual USSC Sign World convention, then down to Virginia to visit two of his eighteen manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Canada, rounding out the trip driving over the Blue Ridge Mountains, stopping for gas near Cincinnati, and on home to Minnesota.

Sharon, Jim’s wife of 52 years is by his side; she’s always been by his side. They go everywhere together; she is his business partner, as well as his heart.

They are getting older now, but age and time has not slowed Mr. and Mrs. James R. Weinel. They are as vital today as they were back in the early sixties, when, with start-up cash of $150 they rented 400 square feet of space in a garage, and together began what is now the colossus of the sign industry; Gemini Inc., in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, producers of the largest line of dimensional letters in the world.

Jim and Sharon are the very embodiment of the American dream. Two people from the heartland, who took a chance on themselves, and with hard work and determination, became rich beyond their wildest dreams. In a phone interview, conducted while Jim drives over the mountains towards home, he candidly reminisces about his early years as a kid in Randolph, Minn, population 250.

“Sure, I remember my first job, I was 8 years old, and I began to clean out the barn, and mow lawns. Randolph was a railroad town. My dad was a railroader. My parents taught me the value of hard work,“And Sharon was a farm girl from Howard, South Dakota, so she was even tougher than me”.

Jim says hard work with attention to detail, and a commitment to a quality product at a fair price, delivered to the customer as quickly as possible is the guiding principle of his multimillion-dollar business.

Jim and Sharon recently donated a $2 million gift to the University of Cincinnati to establish the James S. Womack/Gemini Chair of Signage and Visual Marketing.  That money did not fall off the trees. It came from a man who started and failed at several businesses before he established Gemini.

“I sold honey off the back of my truck”, he recalls, “and had several other flops before I met Tom Limborg, an itinerant sign painter. I was selling sign letters out of the back of my car at that time, and he asked me to form some letters for him. I did, using the same material we use today, cellulose acetate. “I always wanted a successful business, and I figured letter making could be it…When we began, Sharon and I would travel together, and she would head to the town library to look up mailing lists while I made sales calls”.

“Sharon is the very heart of the business, the rock of the company”, said Dick Develin, Mid Atlantic sales manager for Gemini. “She has been actively involved in the production of the Gemini catalog.“And Jim is one of the most decent businessmen you could ever meet. His customers are always happy with the service.”

Jim and Sharon met in Minneapolis and were married in 1956. They have three children- 2 daughters and 1 son, and 11 grandchildren. Jim graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1956. After a brief active duty in the Army, he and Sharon settled in Minnesota.

He worked in aerospace engineering for five years, until he decided to form a company of his own. And that’s when the good old American entrepreneurial spirit kicked in. With nothing more than his car and a dream, he set out to sell sign letters; a strange departure from a civil engineer in the aerospace industry.

In 1964, he had the opportunity to purchase a small company in Minneapolis where he began making letters for the sign industry. They grew and expanded into a major industry making plastic sign letters, aluminum sign letters, changeable sign letters, cast metal sign letters, and bronze plaques.

Philanthropy has been a significant part of their professional and personal lives. In 2006, they established the Don Osell Chair of Sales and Marketing for Engineers at the University of Minnesota. They also established a corporation to reach out to high school students in cities where Gemini has plant operations. The Ross Wagner Scholarship Program for Engineers awards educational grants to high school students who have selected engineering as a career.

Jim Weinel, now 74, has no regrets about his life. “I’m looking forward the next product,” he jokes, “I never look backward, always forward.

And oh, yes, he says, there is a fellow who is writing a book about how to make it big on practically nothing…Jim is in the book. Naturally.