Nearly 27 years ago, Kim Lobdell sat behind her desk at KL Engineering for the first time, alone in the office and the sole employee of the Fitchburg company she had just started.
Standing on the 55th floor of the partially completed John Hancock Center in Chicago, the 14-year-old Stephen Perry Smith didn’t know he one day would be designing similar buildings.
Teaching wasn’t Patrick O’Neill’s first love. The Oshkosh native got into remodeling and landscape work right after high school and eventually took a job at Appleton-based RJ Kampo Plumbing and Heating Inc., a company his wife’s cousin owned.